Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas

#111

Post by rumanator » Mon, May 18, 2020, 7:29 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #30

outside1234 wrote: post #6

"But Musk is said to want to start construction extremely soon and aims to have Model Y vehicles coming out of the plant by the end of the year." That is just delusional.

I think the rule with Elon Musk is all his estimates are extremely optimistic and you need to multiply them by two or three to get closer to reality. But I'm sure it serves a purpose in giving his employees an aggressive target to aim at. Even if they miss it, at least they probably got there sooner.

> But I'm sure it serves a purpose in giving his employees an aggressive target to aim at. Even if they miss it, at least they probably got there sooner.

That would require an executive board entirely detached from both reality and what their own experts have to say regarding the feasibility of those plans.

Re: Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas

#112

Post by jcranmer » Mon, May 18, 2020, 7:30 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #104

xur17 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CA is more lax than TX? I find that surprising.

https://workinjurysource.com/workplace-injury-statistics-201... > States with Non-Fatal Workplace Illness and Injury Rates Above the National Average: > California > States with Non-Fatal Workplace Illness and Injury Rates Below the National Average: > Texas It's completely possible that Texas is less adversarial/bureaucratic or similar than California, but whatever they're doing is working. Though it could be cultur…

That statistic is nearly completely useless for comparison.

For starters, it's measuring non-fatal illnesses. If your regulatory regime is converting otherwise fatal accidents to non-fatal ones, then you're going to have higher rates despite being safer. (Historically, this has happened: the introduction of helmets in WW1 caused head injury rates to go up... because people who otherwise died now lived with a head injury instead).

Another point is that states have quite different workplace characteristics, so the baseline risks are going to be quite different. Working in a coal mine is going to be an inherently more dangerous job than being a paper-pusher in an office tower. Unsurprisingly, West Virginia (which has a lot more of the former than the latter) is in the above-average list and New York (which has the reverse) is in the below-average list.

Finally... there's no mention of the degree of difference at all.

Re: Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas

#113

Post by Aperocky » Mon, May 18, 2020, 7:35 PM UTC

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #95

Isn't this just Elon Musk getting into one of his superfluous fights, only this time California being the somewhat-random opponent? Musk has been completely unhinged the last few weeks, and it doesn't seem to be wise making such large decisions in anger, especially considering the reason for his anger is, even if justified, unlikely to reoccur. I'm quite the Musk fanboy, but he's always had this very strange anger is…

> Musk has been completely unhinged the last few weeks

The most logical guess I can make is he on some new drugs that's starting to damage his brain. Some form of synthetic or maybe good ol heroin.

Re: Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas

#114

Post by bdcravens » Mon, May 18, 2020, 7:37 PM UTC

lukevp wrote: post #85

justin66 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some vague "regulations" way, possibly, but the published hourly rates of Tesla Fremont workers are not especially high. (I just googled the average as being less than twenty dollars, which can't possibly be right, but I do remember the figure being low by autoworker standards) The thought that they might pay even less in Texas is depressing.

$20/hr for blue collar work in a lot of Texas is very high. For example, Amazon was paying $12/hr in the San Marcos facility until they raised wages recently, and that was considered decent pay. $8-10/hr is pretty common for unskilled labor here. We have a lot of tech and oil and gas that influences the average income but tons of people here are working for way less than $20/hr.

Yeah, $10-15/hour for a lot of non-skilled labor or even low-qualification desk jobs is typical in the Houston area. The average home price here is 1/13th that of Fremont, to say nothing of areas outside of major cities.

Re: Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas

#115

Post by bdcravens » Mon, May 18, 2020, 7:39 PM UTC

gok wrote: post #92

Cactus2018 wrote: post #29

Building a factory in Texas worked for Toyota https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Motor_Manufacturing_Tex...

Not entirely coincidentally, Telsa's current factory in California is a former Toyota plant.

They also briefly partnered with Toyota on a Rav4:

https://www.tesla.com/blog/tesla-notifies-sec-agreement-toyo...

Re: Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas

#116

Post by m0zg » Mon, May 18, 2020, 7:40 PM UTC

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #95

Isn't this just Elon Musk getting into one of his superfluous fights, only this time California being the somewhat-random opponent? Musk has been completely unhinged the last few weeks, and it doesn't seem to be wise making such large decisions in anger, especially considering the reason for his anger is, even if justified, unlikely to reoccur. I'm quite the Musk fanboy, but he's always had this very strange anger is…

"Republicans buy shoes too". He even referred to taking both pills in the very next tweet, but some people are too dense to understand what he meant.

Re: Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas

#117

Post by WalterSear » Mon, May 18, 2020, 7:41 PM UTC

Aperocky wrote: post #113

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #95

Isn't this just Elon Musk getting into one of his superfluous fights, only this time California being the somewhat-random opponent? Musk has been completely unhinged the last few weeks, and it doesn't seem to be wise making such large decisions in anger, especially considering the reason for his anger is, even if justified, unlikely to reoccur. I'm quite the Musk fanboy, but he's always had this very strange anger is…

> Musk has been completely unhinged the last few weeks The most logical guess I can make is he on some new drugs that's starting to damage his brain. Some form of synthetic or maybe good ol heroin.

I think he's just huffing his own farts.

Re: Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas

#118

Post by foobiekr » Mon, May 18, 2020, 7:42 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #70

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk rarely gives estimates, but targets (used to motivate people, for instance, and to overcompensate any unexpected issue or mistake). I'm looking for his most ambitious and oldest targets and so far, most of them have been reached/exceeded. The most important one being the 500,000 production vehicles run rate for 2020 and 35 GWh battery production for Gigafactory Nevaga. Multiplying that duration by 2 or 3 would b…

His track record on things like self driving is not even close to accurate. But that's to be expected, manufacturing is more engineering and self driving is more research. Engineering is easier to estimate (note, still not easy!)

His track record on the NUMMI plant wasn't very good either. Over-automation and many other issues.

Re: Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas

#119

Post by sidibe » Mon, May 18, 2020, 7:42 PM UTC

jfoster wrote: post #83

sidibe wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has no sense of time. Every year they're supposed to have robotaxis by the end of the year and they've only just started to jankily handle stoplights

Rest of the companies doing that are in more or less the same boat. Tesla ahead of all of them in bringing some pieces of the autonomy to market.

Other companies have made over-optimistic predictions but not on the same scale and with the same frequency. Tesla is ahead of them on the "bringing to market" part but not on the autonomy part, where they're not really working on the same level of difficulty problems as the ones trying for L4.

Re: Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas

#120

Post by epistasis » Mon, May 18, 2020, 7:49 PM UTC

rubicon33 wrote: post #108

epistasis wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm already looking at the competitors to the Model 3 that are coming out in the next few years. I have loved this car, but Musk is toxic and I don't want to be finding him anymore. I know maybe 5 other people with Teslas, and two others have already said they're looking to switch too. Part of the Tesla story was that it could be a California pride thing. When Musk makes the state his enemy, and acts like an idiot, a…

"Part of the Tesla story was that it could be a California pride thing." Lol. Can humans ever drop the tribalism, I wonder? To be fair, Musk is totally playing the same game. I've held out for a long time, denouncing both sides as stupid. But I'm getting tired of seeing everyone else just say fuck it, grab a beer, a bible, a shotgun, and go full blown alt-right. Or say fuck it, grab a cell phone camera, and go full b…

I'm not even talking about the alt-right turns. I'm talking about non-partisan hostilities towards our state and the weird science denialism around SARS-CoV-2. General values that I see in most Bay Area engineers.

Add in alt-right and he's going to lose a hell of a lot more people than those who love in California and love it and prefer to support local economies when possible.