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New images and video confirm Austin-made Tesla model Y has cracked front casting

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Re: New images and video confirm Austin-made Tesla model Y has cracked front casting

#191

Post by Fluorescence »

chrisco255 wrote: post #124
jeffbee wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone should be highly skeptical whenever Tesla adopts an "industry first". There may be good reasons the industry doesn't do that. It may be something that an experienced engineer would advise against.

It's mostly just a lack of willingness to spend on large casting machines. Tesla is famous for purchasing the largest presses: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giga_Press Tesla is partly empowered to do this because electric vehicles are mechanically simpler than ICEs, and the batteries themselves also are made to be structural components. There's nothing fundamentally unsound about pressed aluminum.

One of the reasons it isn't done is the QC problem. If you have a 10% rejection rate on 20 parts, 18 parts will pass. If they were all one mega-part, the whole casting has to be rejected. You then add in repairability issues and no flexibility to accommodate other types of manufacturing variability (errors, fit) and your savings from a single casting can become a big deficit instead.

Sadly the reason this bad casting was shipped to a customer is probably because they are not achieving the desired pass rate so they knowingly wave through defective castings.

Re: New images and video confirm Austin-made Tesla model Y has cracked front casting

#192

Post by Roark66 »

Manufacturing aluminum castings at scale efficiently (without using excessive amounts of metal) is a difficult problem to solve. This kind of stuff has plagued other car manufacturers too and with much smaller components. For example aluminum Ice engine heads and blocks. Certain vehicle years (for example 2005 Golf tdi) are known for "porous" and cracking castings.

There is a very good reason (other than "they" want cars to rust) for using steel. Just based on my hobbyist knowledge it's a metal that behaves a lot more predictably.

Re: New images and video confirm Austin-made Tesla model Y has cracked front casting

#193

Post by philistine »

toddmorey wrote: post #73
rsynnott wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I own two Teslas and their service is horrible. Genuinely curious; why did you buy the second one? I might possibly be slightly over-vindictive with brands, but once a brand fails me I’m very reluctant to buy something else from them (a Samsung TV with some silly quality control and firmware issues was enough to make me swear off Samsung, and the Nexus 7 (original one; the one that tended to degrade after about a y…

I’m shopping for anything EV other than a Tesla now. There are many options now, but Tesla is still way ahead with the power train. Most competitors aren’t at the same place on range & performance yet. It’s an amazing power train glued inside a 90s-era Oldsmobile.

I’m very hopeful that in five years time, Tesla has been so thoroughly lapped by the rest of the car industry that they have to start closing some of their gigafactories.

I’d bet good money on that.

Re: New images and video confirm Austin-made Tesla model Y has cracked front casting

#194

Post by idiotsecant »

dawnerd wrote: post #148
ozr wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. The most aggressive consent requirement for recording is 'two-party' consent, where the both people on the call need to be aware it's being recorded. If you say "this is/may be(ing) recorded" then both parties are aware.

If you tell a company calling that you might also be recording I found they like to end the call fast. Funny how it’s okay if they do it and hold all the evidence…

Yes, in a previous life I did some soul-sucking call center work for a large national mobile company and they specifically had a written policy at the root level of their knowledgeable system about call recording. Their instructions were that if anyone was recording the call you were to read a certain script and immediately disconnect, no questions asked. If they tried to do the 'this call may be recorded' thing you were supposed to seek clarification about whether the call is being recorded and if the answer was anything other than no, you were to read the same script and immediately disconnect.

These companies know that worker bee call center drones say things all the time that the company doesn't want preserved in a court of law later- mainly promises that the company doesn't want to have to uphold if they were outside policy. They take it very seriously. I suspect any major company with something to lose has a similar policy.

Re: New images and video confirm Austin-made Tesla model Y has cracked front casting

#195

Post by Roark66 »

drewg123 wrote: post #64

Sounds like not much has changed since 2015. A good friend ordered a new Model S in 2015. It arrived with a "squeak" that turned out to be due to missing welds in structural components of the chassis. They wanted him to sign an NDA to get a replacement vehicle (which he refused to do, both on principle, and because he'd talked to friends about it already). So he was forced to keep his vehicle, which was then repaired…

Aren't there some laws that require a car manufacturer to buy back a faulty car like this?

Re: New images and video confirm Austin-made Tesla model Y has cracked front casting

#196

Post by Mizoguchi »

If the recall is more expensive than the possibility of mass lawsuits, then Tesla will leave the owners deal with the issue.

To be fair, this is typical behavior of any automaker, not just Tesla.

I myself had my ordeal with Honda over a poorly designed auto braking system on a new $40K vehicle that almost got me killed.

The response I got from Honda both the dealer and service was pretty much the same, we checked the computer logs and didn't find anything wrong with the car so it is safe to drive.

I decided to trade it in for a Toyota and take a $10K loss.

A couple of years later there was a class action lawsuit for the same exact problem I had and eventually a settlement, obviously Honda never acknowledged any wrongdoing.

Shortly afterwards my Toyota got recalled for the airbag malfunction after many people got killed or badly injured.

Re: New images and video confirm Austin-made Tesla model Y has cracked front casting

#197

Post by philistine »

ryandrake wrote: post #180
ta988 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately when people are so emotionally involved with something be it a CEO, a brand or a religious group they will go through all kind of brain gymnastics to not really blame them. Look at the child abuse in the catholic church (and all the others that are just barely starting to be known), their congregants protected the priests too and found all kind of excuses.

This definitely seems like a little Stockholm syndrome. You see it also when it comes to doing a chargeback against a company that defrauded you. Inevitably someone will say "But, if you do a chargeback, the company will close your account and ban you!" These people have gotten to the point where the company has stolen their money, and they still want to continue doing business with them! A lot of simping for compani…

It’s not just simple simping. Those companies have such large operations, with so little competition, that it’s hard to find an alternative.

What if you’re not a tech person at all and you can’t use Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Samsung, eBay. You’re screwed, cause the alternatives might as well be wizardry.

Re: New images and video confirm Austin-made Tesla model Y has cracked front casting

#198

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

Fatnino wrote: post #183
jen20 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of thing certainly stopped me from buying one, even in the days before they were referred to as “MAGAmobiles”. Instead I waited for companies that actually know how to make cars to work out how to make electric cars.

Who is calling them MAGAmobiles? A MAGAmobile is a lifted truck that rolls coal and has a huge lets go brandon decal

Yeah, I thought it was way more MAGA to burn fossil fuels than drive an electric car.

Re: New images and video confirm Austin-made Tesla model Y has cracked front casting

#199

Post by philistine »

kkielhofner wrote: post #175
mlinhares wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a status/whatever symbol, build quality doesn't really matter. I've a friend that drives a Model 3 and said "it's just like driving a BMW" and of course he has never driven a BMW.

These people are interesting. Anyone who has so much as sat in a mid to top tier car from BMW/Mercedes/etc will instantly come away with an overwhelming sense that a Tesla feels cheap by comparison (because it does). Classic things like the sound and feel of closing a door, gripping a steering wheel, pushing a button, etc. If you pay attention to detail this can often be experienced from the car externally - famous c…

Looking at how Elon is running Twitter, it’s no surprise that the little details like door frame feel are irrelevant.

Re: New images and video confirm Austin-made Tesla model Y has cracked front casting

#200

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

chroma wrote: post #140
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it clearly is true, as someone who has not yet read the article can find out by reading it doing so might clear up your misunderstanding which is currently leading you to believe there's some sort of conflict between the quote provided and your personal experience

I believe this guy’s story, but the article in question doesn’t link to the source of the quote, and that quote directly contradicts the experience of every Tesla owner. There would definitely be a conversation in the owner’s service history where he sent them photos of a cracked casting, along with Tesla’s response. I get that the owner doesn’t want to reveal more about themselves than is necessary, but the reporter…

here is another source [0], found with a moment of googling (then again, I'm not trying to convince myself it isn't true, so I had no objections to looking)

so, we know that's true. And I get that elmu and tesla don't want to be accountable for their screwups, but as another poster pointed out, the Tesla policy in question is egregious, and imo loses them the benefit of the doubt here.

as for it contradicting the experience of every tesla owner, I'm not sure that's true. Given that we know the policy is true, and tesla owners aren't all hallucinating, that must mean there isn't actually a contradiction between the two. It seems like perhaps you misunderstood, tesla obviously wouldn't cover up stuff like normal maintenance, we're talking about manufacturing defects, something tesla is notorious for downplaying and covering up.

why won't tesla either release the records showing this issue is bunk, or categorically deny he came in at all? the most likely explanation is that they know the issue is real, and they were instructed by the known policy not to transmit retainable proof of such knowledge, and they don't want to be sued for libel for calling truth-tellers liars. After all, they've previously had no problem sharing information on customer usage when they believed it exonerated them [1].

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/25/23737972/tesla-whistleblo...

[1] https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-releases-data-logs-...

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