Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

autoevolution.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 310 posts

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

#61

Post by jeffbee »

ceejayoz wrote: post #16
AlexandrB wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear what purpose this cast part serves. I assume the body of a Tesla is formed/stamped from sheets of steel like most modern cars and that this provides most of the structure. It looks like this part is near the top of the hood, so is it structural? Is it just holding a bunch of other parts in place? Hard to tell.

You assume incorrectly. https://electrek.co/2021/10/05/tesla-building-model-y-bodies... > In an auto manufacturing first, Tesla has started building Model Y bodies with two giant single casting pieces for the front and back of the electric SUV.

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.

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

#62

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

flutas wrote: post #45
piva00 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 basicall…

my first thought was that a company infamous for cutting corners on quality, run by an internet troll infamous for trying to avoid responsibility for his actions, violating regulations, and shunning safety, both decided to do what they were infamous for

something like that seems way more likely than the sort of coverup you're suggesting, especially since elmu, not Cracked_Tesla, is the one here who is infamous for coverups

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

#63

Post by rsynnott »

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.

People are _extremely_ weird about that company. I was half-surprised that the usual, near-obligatory, “I love my Tesla, but…” quote was missing.

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

#64

Post by drewg123 »

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 under warranty for what they initially said was not a warrantable defect. To quote him "They took a huge proponent and turned them into someone who will never, ever, recommend them"

And this is how they treated their early adopters that were paying $100K in 2015 for their higher end cars.

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

#65

Post by rsynnott »

jklinger410 wrote: post #57
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…

>...and more to do with Tesla chasing higher margins Which is the most American thing you can do.

As the post you’re replying to mentions, this is indeed a thing that US manufacturers did back in the day. It didn’t work out for them, in the long run.

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

#66

Post by jcpham2 »

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.

For what it's worth we've wanted to own a Tesla for a long time to own an EV. The overpriced nature and all the terrible things I've read about the build quality continually shied me away from actually spending money or even leasing one.

That is until I just so happened to make a little extra money on TSLA stock by accident. I then turned around and found a salvage title, dirt cheap, home wall-charger included 2018 Model 3 and sold off some that TSLA profit for a free car for my wife. We've owned it long enough to confirm all "the build quality is crap" rumors. I'm a mechanically inclined person and I'm not idiot so I have taken the car apart enough to verify it is safe and it isn't dangerous (salvage title, total loss vehicle) but once you start taking things apart you see the corners they've cut where other car manufacturers do it differently - things like water drainage and body panels alignment is just too easy to spot if you've owned 15 cars over 30 years.

Long story short, I wouldn't buy a new one. I certainly wouldn't spent my _hard earned_ money on one. But I don't mind gambling a bit on a rebuilt title mass-produced one. That's about the level of trust I have in Elon's ability to build a quality automobile.

They are ok cars but everything you've heard about build quality and defects is absolutely true. I've never attempted to use the autopilot because I value my life.

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

#67

Post by rsynnott »

gwbas1c wrote: post #47

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…

> 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 year) was enough to convince me never to buy hardware from Google again, say). In particular, I would never buy the _same thing_ (most current Tesla cars are ~the same thing) from a company where I’d already bought one defective thing.

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

#68

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

cypress66 wrote: post #37
piva00 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Has the owner provided any proof of such interaction at the service center, other than his words? A simple video of the whole car would cast all doubts away.

tesla is free to release their correspondence with him, provided they don't have a sketchy company policy to avoid communicating about such matters in retainable form

> 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."

oh... never mind.

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

#70

Post by djbusby »

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.

American build quality "documented" in the movie "Gung Ho"
Post reply on HN