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Tesla’s New Car Smell

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Re: Tesla’s New Car Smell

#151

Post by eddieroger »

acomjean wrote: post #137
joelthelion wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that Honda doesn't make interesting cars. People are ready to cut Tesla some slack because they are truly innovating.

As an Honda element owner I would disagree. Except that its discontinued and nothing out there now matches its practicality. Stylish it is not however.

I was a fellow Element owner for some years. Interesting was just about the nicest thing that people who didn't get the ride would say. I loved that thing, it just wasn't the most fuel efficient vehicle I've owned and my commute changed to a point where fuel efficiency became more important than being able to do interesting things with the seats or insides. But still, interesting nonetheless.

Re: Tesla’s New Car Smell

#152

Post by bluesroo »

dingaling wrote: post #107
joelthelion wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that Honda doesn't make interesting cars. People are ready to cut Tesla some slack because they are truly innovating.

> The difference is that Honda doesn't make interesting cars. You might have missed, for example the Honda Insight hybrid launched in 1999. Cd was 0.25 which was the lowest drag coefficient for a production car for a decade until bettered by a large electric sedan with 0.24... Then there are the conventionally-powered Integra, S2000 and NSX[0] which are renowned amongst driving enthusiasts. [0] actually the latest NS…

All of those cars are not even close to recent except for the NSX. And even the NSX was dead for over a decade before they brought it back! Honda used to have some interesting, fun, simple sports cars... But those days are pretty far behind them at this point.

One low-volume, $150k+ car does not make it seem like they "make interesting cars". They certainly have in the past, but at the moment they really don't from a sports car perspective.

Re: Tesla’s New Car Smell

#153

Post by nradov »

sumedh wrote: post #96
gumby wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You cannot inspect your way to quality. I have to emphasize the sentence you ended your comment with. Anybody who has worked in volume production has heard this phrase too many times to count. People who never learned the difference between QC and QA never seem to understand this phrase either. Doesn't mean they are dumb, but does mean they don't even understand the scope of what they don't know. Another common mis…

> People who never learned the difference between QC and QA never seem to understand this phrase either. Can you please explain the difference?

QA is defect prevention. QC is defect detection and removal. If an activity causes rework then it's QC, not QA.

Re: Tesla’s New Car Smell

#154

Post by cl0wnshoes »

udhan wrote: post #101
prostoalex wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not like choosing a fridge, where there are 500 models available. There are two autopilot systems commercially available today - Tesla Autopilot and Honda Sensing Driver Assistance. Two more are slated to be released - Cadillac SuperCruise and Audi Traffic Jam Pilot. The rest is an all-you-can-read buffet of press releases about some great tech this one company tested in this one lab (I hear Waymo is great, and…

Subaru's eyesight is there since 2015. Afaik, Honda sensing and eyesight are very similar.

Test drove a 2015 Acura, took multiple corners on the freeway unassisted while pacing the cars in front. No clue how long they've had that technology. I'm sure there are more equally impressive cars/packages that we don't hear much about.

Re: Tesla’s New Car Smell

#155

Post by batushka »

LAMike wrote: post #8

"If a part has a problem, only a small quantity needs to be shipped back to the supplier who can inspect, correct, and quickly adjust their own production process." Isn't one of the advantages of having a minimal, electric vehicle that there are fewer moving parts? Telsa is in a interesting position as a software/car maker. There production line is like an algorithm they are adjusting on the fly, and it's obviously g…

Electric car is simpler, has less moving parts, needs less service and will be more reliable than gasoline - they claim.

All of this will be lessened by enormous amounts of software Tesla puts and a barrier to fix.

Re: Tesla’s New Car Smell

#156

Post by pja »

mcherm wrote: post #149
pja wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History shows that knowledge transfer is really, really hard. Humans are just not very good at it :( (A similar story is told of the spread of the use of Feynman diagrams in physics - I’ve read that their spread was far slower than you’d expect given their utility: For whatever reason it wasn’t enough to be told that they were an incredibly useful tool by people you trusted - it was only when non users actually worke…

Fascinating story, do you have any idea where you read that?

Nope, but a quick Google suggests that this paper:

“Spreading the Tools of Theory: Feynman Diagrams in the USA, Japan, and the Soviet Union” by David Kaiser, Kenji Ito and Karl Hall

http://web.mit.edu/dikaiser/www/Kaiser.SpreadingTools.pdf

must have been the original source research.

edit: Also, there’s a book (by one of the authors of that paper): “Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion Of Feynman Diagrams In Postwar Physics” https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002Y5W2X2

Re: Tesla’s New Car Smell

#157

Post by lostboys67 »

struppi wrote: post #108
lostboys67 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with all respect to Jean he's a computer guy and not a Mech Engineer. If Tesla has cheap land and can store locally why not - remember that Japan doesn't have as much land space as the USA has JIT just pushes the costs on to smaller suppliers who a large company can effectively bully in the same way big supermarkets bully framers.

"JIT just pushes the costs on to smaller suppliers who a large company can effectively bully in the same way big supermarkets bully framers." This is not how the TPS works (At least not in theory. In practice, bullying may or may not happen - I don't know about any). The idea behind JIT is that you can react to changes in external circumstances faster. Also, the suppliers should also not have huge stockpiles of parts…

that's not how I recall JIT is the parts arrive just as needed on a mature production line continually making tweaks to parts is more akin to small batch production

Re: Tesla’s New Car Smell

#158

Post by hector_ka »

nihonde wrote: post #133
prostoalex wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toyota’s recalls are expensive, as they involve a network of dealers who need to be paid for providing the repair and maintenance. Tesla’s vertical integration of service centers has an interesting side effect - recalls and repairs are pretty cheap, as the costs of service centers and loaner vehicles they give out are fixed and have been borne already. I wonder if that makes the company more dismissive of potential i…

If you look at how Toyota's dealership network operates in Japan (Toyopet, Netz, etc.), you'll see that Toyota is capable of vertically integrating the entire distribution chain very well. My own experience of buying (in my case a Suzuki kei model) a domestic car in Japan was quite eye-opening: my dealer came to my house and had tea with us, found us the best, least-expensive configuration of the car, dropped it off…

I am fascinated about this . Do you know where we can get more info about the way businesses treat their customers in Japan?

Re: Tesla’s New Car Smell

#159

Post by nradov »

tgtweak wrote: post #67
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think Tesla has the best system? The managers in charge of autopilot keep quitting. The media says they are quitting because Elon is making deceptive claims about autopilot. Do you have evidence to the contrary?

Also they've disabled autopilot for the time being. It's an interesting time for Tesla, they feel like the automotive equivalent of AMD - David keeping Goliath honest. How many automotive companies saw Tesla become an actual disruptive threat and then spent tens of billions on self driving and electrification? Tesla isn't going to compete with Honda or Toyota by copying their model (or even their manufacturing proces…

In the Bay Area (Tesla home territory) I see a lot more Leafs than Teslas, mainly because the Leaf is the cheapest way to get a carpool lane sticker. For people who commute on congested local highways the time savings of carpool lane access can make a Leaf effectively "free". Nissan is leasing them extremely cheaply due to the government electric vehicle subsidy and to meet CARB zero-emissions requirements.

Re: Tesla’s New Car Smell

#160

Post by cdkee »

bluesroo wrote: post #152
dingaling wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The difference is that Honda doesn't make interesting cars. You might have missed, for example the Honda Insight hybrid launched in 1999. Cd was 0.25 which was the lowest drag coefficient for a production car for a decade until bettered by a large electric sedan with 0.24... Then there are the conventionally-powered Integra, S2000 and NSX[0] which are renowned amongst driving enthusiasts. [0] actually the latest NS…

All of those cars are not even close to recent except for the NSX. And even the NSX was dead for over a decade before they brought it back! Honda used to have some interesting, fun, simple sports cars... But those days are pretty far behind them at this point. One low-volume, $150k+ car does not make it seem like they "make interesting cars". They certainly have in the past, but at the moment they really don't from a…

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