Tesla’s New Car Smell • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla’s New Car Smell

#161

Post by sbierwagen » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 4:17 PM UTC

struppi wrote: post #108

lostboys67 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with all respect to Jean he's a computer guy and not a Mech Engineer. If Tesla has cheap land and can store locally why not - remember that Japan doesn't have as much land space as the USA has JIT just pushes the costs on to smaller suppliers who a large company can effectively bully in the same way big supermarkets bully framers.

"JIT just pushes the costs on to smaller suppliers who a large company can effectively bully in the same way big supermarkets bully framers." This is not how the TPS works (At least not in theory. In practice, bullying may or may not happen - I don't know about any). The idea behind JIT is that you can react to changes in external circumstances faster. Also, the suppliers should also not have huge stockpiles of parts…

Paywall link.

Re: Tesla’s New Car Smell

#162

Post by digikata » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 4:17 PM UTC

Hypx wrote: post #27

carlivar wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think Tesla doesn't fundamentally grasp it? This anecdote? The plural of anecdote is not data. Your wikipedia link on the Toyota Production System says it was developed between 1948 and 1975. So it look 27 years to develop. Working for a startup myself, I'm very aware of Kanban and other TPS-inspired work processes. Sometimes in startup-hair-on-fire-mode that all goes out the window and I think that's…

It's pretty self-evident if you read the next two paragraphs: > (Ironically, the Fremont plant is prominently featured in “The Machine…” as the locus of the ultimately failed GM-Toyota cooperation.) > As I watched Tesla’s messy, hiccuping line, with workers dashing in to fix faulty parts in place, my mind travelled back to the Honda plant I had visited years ago in Marysville, Ohio. Clean, calm, everything moved smoo…

Toyota is a global car manufacturing company who has been manufacturing cars (and building new car factories) for many many decades now. This is will be Tesla's first high volume line of vehicles. I think it makes sense for some time to work out kinks in process and meta-processes.

Even a couple of years back when Toyota passed GM as highest volume maker of vehicles, the execs at Toyota said there was a moment where they took their eye off clean processes and Toyota quality suffered a bit. Some of that I suspect had to do with the timing of the retirement of a generation of very experienced people in Toyota. I think they've since been on a corrective course.

Re: Tesla’s New Car Smell

#163

Post by brianwawok » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 4:52 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #58

carlivar wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think Tesla doesn't fundamentally grasp it? This anecdote? The plural of anecdote is not data. Your wikipedia link on the Toyota Production System says it was developed between 1948 and 1975. So it look 27 years to develop. Working for a startup myself, I'm very aware of Kanban and other TPS-inspired work processes. Sometimes in startup-hair-on-fire-mode that all goes out the window and I think that's…

> Sometimes in startup-hair-on-fire-mode that all goes out the window If that's how you use it, then you also don't grasp it. The point of a process is that it supports you in hard times. (In easy times, any process will do.) In my view, the essence of Lean is patient incremental gain. Giving in to panic is throwing all its benefits away, and creating both immediate and long-term problems for yourself. A good counter…

Toyota also had profits of billions of dollars from other lines to back their Hybrid model.

Tesla is basically a really big startup, and has nowhere near the cash reserve to take 6 years to bring the model 3 to market. It it basically get it out NOW, or fold. In 6 years Ford etc. etc. already has a model 3 equivalent for sale and knows how to manufacture. You can't play it so safe in an established market if you want to dive in.

Re: Tesla’s New Car Smell

#164

Post by wpietri » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 5:09 PM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #163

wpietri wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes in startup-hair-on-fire-mode that all goes out the window If that's how you use it, then you also don't grasp it. The point of a process is that it supports you in hard times. (In easy times, any process will do.) In my view, the essence of Lean is patient incremental gain. Giving in to panic is throwing all its benefits away, and creating both immediate and long-term problems for yourself. A good counter…

Toyota also had profits of billions of dollars from other lines to back their Hybrid model. Tesla is basically a really big startup, and has nowhere near the cash reserve to take 6 years to bring the model 3 to market. It it basically get it out NOW, or fold. In 6 years Ford etc. etc. already has a model 3 equivalent for sale and knows how to manufacture. You can't play it so safe in an established market if you want…

I don't think it works like that.

"Getting it out now" means building a very reliable, high-volume production line. If you rush that, you get an unreliable production line, which unless you just ship garbage, will be a low-volume production line or a very expensive production line. Or both.

I understand why "hair-on-fire mode" feels right. One's internal feelings of urgency are matched by dramatic action. The chaos and excitement of red alert gives nobody time for contemplation and lets everyone ignore the uncomfortable feelings that might come from that. But people in that mode make terrible choices, drastically undervaluing the long term.

In software, it's especially easy for us. Our products are rarely life critical, people are used to them being flaky, and we can fix things later by shipping new versions. None of these is true about cars. People used to ship garbage anyhow, which is why the US car market in the 70s and 80s was plagued with problems. And why Toyota and others could make such inroads.

Tesla should absolutely be taking risks, especially product feature and marketing risks. But taking quality and productivity risks in hopes that they can somehow make it up later strikes me as a terrible idea.

Re: Tesla’s New Car Smell

#165

Post by Animats » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 5:11 PM UTC

struppi wrote: post #108

lostboys67 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with all respect to Jean he's a computer guy and not a Mech Engineer. If Tesla has cheap land and can store locally why not - remember that Japan doesn't have as much land space as the USA has JIT just pushes the costs on to smaller suppliers who a large company can effectively bully in the same way big supermarkets bully framers.

"JIT just pushes the costs on to smaller suppliers who a large company can effectively bully in the same way big supermarkets bully framers." This is not how the TPS works (At least not in theory. In practice, bullying may or may not happen - I don't know about any). The idea behind JIT is that you can react to changes in external circumstances faster. Also, the suppliers should also not have huge stockpiles of parts…

If you have a stamping plant, you usually have far fewer presses than part numbers. You stamp out some part, then change dies to stamp out another part. Die changing and adjustment is time-consuming and is non-productive downtime. Once a press and die set is running well, it will produce parts at a good rate without much attention, but die changing is labor-intensive. The less often you change, the lower the cost per unit.

The optimal batch size at the stamping plant may be quite different from the batch size the assembly plant wants. That means in-process inventory, stored somewhere.

In the scale of auto body parts, dies weigh many tons and cranes are needed to do a die change. Clamping a die into position is complicated. There are quick-change systems. They're expensive.[1][2]

What's probably choking Tesla is that they planned their stamping batch sizes for a much higher production rate than they can currently achieve. Much of the planning for the Model 3 production line was based on the assumption that not much would go wrong. They made hard tooling for parts before using prototype soft tooling to save time.[3] That's a win only if you get it right the first time.

(I once worked in an R&D facility for heavy hydraulic equipment. They had to deal with problems like this. People talked about "setup" a lot. A basic fact of manufacturing is that setup and changes are much more difficult than production. Once you get a production machine set up, it's mostly putting in blanks and taking out product, and that's often automatic. Setup requires skilled people. There's been a lot of talk about "agile production" and a "lot size of one", but the real economies still appear only when you make large numbers of something. Look at the pricing for some on-line service that makes custom things for you. There will be a big price break as the quantity goes up.)

[1] http://www.thefabricator.com/article/stamping/10-common-quic... [2] http://www.thefabricator.com/article/stamping/how-quick-die-... [3] https://insideevs.com/tesla-insider-speaks-out-on-problems-o...

Re: Tesla’s New Car Smell

#166

Post by wpietri » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 5:12 PM UTC

pja wrote: post #95

wpietri wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really find it hard to believe they don't understand the TPS. Sure. Maybe. I don't know. American carmakers didn't get it for decades. Even when they thought they did, they performed Lean rituals without real understanding. This was despite Toyota trying vigorously to teach them.

History shows that knowledge transfer is really, really hard. Humans are just not very good at it :( (A similar story is told of the spread of the use of Feynman diagrams in physics - I’ve read that their spread was far slower than you’d expect given their utility: For whatever reason it wasn’t enough to be told that they were an incredibly useful tool by people you trusted - it was only when non users actually worke…

Definitely. And in this case I don't think it was just knowledge that needed transferring. It was culture and values.

There's a This American Life episode (centered around what is now Tesla's plant) that covers this well: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/561/...

Re: Tesla’s New Car Smell

#167

Post by Tiktaalik » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 5:24 PM UTC

erk__ wrote: post #148

Analemma_ wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People underestimate how god-awful slow the big car makers are I think it’s exactly the opposite. People enamoured with Tesla and Musk tend to over -estimate how slow the old car makers are, because they’re so used to the “Silicon Valley story” that we will inevitably come in and take over everything. Look: it’s 2017. Everybody has read the Innovator’s Dilemma, everybody knows how fast e.g. Palm, Nokia, etc. went o…

And companies like VW, BMW and Toyota are also investing a large amount om money into autonomous driving, they just keep it more behind curtains than Tesla.

Ditto with electric tech. You can buy an electric VW right now, and from reviews I've read it's apparently a fantastic product. The difference is in hype. VW very boringly made their existing dependable and well known Golf electric.

Re: Tesla’s New Car Smell

#168

Post by CardenB » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 5:32 PM UTC

Analemma_ wrote: post #54

xenadu02 wrote: post #49

Manufacturing ramp-up is exactly this sort of thing. Building by-hand as you work out the process and employ more automation. I'm not sure this is unexpected? As an investor I know full well Tesla has a ticking clock. They must achieve scale before the giants can catch up. People underestimate how god-awful slow the big car makers are. They haven't even come to terms with what Tesla is really doing yet. None have any…

> People underestimate how god-awful slow the big car makers are I think it’s exactly the opposite. People enamoured with Tesla and Musk tend to over -estimate how slow the old car makers are, because they’re so used to the “Silicon Valley story” that we will inevitably come in and take over everything. Look: it’s 2017. Everybody has read the Innovator’s Dilemma, everybody knows how fast e.g. Palm, Nokia, etc. went o…

> GM is arguably in the lead right now as far as autonomous driving capability. They’re at least tied with Google and certainly ahead of Tesla

GM is definitely not tied with Google.

Re: Tesla’s New Car Smell

#169

Post by prostoalex » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 6:22 PM UTC

immutable_ai wrote: post #140

prostoalex wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toyota’s recalls are expensive, as they involve a network of dealers who need to be paid for providing the repair and maintenance. Tesla’s vertical integration of service centers has an interesting side effect - recalls and repairs are pretty cheap, as the costs of service centers and loaner vehicles they give out are fixed and have been borne already. I wonder if that makes the company more dismissive of potential i…

> Tesla’s vertical integration of service centers has an interesting side effect - recalls and repairs are pretty cheap This is assuming that Tesla's centrally managed monolithic dealer/service network will be run more efficiently than the distributed and competitive dealer networks typical of other car companies. That assumption runs counter to typical economic thinking that competitive market based solutions will b…

Dealerships are not that competitive, though.

They are awarded on territorial basis to guarantee some monopoly within a geographic market, and the incentive system (inventory requirements, bonuses) benefits current owners opening in new markets rather than new players stepping in.

Their business model also relies on frequent customer visits for repairs/maintenance and subsequent upsell, so their incentives are somewhat misaligned with manufacturer's. So even if Tesla did a complete 180 on their service centers and started selling dealerships, they might not have many takers considering their maintenance needs and potential revenue https://www.tesla.com/support/maintenance-plans

Lastly, while a network of independent mechanic shops might be an indicator of competitive markets working properly, that market is far from transparent due to information asymmetry between the service buyer and the service provider.

Re: Tesla’s New Car Smell

#170

Post by specialist » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 8:06 PM UTC

csours wrote: post #23

Disclaimer up front: I work for a Tesla competitor. People believe funny things about Tesla and Elon. But before I talk about that, let me say: I've been extremely impressed with Tesla and Elon for their ability to eventually deliver, and to build unparalleled excitement around electric vehicles. I believe Elon is truly a visionary. Now for the funny things: 1. You can throw money at problems to fix them: If you do t…

”You cannot inspect your way to quality.”

Exactly.

Once you understand (grok) this, a lot of efforts become obviously silly. Like standardized testing regiments for K-12 public education.

Source: Former QA/Test manager, back when we still pretended to care about quality, eliminating defects, reducing costs.