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

Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

asia.nikkei.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 460 posts

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#91

Post by netfl0 »

KaiserPro wrote: post #48

This is grand, apart from the build quality of the mechanics is ~10 years behind. Go to a tesla showroom, Look at the doors of the model three. Note that they don't line up. Look at the paint job, notice that there are bumps and chips, especailly on the edges of the doors. This is on a _demo_ car, stuck in a showroom. these should be perfect. Even a budget Kia has better build quality than this. Its not the isolated…

These seem like legitimate but insignificant issues.

As long as it is functionally sound, I don't think minor cosmetic issues will materially impact public opinion. The general public is unaware of body panel alignment as a concept.

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#92

Post by claudeganon »

Realistically though, Tesla will got bought out by one of these larger companies, so they can integrate (while undoubtedly making worse) the underlying tech.

Tesla hasn’t show any capacity to deliver quality cars at scale, nor provide service to them, whatever their ambitions. Combined with all their SEC problems, it’s reminiscent of Preston Tucker’s car company:

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

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#93

Post by onetimemanytime »

KaiserPro wrote: post #48

This is grand, apart from the build quality of the mechanics is ~10 years behind. Go to a tesla showroom, Look at the doors of the model three. Note that they don't line up. Look at the paint job, notice that there are bumps and chips, especailly on the edges of the doors. This is on a _demo_ car, stuck in a showroom. these should be perfect. Even a budget Kia has better build quality than this. Its not the isolated…

Exactly. If x chip can do the job and then some, who cares if they have one 4 times as powerful? The car has many parts...

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#94

Post by ilikehurdles »

While I don't expect the results to be that much different, I feel like Tesla teardown should be compared to a BMW, Audi, or Lexus teardown. The cutting edge electronics stuff is usually tried first on the luxury brands before it trickles down into economy models.

A brand like Toyota or VW has to ship at magnitudes greater scale and at much lower price points. Manufacturers have much less breathing room for component failure on a Golf or Corolla, so they choose battle-tested parts or either from prior generations or whatever they've found works well on their luxury brands.

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#95

Post by londons_explore »

KaiserPro wrote: post #48

This is grand, apart from the build quality of the mechanics is ~10 years behind. Go to a tesla showroom, Look at the doors of the model three. Note that they don't line up. Look at the paint job, notice that there are bumps and chips, especailly on the edges of the doors. This is on a _demo_ car, stuck in a showroom. these should be perfect. Even a budget Kia has better build quality than this. Its not the isolated…

Yet most cars you buy today don't even have Wifi - a technology that's been around for over 20 years. There's no API for controlling them apart from a CAN bus which is barely documented, not wireless, not routable over networks, can't even deliver video feeds, and dates from 1986.

It feels like car technology stopped when the generation of those born in the 40's retired. Ever since then, younger generations have been focussed on the internet, computers and phones, and the car has become a tool like a pencil - it works well enough, and new models only see incremental changes.

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#96

Post by aguyfromnb »

wil421 wrote: post #54
soygul wrote: post #18

Article praises Tesla's custom AI chip. It is something many criticize as a waste of development resources, while they could have used off-the-shelf components for the same task. Tesla's real advantage is their battery production. No one else can compete with them on battery price or production volume at a similar quality: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/10/teslas-competitors-play-catc...

Battery production seems like a problem that can be solved right now with money. VW and Toyota could partner with a 3rd party (like Tesla and Panasonic) and build factories. Custom silicon seems like a much harder problem for VM/Toyota. Unless a supplier can build something for them I don’t see either company innovating like Tesla. Basically Tesla’s secret sauce is the Tech not the EV components.

>Custom silicon seems like a much harder problem for VM/Toyota

What evidence is there that custom silicon has any advantage in the self-driving race, let alone in cost competitiveness?

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#97

Post by honestoHeminway »

Shivetya wrote: post #7
lisk1 wrote: post #3

I'm perplexed by this article what so special about tesla hardware except some custom ASICs , few days ago there was article disusing the software side of Tesla cars didnt took traction on HN , its just Ubuntu based linux with fail save boot feature, a bunch of shell scripts and QT based user interface. The interesting questions is, is it viable someone to make fully open source linux distro for tesla cars and how le…

What stands out from this article for me; I own a model 3; is that they are suggesting that suppliers may hold back some manufacturers who do not wish to damage their relationship with those suppliers by wholesale changing up how cars are done. one area they suffer not highlighted is that each supplier maintains its own code base and while I bet they are obligated to share that with the automobile manufacturer it is…

There are embeded standards? https://www.autosar.org/

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#98

Post by pier25 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #59
bovermyer wrote: post #24

Note that the "we cannot do it" quote is not referring to the technology itself, but rather to the fact that to adopt Tesla's pattern, the legacy auto companies would need to ditch their supply chains. That's not something they can do without pissing off a lot of people.

I think they could easily piss off a lot of people, if it was important for the company. What they can't do is become another kind of organization. If new nimble competitors working in a new way appear, old companies, with vastly more money but a settled bureaucracy, just slowly die, rather than adapt.

> What they can't do is become another kind of organization.

That's a big problem many companies are facing in this day and age.

For example traditional newspapers companies are transitioning to digital publishing. This not only impacts how content is published but also how content is produced for a different medium.

I heard a podcast a couple fo years ago with (I believe) the CTO of the NYT. He said that the digital part of the NYT was almost a different company altogether. In the past years I worked at a paper publishing/education company and that was my experience as well. I was in charge of the digital product dept and we were like a black box inside the company. Nobody there really understood how we worked.

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#99

Post by mcv »

neuronic wrote: post #86
latortuga wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a brand new car company that has built manufacturing from scratch. 10 years ago, car companies had been manufacturing cars for decades. This stuff doesn't happen overnight.

Ah ok, this justifies luxury prices then. I mean early adopter surcharges.

It's absolutely an early-adopter surcharge. At luxury prices, because that's the only way to start a completely new car manufacturer at this scale.

Most new car companies are small affairs that hand-build fairly simple cars at luxury prices from their garage. They get away with it because they offer something unique. So does Tesla, only they try to do it at scale.

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#100

Post by paramk »

James_Henry wrote: post #42
bovermyer wrote: post #24

Note that the "we cannot do it" quote is not referring to the technology itself, but rather to the fact that to adopt Tesla's pattern, the legacy auto companies would need to ditch their supply chains. That's not something they can do without pissing off a lot of people.

The answer to this, I would think, would be to have a small part of the company whose soul purpose is to disrupt the larger company. Then Toyota and VW might have built Tesla in house without supply chain worries. When their in-house Tesla-like company proved a success, they could reasonably afford to upend their old supply chain: self-disruption.

So Tesla is doing what Clayton predicted twenty years back.
Post reply on HN