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Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

cnbc.com

71–80 of 192 posts

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

#71

>Tesla is able to build the safest and best-performing cars Am I out of date with the news?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,

Tesla's are inherently very safe because they have such a large frontal crumple zone with no engine and the floor is a solid battery which helps with side collisions.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/04/watch-how-tesla-model-3-ea...

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

#72
post #21

Tesla has shown time and time again that they care for their customers, giving free services and even upgrades. This is just another CNBC attack on TSLA for whatever reason.

I got a bad feeling, if something is free, it's because it was unsafe.

That's irrational.

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

#73

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?

What you're describing is smart business.

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

#74
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people overestimate the fallaciousness of examining the motivations of the speaker. It only applies to the factual and logical matters; the fact that CNBC may or may not hate Tesla or Elon Musk does not affect whether or not tape was used to correct cracks in parts or whether or not people were asked to work in low-quality conditions on pain of firing, or any strictly logical conclusions you may draw from tho…

What makes you think that CNBC is particularly hard on Tesla?

Anonymous anecdotes aside, the scandalous news they report is that Consumer Reports puts Tesla's reliability in the bottom half -- yes, shock and consernation, the BOTTOM HALF!!! -- of all automobile manufactures.

Of course, 50% all automobile manufacturers are in the bottom half, and sure, it's not where you want to be. But none of the rest get special attention for being so.

Want proof? Do a search for the the following: CNBC consumer reports reliability rating.

What comes up? In order:

1. "Tesla Tanks": https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/21/tesla-tanks-subaru-soars-in-...

2. "Tesla Slips": https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/24/tesla-reliability-slips-to-t...

3. "Consumer reports yanks recommendation for Tesla": https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/21/reuters-america-update-2-con...

4. "Tesla Falls": https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/tesla-falls-after-...

..And so forth.

Note, however, that we didn't search for "Tesla". The spotlight given them is CNBC's bias. There's an entire automobile industry out there, and at any given time, half of it is in the lower half of reliability ratings. But only one is ever given headlines for it.

That's bias.

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

#75
post #67
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 don’t see how you get “vigorous denial” from the mild words Tesla said in its response. It’s like we didn’t read the same article. And you amp it up with “always”... is that really necessary? Your comment is adding heat and noise, not much else.

Bingo, it seems people often don't consider that these reports could be false. There's a LOT of money in shorting stocks, especially Tesla stock. Because of this it's hard to go to any tech related news site and not see an article about them being slandered. There's constantly huge campaigns going on to FUD Tesla for profit. I'm not saying that everything negative about Tesla is false, but I am in no way going to believe that it's all true.

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

#76
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.

Teslas do have poor reliability: https://www.consumerreports.org/media-room/press-releases/20...

And Tesla has cut corners with engineering decisions: https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27989/teslas-screen-saga-shows...

Musk wants Tesla to out-Toyota Toyota, but it hasn't yet and probably won't:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2018/02/16/tesla-th...

https://www.thedrive.com/tech/26955/inside-toyotas-takaoka-2...

There's no point in ignoring Tesla's problems. It's better to be objective about it. If you want to buy a Tesla you should go in clear-eyed about the reliability issues.

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

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sourc…

20 years? I've seen what happens to walmart electrical tape in a single summer in a car in the sun. And its been pointed out that the tape doesn't actually hold the "triple-cam" in place, just the wire connectors (implying this is less of problem?).

If it were my car, (and its so unimportant) than I'd vastly prefer nothing over Walmart tape. The tape is not going to do anything and its going to make a sticky mess. Tesla apologetics aside, this is not ok and I'm sticking to that.

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

#78
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?

The Wikipedia "Tesla, Inc." and "History of Tesla, Inc." pages both say explicitly that the company was founded in July 2003 by two other people and that Musk joined in February 2004. Is that wrong? If not, what retconning do you see on Wikipedia?

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

#79
Wow, my Model 3 has been serviced for both the issues mentioned in the article: a loose connection in the 12v subsystem (which completely locked me out of the car and required a tow!) and moisture in one of my tail lights.

I hope they are able to work these issues out.

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

#80

>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,

https://www.nhtsa.gov/ratings You can check the safety ratings by the NTHSA.
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