21–30 of 209 posts
My wife damaged the skirt at the bottom of the car, driving over a bump. It dented the skirt pretty badly, so we got it replaced. $10,000 and 4 weeks labor (but waited months to get it fixed), because they had to disassemble the whole damn car. I was livid at what should have been maybe a $200 part required practically the entire car to be disassembled. One front seat and the back seats were both removed as were the…
Wow. I had a '91 Saturn sedan until 2015. Despite my model being out of production for decades, and Saturn having closed up shop for years, I could still find aftermarket auto parts. How common of a problem is this? Any other manufactures/models notorious for poor part availability?
Pretty big difference between a model that sells 2,500 total units and one that sells millions over 2 decades. A better comparison would be to look at what parts availability is on a limited run sports car.
I’ve got to think that the ratio skews heavily to the side of custom for any of the Tesla. This is where Tesla’s intense vertical integration starts to be a detriment. I was just reading an article about how the vertical integration of Tesla was amazing in that it made it possible for custom components to be used that saved space and weight by performing more than one job [0]. This is great - until you need to replace that one specialized part and you can’t seem to find it.
I laughed when I was looking at the cup holder for my new car. It’s a 2018 Audi A3. The rear cup holder is the same junky design that I had to replace multiple times in an old 2000 Jetta. It’s not a great design, even-though it saves space. However, because of all of the available suppliers for that part, I know I’ll be able to find a replacement of this for years. This type of parts availability is a blessing (you can find one cheap) and a curse (you are limited in how you can design the car by the parts that are already available, thus you can only have a barely functional cup holder).
[0] https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-superbottle-disrupti...
My wife damaged the skirt at the bottom of the car, driving over a bump. It dented the skirt pretty badly, so we got it replaced. $10,000 and 4 weeks labor (but waited months to get it fixed), because they had to disassemble the whole damn car. I was livid at what should have been maybe a $200 part required practically the entire car to be disassembled. One front seat and the back seats were both removed as were the…
A lot of early adopters were probably worried that Tesla would go out of business and they wouldn't be able to get parts. Tesla is still in business and there still aren't parts. Hopefully enough of the current Tesla models will end up on the road to make it profitable for aftermarket suppliers to make some parts. So far it doesn't seem like that is happening at very much scale.
This guy is great, he found a niche full of customers and became the expert. I wish more startups would do this. With regards to Tesla, it is always interesting to me to see how as companies grow, they become more political, less effective and generally suck more. All the good people, like this guy, get pushed out or leave on their own. Makes me generally not want to build or work for a large company ever again.
The skillsets required for a $100k company, and $1M one, and $100M one and a >$1B one are very different.
It's not even surprising when a CEO who launched a company gets replaced once the company goes big (oh hey speaking of which).
This guy is great, he found a niche full of customers and became the expert. I wish more startups would do this. With regards to Tesla, it is always interesting to me to see how as companies grow, they become more political, less effective and generally suck more. All the good people, like this guy, get pushed out or leave on their own. Makes me generally not want to build or work for a large company ever again.
Find a niche. Build a profitable business around it. Stay small. Make your customers and your staff happy (make a path to shared ownership for them if that tickles your fancy). Enjoy doing it. You won’t regret it. More money, more problems (my apologies to Mr B.I.G.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Find a niche. Build a profitable business around it. Stay small. Make your customers and your staff happy (make a path to shared ownership for them if that tickles your fancy). Enjoy doing it. You won’t regret it. More money, more problems (my apologies to Mr B.I.G.)
"Mo" not "More". Respect.
On the plus side, it really drives up re-sale values and part-out values when you don't have the manufacturer undercutting you.
Source: I parted out my old Macbook and ended up with a pretty good downpayment on my next done. Got new mid-2015 Macbook Air new by parting my mid-2011 and ~CAD$300 by selling the promo "free" Beats headphones.