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Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

asia.nikkei.com

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

#121

Post by cozzyd »

lorenzhs wrote: post #58
cozzyd wrote: post #34

In other words, Tesla teardown finds remote bricking capability 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW. In seriousness, it's no surprise that older vendors will incrementally upgrade their hardware and work with suppliers rather than starting from scratch and obsoleting all suppliers. Likewise, I assume $startup_du_jour has a tech stack "6 years ahead" (whatever that means) of more established players. edit: s/de jure/du jou…

I agree, the article focuses on the "they built their own AI chip" thing a bit too much for my taste. It also doesn't explain why reducing the number of ECUs would upset supply chains to the degree claimed, there is a lot of other stuff that goes into making a car. Off-topic, but I think you meant "du jour" (of the day) instead of "de jure" (by law) :)

I did mean du jour. This is what I get for writing comments before I drink enough coffee :)

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

#122

Post by TeMPOraL »

londons_explore wrote: post #95
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…

> Yet most cars you buy today don't even have Wifi (...). 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.

On the one hand - and thank God; routing car controls over networks by default sounds like a tremendously bad idea.

On the other hand - while a lucky accident in case of cars, modern electronic devices also don't have these, but for different reasons. When was the last time you could make your phone call people and send text messages over wireless connection, via an API built into the phone? Last time I remember being able to easily do it was in the feature phone era.

Modern hardware is increasingly controllable through hidden, restricted, undocumented APIs, or public APIs that require installing third-party software, go through third-party servers, and involve signing some contract or accepting some ToS. That same API-providing-software then proceeds to exfiltrate any and all data it can get its hands on. I do not want any of that in a car.

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

#123

Post by xvf22 »

pmorici wrote: post #109
dontdoitpls wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The power of marketing is incredible. No one else could get away with Tesla quality at luxury pricing, but they sell vehicles.

The Chevy Bolt is priced the same as the Tesla Model 3 and has less 'luxary' features. For example if you want leather in the Bolt that's extra where as it is standard on the 3. Other things the Bolt doesn't have at that price are Autopilot, DC Fast Charging, etc...

The leather is tied to the range in the model 3.

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

#124

Post by SEJeff »

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…

A lot of the tech in the Tesla vehicles is truly innovative. Look at the seemingly simple cooling bottle they use, which is the best in the entire automotive industry (and patented by them):

https://jalopnik.com/the-tesla-model-3s-superbottle-easter-e...

I keep hearing people talk about fit and finish problems with Tesla vehicles, but I simply don't see it. I was so paranoid when I took delivery of mine that I literally brought a measuring tape. They've long since fixed the body panel problems and it manifested itself more with older Model S/X and the very first batch of Model 3s. This "problem" is pretty much gone, and this argument is like beating a dead horse.

Disclaimer: own a Model 3 and have since Nov 2018

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

#125

Post by kolinko »

pmorici wrote: post #103
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…

Total non-sense; this might have been true about the first ones off the line 2 years ago but hasn't been the case for some time. They also seem to be selling them faster than they can make them so even if true which it isn't the market doesn't seem to care.

The market will care when it comes to upgrading to the new model in a few years.

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

#126

Post by TeMPOraL »

mcv wrote: post #99
neuronic wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not like this wasn't a publicly known fact, a strategy they officially wrote about.

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

#127

Post by rthomas6 »

sailingparrot wrote: post #108
dontdoitpls wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The power of marketing is incredible. No one else could get away with Tesla quality at luxury pricing, but they sell vehicles.

Save for the small detail that 33k USD for an electric vehicle is not luxury pricing at all. * Nissan Leaf: 31k * Kia Soule EV: 33k * Chevrolet Bolt: 38k

Where are you getting the 33k number? The model 3 is more like 40k base price.

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

#128

Post by millzlane »

ghaff wrote: post #64
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #11

This is the industry that took years to adopt the CD player, it’s not that hard to be technologically ahead of them. Whether that actually translates into more sales of cars is a different question.

Assuming that was the case, it wouldn't surprise me that might have something to do with the reliability of early CDs across a wide range of temperature conditions and use given vibrations, potholes, etc.

Yea ESP didn't come about until the 90's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_skip_protection

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

#129

Post by pier25 »

iamphilrae wrote: post #16

My brand new Toyota C-HR comes with an entertainment screen that is not Retina display. Technology that has been out for half a decade and is found in the dirt cheapest of smart phones. It honestly doesn’t surprise me that the rest of their tech is so far behind.

The touchscreen system of my Honda HRV from that I bought in 2016 is ridiculously bad.

I think the new models come with Android or Apple Car integration but mine has a UI that looks and feels from 20 years ago. Not only it's fugly, but it's slow and unresponsive. Bluetooth disconnects randomly. Sometimes the phone connects but not the audio. The volume control is a fucking touchscreen slider which is totally unresponsive. Jesus, the team that did that had no idea what they were doing.

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

#130

Post by archi42 »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #94

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…

Absolutely, scaling is one of the imho two keys here: As per [1], in 2019 Tesla sold 158k Model 3 in the US (pop ~329M). Local news[2] said VW sold 204k Golf in 2019, in Germany (pop ~83M), and they have many more well selling cars on the SAME platform across multiple brands.

2nd: Car tech was traditionally slow moving, which has a lot to do with a strong focus on safety (at least from my experience with automotive customers).

[1] http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/tesla/tesla-model-... [2] https://www.heise.de/autos/artikel/Deutschlands-meistverkauf...

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