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Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

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

#341

Post by taygetea »

threeseed wrote: post #312
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My view of the economics is that most recently Tesla knows how to make a car. The battery pack is still more expensive than an ICE drivetrain, but that is a matter of time. My view of that is based on the rapid construction of the China gigafactory, and the sooner-than-expected Model Y deliveries. The only company with proper prioritization of EV development outside of Tesla is VW. GM would be next, but they still ar…

> The only company with proper prioritization of EV development outside of Tesla is VW That is simply not true. All of the manufacturers apart from say Toyota have made EV the number one priority for their companies. Mainly because of the impending EU regulations on emissions. Porsche has the best EV car on the market. BMW sacked their CEO because of a lack of EV progress, Mercedes has most of their innovation going…

I keep seeing people in these comments saying that the Taycan is better than the Model S, but I'm not sure what they're seeing. It has a razor-thin acceleration advantage and can manage that more than once on a charge, but it does that at the cost of being a very expensive and cramped sports car design. If you're optimizing for track performance, sure, but that's not a very common use case, as opposed to the usefulness of a longer range, more spacious, cheaper sedan.

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

#342

Post by taygetea »

swiley wrote: post #43
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.

My car has a monochrome segmented LCD and physical controls that I can manipulate without looking. My friend’s low res color touch LCD is bad enough, I just know the people building these UIs now unconstrained by the physical DPI would include features that require long careful looks in order to resolve.

Glancing at the big, high-dpi navigation map and getting the info you need quickly is a pretty major feature. The Model 3 screen has a bit of this issue with buttons around the edges, but where it's important, like speed, autopilot controls, and the map, they've done well.

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

#343

Post by pests »

matahwoosh wrote: post #299
taylodl wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue this is Tesla's real business - battery production. I don't believe they intend to stay in the auto market forever. They're in the market to create demand for quality electric cars, goad the traditional auto makers into making them, and then selling those traditional auto makers the batteries they need to make them work well. I believe that is Tesla's long-term business plan.

Batteries are a commodity, so I doubt Tesla would want to reduce themselves to an OEM and shrink their margins. Their energy business might eventually be bigger than their automotive one, but either way I think they will continue selling vertically integrated products.

Are batteries a commodity or are we just assuming that?

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

#344

Post by xiphias2 »

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.

The biggest problem of old companies is that even their cash advantage is getting less useful as their market cap is going down relative to Tesla's.

Tesla with its valuation can afford to scale up aggressively as long as it can continue decreasing manufacturing prices with Wright's law.

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

#345

Post by netfl0 »

mark-r wrote: post #287
netfl0 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry can you clarify your point? I am lost in a bit of ambiguity in the syntax.

"I don't think minor cosmetic issues will materially impact public opinion" is exactly the opinion of the Detroit car companies before they started losing market share to the Japanese companies. They've never recovered. The Japanese were widely regarded to be higher quality machines, and the fit/finish was a big part of that perception.

Ah thanks.

I’d add my impression was that the mechanical reliability and price were the key factors.

It would also be important for us to agree on what truly is minor cosmetics versus total negligence or awful design and material quality.

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

#346

Post by falcolas »

jayd16 wrote: post #320
falcolas wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fit and Finish are exterior indicators of the quality of the entire vehicle. If they don’t care enough to make the panels line up, what assurances do we have that they do care enough to torque all of the bolts correctly, to ensure that the motor is mounted correctly, to ensure that the suspension has been properly calibrated? Also, the condition of the body and the interior matter more to the vehicle’s resale value t…

It's a heuristic not a rule.

Is it? Getting the spacing down so its not noticeable by humans is doing manufacturing and assembly with tolerances measured in whole millimeters. It’s easily the largest possible tolerances allowed within the manufacture and assembly of the car. It should be some of the easiest manufacturing and assembly to be done.

If they can’t manage tolerances measured in millimeters, how can they manage manufacturing and assembly tolerances measured in the thousandths of a millimeter?

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

#347

Post by JPKab »

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…

I'm not a Tesla owner. In fact, I find the company's hype driven marketing annoying.

That being said, your info is out of date. The fit and finish isn't an issue anymore.

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

#348

Post by Bendingo »

natch wrote: post #335
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 power of marketing is incredible. Tesla doesn’t advertise. Guess who does? The car companies that you seem to think have a better price/value offering. Hmm, so yes, the power of marketing is incredible indeed.

Fixed: Tesla's marketing is so powerful, that they don't even need to advertise.

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

#349

Post by tdonovic »

nicpottier wrote: post #324
t0mas88 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prices here are incomparable to the US due to tax, but a model S starts at 90k if you accept it being only available in white (nobody does at that price). If you pick any other color, reasonable rims and a "luxury interior" as you would expect on cars in this price range it's 110k to 120k euro. That's more than a full option BMW 5 series or Audi A6 and comparable to a very high-end Audi A8 or BMW 7 series. Not sure a…

Standard range is $40k, AWD long range is $50k. Paint is $1000 extra for anything but black, $2000 for red. Where are you getting $64k?

In Europe, and the comparison is even worse in $AUD

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

#350

Post by boojums »

nicpottier wrote: post #324
t0mas88 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prices here are incomparable to the US due to tax, but a model S starts at 90k if you accept it being only available in white (nobody does at that price). If you pick any other color, reasonable rims and a "luxury interior" as you would expect on cars in this price range it's 110k to 120k euro. That's more than a full option BMW 5 series or Audi A6 and comparable to a very high-end Audi A8 or BMW 7 series. Not sure a…

Standard range is $40k, AWD long range is $50k. Paint is $1000 extra for anything but black, $2000 for red. Where are you getting $64k?

The poster mentions euro, so I would guess the poster is using local prices.
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