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Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

cnbc.com

51–60 of 192 posts

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

#51
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> All automakers get scrutinized by someone.

Citation needed. I've never seen a story this thin (one photo of tape holding down a nonstructural plastic housing) run about another manufacturer. You have a counterexample?

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

#52

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.

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

The admission of willful ignorance here is rather astounding.

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

#53
post #4

> In fact, we have a large number of employees who request to work on GA4 based on what they hear from colleagues and what they have seen first-hand Wonder if the Tesla spokesman has a desk there. Off the top of my head I can't imagine a reason why the tent would be such a great place to work. Equal maybe but certainly not better than a factory building that was not put up in a hurry to meet demands. In any manufactu…

> Off the top of my head I can't imagine a reason why the tent would be such a great place to work. It's in Fremont California where the weather averages 49-69F with extremes being 42F and 79F. It's outside so constantly moving fresh air, and it's covered so no sun beating down. The ends of the tent appear to be open letting natural light in and allowing you to look out at the sky. Contrast that to a typical factory…

I worked in a factory for a couple of weeks putting radiators on Defenders [0].

The work was extremely boring (30 second task repeated 8 hours a day) but temperature / conditions were never an issue. Workers were looked after seemingly well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Rover_Defender

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

#54
post #42

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…

I'm not defending Musk at all, but if those pictures were leaked from a Tesla employee, they're in breach of their NDA, a legally binding contract. Why wouldn't they go after someone breaching their NDA? I get that there are whistleblower protections and whatnot, but that is for lawyers and judges to decide. I'd be surprised if there wasn't a team analysing those photos.

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

#55
post #42

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…

"The most fundamental difference is thinking about the factory really as a product, as a quite vertically integrated product," said Musk. "It's treating it as more of an engineering and a technical problem as well," added Chief Technical Officer J.B. Straubel.

"Which is the Toyota Production System," replied Johnson.

"Yeah, we don't think so," countered Musk.

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

#56
post #54
post #42

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…

I'm not defending Musk at all, but if those pictures were leaked from a Tesla employee, they're in breach of their NDA, a legally binding contract. Why wouldn't they go after someone breaching their NDA? I get that there are whistleblower protections and whatnot, but that is for lawyers and judges to decide. I'd be surprised if there wasn't a team analysing those photos.

It's also worth remembering that innovations in manufacturing are quite often 'short cuts' that have the same or better result with less process.

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

#57
post #42

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…

What else do you expect from a company where an investor retconned himself into being a founder, including in the Wikipedia entry?

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

#58
post #11
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What concerns me is that shortcuts in industrial manufacturing processes are often directly detrimental or even fatal to workers. Heavy industry uses toxic chemicals and large, powerful machinery; cutting corners around those things is actively dangerous. Using some electrical tape in places where you'd otherwise use shrink tubing is not a big deal. But like you said, trying to cut corners on a finished hardware desi…

There's absolutely no such contention in the linked article though. It's about tape. I mean, yeah, they could be doing all kinds of crazy things. But so could anyone else who needs to ship products on tight schedules. Why single out Tesla here? I mean, would you react this way if it turned out Mazda or Audi was taping down some misassembled parts?

It’s clear that tesla stories (especially negative ones) = more clicks

At the bottom of auto/EV articles, I frequently see a sentence or two soliciting stories from tesla employees specifically. Often times the article isn’t even about tesla!

I can see disgruntled employees jumping at the chance to share their story with a journalist incentivized to write about it.

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

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Using some electrical tape in places where you'd otherwise use shrink tubing is not a big deal. The article says that they used electrical tape from Walmart on a bracket that holds the cameras for Autopilot . I've used some Walmart etape... that's a big deal.

I do not know about cars but using electrical tape on aircraft is absolutely not allowed. Unlike in most electronics vehicles deal with vibration, improper wire routing will cause chafing against any surface it touches over time causing exposed wires and shorts in the best case. Zip ties are obviously not allowed because they would cause chafing themselves, electrical tape will likely come come undone after some year…

I know the internet really loves muh aerospace standards but there's reasons vehicles that travel in two dimensions don't need to abide by those standards. It would be prohibitively expensive and overkill most of the time. There's tons of stuff that isn't allowed on aircraft and a lot of it traces back to being able to verify/inspect what was done and allowing a chain of custody so problems can be traced to the source. This isn't as necessary for two dimensional vehicles that only last 20yr.

Zip ties are mostly not allowed for QC reasons. Some people will crank them tight and some won't. They won't really cause much chafing if properly installed because the wires shouldn't be moving enough to chafe. There's tons and tons and tons of aftermarket wiring in work trucks out there that's been installed with zip ties and it's not any less reliable than OEM wiring.

All but the worst electrical tape will take 20+yr to come apart even in an automotive environment. It should take longer on an EV that isn't going to have as many sources of oil leaks in old age. I still wouldn't want to use it for anything other than bundling wires though.

As an aside, I've worked on aircraft (GA) and on cars and your average car sees more vibration but obviously if things fall apart in the air it's a bigger deal.

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

#60
post #42

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…

Have you considered that they vigorously deny things because they are not true? If even a fraction of the negative things about Tesla in the press were true then their cars would be falling apart on the streets and the company would be failing from low demand. In reality buyers love the cars and they just broke their delivery record again last quarter.
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