Tesla is an immature car maker. They might have great designs but they haven't matured their processes. They haven't spent years fine tuning their QA processes so these things slip through. One off type stuff like this and designs that are generally less manufacturing optimized designs coming from them are not surprising.
I don't see why all the fanboys get their panties in a knot when people point this out. To everyone who actually knows anything about cars or manufacturing it's kind of a nothing-burger that everyone expects will slowly go away with time.
But I designed interior parts, so it's my own Engineering take. Tesla's were not competitive at all. The gaps between panels were so bad, you could stick your finger in it. That's not just an appearance issue, kids and adults will mess around with large gaps and put stuff inside.
And features in the interior were non existent. (Especially for a luxury car)
Interesting that you are just glossing over the fact that a) Tesla trounces all competition on performance and b) Tesla trounces basically everyone on safety as well.
a) for that kind of money, and lack of features, it better go fast (cornering, meh, not so much).
b) You are commenting on an article that talks about a Tesla loosing its roof. That's a new one on me, and I'd thought I'd seen it all back when I was an auto mechanic.
Just my own personal experience, I've owned two Teslas (a 2014 Model S and a 2018 Model 3) and they both had a pretty good number of problems here and there. The S was particularly bad, though that is maybe not surprising since it was one of the first 50k cars the company built, but the 3 has had its share of issues as well.
But the thing is, I've never had any issues that rendered the car undriveable or unsafe, and service has always been a joy to work with. Every problem I've encountered has been addressed quickly and effectively with no hassle or charge. So, I'm willing to forgive some of the rough edges, and I suspect this is why they get such good customer satisfaction ratings despite the relatively high number of issues.
Cars should be available, not spend time in the shop for repairs that could have been avoided. It's great that you are so forgiving but for me a trip to the garage for some small issue would eat up half a day easily and that adds up quickly when there are a number of issues.
I mean, I agree with the sentiment, but also you're assuming you'd similarly waste half a day for a Tesla repair, and that's usually not the way things work. Tesla will frequently send a technician to a customer's home or place of work and fix issues on the spot. Even when I've had to go to a service center in person, they've included free rideshare credits for quick repairs so that I don't have to wait around, or free loaner cars for longer repairs.
Back in the old days when I lived far away from a service center, they once drove hundreds of miles with a flatbed to come pick up my car, and dropped off a free loaner at my house while my car was in the shop, then came back and returned my car and picked up the loaner a few days later. (The loaner was also a nicer Tesla than the one I owned.) They really do go above and beyond to resolve issues as pleasantly and conveniently as possible.
I have a recent X, the panels fit together, no rattles or squeeks and the issues I've had were fixed fast. Last was the voice control button on the steering wheel that failed to work, reported it on last Thursday, they were at my door with mobile service at 9 this Monday.
I did test drive a 2013 S and I decided to wait until they matured at that point but now they seem to have gotten their act together in most cases.
They're actually on par with Audi here in Norway when it comes to customer satisfaction so it's not all bad [1]. Only Toyota, volvo and BMW beat them. They had a dip due to an overcrowded service department at the launch of the Model 3, but they hired a ton of people and trained them.
Now this roof falling off is one area they could improve greatly, factory Q&A. There should be a bumpy test track where they take all their vehicles for a control drive before shipping them to eliminate issues like that roof.
Well, for one example: Tesla Model 3 production was constrained based on the amount of paint their factory was consented to spray every day. When Model 3 production started climbing, customers were seeing very thin and uneven paint application, well below what's normal for a car in this price bracket, and often very light on critical areas like the sills. Owners in snow-bound places where Tesla is popular, such as Scandanavia, were reporting pain stripping within a few months of ownership.
I don't know about you, but my expectation for what is nominally a luxury car would be to have paint standards better than British Leyland in the 70s.
It's a design that is getting sold to people who are getting starry eyed over other aspects of the car. They don't care that the fit and finish is befitting an Aveo. They care that they're driving a sexy new EV from the leading manufacturer of sexy new EVs. From the perspective of "keep Tesla relevant and financially solvent-ish" it's a great design. They know what the people they're selling to care about and what they don't and the latter isn't getting much attention.
It's like how the Tacoma has been the turd of it's segment on paper for 20+yr but still flies off the shelves. Clearly the metric don't tell the whole story. In both cases there's an emotional value proposition that's doing a lot of heavy lifting.
And since I know in advance that this comment is gonna piss off a hell of a lot of people here (if I had to pick a demographic that will have both a Tacoma and a Tesla in their driveway HN would be about the perfect fit) I'll ask in advance if any of those people would like to tell me why I'm so wrong.
As someone who’s designed auto interiors, where other people see simplicity like a single touchscreen for all controls, I see an ergonomic disaster motivated by cost cutting.
I'm genuinely curious, could you explain how the touchscreen is a disaster?
I haven't seen a Tesla interior so when you say "all controls" it's a bit concerning. I'm assuming you're talking only of non-driving related control...
Because of the lack of tactile feedback, touchscreens often lead to distracted driving by forcing drivers to take their eyes off of the road to carry out simple tasks. As an example, take HVAC and radio functionality -- in older cars with buttons and knobs, after a short amount of time, people can operate these functions without looking. The same is not true for touchscreens. That's not to say that there is no place for them in cars, but the consensus it's better to use a combination of touch screen (for things you don't often adjust while driving) and physical controls (for things you do). But it's generally cheaper to slap a big ol' touchscreen in cars that does everything, and change configurations in software, rather than investing in custom interior designs for each model of car. And it's not just Tesla doing this, even companies who hang their hat on safety like Subarus are stuffing more and more functionality into touchscreens[0].
Even the Ford Mustang Mach E has copied the Tesla center-screen design. At least they also have a short-wide screen behind the steering wheel too, and they've included a big knob embedded into the bottom of the center console screen. Hopefully that helps.
I'm not familiar with Teslas at all, but it sounds like a voice interface might help work around some of these limitations, a la Alexa/Hey Google. Maybe they already have it?
Please no, nothing is more frustrating and distracting to try to get my virtual assistant to fix something they've misunderstood. That's about as fun as arguing with your passenger about directions while driving.
I used to think that voice recognition sucked until I tried Google Assistant. Holy shit is it amazing when it picks up every single word you utter every single time. Truly impressive and if car manufacturers can license the voice tech from Google I can definitely see the tech being quite useful.
It feels like a specialized voice control interface with a limited set pre-programmed functionality accessible through specific hard-coded keywords (which is what I assume Teslas could be equipped with for this purpose) might have a much easier time getting things right compared to an open ended general purpose virtual assistant that has to deal with completely arbitrary voice commands and unbounded ambiguity.
They do. You can control many things with voice in Tesla.
I don't know the comprehensive list of things you can use it for, but so far I used it to:
* Change temperature
* Play a specific song
* Set navigation to a new destination
I didn't put switching music tracks (next&previous)/adjusting volume on that list, because those can be easily performed using the scrollable button on the steering wheel.
If by voice control, you mean asking a passenger to do it, sure. If you mean trying to find the right keywords while driving a vehicle at 65 mph, no thanks. I'm a native english speaker with a california accent and none of the systems I've used have been much help.
It's like playing an old text adventure without the manual, so you don't know the verbs. It uses too much thinking to try to come up with different words while also trying to drive.
Your federal law does not necessarily apply everywhere a tesla may be purchased and operated (I'm not saying it makes economic sense or anything, just that US law is likely not the sole reason it's there)
As a Model Y owner (who still has his roof!), you very quickly become accustomed to it. Excellent voice controls allow for finding music easily, and adjusting things like the AC is done so infrequently that doing it through the touch screen is a non-issue.
or are a non native english speakers.
Sure, not getting voice control to work properly in my language is one thing, but not being able to deal with local accents (which is a majority in the world) makes voice control almost useless.
Every human factors study I’ve seen results for indicated that touchscreens were ergonomically inferior. Drivers would take longer to make the same adjustments and were more distracted while doing so. You may be underestimating how much the touchscreen impacts your ability to drive. Voice control is indeed much better, but as others have pointed out, experiences may vary.
All research shows voice control is more dangerous than driving at the legal alcohol limit. Convenient maybe but very unsafe. Also will become illegal. Already is in some countries. Not much fun with a Tesla when using a touchscreen is illegal unless the handbrake is on.
Not entirely related, but I always hated the red dash lighting on my car. I thought it looked ugly and wondered why they didn't just go with a cleaner white colour.
Then I read about red light is specifically used in car dashboard lighting and airplane cockpits because it helps with night vision. What I thought at first was just an ugly colour choice was actually a very subtle design decision to help while driving at night.
It always reminds me how complicated and multifaceted good design is. There are always trade offs to consider, but minimalism as a design trend often seems a little too willing to ignore those trade offs and will sacrifice traits like safety, efficiency and flexibility for the sake of cost and simplicity.
Then I read about red light is specifically used in car dashboard lighting and airplane cockpits because it helps with night vision.
Given that there is a stream of not-red lights shining at me in the opposite lane, I've been skeptical of this claim since Nissan did it in the 300Z like 30 years ago. It's there to look cool, not be useful. There's a subtle design lesson in there as well, I'm just not sure what it is.
You don't need night vision when headlights are visible in the opposite lane. You'll appreciate it when you are driving on a dark road on a moonless or overcast night.
When I took an astronomy class in college, we'd have "night" class on the roof, with telescopes, and star maps.
We were instructed to bring flashlights, but cover the lens with a red layer, to keep the pupils from closing too much, so we could both look at stars but read our star charts.
The headlights in the other lane don't disqualify the benefits of using red lighting inside the car.
I don't even have a Tesla, I have a 2013 Prius which has an array of buttons for everything instead. The only knobs are the miniscule (and hard to turn) volume and tune buttons on the radio. They made a token effort but placing indentations on the heater temp and fan speed buttons but after five years I still can't operate anything on the center console without taking my eyes off the road.
I love almost everything about my Prius but the person who designed the interior to look like a Starfleet shuttlecraft should be shot.
Wow. I feel like I got my Subaru at just the right time when driver assistance tech was somewhat mature but the user interface was still mostly mechanical.
> I'm genuinely curious, could you explain how the touchscreen is a disaster?
Touchscreens in cars are a disaster, in general. They're a bad technology for the use case. They're more so in a Tesla, because Tesla relies on them far more heavily than any other manufacturer, and gives users no alternative for most functions.
Cars should be designed to minimize touchscreen use, not maximize it.
So if that happens, embrace the touchscreens then? I mean, in the 90s, Microsoft was pretty hung ho about having voice as the main interface to computers in the near future. They kept the keyboard, which, given the history of early noughties voice recognition, was probably just as well.
My point is that you shouldn't design things being made right now for an entirely speculative future change.
I don't think anyone believes that Tesla will have actual self-driving cars, which don't require constant driver attention, within the lifetime of the cars currently being produced.
I completely agree. They're not as reliable as buttons. A single failure breaks everything. They're not particularly robust to temperature extremes. I can't use them by touch alone. They don't work with gloves.
In fact, the reliance on a touch screen is why I've stricken Tesla off the list while shopping for an EV. I currently drive an old BMW and I love the interface. There are physical buttons for everything and there's no unnecessary fluffy stuff.
The most-modern vehicle I've driven whose interface I've liked was a Skoda Fabia.
Sounds like you are stating an opinion rather than some fact based on data. As proven by exponential growth in Teslas, there is clearly a massive fanbase of people who like touchscreen. I personally absolutely love it, and don't really know why other cars have knobs and buttons.
On my dad's old land rover, you can literally operate the radio wearing blindfolds because everywhere is simply placed. It responds instantly, draws no power, and shut up when you aren't using it. His current car just gets in your way, even if it has more features.
One thing I’ve never seen mentioned online but a Model 3 owner I know complained about is that the speedometer is blocked if you have your right hand between 3 and 6 o clock on the steering wheel. He had to change the way he’s used to gripping the wheel to accommodate the car which seemed like a high burden for a luxury product.
I truly don't understand how your friend has this problem. I have a Model 3, and after I read your comment, I tried to block my view of the speedometer with my right hand and couldn't do it. I tried sitting closer and farther back, higher and lower. I tried every position on the steering wheel. I flared my elbows out. I tried to imagine my hands and wrists were twice the size. I just don't see how this is possible. I'd love to see a POV pic from your friend that illustrates the problem. For my money, having the speedometer on the central screen makes it more visible. My view of a conventional dash is always partially blocked by the steering wheel.
Think I misremembered slightly, I only rode with him once. I though the speedo was at the lower left of the screen but it looks like the upper left. Think maybe he was used to having his hand between 12 and 3 and had to move? He was a larger guy if that makes a difference
Not a friend, just a former coworker I didn’t keep in contact with so I don’t have any way to follow up.
Almost every modern car has an adjustable steering wheel which you can move around to ensure you have a line to the instrument panel. Cars in the Model 3 price range will often project speed and other driving information into the windshield.
A lot of people have offered other details. I’d add: in the Model 3 even instrument panel information like speed is in the center display.
Touchscreens cut costs because you can ship the same hardware to all SKUs and change features in software. Buttons need to be added or replaced with fillers depending on the options that each car has.
If nothing else: safety. Research shows that even using Siri or Google assistant is worse than driving at the legal alcohol limit. Using a touchscreen should (and will become) illegal. In a Tesla you can't do shit without using the touchscreen. A safety and UX disaster.
This is such a dumb point. When Ford started, horses were the main means of transportation. Comparing that to Tesla’s beginning, which was at the peak of car manufacturing, is stupid.
By the mid 90s the domestics had more or less closed the gap. They just didn't apply the techniques and processes to the product lines they didn't care about (i.e. economy cars, they were selling SUVs hand over fist after all). And if you look at MRSPs for foreign and domestic economy cars throughout the 90s the prices more or less reflect the respective OEM's level of investment in those product lines. If you wanted an economy car you bought a Civic. If you wanted a shitbox you bought an Escort for less money.
> By the mid 90s the domestics had more or less closed the gap.
I completely disagree with that. I bought a Cadillac in 2012. Its build quality was lower than anything I've seen from BMW, Audi or Volvo. I'm talking about really inconsistent panel (internal and exterior) gaps and misc vehicle rattles. It's also worth mentioning the Cadillac was the most expensive vehicle of the group and very much a line that GM cared about. I have no idea how Ford is doing, but GM is still not comparable to German/Swedish/Korean manufacturers.
Also, manufacturing engineering and mass production was just getting started. hell, Ford was famous for adopting scientific management and the assembly line to cranck out a massive amount of cars at that time.
I would even argue ford's model of manufacturing turned the last remnats of workshop based work into the mass producing factory.
Yes, Tesla may not have the best manufacturing quality, but compared against American cars from the 80's...
They've only been mass manufacturing for about 4 years now; previous models are low volume models with a lot of hand assembly.
Musk says that manufacturing is a couple of orders of magnitude harder than designing and building prototypes. He's learning these lessons the hard way. If you can survive the lesson, it's the best way to learn them. Little consolation to those who buy the lemons during the learning period, though.
This is also a tale about America. Tesla's Chinese factory gets first place on a similar survey to the JD Powers initial quality survey that Tesla America got last place in. America just doesn't have the deep well of manufacturing knowledge that a new company like Tesla can draw on.
The problem is the conscious choice to prioritize quantity over quality. Make no mistake, Tesla's leadership consciously chose to let quality slide in order to meet the delivery volumes because the latter is what pumps stock prices. And they did this knowing it could (and did) very well lead to direct loss of life.
This is what would worry me as a potential customer. That the manufacturer selling me their product considers such disasters acceptable in order to ship a few more units. It's not that often lately than manufacturers are willing to do this (think GM ignition key scandal, rather than VW pollution cheating).
>> America just doesn't have the deep well of manufacturing knowledge that a new company like Tesla can draw on.
Is this serious? America has been offshoring domestic auto manufacturing for a couple decades now. The people who worked in those factories didn’t just die, they’re mostly still available for hire. There is no metric in manufacturing knowledge where America lags that far behind other first world countries, let alone the rest of the world.
The age is a bigger issue than you might think. When I worked in automotive manufacturing, I bet the average age was approaching 50. Combine that with work that is more manual in nature and there might be more concern that there is a skill/worker shortage. The DoD has identified this as a risk [1] and notes that a majority of manufacturing workers are over 45 years old [2]
The Tesla factory is a former GM/Toyota factory notable for introducing Japanese quality practices to the US, and it ran until 2010:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI
Those methodologies don’t proscribe the bests places to hold a piece of glass for optimal adhesion. Just how to structure and operate just-in-time workflows.
> Do people really think that "gluing the glass in" is some bit of advanced engineering?
Conversely, do _you_ really think that - evenly applying an adhesive to an incredibly smooth surface (repeatably) to bond it to a frame and have it undergo twisting, vibration, and extremes of heat and cold, aerodynamic effects / pressure, exposure to moisture, UV and atmospheric contaminants and retaining its adhesion for the expected life of the vehicle -
But you're talking about chemical engineering of making glue, and luckily 3m (etc) have already done all that work.
All Tesla have to do is "buy the right glue", and then "make sure it gets put on correctly". That is a bit of production engineering but seriously it's not hard to lay down a bead of adhesive, place the glass in, and then check that it's been done.
I understand what you're saying but I disagree that it can be reduced to 'buy the right glue' and 'make sure it gets put on correctly' any more it does any more justice to a model CPU to say it's just 'take a transistor and replicate it 5 billion times on a hunk of silicon'. While that's technically true in both cases, it neglects to consider the level of technology that goes into all of the details to make it possible.
I'm not saying that attaching glass to metal is at the same level of complexity as semiconductor fab, but it's a far cry from using some Elmer's Glue to stick two pieces of construction paper together.
And yes, I'm pretty sure Tesla didn't create their own adhesive for the purpose, but I'm equally sure 3M doesn't have an off-the-shelf "Model Y Roof Adhesive, 500ml" product. Or perhaps they did, but the engineering constraints to develop it were those of normal passenger cars, sunroofs, etc., not taking into account the various forces acting upon a 4'x7' sheet of glass at highway speeds, or perhaps the temperatures or speeds of an industrial applicator robot (or conversely, the slowness of a human applicator).
To go back to your original assertion, no, it's not hard to lay down a bead of adhesive, place the glass in and check that it's been done. If in fact the failure mode was 'Failure to apply adhesive', well, that's a fairly egregious and easy to spot problem. If it's 'adhesive failed for unknown reasons after a short period of time', that's an altogether different problem.
Sure. Choose a glue that has the appropriate material properties in all expected conditions, longevity, resistance to all the various stresses, compatibility with both mating surfaces... Then put it in exactly the right place e.g. where the full range of expected operating conditions doesn't create too much stress or resonance... But only the right amount and with the right cure time and cure conditions.
Repeat this step with literally every weld, seal, screw, or other component. Then get it right for hundreds of thousands of cars regardless of the condition of the factory line and workers/robots.
de Havilland was making airplanes for 33 years when the famous Comet crash occurred.
Manufacturing is a learning process. There's a lot of engineering in every detail, and there will always be room for improvement.
Nobody had been making pressurised-cabin passenger aircraft for any appreciable length of time when the Comet crash happened. The situations are in no way comparable unless you restrict things to the powertrain.
The Comet thing was a design flaw, not a process/quality control flaw. And the Comet was essentially unique at the time; _no-one_ was making things like that. Lots of people today are making cars; Tesla could just hire experts. For that matter, they could buy/merge with a small car company.
I suspect there’s some sort of NIH thing going on.
Musk has admitted to how hard production is. Those little nuances in manufacturing like where to hold glass come from years of production/quality/root-cause analysis to arrive at best practices to avoid exactly these kinds of issues. Don't discount how hard it is just because it seems simple to the uninitiated.
Ever talked to somebody with little to no software experience who will tell you how easy it should be to just slap some code together to build a the next Google? It's like that.
It's only hard because he's insisting on re-inventing everything rather than just using standard engineering practices.
I used to build test equipment for aerospace and safety critical equipment for coal mining. I'm well aware that even with rigorous control you're going to get some errors. But "the glass fell out because we glued it wrong" isn't a normal manufacturing error. It's a mistake that requires more than one process to fail.
Nobody at Ford has been working there for 112 years. The thing is, Tesla could just hire people who have experience working in quality control for car manufacturing and then they'd be just as experienced at it as Ford.
Your logic suggests either a) they haven't bothered hiring people experienced in quality control for car manufacturing, or b) they have, and yet their cars are _still_ this badly made. Neither is a good look.
Corporate culture doesn't just shift overnight. The Big Three didn't get serious about quality control until Japanese automakers started eating their lunch. Even then, it took time to really ingrain it into the company culture.
I don't know what the Tesla culture is like, but if it skews toward the tech "move fast and break things", just hiring experienced QA folks won't magically get everyone onboard to strict, controlled processes.
This is so true, look at any GM or Chrysler car from the 90's. Complete abominations of cars with cheap plastic everywhere and myriad mechanical problems. You can see their attempts to catch up to Japanese cars during this time.
Personally, I am waiting until Tesla's competition gets their act together and starts producing more EVs. Mercedes and Volkswagen are both moving in that direction, for instance. I think in the next 5-10 years there will be plenty of EVs on the market in most countries, and Tesla will no longer stand out simply because they were first.
I drive a Subaru now. If I could get an EV version of my present car with comparable range, I'd buy it today and never look back. They say by 2035 they'll have electric versions of all their major models[1], so I guess... sometime in the next 15 years, for me?
I'm very much in the same boat. It's one of the things that has always confused me a little about Subaru, since they seem like they've been really well-placed to take advantage of the transition to electric vehicles. A lot of their customer base cares about things like the environment, usually has some degree of disposable income (they're not the cheapest car on the market) and places a high value on areas like reliability and simple functionality. Electric cars already are supposed to require less maintenance than your average ICE vehicle, and the four-cylinder boxer engine/CVT combo isn't exactly known as a hotrod combo either, so it's not as if the need to satisfy their customer base on 0-60mph time anway (for that type of car, ignore the WRX for a moment).
If they made a Crosstrek/Forester-type vehicle with 300-400 miles of all-electric range, kept the ground clearance, roof rack, and usual interiors, I've always imagined that those vehicles would sell like hotcakes. I know I'd be interested in immediately trading up, in a way that I probably won't be otherwise for a long time.
Subaru is slow to move on industry trends. They were some of the last to get USB ports in their cars, Bluetooth, modern power steering (the wheel in my 2013 Impreza is shockingly heavy for a new car), better fuel economy, etc, etc.
They do one thing - they make solidly reliable 4-wheel-drive cars - and they do it quite well. But I've never seen them be the first on any new thing the industry is doing, no matter how good it is.
You're absolutely right. I always thought of Subaru as a niche car maker appealing mostly to outdoorsy types who don't mind getting their hands dirty to do some maintenance on their car. I don't think they really put much effort into their interior aesthetics. Heck, until recently they weren't really making the best looking cars either. I drive a 2016 WRX and it's literally a box on wheels. There is barely any sound proofing, the audio quality is horrid, the interior is as plain as it gets and they're probably 5 years behind everyone else on innovation, but the car is just insanely solid and incredibly easy to maintain.
> Personally, I am waiting until Tesla's competition gets their act together and starts producing more EVs.
Market share of new BEVs in Germany, January 2020 to September 2020:
Volkswagen-Audi-Porsche: 33%
Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi: 18%
Hyundai-Kia: 13%
Tesla: 12%
Mercedes: 9%
BMW: 8%
You don't have to wait, the competition is already outproducing and outselling Tesla in Europe. And all of these car companies have new BEV models in the pipeline that are going to further erode Tesla's marketshare, because Tesla has nothing in the pipeline for the European market over the next couple of years.
Honestly, don't wait. These issues are very rare (otherwise you will see a post on HN every day). And even if you have some issues, they will send someone over to your home to fix it.
and car and production technology has shifted massively in those 100 years.
Producing cars in itself is not a new process from a manufacturing perspective, especially not the non EV parts. (like body work and structural work).
What kind of quality control does tesla have, when it is not able to reliably produce cars with the same finish and fit. Most manufacturers have been able to do this for atleast 30 years. it is not like the industry doesn't have solutions to tackle these issues at scale.
The example from this article is from the Model Y, which just began shipping in March. Tesla is still in a huge rampup growth phase where their manufacturing processes aren't yet stable.
I don't think Tesla deserves a free pass with these issues, but I also think they should be expected.
Let's not be totally unfair to Tesla here, plenty of cars have had similar issues. Various models of Vauxhall / Opel have been known for the bonnet / hood latch coming undone at motorway speeds and slamming into the windshield. Others have been known to catch fire randomly.
Sure, and when that happened, did people say "oh, that's to be expected, sometimes cars do this sort of thing" or did they say "this is completely unacceptable and must be fixed immediately"?
Tesla gets held to a separate standard, and excuses get made for it, because people want it to succeed. I want it to succeed, too, but my definition of success includes making reliable cars. (And preferably sacking Elon Musk, but that's unrelated.)
I think it can be both unacceptable and not unexpected. No amount of engineering can match a few months of real world testing. So long as there is a good faith effort to fix the issue then it's not necessarily a sign of incompetence on Tesla's side.
While Tesla has been making cars for 17 years, they have also been constantly scaling up. Prior to 2018, Tesla had delivered fewer than 500k cars total. By contrast, they are pushing to get 500k cars out the door this calendar year.
Toyota, GM, etc are sitting on mature product lines which are growing a few percentage a year. They can roll out a new assembly line and spend months fine tuning it before turning it up and shutting down the old one. Tesla has no previous assembly line to lean on.
It's pretty clear Tesla as a company values growth over delivering the best quality product.
The flip side of this is I've heard a fair number of people suggest that Tesla's service is good... stupid slow but eventually good.
It's pretty clear Tesla as a company values growth over delivering the best quality product.
Sure, I thought they had been pretty clear they felt reaching volume was critical to making BEV technology competitive (a larger revenue base over which to amortize development)
Boeing has 50 layers of outsourcing. Tesla is vertically integrated and they try to control the whole process. Their QA might be bad but they have the highest safety rating in the market and are technologically the most advanced in terms of EV.
> Tesla's service is good... stupid slow but eventually good.
It's so slow though that I don't think it can even be considered "good" anymore. Ok fine they eventually fix issues, but at the cost of you having a defective product for weeks/months?
I really want to buy a Model Y, but I just almost had to push back the closing date on buying a new house because it took longer to have somebody in their solar panel department send a single e-mail than it took for the bank to get me a mortgage. It took a lot of stress, over a dozen e-mails and about 3 hours on the phone before I was able to eventually speak to a human to resolve my issue. The whole experience has soured the brand for me, and from googling around my case is far from an outlier.
>fair number of people suggest that Tesla's service is good... stupid slow but eventually good.
This luxury sports car business model. Expensive sports cars are very unreliable and delicate. But they are so expensive that providing very good custom service and repair after the sale is worth it.
They are trying to transform into a market where routine million car recalls kills the business and eats all profits. New cars are expected to work.
> To everyone who actually knows anything about cars or manufacturing it's kind of a nothing-burger that everyone expects will slowly go away with time.
Tesla fundamentally disagrees with established ways of manufacturing cars and is still approaching it as a SV startup. They chase growth numbers, rush new models in production, will put home depot scrap in the cars just to keep the lines moving, and have no quality culture.
Company needs to go over very fundamental philosophy changes for issues like that go away. Just the time itself is not enough.
Japanese or Korean auto-markers turned around their quality over time, by heavily investing into that. Tesla shows no signs of that.
In fairness to Tesla, the cars are relatively simple and last a long time (as long as the batteries don't fail.) But more to the point, if competing manufacturers can't get serious about competing with Tesla, then Tesla isn't under pressure to change its practices.
Tesla is improving its manufacturing all the time. They have only turned into a mass market manufacturer in 2017. Shanghai where they could start fresh has very few of these problems. The Model Y rollout was early and much better the Model 3 already.
The argument that Tesla is not investing in improving quality is simply not true. Things like casting make far more exact parts and very repeatable. It also reduces 100s of parts, less variation, less manufacturing steps and thus mistakes.
They are investing in the most expensive paint shop you can buy in the market right now for their new factories and they just renovated the paint shop in Fremont (since then I have not heard of bad paint quality).
They defiantly need to do more but its unfair to say they are doing nothing.
According to the initial Reddit thread (anecdotal evidence I realise), while this is the most severe and highest profile incident, there have been quite a few reports of windows being improperly sealed. So as you say, not a one-off, but rather a flawed manufacturing procedure.
I went along with a family member to a Model 3 test drive recently and it was surprising just how many little defects were there, considering the price of the car. While paint finish or panel fit isn't going to ruin a car overall, the fact the big easy-to-spot things are so clearly flawed does make one pause to consider how rigorous the QA is for the parts under the surface.
I find "anecdotes do not equal data" to be unscientific.
Your doctor doesn't take your oral history for fun, it's data. Now, just like a medical doctor we should weigh anecdotal data accordingly, but it's still data.
Here for example we can tell BMW/Audi reportedly sometimes make production errors. Tesla reportedly don't always make significant (to the commenter) production errors.
Sure, that's not terribly useful. It's still data.
Where only one or two anecdotes are presented, there is a larger chance that they may be unreliable due to cherry-picked or otherwise non-representative samples of typical cases
The doctor takes your oral history to assess your health. Knowing that $x percent of family tree has high blood pressure means they can more accurately assess your risk of high blood pressure. For the population of “literally you”, your oral history is data. Now, if the next patient came in, and your doctor said “well, the last person in here has high blood pressure, you might have it to”, that’s an anecdote.
Similarly, telling somebody ~”My instance of $product worked great” isn’t really useful info for them. That’s a sample size of 1 out of a massive number.
He's responding to another anecdote, demonstrating that any anecdote likely has a counter-anecdote. You should read the context of a thread before replying snarkily.
Why is this getting downvoted so heavily? It is totally true. If there are issues with the production, this will show only in big numbers. One anecdote saying "but I hade one and nothing happened" does literally say nothing about the problem.
Which means that when the showroom models don't even get it right, it's all the more underwhelming. The showroom demonstrator we saw had very patchy paint, misaligned exterior panels and trim, and gaps in the interior door finish too.
I'll have to agree. Having bought into the Tesla Kool aid last year, I decided to get myself one (S). Sure, I liked it and all, and it certainly reeks of German engineering design thanks to Holzhausen, but it's overall service model leaves much to be desired. I only realized that when my SO's Dad showed me the Porsche Taycan, that I realized how much Tesla had sacrificed, in terms of customer convenience and customer service. Tesla is no BMW or Porsche, and I don't think it can be one either - not with Musk's demanding sort of leadership. Designing a sexy car might be possible, but designing the processes behind manufacturing that with no qualms or quality issues, with a constantly changing team of engineers, is not possible. That requires time and patience and a lot of TLC, all of which Musk doesn't have.
It's a good stock to ride the sucker wave on though.
O, please. I own both BMW and Tesla, and while BMW is more refined car, service and quality miles better with Tesla. BMW gets obscure error codes, and then dealership lazily tries to fix it for weeks (this year BMW spent 7 weeks at the shop, last year 3 weeks). Tesla needs service, technician comes and fixes it on your driveway!
“I only realized that when my SO's Dad showed me the Porsche Taycan, that I realized how much Tesla had sacrificed, in terms of customer convenience and customer service”
Tesla's level of service drops like a cliff after the first year, at least in Europe. While it's still better than the traditional dealership model of service, it's nowhere close to the kind of service that a German car gets. Not to mention the fact that Tesla wants to play the Apple game and become exclusively set on retaining its exclusive OS. I can see more customer unfriendly behavior in the future.
its interesting because Musk isn't trying to design a Porsche, he is trying to design low end cars, but to me that makes little sense. To me, it feels like he should go with the iphone model
It's this the bit where you tell me that unnecessarily gluing in batteries, and soldering in memory, and charging a fortune for cables, and silently reducing processing power of older products, is all somehow about bringing tech to the masses and not a cynical move to reduce repairability and squeeze money out of successful lifestyle marketing?
You are comparing very different classes of cars. A Tesla Model 3 is equivalent to BMW 3 series ($35-40K), and in my experience compares very favorably to it in terms of performance, design, servicing/maintenance and more. Owning an entry level BMW isn't the luxury it's claimed to be in ads. A Porsche Taycan goes for $150K+.
That's a great theory, until you realize that Tesla's been around 17 years, and that for a lot of their issues they really could crib notes on how other vehicle manufacturers do things. A huge amount of their QA issues around non-drive train components are solved problems everywhere else, and they've been at it for a while now.
They've been making at least 10K units a quarter since Q1 2015. I'd hope that in half a decade they would have figured out how to make the body panels align and stay attached to the frame.
Complaints about Tesla's fit and finish extend back to before they were mass producing vehicles, when they theoretically should have been able to hand fit them. So I really don't buy any argument about it being a problem with scaling up; they just seem incapable or disinterested in fixing this.
> They haven't spent years fine tuning their QA processes so these things slip through.
That's not true. Similar things happen with all car makers, but if you pick up your car from a car dealership, the dealer will quietly fix the cosmetic issues because they want to avoid a bad reputation.
> They might have great designs but they haven't matured their processes. They haven't spent years fine tuning their QA processes so these things slip through
They’ve been around a while now, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. I think at this point the obvious conclusion is that they just don’t care. Like, it’s not like Toyota locks their process engineers in a basement. If they wanted to hire experts it’s just a question of money.
This seems likely to go badly for them as competition heats up.
It's also a question of listening to them. If the process engineers say "to build a quality product it takes X amount of time" and Musk says "no, we need to hit X cars by next week, we don't have that time, build a tent in the parking lot and build cars in there", all the salary in the world won't help.
> I don't see why all the fanboys get their panties in a knot when people point this out.
People keep saying this but I always see way more critiques of Tesla and Elon than the opposite.
My opinion on the matter is people love pushing back on whatever appears popular. Whether or not it's just a few idiots on the internet with little to no real influence and transform into the powerful strawman others love taking down.
While TSLA does seem to have a history of these issues I wonder how bad the problems are relative to other car makers who have had to make a large number of recalls over the years. I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla still has a higher defect rate, but I think it would be much closer than these articles will have you believe.
In general, anything Tesla related gets more coverage than an equivalent issue for any other car maker. I remember a few years back when Autopilot accidents would make national news while any other generic car wreck doesn't cause anyone to think twice.
Safety issues are recalled, so you would see them regardless.
Since Tesla has less than 1 million cars built IIRC, it's actually much worse of a problem. Other automakers have hundreds of millions of cars on the road with different designs, each with potential problems.
Yet something safety critical like a roof falling off happens rarely, but get recalled.
I’m not seeing this VW recall. Are you referring to Takata airbags? That’s an old recall but a really bad one, caused by Takata not the car manufacturers. The ECM getting updated for emissions reasons? I just took my car in for that one during my regular service, it’s a service bulletin not a recall.
The car makers knew the liabilities of using ammonium nitrate as an airbag propellant. It was just cheaper. It's not like Takata swapped from a stable propellant to one which could be stable if everything was done just right on their own without telling anyone.
That doesn’t answer my question first off and moves the goal posts elsewhere secondly. The issue here is there isn’t a VW recall I can find that he’s talking about, the airbag issue was an industry wide thing and not tied to a specific manufacturer, whereas this issue is tied directly to Tesla moving fast and breaking things still.
I think there's a tangible difference between something like this and a recall. A recall is a single thing going wrong at a large scale. Audi having water pumps that can short-circuit in common scenarios [0]. Samsung using underspecified capacitors on their TVs [1]. Generally, this was a single mistake that had large consequences.
However, if different things keep going wrong at a smaller scale... That's a problem with management and process, not a single mistake echoed at scale.
Single mistakes are just not reported. My Ford had wires swapped in production and the first time the passenger's windows was lowered, the door locks got fried. Then the transmission fell apart. Different small things. If it was a Tesla you'd probably read about it.
In general, anything Tesla related gets more coverage than an equivalent issue for any other car maker. I remember a few years back when Autopilot accidents would make national news while any other generic car wreck doesn't cause anyone to think twice.
Oh yeah this part is for sure true. I remember years ago a Model S got in an accident and had a small battery fire, and it was all over the news. Meanwhile Ford had a major recall going on for cars literally spontaneously catching on fire while driving, and nobody paid any attention.
Meanwhile Ford had a major recall going on for cars literally spontaneously catching on fire while driving, and nobody paid any attention.
...If water and contaminants got into the cables of certain model trucks as a result of snow or ice seepage, and those water/contaminants caused corrosion, and the block heater cable was plugged into an electrical outlet and active. This happened for 3 trucks out of 847,000.
Corrosion-related recalls are fairly common for automakers, because it's hard to anticipate which interior components will face corrosive elements, or how frequently, or in what amounts, due to the wide variety of geographies, climates, and uses that vehicles get subjected to.
Tesla has issued corrosion-related recalls itself, multiple times, including in 2018 and 2019, and these similarly did not make national news.
There is some truth to Tesla issues getting covered more often, but when was the last time Ford or Toyota recalled a vehicle because a major part of the body could blow off? A component being faulty isn’t really on the same order of magnitude as the entire roof of the car detaching. I’m also reminded of a story a few months ago where the steering wheel of a Tesla simply detached in the driver’s hands. This is just an deeply flawed manufacturing and QA process that frankly deserves more critical coverage than other car companies because the problems are more fundamental, like potentially ending up like the police car at the end of The Blues Brothers.
I think the fact that you didn't hear about this recall, to the point of not even believing such a thing could happen, while you did hear about this one case of one Tesla roof blowing off, illustrates the point nicely.
You don't buy a Tesla for reliability. You buy one to show your friends.
No other automaker gets this pass(except maybe Jeep vehicles).
Anyway, as bad as Tesla quality is, customers getting new cars from new companies should have little expectation of quality. (Although Tesla made it's first car in 2006, at when do they stop getting such sympathy?)
Funny you mentioned Jeep, I remembered reading the Consumer Reports review of the 2021 Wrangler, it was bad. It's by far the lowest rated vehicle there. Pretty much everything is terrible on that thing. Road Test, 36/100, Reliability 1/5, Predicted Owner Satisfaction... 4/5. I had to go back and double check that again, just to be sure. Apparently people love those Wranglers, no matter what.
They are very much a lifestyle vehicle. They offer an idea of "mobility" and "going anywhere", basically vehicular freedom to tackle any type of terrain, even if most people never will. Very American sentiments that resonate with Wrangler owners.
I think they also benefit from the fact that off road hobbyists really do use Wranglers. They just use ancient models which have been lovingly restored and modified over decades, but they're Wranglers.
So then the more aspirational type want to emulate them, but they want it newer and shinier and with a warranty, so they wind up with the substandard SUV which is the new Wranglers.
Exactly the same story with Land Rovers in the UK, incidentally.
There really isn't a competitor to the Wrangler if you're into offroading. Sure pickup trucks compete but the size of a Wrangler + the massive aftermarket support make it hard to beat. The new Bronco might eat some of the market but time will tell.
Jeep has gone downhill quite markedly now that they're Fiats. I don't have any history with Fiat but I do know since the merger of Chrysler & Fiat in 2014 Jeep has gone downhill. As others have mentioned it's become a lifestyle brand instead of a utility brand. IMO once more people become aware of the significant reduction in their utility value then their sales will plummet. But I could be wrong. All I know is I have a 2008 Jeep Wrangler with 220,000 miles on it and I found it worthwhile to drop a new engine in it. That was a cheaper and more reliable option than getting a new vehicle - even knowing in 2-3 years I'm going to have to put a new transmission into it.
Yep! I own a 2012 Wrangler. It's a toy more than transportation. It gets me where I need to go but carrying more than one passenger is a pain. The windscreen fluid jet is poorly located and doesn't get the whole windscreen when I need to get rid of dirt on the windshield. I have had to JB weld the gear shift knob back together.
It's a completely impractical and inconvenient car. But I still love it because it's fun to drive and it can, in fact, go pretty much anywhere.
I have a Tesla and also had a Wrangler until a few weeks ago. Nobody is buying either one for fit and finish. The Wrangler was a total piece of crap and it drives like a pregnant rollerskate. You feel like you could be seconds from death any time you get it up to 75 mph, it chugs gas like nobody's business and it performs like your typical John Deere. It was also awesome, tons of fun and the kind of car that would be every bit as cool in 20 years. I got it back when you could still buy an unlimited miles warranty from Chrysler so I didn't really care that it was junk.
I love the Tesla. I wouldn't say it's built badly, but it's not on par with an import in the same price range. I like it for other reasons. It's unlike any other car. I love the way it drives, I love the features, it feels futuristic. I would challenge anyone to drive a decked out Tesla for a year and then go back to a regular car as their daily driver.
On the other hand, despite minor quality things, my wife loves our Model 3. For the price and what it achieves it is a great vehicle. I always tell people Tesla is a software company that happens to make cars. In that regard they are a decade ahead of traditional manufacturers in my estimation. Look at how low quality the software ecosystems of most traditional manufacturers are.
I am very ambivalent. I love electric vehicles for the environment, but I grew up with and love sports cars. The Tesla is just too clean and clinical for me. I do have to say, though, I own a high end Ford truck that carries their flagship infotainment system and it is /nothing/ like the Tesla. It actually crashes more often. The only thing it has going for it is CarPlay, but even that can be buggy and not work right at times. Meanwhile the giant infotainment screen on the Tesla generally just works and behaves nicely. It is one thing to read people nitpicking Tesla and another to drive them day to day and be realistic. People love the cars for a reason, they are fun, have really great resale value, are very easy to maintain, and can have very exciting driving performance.
It's not that bad. You get a crappy release once in a while and it gets fixed within a week or a month at the most. And most of those bugs are in new features they continue to add after I've bought the car. Meanwhile, my Chevy has the worst software and infotainment system I've ever experienced and the dealer wants $169 just to check for updates. I've owned a half dozen cars in the last 5 years and none of them had software remotely on par with the Tesla. Toyota and Honda were probably the only others I liked because they didn't really try to do much. They just worked.
Look at how low quality the software ecosystems of most traditional manufacturers are.
The new in-dash systems in the Subarus and Ford E-Mustangs appear to be on par with Tesla, usability wise, and unlike Tesla can be used with physical controls.
I didn't really believe this back when I was driving a BMW and Honda daily running CarPlay, but now that I'm on the Model 3 I'm hitting lots of software bugs on the Tesla head unit that would've never passed even the most basic of software QA at my previous job.
The Tesla head unit makes the current automaker's head units look super reliable and as solid as a rock. OTA software updates do have their benefits, but it seems like it leads to compromising quality for pushing features of questionable utility out the door.
I get really disappointed when I see Tesla implementing really unnecessary features like Rainbow Road (the over-done SNL "more cowbell" skit) and fart mode. Focus on the reliability before making these features.
Tesla shipped 139K[1] cars last quarter and 1 roof blew off, nobody died, and now they are unreliable ? Now compare that to existing automakers that have had years more of manufacturing experience, six sigma bullshit, etc and look at the largest recalls[2]. (Ford recalled 7.9 million cars in 1996)
People buy Tesla because they are much more efficient than combustion engines, have superior technology, and a lot more fun to drive .. and maybe it makes you cool to IDK.
I really do not understand why everyone on HN hates tesla so much ...
Same reason people don't like Apple. A low quality product sold by massive advertising/marketing campaigns.
And yes Tesla is unreliable, there's no debate here. A new car company is going to be unreliable. And why are you using Absolute numbers? 1 roof, 7 million Ford cars. You made a statistical error here.
And what is this about combustion engines? It's 2020, everyone sells an EV. Only Tesla sells a low quality EV.
Re Apple: Apple is the most valuable company in the world, what are you talking about?
Re statistics error - what error did I make ?
Re combustion engines, have you tried to do a road trip in a non-tesla EV using charge point. I suggest you try and then report back about how bad the experience is.
"In September, Business Insider reported that a Tesla owner found non-standard parts like plastic straps and faux wood, that looked like they were from "Home Depot," holding the cooling unit of their Mode Y in place. "
I have no skin in the Tesla game. I'm not much of a car guy. But I just recently bought a new vehicle and I ruled out Tesla because of that story from last month. I was looking at cars when that story came out. I don't know if stories like flying roofs, and the wood and the other stuff only make the news because they're Tesla and maybe these things don't happen all that often, but that non-standard parts thing really made me steer clear of Tesla while shopping for cars last month. It seems like so many of these things just don't happen to other cars?
Tesla is an unconventional, scrappy company led by an unconventional, scrappy CEO. I'm not surprised that they do unconventional, scrappy things.
I'd be totally comfortable with the wood load spreaders from last month's stories or the fact that some of the cars are built in tent factories. I don't think those issues are blockers. I do think they have a general need to improve their quality and fit/finish, but those are in some cases things that must come from experience and track record of mass production, but I think those are unrelated to scrappiness.
(Disclaimer: I am short $TSLA on the basis of comparative valuation only, not because they are incapable. For that, I'm short $NKLA.)
> I am short $TSLA on the basis of comparative valuation only
What are you comparing the valuation to? Other car companies? Revenue? I ask because when there are so many emotional investors in a stock like Tesla, I've found it hard to rationalize the price. For that reason, I'm nervous about going short or long for any length of time. That said, I've had a lot of success day trading the price action.
I feel like there's a certain exuberance for the great things that Tesla (and SpaceX) have achieved. Much of that exuberance is well-justified by the delivery. It seems likely to me that continued excellence of execution is priced into the stock at these levels and that no company is that perfect, regardless of the size of the opportunity in front of them.
I also find it somewhat telling that Tesla sold $5BB of $TSLA into the market in early Sept. That might suggest that they thought the near-term market conditions were as good as they were going to get for a while. This is (IMO) a wonderful company with an excessively premium market cap.
"Valuation isn't a short thesis" as they say. Totally fraudulent companies can trade for decades and price corrections don't happen without a trigger. IMHO only enter a short position when you have identified the cause of a correction and you know it is happening now.
As someone who’s worked in an FDA regulated industry the idea of changing material and design like that without any kind of change control vetting is insane. Speaks to an underpowered/ineffectual quality department.
Can someone in the automotive space comment if there’s really no legal/regulatory consequence for haphazardly jury rigging stuff on the fly like this?
I view the plastic straps and faux wood as a positive. The original strap and guard were custom, but deficient. Any other car company would have kept shipping the deficient design until a new component was designed, validated, tooled and produced. That takes most of a year. Tesla will eventually replace their ad-hoc hold downs. But in the meantime they'd rather look unprofessional than ship deficient designs. Kudos.
What makes you confident the ad-hoc hold downs are superior, instead of "deficient" as well? Do you think they're ever even done the same way twice? What's the chance some mechanics at a particular dealer made it up, and nobody else even knows about it? As you mentioned, it was not "designed" or "validated", how could anyone be confident that it's safe, effective, or even superior to what it replaced?
Hopefully they're properly documenting these non-standard vin numbers incase a problem is discovered with the ad hoc design change and they need to do a recall or service campaign for that change.
Another car company would not have delivered cars to the dealers if they knew that components were faulty at the time of delivery. They would have held the cars on the factory lot and replaced the components prior to shipping, because recalls are very expensive and can trigger other legal consequences to the company.
Thus, recalls are only used by other automakers for problems discovered after a unit has been manufactured and shipped, not for problems discovered during the assembly of a unit. For example: if vehicles 0-99 were shipped before a problem was discovered with a component in unit 100, vehicles 0-99 gets recalled, and vehicle 100 stays on the factory lot until the replacement component is ready and installed. Vehicles 100-125 might get built before the replacement component is ready depending on how the automaker has structured their factory line and whether the component is a critical component, and if so they also remain on the factory lot. Vehicles 126+ are assembled with the replacement component so they get shipped after assembly is complete.
> Another car company would not have delivered cars to the dealers if they knew that components were faulty at the time of delivery
Very Very doubtful. There is some accountant math that goes into those types of decisions. If that car made it all the way to the buy off ride and into manufacturing with those components and it was found later that they failed faster than expected or didn't always work quite right. They are not going to hold those cars back unless it causes a catastrophic and probably fatal, to the occupants, failure.
Otherwise they will hope it will fail outside of warranty and charge your for it.
My wife’s cousin is a dealer mechanic, and he described this really perverse incentive WRT GM.
If the dealership sees a particular failure mode and reports it to GM, then they’ll issue a TSB (or maybe even trigger a recall). But in doing so, they’ll only pay a fixed fee to the dealer.
Instead, what happens is that the dealer has an incentive to build a local knowledge base on how to fix the common problems but not share it with GM as they can bill the repairs hourly.
(The specific failure mode he used as an example was inadequate weatherproofing in door electrics. The local fix was to pop-rivet the bottom of a plastic container in the right place so as to improve weather resistance)
Car manufacturers don't do that anymore. They learned from Ford's mistake with the Pinto. Also, it costs significantly more to replace parts by recall than it does to simply hold back vehicles at the factory, on the order of 10-20x as much $$$, since there are additional legal and regulatory requirements associated with recalls, and generally releasing a car with known flawed parts means treble damages come into play in any legal proceeding (meaning, 3x damages awarded to the plaintiff).
Notably, car manufacturers work like this currently, but before Japanese manufacturing methods took over, US-made cars were notorious for shipping with all kinds of flaws, with the classic anecdotes about people receiving cars with beer cans rattling inside of doors.
That stuff is sloppy, but not a huge deal for me. What's really a deal-breaker is the always-on internet connection, the monitoring/telemetry, and the idea that although I'm buying a car, it's not really mine, because I'm only licensing the software that lets it function.
If I could buy a Cybertruck that functioned without a connection to the mothership, I would.
Everybody always brings that up. I don't love it, but yes I do, and I trust Apple more than I trust Tesla.
> They work offline
They somewhat work, and it's not clear for how long. If it goes a year without being able to connect, is it fine with that? Or will it stop working until it's able to update?
Honestly, you missed out. Don't form your opinion on a single article, they are designed to drive clicks. I have found /r/teslamotors to be fairly humble site with honest opinions
r/teslamotors it fine, but you need to know that they do delete a lot of posts, which is fine. They also have a lot of people that put money in Tesla and will defend the company. They have a weekly reminder about that, it's a bit weird.
Well, it's sure a good thing Tesla has no PR department to respond to things like this anymore. It wouldn't be in the company's best interest to be able to explain how something like this happened, or anything.
Does a PR dept actually matter for this? If an explanation is warranted, just publish it on social media. I expect the corporate focus is more on "fix the problem" than "hey everyone, let's DiScUsS tHe PrObLeM"; Tesla doesn't want to draw attention to the problem, they want to fix the problem so it never happens again and nobody has reason to discuss it.
Kinda like the "child slave labor" issue raised during the shareholder's meeting: Some people wanted to compel Tesla to address the problem ... minutes later Musk eliminated the problem by removing cobalt use.
The body of the article says they picked the car up from a Tesla service center (which is accurate--you can order your car from a showroom, but you pick it up at the service center). The only reference to a "dealership" is in the photo caption, which was likely written by someone else who wasn't as familiar with Tesla.
Could this be a result of forcing people back to work during a pandemic, and maintaining high output quotas while the global supply infrastructure was shitting itself?
> On Monday, Walter Chien said that he spoke with a Tesla representative, who said that "everything was done correctly" when manufacturing the car. "To me, that was more concerning," Chien told Business Insider.
That's a... no? Situation normal, carry on, everybody... concerning, indeed.
Question to those in the know -- are these roof glass panels attached to the car in a similar way to windshields? I recall that when I had my windshield replaced, they told me that the glue would need a day to bond and not to slam the doors or the glass would just pop off.
I feel like this could be an expected behavior for any extremely new car if that is the case.
The slowest cheapest windshield glue you can get takes like 6hr to cure in normal temps and a couple days at near freezing temps (don't ask how I know this).
These aren't T34s that are driving off the line and to the front. It would certainly have been cured by the time the car made it to the customer. I'm betting their QA process didn't accurately catch and remediate all the cars moved down the line after the glue machine ran dry.
Speaking of windscreens, my chemistry teacher once told us that when he worked at an acid factory they would spew out enough gas to start attacking peoples cars, but to avoid the regulators they would just say "Go and talk to John [redacted]" and they bought everyone a new one no questions asked because it was cheaper than getting shut down.
> he spoke with a Tesla representative, who said that "everything was done correctly" when manufacturing the car.
Does this mean they expect a roof to fly off even when things are done "correctly"? What happens when they make the inevitable mistake?
Normally I'd say this is a PR disaster but just like other companies which command blind, unwavering loyalty, Tesla can also afford such disasters knowing that opinions will stay the same no matter what. Whether you love them or hate them this will do nothing to change it. Tesla is a very emotional choice no matter which side of that choice you land on.
Check out this video comparing the latest Toyota RAV4 Prime (Plugin Hybrid) and Tesla Model Y. The conclusion is that Toyota is a car manufacturing company learning to become a technology company, while Tesla is a technology company learning to become a car manufacturing company.
The uneven alignment at the gap between the roof frames in Tesla Model Y (shown at 10:20) though is quite unsettling to behold. Both of the presenters agreed that similar misalignment will never had passed Toyota QA.
The first time I got into a Tesla S, the first thing I noticed was how unpolished were the finishes everywhere. You can see uneven gaps in the door panels, in the console, in the floor.
There are many unfinished plastic pieces that seem to be cut rough and added like that to the car.
Everything feels like it's made out of cheap plastic. Not even remotely close to the finishes of a German sedan, and inferior to the finishes of an everyday American Sedan like the Chevy Cruise.
I'm sure that the car is structurally sound but it was mind boggling how cheap it felt. It was almost like the interior of super low-end model for emerging markets, but with a large touch screen in the middle.
What could a technology company bring? Intentionally broken software? When I buy a coffee maker it has one job: make coffee. When I buy a car I want it to move me over the road. Sure there's software but it's a lot of embedded/DSP/controll stuff. Tesla can do a lot more of the value-add/infotainment crap but most people don't like that.
I watched the whole thing...wow that gap, how can that even come off the lot? It must be withing the Tesla tolerance level, which is scary.
Also the back seat isn't roomier, the dad had his legs spread and said it's just as roomy...I think using a touch screen to move the vents would annoy me very quickly. My family car is a Honda Odyssey and it annoys me that the fan speed on the AC is via the touch screen.
Let's wait for the follow up post. The initial video is 3 seconds long, and the photo looks like it was taken on a blackberry. I'm not saying this is a FUD scam, but it smells like a FUD scam. Business Insider hasn't always been neutral or reasonable when it comes to Tesla coverage too.
Much higher in the comments, you can see the original reddit thread linked with the same pictures. Not everyone records their life in the highest quality all the time
Sadly, there's a cadre of devoted Tesla cultists who routinely underplay these build issues and even insinuate that early adopters should endure them for the sake of the brand. I really want a Model Y, but these quality issues are massively concerning.
Genuine question. What makes the model Y desirable?
To me it’s just a funny looking , awkwardly proportioned minivan with a weird interior.
It’s not hyper aggressive like a German car or cheap and handsome like a Mazda. It’s just an egg with a load of seats.
Tesla have got EV infrastructure figured out. Here in the UK if you want to go for long journeys you need distributed high speed charging. Teslas are also efficient with the electricity and have decent range, while being pretty fast. Those are the plusses anyway...
If you want an EV that can do everything an ICE car can do, including reasonably convenient road trips, it's still the only option. (The delta is not quite as strong in the European or Chinese markets, but it's still there.)
Things that people like about EVs and Teslas specifically:
1) The driving experience is very special. Startling acceleration, single-pedal driving, near-silent low speed operation.
2) Operating costs are very low. Next to no routine maintenance, inexpensive "fuel".
3) Class-leading safety due to low CoG and lack of engine in the crumple zone.
4) Great software that is updated frequently over the air.
5) Arguably the best proto-self-driving/advanced driver assistance that gets better over time. 6) Hands down the best charging infrastructure and experience.
The build quality issues are real, but tend to be overblown by the media. The looks, inside and out, are definitely polarizing. I personally love the minimalism but would like better materials. But it's inarguably different, and for lots of people that's exciting in and of itself.
Maybe they brake automatically - “regenerative braking”? I remember when I was test-driving Model S, the driving experience was very different from an ICE car, because as soon as you took your foot off the pedal, it started braking quite noticeably. To get an equivalent experience to an ICE car, you had to keep the pedal pressed ever so slightly (or change the settings).
Maybe regenerative braking is also when the brake lights turn on.
Maybe... there's some kind of threshold of deceleration that triggers the brake lights when pulling off the throttle but I don't know what it is. It could also be autopilot on.
Yes you can coast normally if you disable regenerative breaking. If its on, your car slows down a lot faster than it would if you were just coasting, so it triggers the break lights when you remove your foot from the gas
It may be, I ride the accelerator so it doesn’t often trigger the brakes unless you let off by a lot then the regenerative braking really kicks in. So if you let off the accelerator enough it triggers the brake lights because the motor is “braking” and charging the battery.
Can’t quite do everything an ICE can do. Gas cars have superior range on the whole, especially in cold weather conditions. Also you’re much safer finding a gas station on off-routes than a supercharger station.
I was in Atlanta during snowpocalypse of 2011. Georgia had TONS of Nissan Leafs because of a tax incentive that made it close to $0 to lease it. The highway had lots of stranded leafs because the battery died due to heating the car.
That isn't really germane to a conversation about Tesla cars. The lowest-range cars Tesla ever made had more than double the battery capacity of a 2011 Leaf (and unlike the 2011 Leaf, they all have battery-warming tech).
The parent I replied to was discussing the cons of electric vehicles vs ICE cars....so, very germane.
My comment was also referring to the drain on the battery due to resistive heating used to warm up the cabin...not range efficiency on the battery due to cold temperature.
My Googling shows that Tesla went away from resistive to heat pump in the model Y...so, I think my comment is germane to Tesla except model Y.
EV is better for daily commute , charge at home , always full tank , so you DONT need to search for a charger/gas station at all. I used Public charger 4 times since I bought the car . You don’t need to change oil , warm up the car etc .
Interesting you list a lot of things about Tesla and not the model Y.
I want an LC500 convertible because I think it looks fantastic and it’ll be fun to drive. But I want that car not just a Lexus.
And 4) could go either way:) no one is able to disable bits remotely on most cars, or at least until BMW get their subscription service going for heated seats and radio stations.
"Muh technology." Anyway, on the upside none of my techie friends will be able to give me shit for owning an Italian sports car. Or if I do, I'll laugh at them for owning an ill constructed and expensive golf cart.
Model y Performance owner, maybe because most of the “aggressive” ICE German cars are slower compared to model Y which is still SUV with big trunk etc ? Whenever I get into German car I feel like I’m in 80s, so many obsolete details . I like minimalism . I want my car drive fast , with good sound , easy to load stuff. Electric car is so much better for daily commute .
The statement about not being handsome like a Mazda has some irony in it, as the Tesla head designer, Franz von Holzhausen, previously was a lead designer at Mazda, before he joined Tesla.
Speaking for myself, I actually quite like the design of the Teslas. They are very smooth and have a quite different approach than most mainstream makers. I dislike especially the overly edgy brutal look with huge radiator openings, which has crept into the car market since 2010.
Maybe it is me being a physicist, but I can also appreciate how the design maximizes aerodynamic efficiency, even if that means other compromises. Which is partly responsible for Teslas leading in range tests.
As I like simple elegant shapes, I appreciate how from the front edge of the windscreen to the very back of the car, there is a single smooth curvature of the roofline.
The same /r/teslamotors where the moderators decided the story seemed fake and they should get to the bottom of it, posting a private video against the wishes of the car owner?
The members of the sub are generally quite reasonable, but it's consistently pruned of content that could be damaging to Tesla. I read it for many years until that started to creep me out.
Damn. I bought a Model 3 in Feb of this year, I definitely would have held off if I had seen this first. Anecdotally, my car has been perfect, 0 issues cosmetic or otherwise, but it's obvious I've just been lucky. I really love the car, it's a dream vehicle that exceeded my expectations despite the hype, but there's no getting around the fact that I am sacrificing an unnecessary amount of safety for a cool car. Certainly I could not justify purchasing another Tesla the next time I need a car.
I don't think there are any safety issues with the suspension of the Model 3. Check our the teardowns by Sandy Munro. He is not shy of critisizing Tesla, but had nothing bad to say about the suspension.
The suspension is the one part in a car, which is easily inspectable by just looking at it. And which has not changed much over time. Any competent mechanic should be able to check it. If there were fundamental issues with Tesla suspensions, the net would be full of reports about it and of course authorities would have acted, but beyond that one crusader against Tesla, no one has claimed they are unsafe. Actually, by most accounts, the Model 3 is one of the safest cars you can buy.
However, the suspension of any car is a vital part that is exposed to the outside and exposed to wear constantly. While most electric cars don't require much maintenance - Tesla does not have a maintenance plan any more - the brakes and suspension I would have checked by a mechanic at least biyearly, as this is a very important mechanical part you want to be serviced before there is a failure.
That's incredible. Meanwhile, my Honda has received free repairs after multiple recalls for far less serious defects identified after far fewer incidents.
Tesla has may legit problems, but I doubt "whompy wheels" are one of them. Someone who goes by Keef has been cataloging/submitting complaints to NHTSA about cars they find via salvage listings that they think are from something they've termed "whompy wheels".
1. Someone is deliberately breaking the suspensions of otherwise intact Teslas.
2. Someone has observed a large number of otherwise undamaged Teslas with this peculiar failure and is documenting it.
Which one of those is more likely...? If you search for "suspension failure" at teslamotorsclub.com there are a surprisingly large number of results too.
For Keef's "whompy wheels", I think this is more likely.
3. Suspension damage is common in vehicles that have been in accidents.
There are legitimate threads about suspension damage due to failed components and/or improper assembly on TMC, but that's probably not what happened in most of the vehicles in Keef's Flickr account.
I've seen the other comments about his crusade against Tesla, but unless he's breaking them himself or being extremely skilled at editing photos, I think the evidence speaks for itself --- so either Tesla's bodies are extremely tough, or their suspensions are below average in strength. I would expect to see some more damage elsewhere on those cars if they've been in accidents.
(IMHO a low-speed impact of the sort that doesn't cause other damage beyond minor scratches and dents should not be enough to break suspension parts.)
WTF. That looks like a symptom of CAD/CAM "cost/weight optimisation" taken to extremes --- parts designed to be as light and flimsy as possible for their use-case, thus any small statistical outliers cause catastrophic failure.
(It's not only Tesla who does this, but perhaps they have been cutting it a bit too close, given their relative inexperience compared to other auto manufacturers.)
I wrote it already in another posting here, but this individual was in a crusage against Tesla. He even grabbed pictures of crashed Teslas and submitted them under fake names to the authorities.
This "whompy wheels" thing was brought up by an individual who crusaded against Tesla. He even filed reports to authorities under fake names with images of totalled Teslas, he found on the web.
The suspension is a part which can be easily inspected on a car and is one of the parts which is not different on electric cars. Any mechanic can inspect it. How does it come, that beyond that crusader, no one called out Tesla for this? Neither the authorities, nor any mechanic working on Teslas. Check the teardowns by Sandy Munro, who is an automobile expert. He criticised many things about Teslas, but not the construction of the suspension.
The suspension is a part which can be easily inspected on a car
Parts can be weakened internally and break suddenly, especially those of the cast-alloy that Tesla uses. The aerospace industry has extensive knowledge of that process, and the methods required to detect such defects are well beyond "easily inspected".
Cultists need cars too. Just because you're trying to summon a Nameless Horror doesn't mean you don't need to get from point A to point B. And why not drive a Tesla so that the Thing With Too Many Angles has an incrementally better ecosystem in which to settle back down for an eon or two of sleep?
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 336 ms ] threadI don't see why all the fanboys get their panties in a knot when people point this out. To everyone who actually knows anything about cars or manufacturing it's kind of a nothing-burger that everyone expects will slowly go away with time.
It's a low cost design, not a great design.
I'm not a car guy and never even touched a tesla so I'm curious what's bad in them.
But I designed interior parts, so it's my own Engineering take. Tesla's were not competitive at all. The gaps between panels were so bad, you could stick your finger in it. That's not just an appearance issue, kids and adults will mess around with large gaps and put stuff inside.
And features in the interior were non existent. (Especially for a luxury car)
I guess meaning is relative so 2020 luxury means curves, a tablet and skateboard battery pack.
I guess that's inconvenient to mention?
b) You are commenting on an article that talks about a Tesla loosing its roof. That's a new one on me, and I'd thought I'd seen it all back when I was an auto mechanic.
https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/news/local/car-loses-...
https://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1041062_recall-your-co...
https://www.motor1.com/news/419197/lotus-elise-loses-roof-hi...
But the thing is, I've never had any issues that rendered the car undriveable or unsafe, and service has always been a joy to work with. Every problem I've encountered has been addressed quickly and effectively with no hassle or charge. So, I'm willing to forgive some of the rough edges, and I suspect this is why they get such good customer satisfaction ratings despite the relatively high number of issues.
Back in the old days when I lived far away from a service center, they once drove hundreds of miles with a flatbed to come pick up my car, and dropped off a free loaner at my house while my car was in the shop, then came back and returned my car and picked up the loaner a few days later. (The loaner was also a nicer Tesla than the one I owned.) They really do go above and beyond to resolve issues as pleasantly and conveniently as possible.
I did test drive a 2013 S and I decided to wait until they matured at that point but now they seem to have gotten their act together in most cases.
They're actually on par with Audi here in Norway when it comes to customer satisfaction so it's not all bad [1]. Only Toyota, volvo and BMW beat them. They had a dip due to an overcrowded service department at the launch of the Model 3, but they hired a ton of people and trained them.
Now this roof falling off is one area they could improve greatly, factory Q&A. There should be a bumpy test track where they take all their vehicles for a control drive before shipping them to eliminate issues like that roof.
[1] https://www.tu.no/artikler/tesla-gjor-et-byks-i-kundetilfred...
I don't know about you, but my expectation for what is nominally a luxury car would be to have paint standards better than British Leyland in the 70s.
There is nothing about a Tesla that suggests they are trying to make it appear luxurious. Where are the expensive materials and ornamentation?
They are trying to make a futuristic car.
It's like how the Tacoma has been the turd of it's segment on paper for 20+yr but still flies off the shelves. Clearly the metric don't tell the whole story. In both cases there's an emotional value proposition that's doing a lot of heavy lifting.
And since I know in advance that this comment is gonna piss off a hell of a lot of people here (if I had to pick a demographic that will have both a Tacoma and a Tesla in their driveway HN would be about the perfect fit) I'll ask in advance if any of those people would like to tell me why I'm so wrong.
I must know more. What's wrong with the Tacoma?
Basically, Toyota has been too afraid to touch it (lest kill the golden goose) for approaching twenty years.
I haven't seen a Tesla interior so when you say "all controls" it's a bit concerning. I'm assuming you're talking only of non-driving related control...
Everything else is in the touch screen UI.
edit: I bit more than I originally thought, but not much. (gear selector, lights, and cruise control also have manual interfaces)
https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/JO/model_s_eu...
[0] https://www.motortrend.com/cars/subaru/outback/2020/2020-sub...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8
They do. You can control many things with voice in Tesla.
I don't know the comprehensive list of things you can use it for, but so far I used it to:
* Change temperature
* Play a specific song
* Set navigation to a new destination
I didn't put switching music tracks (next&previous)/adjusting volume on that list, because those can be easily performed using the scrollable button on the steering wheel.
It's like playing an old text adventure without the manual, so you don't know the verbs. It uses too much thinking to try to come up with different words while also trying to drive.
We can argue how far away that is etc, but that's the mission statement.
Yet they continue to manufacture cars with legacy, tactile steering wheels. Curious.
That's still required by federal (!) law, cf. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/393.209
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motor-shows-geneva-motor-...
[0] https://www.motorbiscuit.com/why-is-mazda-removing-all-touch...
[1] https://jalopnik.com/honda-follows-mazda-by-ditching-some-to...
https://www.iamroadsmart.com/campaign-pages/end-customer-cam...
Then I read about red light is specifically used in car dashboard lighting and airplane cockpits because it helps with night vision. What I thought at first was just an ugly colour choice was actually a very subtle design decision to help while driving at night.
It always reminds me how complicated and multifaceted good design is. There are always trade offs to consider, but minimalism as a design trend often seems a little too willing to ignore those trade offs and will sacrifice traits like safety, efficiency and flexibility for the sake of cost and simplicity.
Given that there is a stream of not-red lights shining at me in the opposite lane, I've been skeptical of this claim since Nissan did it in the 300Z like 30 years ago. It's there to look cool, not be useful. There's a subtle design lesson in there as well, I'm just not sure what it is.
We were instructed to bring flashlights, but cover the lens with a red layer, to keep the pupils from closing too much, so we could both look at stars but read our star charts.
The headlights in the other lane don't disqualify the benefits of using red lighting inside the car.
I don't even have a Tesla, I have a 2013 Prius which has an array of buttons for everything instead. The only knobs are the miniscule (and hard to turn) volume and tune buttons on the radio. They made a token effort but placing indentations on the heater temp and fan speed buttons but after five years I still can't operate anything on the center console without taking my eyes off the road.
I love almost everything about my Prius but the person who designed the interior to look like a Starfleet shuttlecraft should be shot.
Touchscreens in cars are a disaster, in general. They're a bad technology for the use case. They're more so in a Tesla, because Tesla relies on them far more heavily than any other manufacturer, and gives users no alternative for most functions.
Cars should be designed to minimize touchscreen use, not maximize it.
My points was that designing the interior of a car like a cockpit becomes kinda pointless when the driver isn't doing much driving.
I don't think anyone believes that Tesla will have actual self-driving cars, which don't require constant driver attention, within the lifetime of the cars currently being produced.
But obviously Elon is the CEO and you are not, so if you are right then it will be his failure.
In fact, the reliance on a touch screen is why I've stricken Tesla off the list while shopping for an EV. I currently drive an old BMW and I love the interface. There are physical buttons for everything and there's no unnecessary fluffy stuff.
The most-modern vehicle I've driven whose interface I've liked was a Skoda Fabia.
On my dad's old land rover, you can literally operate the radio wearing blindfolds because everywhere is simply placed. It responds instantly, draws no power, and shut up when you aren't using it. His current car just gets in your way, even if it has more features.
Not a friend, just a former coworker I didn’t keep in contact with so I don’t have any way to follow up.
Touchscreens cut costs because you can ship the same hardware to all SKUs and change features in software. Buttons need to be added or replaced with fillers depending on the options that each car has.
I'm not saying that makes it excusable but I think the scale is important, other major car manufacturers have been around 4-5x as long.
By the mid 90s the domestics had more or less closed the gap. They just didn't apply the techniques and processes to the product lines they didn't care about (i.e. economy cars, they were selling SUVs hand over fist after all). And if you look at MRSPs for foreign and domestic economy cars throughout the 90s the prices more or less reflect the respective OEM's level of investment in those product lines. If you wanted an economy car you bought a Civic. If you wanted a shitbox you bought an Escort for less money.
I completely disagree with that. I bought a Cadillac in 2012. Its build quality was lower than anything I've seen from BMW, Audi or Volvo. I'm talking about really inconsistent panel (internal and exterior) gaps and misc vehicle rattles. It's also worth mentioning the Cadillac was the most expensive vehicle of the group and very much a line that GM cared about. I have no idea how Ford is doing, but GM is still not comparable to German/Swedish/Korean manufacturers.
I would even argue ford's model of manufacturing turned the last remnats of workshop based work into the mass producing factory.
They've only been mass manufacturing for about 4 years now; previous models are low volume models with a lot of hand assembly.
Musk says that manufacturing is a couple of orders of magnitude harder than designing and building prototypes. He's learning these lessons the hard way. If you can survive the lesson, it's the best way to learn them. Little consolation to those who buy the lemons during the learning period, though.
This is also a tale about America. Tesla's Chinese factory gets first place on a similar survey to the JD Powers initial quality survey that Tesla America got last place in. America just doesn't have the deep well of manufacturing knowledge that a new company like Tesla can draw on.
This is what would worry me as a potential customer. That the manufacturer selling me their product considers such disasters acceptable in order to ship a few more units. It's not that often lately than manufacturers are willing to do this (think GM ignition key scandal, rather than VW pollution cheating).
Is this serious? America has been offshoring domestic auto manufacturing for a couple decades now. The people who worked in those factories didn’t just die, they’re mostly still available for hire. There is no metric in manufacturing knowledge where America lags that far behind other first world countries, let alone the rest of the world.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/opinion/america-military-...
[2] https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2018/05/22/americas-ind...
There's an episode of This America Life about it: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015
Tesla aren't starting from nothing, they're able to use all the existing knowledge about putting together a factory to build product.
Conversely, do _you_ really think that - evenly applying an adhesive to an incredibly smooth surface (repeatably) to bond it to a frame and have it undergo twisting, vibration, and extremes of heat and cold, aerodynamic effects / pressure, exposure to moisture, UV and atmospheric contaminants and retaining its adhesion for the expected life of the vehicle -
isn't advanced engineering?
All Tesla have to do is "buy the right glue", and then "make sure it gets put on correctly". That is a bit of production engineering but seriously it's not hard to lay down a bead of adhesive, place the glass in, and then check that it's been done.
>>> check that it's been done
Seems like they cut some corners here.
I'm not saying that attaching glass to metal is at the same level of complexity as semiconductor fab, but it's a far cry from using some Elmer's Glue to stick two pieces of construction paper together.
And yes, I'm pretty sure Tesla didn't create their own adhesive for the purpose, but I'm equally sure 3M doesn't have an off-the-shelf "Model Y Roof Adhesive, 500ml" product. Or perhaps they did, but the engineering constraints to develop it were those of normal passenger cars, sunroofs, etc., not taking into account the various forces acting upon a 4'x7' sheet of glass at highway speeds, or perhaps the temperatures or speeds of an industrial applicator robot (or conversely, the slowness of a human applicator).
To go back to your original assertion, no, it's not hard to lay down a bead of adhesive, place the glass in and check that it's been done. If in fact the failure mode was 'Failure to apply adhesive', well, that's a fairly egregious and easy to spot problem. If it's 'adhesive failed for unknown reasons after a short period of time', that's an altogether different problem.
Repeat this step with literally every weld, seal, screw, or other component. Then get it right for hundreds of thousands of cars regardless of the condition of the factory line and workers/robots.
de Havilland was making airplanes for 33 years when the famous Comet crash occurred.
Manufacturing is a learning process. There's a lot of engineering in every detail, and there will always be room for improvement.
I suspect there’s some sort of NIH thing going on.
Ever talked to somebody with little to no software experience who will tell you how easy it should be to just slap some code together to build a the next Google? It's like that.
I used to build test equipment for aerospace and safety critical equipment for coal mining. I'm well aware that even with rigorous control you're going to get some errors. But "the glass fell out because we glued it wrong" isn't a normal manufacturing error. It's a mistake that requires more than one process to fail.
Which is stupid in a world where you can drawn on 150+ years of manufacturing experience.
Sure, in IT and tech it might work, but those fields are relatively young.
Your logic suggests either a) they haven't bothered hiring people experienced in quality control for car manufacturing, or b) they have, and yet their cars are _still_ this badly made. Neither is a good look.
I don't know what the Tesla culture is like, but if it skews toward the tech "move fast and break things", just hiring experienced QA folks won't magically get everyone onboard to strict, controlled processes.
I drive a Subaru now. If I could get an EV version of my present car with comparable range, I'd buy it today and never look back. They say by 2035 they'll have electric versions of all their major models[1], so I guess... sometime in the next 15 years, for me?
[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a30613610/subaru-crossover...
If they made a Crosstrek/Forester-type vehicle with 300-400 miles of all-electric range, kept the ground clearance, roof rack, and usual interiors, I've always imagined that those vehicles would sell like hotcakes. I know I'd be interested in immediately trading up, in a way that I probably won't be otherwise for a long time.
They do one thing - they make solidly reliable 4-wheel-drive cars - and they do it quite well. But I've never seen them be the first on any new thing the industry is doing, no matter how good it is.
Market share of new BEVs in Germany, January 2020 to September 2020:
Volkswagen-Audi-Porsche: 33%
Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi: 18%
Hyundai-Kia: 13%
Tesla: 12%
Mercedes: 9%
BMW: 8%
You don't have to wait, the competition is already outproducing and outselling Tesla in Europe. And all of these car companies have new BEV models in the pipeline that are going to further erode Tesla's marketshare, because Tesla has nothing in the pipeline for the European market over the next couple of years.
I think the list for Canada is even smaller, though I am not sure.
Here's hoping some more of those come to the States soon.
Producing cars in itself is not a new process from a manufacturing perspective, especially not the non EV parts. (like body work and structural work).
What kind of quality control does tesla have, when it is not able to reliably produce cars with the same finish and fit. Most manufacturers have been able to do this for atleast 30 years. it is not like the industry doesn't have solutions to tackle these issues at scale.
I don't think Tesla deserves a free pass with these issues, but I also think they should be expected.
Tesla gets held to a separate standard, and excuses get made for it, because people want it to succeed. I want it to succeed, too, but my definition of success includes making reliable cars. (And preferably sacking Elon Musk, but that's unrelated.)
Given there are a lot more of them made, seems like they are getting better.
(I am an owner of Model 3 and find it to be a joy of a car.)
Technically, this is QC (quality control), not quality assurance.
Toyota, GM, etc are sitting on mature product lines which are growing a few percentage a year. They can roll out a new assembly line and spend months fine tuning it before turning it up and shutting down the old one. Tesla has no previous assembly line to lean on.
It's pretty clear Tesla as a company values growth over delivering the best quality product.
The flip side of this is I've heard a fair number of people suggest that Tesla's service is good... stupid slow but eventually good.
Sure, I thought they had been pretty clear they felt reaching volume was critical to making BEV technology competitive (a larger revenue base over which to amortize development)
I hope it works better for them and their clients than it worked for Boeing and the 737 MAX operators and passengers...
It's so slow though that I don't think it can even be considered "good" anymore. Ok fine they eventually fix issues, but at the cost of you having a defective product for weeks/months?
I really want to buy a Model Y, but I just almost had to push back the closing date on buying a new house because it took longer to have somebody in their solar panel department send a single e-mail than it took for the bank to get me a mortgage. It took a lot of stress, over a dozen e-mails and about 3 hours on the phone before I was able to eventually speak to a human to resolve my issue. The whole experience has soured the brand for me, and from googling around my case is far from an outlier.
This luxury sports car business model. Expensive sports cars are very unreliable and delicate. But they are so expensive that providing very good custom service and repair after the sale is worth it.
They are trying to transform into a market where routine million car recalls kills the business and eats all profits. New cars are expected to work.
Are you being held against your will?
Tesla fundamentally disagrees with established ways of manufacturing cars and is still approaching it as a SV startup. They chase growth numbers, rush new models in production, will put home depot scrap in the cars just to keep the lines moving, and have no quality culture.
Company needs to go over very fundamental philosophy changes for issues like that go away. Just the time itself is not enough.
Japanese or Korean auto-markers turned around their quality over time, by heavily investing into that. Tesla shows no signs of that.
The argument that Tesla is not investing in improving quality is simply not true. Things like casting make far more exact parts and very repeatable. It also reduces 100s of parts, less variation, less manufacturing steps and thus mistakes.
They are investing in the most expensive paint shop you can buy in the market right now for their new factories and they just renovated the paint shop in Fremont (since then I have not heard of bad paint quality).
They defiantly need to do more but its unfair to say they are doing nothing.
I went along with a family member to a Model 3 test drive recently and it was surprising just how many little defects were there, considering the price of the car. While paint finish or panel fit isn't going to ruin a car overall, the fact the big easy-to-spot things are so clearly flawed does make one pause to consider how rigorous the QA is for the parts under the surface.
Your doctor doesn't take your oral history for fun, it's data. Now, just like a medical doctor we should weigh anecdotal data accordingly, but it's still data.
Here for example we can tell BMW/Audi reportedly sometimes make production errors. Tesla reportedly don't always make significant (to the commenter) production errors.
Sure, that's not terribly useful. It's still data.
/bugbear
The doctor takes your oral history to assess your health. Knowing that $x percent of family tree has high blood pressure means they can more accurately assess your risk of high blood pressure. For the population of “literally you”, your oral history is data. Now, if the next patient came in, and your doctor said “well, the last person in here has high blood pressure, you might have it to”, that’s an anecdote.
Similarly, telling somebody ~”My instance of $product worked great” isn’t really useful info for them. That’s a sample size of 1 out of a massive number.
Plus, Tesla has very high consumer satisfaction and low maintenance cost. Is that enough data for you?
Apropos of anything else, I'd not be so surprised that the cars Tesla probably hand picked for test drive events are the cream of the crop.
Aren't these components that should be ok at least after 17 years of Tesla?
After watching Rich Rebuilds on YouTube I came to the conclusion they are just not very good cars.
It's a good stock to ride the sucker wave on though.
O, please. I own both BMW and Tesla, and while BMW is more refined car, service and quality miles better with Tesla. BMW gets obscure error codes, and then dealership lazily tries to fix it for weeks (this year BMW spent 7 weeks at the shop, last year 3 weeks). Tesla needs service, technician comes and fixes it on your driveway!
You can buy an equally boring looking car to the Tesla 3, say a loaded Honda Accord, and avoid the finicky bullshit that comes with the BMW.
Unless the parts aren't in stock. Then technician comes and fixes it on your driveway, 2-3 months later!
Can you explain this, what compared unfavorably
I remain to be convinced, have at it ...
The Model 3 wins on acceleration, though, no question about it.
Actually, Tesla nixed essentially their entire QA for the production line years ago because it was slowing down production.
I have a Model 3 so I'm not just some hater! Tesla's Customer Service is seriously bad.
Complaints about Tesla's fit and finish extend back to before they were mass producing vehicles, when they theoretically should have been able to hand fit them. So I really don't buy any argument about it being a problem with scaling up; they just seem incapable or disinterested in fixing this.
That's not true. Similar things happen with all car makers, but if you pick up your car from a car dealership, the dealer will quietly fix the cosmetic issues because they want to avoid a bad reputation.
Calling a blown off roof a cosmetic issue tells a lot about your expectations on car quality.
They’ve been around a while now, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. I think at this point the obvious conclusion is that they just don’t care. Like, it’s not like Toyota locks their process engineers in a basement. If they wanted to hire experts it’s just a question of money.
This seems likely to go badly for them as competition heats up.
Really, Tesla would probably benefit enormously from Musk stepping back and becoming president or CEO-in-name-only.
People keep saying this but I always see way more critiques of Tesla and Elon than the opposite.
My opinion on the matter is people love pushing back on whatever appears popular. Whether or not it's just a few idiots on the internet with little to no real influence and transform into the powerful strawman others love taking down.
In general, anything Tesla related gets more coverage than an equivalent issue for any other car maker. I remember a few years back when Autopilot accidents would make national news while any other generic car wreck doesn't cause anyone to think twice.
Since Tesla has less than 1 million cars built IIRC, it's actually much worse of a problem. Other automakers have hundreds of millions of cars on the road with different designs, each with potential problems.
Yet something safety critical like a roof falling off happens rarely, but get recalled.
Has there been any Tesla recalls?
However, if different things keep going wrong at a smaller scale... That's a problem with management and process, not a single mistake echoed at scale.
[0] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/audi-recall-a4-a5-a6-q5-d...
[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/samsung-power-defect-causes-some-t...
Oh yeah this part is for sure true. I remember years ago a Model S got in an accident and had a small battery fire, and it was all over the news. Meanwhile Ford had a major recall going on for cars literally spontaneously catching on fire while driving, and nobody paid any attention.
...If water and contaminants got into the cables of certain model trucks as a result of snow or ice seepage, and those water/contaminants caused corrosion, and the block heater cable was plugged into an electrical outlet and active. This happened for 3 trucks out of 847,000.
Corrosion-related recalls are fairly common for automakers, because it's hard to anticipate which interior components will face corrosive elements, or how frequently, or in what amounts, due to the wide variety of geographies, climates, and uses that vehicles get subjected to.
Tesla has issued corrosion-related recalls itself, multiple times, including in 2018 and 2019, and these similarly did not make national news.
Mercedes recalled tens of thousands of cars this year for sunroofs that could blow off: https://www.consumerreports.org/car-recalls-defects/mercedes...
I think the fact that you didn't hear about this recall, to the point of not even believing such a thing could happen, while you did hear about this one case of one Tesla roof blowing off, illustrates the point nicely.
Edit: Someone else pointed out that Corvettes were also recalled for roofs flying off: https://www.corvetteblogger.com/2009/12/28/gm-issues-recall-...
"Unexpected Convertible" - science.times.com
"Tesla Accidentally Produces Model Y Convertible" - thedetroitbureau.com
"Tesla convertible?" -- fr24news.com
"Tesla Model Y Turns Convertible" -- carbuzz.com
"Tesla Model Y convertible anyone?" -- auto.hindustantimes.com
No other automaker gets this pass(except maybe Jeep vehicles).
Anyway, as bad as Tesla quality is, customers getting new cars from new companies should have little expectation of quality. (Although Tesla made it's first car in 2006, at when do they stop getting such sympathy?)
So then the more aspirational type want to emulate them, but they want it newer and shinier and with a warranty, so they wind up with the substandard SUV which is the new Wranglers.
Exactly the same story with Land Rovers in the UK, incidentally.
It's a completely impractical and inconvenient car. But I still love it because it's fun to drive and it can, in fact, go pretty much anywhere.
I love the Tesla. I wouldn't say it's built badly, but it's not on par with an import in the same price range. I like it for other reasons. It's unlike any other car. I love the way it drives, I love the features, it feels futuristic. I would challenge anyone to drive a decked out Tesla for a year and then go back to a regular car as their daily driver.
This same experience with a Ford logo would end in a negative review.
The new in-dash systems in the Subarus and Ford E-Mustangs appear to be on par with Tesla, usability wise, and unlike Tesla can be used with physical controls.
Probably the scariest statement in this thread, given what we know about the reliability of software.
The Tesla head unit makes the current automaker's head units look super reliable and as solid as a rock. OTA software updates do have their benefits, but it seems like it leads to compromising quality for pushing features of questionable utility out the door.
I get really disappointed when I see Tesla implementing really unnecessary features like Rainbow Road (the over-done SNL "more cowbell" skit) and fart mode. Focus on the reliability before making these features.
Tesla shipped 139K[1] cars last quarter and 1 roof blew off, nobody died, and now they are unreliable ? Now compare that to existing automakers that have had years more of manufacturing experience, six sigma bullshit, etc and look at the largest recalls[2]. (Ford recalled 7.9 million cars in 1996)
People buy Tesla because they are much more efficient than combustion engines, have superior technology, and a lot more fun to drive .. and maybe it makes you cool to IDK.
I really do not understand why everyone on HN hates tesla so much ...
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/2/21498558/tesla-q3-2020-ve...
[2] https://money.cnn.com/2014/05/27/autos/biggest-auto-recalls/
And yes Tesla is unreliable, there's no debate here. A new car company is going to be unreliable. And why are you using Absolute numbers? 1 roof, 7 million Ford cars. You made a statistical error here.
And what is this about combustion engines? It's 2020, everyone sells an EV. Only Tesla sells a low quality EV.
Re statistics error - what error did I make ?
Re combustion engines, have you tried to do a road trip in a non-tesla EV using charge point. I suggest you try and then report back about how bad the experience is.
I have no skin in the Tesla game. I'm not much of a car guy. But I just recently bought a new vehicle and I ruled out Tesla because of that story from last month. I was looking at cars when that story came out. I don't know if stories like flying roofs, and the wood and the other stuff only make the news because they're Tesla and maybe these things don't happen all that often, but that non-standard parts thing really made me steer clear of Tesla while shopping for cars last month. It seems like so many of these things just don't happen to other cars?
I'd be totally comfortable with the wood load spreaders from last month's stories or the fact that some of the cars are built in tent factories. I don't think those issues are blockers. I do think they have a general need to improve their quality and fit/finish, but those are in some cases things that must come from experience and track record of mass production, but I think those are unrelated to scrappiness.
(Disclaimer: I am short $TSLA on the basis of comparative valuation only, not because they are incapable. For that, I'm short $NKLA.)
What are you comparing the valuation to? Other car companies? Revenue? I ask because when there are so many emotional investors in a stock like Tesla, I've found it hard to rationalize the price. For that reason, I'm nervous about going short or long for any length of time. That said, I've had a lot of success day trading the price action.
I also find it somewhat telling that Tesla sold $5BB of $TSLA into the market in early Sept. That might suggest that they thought the near-term market conditions were as good as they were going to get for a while. This is (IMO) a wonderful company with an excessively premium market cap.
Can someone in the automotive space comment if there’s really no legal/regulatory consequence for haphazardly jury rigging stuff on the fly like this?
People have lost a boatload of money doing that.
Or were you being sarcastic?
Thus, recalls are only used by other automakers for problems discovered after a unit has been manufactured and shipped, not for problems discovered during the assembly of a unit. For example: if vehicles 0-99 were shipped before a problem was discovered with a component in unit 100, vehicles 0-99 gets recalled, and vehicle 100 stays on the factory lot until the replacement component is ready and installed. Vehicles 100-125 might get built before the replacement component is ready depending on how the automaker has structured their factory line and whether the component is a critical component, and if so they also remain on the factory lot. Vehicles 126+ are assembled with the replacement component so they get shipped after assembly is complete.
Very Very doubtful. There is some accountant math that goes into those types of decisions. If that car made it all the way to the buy off ride and into manufacturing with those components and it was found later that they failed faster than expected or didn't always work quite right. They are not going to hold those cars back unless it causes a catastrophic and probably fatal, to the occupants, failure.
Otherwise they will hope it will fail outside of warranty and charge your for it.
If the dealership sees a particular failure mode and reports it to GM, then they’ll issue a TSB (or maybe even trigger a recall). But in doing so, they’ll only pay a fixed fee to the dealer.
Instead, what happens is that the dealer has an incentive to build a local knowledge base on how to fix the common problems but not share it with GM as they can bill the repairs hourly.
(The specific failure mode he used as an example was inadequate weatherproofing in door electrics. The local fix was to pop-rivet the bottom of a plastic container in the right place so as to improve weather resistance)
Car manufacturers don't do that anymore. They learned from Ford's mistake with the Pinto. Also, it costs significantly more to replace parts by recall than it does to simply hold back vehicles at the factory, on the order of 10-20x as much $$$, since there are additional legal and regulatory requirements associated with recalls, and generally releasing a car with known flawed parts means treble damages come into play in any legal proceeding (meaning, 3x damages awarded to the plaintiff).
If I could buy a Cybertruck that functioned without a connection to the mothership, I would.
Do you drive with a smartphone now?
> If I could buy a Cybertruck that functioned without a connection to the mothership, I would.
They work offline: https://www.quora.com/Can-you-still-drive-a-Tesla-if-its-off...
Everybody always brings that up. I don't love it, but yes I do, and I trust Apple more than I trust Tesla.
> They work offline
They somewhat work, and it's not clear for how long. If it goes a year without being able to connect, is it fine with that? Or will it stop working until it's able to update?
Kinda like the "child slave labor" issue raised during the shareholder's meeting: Some people wanted to compel Tesla to address the problem ... minutes later Musk eliminated the problem by removing cobalt use.
Who writes the explanation in a way that is convincing and clear to the public?
You are literally describing a PR department
Not all Teslas are ordered online.
> On Monday, Walter Chien said that he spoke with a Tesla representative, who said that "everything was done correctly" when manufacturing the car. "To me, that was more concerning," Chien told Business Insider.
That's a... no? Situation normal, carry on, everybody... concerning, indeed.
I feel like this could be an expected behavior for any extremely new car if that is the case.
These aren't T34s that are driving off the line and to the front. It would certainly have been cured by the time the car made it to the customer. I'm betting their QA process didn't accurately catch and remediate all the cars moved down the line after the glue machine ran dry.
Does this mean they expect a roof to fly off even when things are done "correctly"? What happens when they make the inevitable mistake?
Normally I'd say this is a PR disaster but just like other companies which command blind, unwavering loyalty, Tesla can also afford such disasters knowing that opinions will stay the same no matter what. Whether you love them or hate them this will do nothing to change it. Tesla is a very emotional choice no matter which side of that choice you land on.
The uneven alignment at the gap between the roof frames in Tesla Model Y (shown at 10:20) though is quite unsettling to behold. Both of the presenters agreed that similar misalignment will never had passed Toyota QA.
[1]https://youtu.be/8kDQvycMpmg
I'm sure that the car is structurally sound but it was mind boggling how cheap it felt. It was almost like the interior of super low-end model for emerging markets, but with a large touch screen in the middle.
Also the back seat isn't roomier, the dad had his legs spread and said it's just as roomy...I think using a touch screen to move the vents would annoy me very quickly. My family car is a Honda Odyssey and it annoys me that the fan speed on the AC is via the touch screen.
https://archive.is/GZtG6
How and why, we'll find out after Elon figures out how to blame it on the driver.
/sarcasm
He was told to Tweet about it and that media would pick it up, sounds like it worked.
https://www.mazda.co.uk/cars/mazda-mx-30/
Not sure how much “out” does it have to be to be considered “out”.
Things that people like about EVs and Teslas specifically: 1) The driving experience is very special. Startling acceleration, single-pedal driving, near-silent low speed operation. 2) Operating costs are very low. Next to no routine maintenance, inexpensive "fuel". 3) Class-leading safety due to low CoG and lack of engine in the crumple zone. 4) Great software that is updated frequently over the air. 5) Arguably the best proto-self-driving/advanced driver assistance that gets better over time. 6) Hands down the best charging infrastructure and experience.
The build quality issues are real, but tend to be overblown by the media. The looks, inside and out, are definitely polarizing. I personally love the minimalism but would like better materials. But it's inarguably different, and for lots of people that's exciting in and of itself.
Is that why I always see Tesla cars continually flashing their brake lights? Is it even possible to just coast?
Maybe regenerative braking is also when the brake lights turn on.
My comment was also referring to the drain on the battery due to resistive heating used to warm up the cabin...not range efficiency on the battery due to cold temperature.
My Googling shows that Tesla went away from resistive to heat pump in the model Y...so, I think my comment is germane to Tesla except model Y.
And 4) could go either way:) no one is able to disable bits remotely on most cars, or at least until BMW get their subscription service going for heated seats and radio stations.
Wow
Speaking for myself, I actually quite like the design of the Teslas. They are very smooth and have a quite different approach than most mainstream makers. I dislike especially the overly edgy brutal look with huge radiator openings, which has crept into the car market since 2010. Maybe it is me being a physicist, but I can also appreciate how the design maximizes aerodynamic efficiency, even if that means other compromises. Which is partly responsible for Teslas leading in range tests. As I like simple elegant shapes, I appreciate how from the front edge of the windscreen to the very back of the car, there is a single smooth curvature of the roofline.
The members of the sub are generally quite reasonable, but it's consistently pruned of content that could be damaging to Tesla. I read it for many years until that started to creep me out.
https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/j6jc7w/a_forma...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/136377865@N05/sets/72157658490...
The suspension is the one part in a car, which is easily inspectable by just looking at it. And which has not changed much over time. Any competent mechanic should be able to check it. If there were fundamental issues with Tesla suspensions, the net would be full of reports about it and of course authorities would have acted, but beyond that one crusader against Tesla, no one has claimed they are unsafe. Actually, by most accounts, the Model 3 is one of the safest cars you can buy.
However, the suspension of any car is a vital part that is exposed to the outside and exposed to wear constantly. While most electric cars don't require much maintenance - Tesla does not have a maintenance plan any more - the brakes and suspension I would have checked by a mechanic at least biyearly, as this is a very important mechanical part you want to be serviced before there is a failure.
2. Someone has observed a large number of otherwise undamaged Teslas with this peculiar failure and is documenting it.
Which one of those is more likely...? If you search for "suspension failure" at teslamotorsclub.com there are a surprisingly large number of results too.
3. Suspension damage is common in vehicles that have been in accidents.
There are legitimate threads about suspension damage due to failed components and/or improper assembly on TMC, but that's probably not what happened in most of the vehicles in Keef's Flickr account.
(IMHO a low-speed impact of the sort that doesn't cause other damage beyond minor scratches and dents should not be enough to break suspension parts.)
(It's not only Tesla who does this, but perhaps they have been cutting it a bit too close, given their relative inexperience compared to other auto manufacturers.)
The suspension is a part which can be easily inspected on a car and is one of the parts which is not different on electric cars. Any mechanic can inspect it. How does it come, that beyond that crusader, no one called out Tesla for this? Neither the authorities, nor any mechanic working on Teslas. Check the teardowns by Sandy Munro, who is an automobile expert. He criticised many things about Teslas, but not the construction of the suspension.
Parts can be weakened internally and break suddenly, especially those of the cast-alloy that Tesla uses. The aerospace industry has extensive knowledge of that process, and the methods required to detect such defects are well beyond "easily inspected".
The nature of manufacturing is that 1-in-1000 problems only show up after a few thousand have been manufactured.
I personally wouldn't buy a Model Y (or any new Tesla model) until the production line has been running for a year.
He must have found the ejection feature, still in beta.
https://theaviationist.com/2020/04/09/report-released-on-fre...