Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 192 posts

Re: Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

#41

Post by cptskippy »

supergauntlet wrote: post #35
ajross wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a link to equivalent worries about Mazda or Audi or someone? I mean... it's not a persecution complex if there's actual persecution. No one writes articles about tape on Fords. Ever.

Does Ford use electrical tape in lieu of heatshrink tubing?

Sadly, for you, the article does not say Tesla used tape in-lieu of heat-shrink tubing or even mention heat-shrink at all. It simply states a fact that "factory tape is high-quality and looks as if it’s shrink-wrapped on a part" to provide contrast to the product Tesla was using.

The usage of the tape, as suggested by the article, wasn't for electrical insulation or wiring protection.

Re: Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

#42

Post by Lazare »

What I find interesting is how vigorously Tesla denies everything, always, even when they're clearly wrong. They lose a lot of credibility that way; I wonder if Musk[1] realises that if he admitted the things Tesla is obviously doing wrong, he might have a hope of convincing people about the ones they're not obviously doing wrong?

And it's especially odd because so much of the article is just a bunch of nothing, but Tesla makes it newsworthy by denying everything. And 50 cents says Musk has a team analysing the photos right now to try and track down the employees who took them. ...to ensure they're fired and/or sued, of course; obviously Tesla would never see people who had identified problems as a potentially valuable resource.

There's a lot more interesting details if you dig into it, but wikipedia has a pretty good summary of the Toyota Production System (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System). An interesting contrast, perhaps.

[1]: I mean, we all know who's behind this PR strategy, right?

Re: Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

#43

Post by supergauntlet »

cptskippy wrote: post #41
supergauntlet wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Ford use electrical tape in lieu of heatshrink tubing?

Sadly, for you, the article does not say Tesla used tape in-lieu of heat-shrink tubing or even mention heat-shrink at all. It simply states a fact that "factory tape is high-quality and looks as if it’s shrink-wrapped on a part" to provide contrast to the product Tesla was using. The usage of the tape, as suggested by the article, wasn't for electrical insulation or wiring protection.

Weird, I saw people elsewhere in the comments mention heatshrink tubing being substituted with electrical tape.

Definitely does seem like a weird thing to base an article on especially when Tesla does lots of other things wrong.

Re: Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

#44

Post by tyingq »

dymk wrote: post #34
tyingq wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm. I was an electronic tech in US government work in the 1980's. We routinely used MEK (methyl ethyl keytones) to clean circuit boards, with zero protections. We got these weird requests to confirm we did this of our own free will in the late 80's. Then, in the 2000's, similarly weird requests to confirm we "knew the risks" . If you complied, you were guaranteed VA coverage. Anectodally, strange rates of lo…

Same thing happened to a lot of workers who worked with Asbestos. My dad, his brother, many of their friends got a few thousand bucks in the 80s if they agreed to never sue. A lot of them died a decade or so later from mesothelioma.

I'm especially disappointed with my case, as organic solvents are almost all historically known aggressive carcinogens. This was not a case of "not knowing", even the 80's. I suspect similar for asbestos, coal dust, etc in that time period.

Re: Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

#46

Post by simion314 »

>Tesla is able to build the safest and best-performing cars

Am I out of date with the news? Are Tesla the safest cars? I am not a car enthusiast so I recall that Volvo has most safety features, did things change or is Tesla PR so deluded, at least I would use something like "one of the safest cars", provide some modesty,

Re: Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

#47

Post by entropea »

vxxzy wrote: post #12

musk slept on the floor of the factory... Safety issues with giant pieces of metal going down the road aside (though it is paramount!), at least the leader struggled with his underlings.

There are people sleeping on the streets blocks away from his factories. Sleeping on the floor of his hundred million dollar factories is not proof of anything.

Re: Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

#48

Post by stonogo »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #28
reitzensteinm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. This "you're singling Tesla out" persecution complex is getting old. Tesla is an amazing company in many ways, but there's plenty of bad to go along with the good.

Isn't it telling that folks have Tesla under a microscope at all?

No. All automakers get scrutinized by someone. What's telling is your overreaction to it.

Re: Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

#49

Post by ajross »

supergauntlet wrote: post #43
cptskippy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, for you, the article does not say Tesla used tape in-lieu of heat-shrink tubing or even mention heat-shrink at all. It simply states a fact that "factory tape is high-quality and looks as if it’s shrink-wrapped on a part" to provide contrast to the product Tesla was using. The usage of the tape, as suggested by the article, wasn't for electrical insulation or wiring protection.

Weird, I saw people elsewhere in the comments mention heatshrink tubing being substituted with electrical tape. Definitely does seem like a weird thing to base an article on especially when Tesla does lots of other things wrong.

> Weird, I saw people elsewhere in the comments mention heatshrink tubing being substituted with electrical tape.

Right, because like I said above, the prevailing paradigm is to skewer Tesla by extrapolating from any available datapoint. So people take "tape" and invent reasons for the tape that don't appear in the article. Some of this isn't the posters' fault, because the article is sensationalized and is clearly trying to lead you to a conclusion about "tape" that it can't make with the simple facts presented.

Which is a media behavior that is, in the auto industry as of right now, almost exclusive to Tesla. No one runs dirt stories about tape on Fords, not because there isn't any (I mean, who knows, but none of would be shocked to read about it) but because even if there was, no one would care.

Re: Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

#50

Post by dpkonofa »

DanCarvajal wrote: post #23
willio58 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. Didn’t some _real_ car companies need bail-outs from the US government?

You mean like how every U.S. Tesla ever sold has been heavily subsidized with tax rebates? And how they actually got a U.S. Government loan? And how they got further tax credits from Nevada for building the Gigafactory there?

You mean like every other EV in the US also? Those are all subsidized to exactly the same amounts yet you don't see them selling like gangbusters...
Post reply on HN