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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

#41

Post by peeters »

kramerger wrote: post #17
AlexandrB wrote: post #7

> The Tesla Files episode revealed that the BEV maker instructs its technicians always to provide feedback orally. Internal documents obtained by Handelsblatt stated: "Do not copy the report below into an email, text message, or leave it in a voicemail to the customer." I don't know how serious a crack in the front casting on a Tesla is, but this kind of policy is pretty egregious.

"Do this only orally" is always to hide evidence from a future court discovery. I don't think Tesla would do this unless management consider it very serious.

That kind of policy should mean that in any court case where a customer's version of events/conversations differs from Tesla's, the customer is assumed to be telling the truth until definitely proven otherwise. The legal liability of this policy should be so great that no sane company would have this policy over just creating a paper trail in the first place.

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

#42

Post by manuelabeledo »

thworp wrote: post #34
kevingadd wrote: post #2

Light being able to shine straight through part of your car that's meant to be solid is scary. Does anyone know how common it is for cast metal of this sort to have damage like this? I am kind of surprised their manufacturing would have this issue

disclaimer: I have no first-hand experience, just second-hand. It should be impossible to leave the factory like this. Let's say the issue is a substandard batch from a supplier that cracks from stress at some stage of the frame assembly (like when adding the battery pack, welding or adhesive bonding). The car should be inspected after all structural parts are added, at minimum visually but ideally with some kind of…

Another option is that workers at the factory are now pushing bad parts knowingly, to get the truck out of the door.

Let's not forget that the truck has been delayed for over two years now. In the meantime, a few competitors have been eating Tesla's lunch, and Musk is notorious for pushing unfinished products.

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

#43

Post by boilerupnc »

stephenr wrote: post #25
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You knew the manufacturer had a reputation of forgetting hard to check parts... and you still bought one. Yeah but the company is run by a hip cool memelord who's gonna get us to mars, and his cars have nice softwares like my iPad. Who cares about the metal parts of the car's rigidity structure? That's just something old boring people think about. Everyone knows EVs are more reliable than ICE so no need to ever look…

> The shit build quality has less to do with being American I'm not suggesting they're shit because they're American. I'm just saying it's nice to see them living up to the existing standard of shitness set by the existing American manufacturers. I'm sure each American car manufacturer has their own unique and interesting reasons for having reliably shit build quality compared to European or Japanese manufacturers.

I posted an HN comment [0] a while back that is one example from prior work experience. It shares how specification differences between the domestics and Japanese auto-makers impacts downstream and overall system reliability/quality.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25627762

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

#45

Post by flutas »

piva00 wrote: post #30
cypress66 wrote: post #24

Has the car owner shown a full video of the car? Are we sure we're not just looking at a crashed car? It'd be nice for the article to include a video like that so there's no doubt.

The article says: > NK denied his car was ever involved in any collisions. And given that the owner took it to an official service center to check the issue I believe the service center would have detected if it was the result of a collision instead of: > The manager of the service center said multiple times that 'the car is safe to drive' and that he had been assured by 'engineers' that it is 'safe.' However, he wil…

IMO (and I'm not a materials engineer) my first thought was the car got ramped off a railroad track or something and landed hard, which basically took any stress in the materials that were already there and caused them to essentially "bubble up" in the form of visible cracking.

Something like that most likely wouldn't be logged as a collision, but I think there would be other signs of that... Of course we're basically getting the best angle of one side of the story and none from the other side in the article.

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

#47

Post by gwbas1c »

This is a slam-dunk for the typical American lemon law.

The owner of the car should go out and find a lemon law lawyer. When I had to work with one I didn't have to pay a thing.

(I had a Subaru where the GPS / Stereo would reboot while I drove and loose its settings. After a bunch of replacements, the car still had the problem. I had to catch it on video, though. Subaru ended up declaring the car a lemon after trying to fix it multiple times.)

FWIW: I own two Teslas and their service is horrible. Every time I take it in, they never put the car back together and I have to take it back.

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

#48

Post by nottorp »

zeroping wrote: post #23
mcpackieh wrote: post #19

Are cast structural parts common on modern cars? I thought the structure of modern cars was forged parts welded together by robots.

Relatively new for such large parts, and an innovation by Tesla, although other manufacturers are picking the idea up too.

Doesn't that mean it's not cost effective to repair in case of accidents?

Small bump - got to dismantle the whole car and replace half of it.

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

#49

Post by kabes »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #10
stephenr wrote: post #9

The weirdest part of this to me is the customer. You knew the manufacturer had a reputation of forgetting hard to check parts ... and you still bought one. What else could it be missing that you can't practically check for? Still I guess at least it's good to see Tesla living up to the reputation for American cars to be generally shit build quality. I feel like they're going a bit overboard on that factor though.

>You knew the manufacturer had a reputation of forgetting hard to check parts... and you still bought one. Yeah but the company is run by a hip cool memelord who's gonna get us to mars, and his cars have nice softwares like my iPad. Who cares about the metal parts of the car's rigidity structure? That's just something old boring people think about. Everyone knows EVs are more reliable than ICE so no need to ever look…

Got a friend working for tesla after-sales service in Europa and he claims the Chinese-made Teslas are better quality than the ones that are American-made

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

#50

Post by [deleted] »

IshKebab wrote: post #32
adionionio wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is legal where you live, you might want to get in the habit of secretly recording business dealings. I always have a recorder in my pocket when dealing with more than a few hundred dollars.

Do it anyway. You can always not use the recording if the penalty for recording is going to be more than the benefit it gives you (unlikely).

[deleted]
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