
Experts say Tesla has repeated car industry mistakes from the 1980s - evo_9
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/04/experts-say-tesla-has-repeated-car-industry-mistakes-from-the-1980s/
======
blattimwind
Anyone who has had to do with the manufacturing side of car makers (German
ones anyway) knows how highly optimized from end-to-end their processes are.
It seems doubtful that anyone could leapfrog this amount of accumulated
process knowledge and optimization simply by way of being new.

Automation is not a black-and-white thing, either, as it is often portrayed.
Sure, some things are fully automated (e.g. assembling the car body), but many
things are partially automated. For example, there is a tool which is
essentially 5/6/7 torque wrenches coupled to a lifting arm. This tool allows a
line worker to mount a tire with little physical exertion in seconds. You see
this sort of thing all the time at car assembly lines; offloading mechanical
power to the machine, while having a human line up and steer things. (This
also avoids a whole bunch of safety concerns you normally have when operating
autonomous equipment in the same physical space occupied by humans)

Another example: The body of virtually any car is self-supporting (there is no
frame), so getting it right is rather critical. To achieve both the high
strength and low weight of a modern car body the steel is deformed very
closely to the maximum deformation it can withstand. This needs very good
matching of the process to the steel. So, the manufacturer of the steel coil
tests each coil individually for its exact properties. For mass production
lines only coils meeting very tight tolerances are used. For low volume lines
the process is adjusted individually for each coil based on the manufacturers
testing and some in-house testing.

~~~
wpietri
It's also shocking to anybody who had studied Toyota's history. Toyota spent
decades honing their processes, but are notoriously automation-averse [1], as
automation locks in a (hoped-for) short-term productivity gain but prevents
the human-driven continuous improvement that has made them highly productive.
[2]

In some ways, I think the long software-is-eating-the-world boom has been bad
for us as an industry. We have been so successful with "throw tech at it"
solutions that we don't know when that isn't a good idea. E.g., the Silicon-
Valley-reinvents-grilled-cheese flop The Melt [3], or the $120m clown show
that was Juicero [4].

American car companies spent decades trying and failing to learn Toyota's
approach. They even had enthusiastic help from Toyota, who even went so far as
to take GM's worst plant and redo it as a joint venture. (Interestingly, it's
the same plant that Tesla now uses. [5]) For those unfamiliar with the story,
I strongly recommend This American Life's episode on it. [6] But my takeaway
was that executive arrogance kept GM from learning that there was a much
better way to make cars. That sounds more and more familiar these days.

[1] [https://www.fastcompany.com/40461624/how-toyota-is-
putting-h...](https://www.fastcompany.com/40461624/how-toyota-is-putting-
humans-first-in-an-era-of-increasing-automation)

[2] [http://www.nbcnews.com/id/18960044/ns/business-
autos/t/study...](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/18960044/ns/business-
autos/t/study-toyota-most-productive-automaker/)

[3] [https://www.wired.com/story/how-the-trendiest-grilled-
cheese...](https://www.wired.com/story/how-the-trendiest-grilled-cheese-
venture-got-burnt/)

[4] [https://blog.bolt.io/heres-why-juicero-s-press-is-so-
expensi...](https://blog.bolt.io/heres-why-juicero-s-press-is-so-
expensive-6add74594e50)

[5] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI)

[6]
[https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015)

~~~
pfarnsworth
I have a friend who worked at Juicero, so unlike 99% of the people here on HN,
I have a lot of info on it, and didn't just read the headlines. In fact, I had
more than a few glasses of Juicero drinks whenever I visited her place
(generally hated it, but I'm not their target demo).

Overall, I never liked the idea, and I told her that. I said it was way too
expensive and they would have to decrease the price by 80% for it to be
viable. But for the people who got it, mainly celebrities and millionaires,
they loved it. I think I remember that Beyonce or Katy Perry or Britney got it
for all of her dancers, etc.

The entire "green juice" industry is large, and the founder made his first
millions by selling chains of these types of juices. The target was to make a
glass of green juice less expensive than what you would find at a high-end gym
or juice shop. The plan was to build it out with the people who were willing
to pay for them, like celebrities and influencers, and then make them mass-
market. The biggest expense was getting the food chain up and running, trying
to get enough local farmers, etc, and getting the freshest ingredients
possible. The internet connection, while ridiculous on the surface, was
necessary to ensure that the ingredients were still fresh, because they
literally had no preservatives. They wanted to avoid having people drinking a
glass of mold or worse especially if they weren't mindful of expiration dates.
This could also help if they sold these presses to juice shops (a later
business strategy) and the person selling the juice might have old expired
stock.

But once it was set up, the plan was to scale out and lower prices through
higher volume. Unfortunately, the bad press hit just as they were doing a
round of funding and went bankrupt soon after because funding dried up.

Do I think it would have been a hit? Probably not. But the idea wasn't
absolutely stupid. It's about the same as any other Silicon Valley idea I've
heard. Cater to a very select market of influencers first, and then scale out
and create a new market based on green juices. The company absolutely believed
that green juices would help the world, because it's a lot healthier, etc, so
if you buy into that mindset that they could create a new industry, then it
made sense.

Did they make pure business strategy mistake? Yes, just like other companies.
Did the founder have too much of a Steve-Jobs-Deity complex by trying to over-
design the press? Yes. But it's not nearly as bad as people believe from the
headlines. The goal was to create a new market, like how Uber created a market
by lowering prices for ridesharing. If you could lower the price of green
juice to the price of a Starbucks latte from $15, then they really felt like
this company would be a tremendous success.

~~~
nootropicat
Juicero was ridiculous even if only because the machine was ridiculously
overengineered. They should have used two steel rollers, I bet the machine
could be made for $20. Instead they made an absurd contraption that crushes
the bag between two plates.

~~~
blattimwind
There's a highly entertaining teardown by AvE on youtube of the machine.

~~~
chii
you should be linking to the video!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-
BGQfpHQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ)

------
lobsternumber1
I think it comes from a basic lack of respect or understanding of the actual
skill requires to work an assembly line properly. Highly educated creative
class are trained their whole life to look down with disgust on the people who
do repetitive labor. The name shows it.. They call it unskilled. And yet how
many of them could do it?

It takes an enormous amount of focus and concentration, the ability to learn
complex routines quickly, to create efficiencies without breaking rythyms or
rules. All while being payed less and treated like a second class employee.

Why is toyota different? Because they dont think like this. Line workers are
thought of highly. Their ideas are integrated into the system. Most of all
they are not disposable cogs

~~~
blattimwind
> The name shows it.. They call it unskilled.

Fun fact: This seems like a very American thing to me (that is being imported
into my culture). Where I live apprenticeships (2/3/4 years work _and_ school)
are frequently required for assembly work and the like, and has usually been
seen as a solid way to make a good living. In the last 10-15 years there has
been a pronounced rise of arrogance against journeyman ("Gesellen" i.e. those
who completed an apprenticeship) and state-certified technicians ("Techniker"
i.e. those who completed an extra two years of school on top of an
apprenticeship; this usually entails a bunch of other additional
qualifications and certifications); parents act like their children are
failures if they don't manage to study at an university and put immense
pressure on them.

Rationally speaking that doesn't make any sense; Gesellen and Techniker work
full-time _years_ earlier than anyone who goes to university and often climbed
the pay ladder quite a few steps in those years as well. Depending on the
profession they make good money. In some professions even a lot (e.g.
industrial field service can pay six figures all things considered).

University and Abitur (the highest level of secondary school) aren't for
everyone, but parents act as if it were so, often with detrimental effects to
their children.

~~~
foepys
50% of all German school students graduating this year will be awarded with an
Abitur. The changed view of learning a trade isn't just in the peoples minds,
it's actually encouraged by the government. Thanks to the Bologna reform, the
old way of going to a trade school is being looked down upon and graduating
from college is the new default. Even when you are completing trade school,
you are nowadays often awarded with a "Fachabitur" which again encourages
people to go to college.

In my city for example the number of college students doubled within the last
10 years. Rents for small apartments got raised accordingly, obviously, and
this put more pressure on blue collar workers to put their children into
college.

~~~
walshemj
Likewise the latest fetish for teaching CS to all school kids.

~~~
joncrane
Nothing wrong with exposing as many children as possible to coding. Forcing
them isn't good, but making sure that in grades 1-4 they get to play good
logic/coding games in computer lab time is a plus.

------
sjwright
I agree entirely with the sentiment of the article, and I think Elon and Tesla
are hopelessly deluding themselves with belief in their superior engineering
and product design. But...

Just because a few companies failed at factory automation in 1980 doesn't mean
it couldn't succeed in 2018. It's patently absurd to knock Tesla for trying it
again in the era of ultra-high resolution cameras and advanced machine
learning algorithms.

~~~
Robotbeat
This is true. But a key point: Tesla doesn't actually have to beat state of
the art in automation to be profitable. Their cars are already great, electric
cars are simpler, they've streamlined the sales process in a way that already
gives them at least 10% greater cost advantage if everything else is
equivalent (while also eliminating a major pain point for consumers).

But it goes beyond just the fact that technology has advanced: Tesla is
willing to pursue alternative approaches where others have long stopped (and
this is a point the author of this article makes later on). The fact that
Tesla doesn't have the conservative culture of other car makers means that
they'll make mistakes like this, but also that they'll find new solutions (or
recognize existing solutions in similar fields that haven't become industry
standard) whereas others would not.

You cannot automate EXISTING car designs much. And Model 3 does make
improvements, but in many ways is built similar. It's like trying to automate
soldering components by hand. Automation of electronics required a change in
the fundamental way electronics were built. Through-hole is hard to automate
but relatively easy to build by hand. Surface mount is simple to automate and
ultimately better in several ways, but is super annoying to build by hand.
Tesla needs to find the surface mount of car manufacturing. And I think
they're trying.

Something particularly hard to automate for automobiles is the wire harness.
There are many degrees of freedom; it's kind of like tying your shoe: easy for
humans, hard for machines. The Model 3 uses less wire than the Model S/X, but
only by a factor of 2 or so. Model Y, on the other hand, is supposed to use
like an order of magnitude less. This is like optimizing a circuit board for
automation by only using a few through-hole components, relying mostly on
surface mount.

So Tesla is going to have to continually redesign their vehicles to be more
and more amenable to automation. They can't do this as a step function, and
Musk has realized that now. (This is another good point the author makes.)

~~~
gamblor956
Tesla has yet to sell a car at a profit (using standard accounting practices,
known as GAAP, for the auto industry or even in general). They're still losing
money on a per-car basis, so the more they sell...the more money they lose.

And don't give me that crap about R&D blah blah blah. Other car makers include
R&D and other related capex in their per-car profit accounting.

~~~
nugga
This doesn't sound right. As far as I heard they make something like 20% or
more profit on sold cars but due to constant heavy investment they burn
through cash reserves.

~~~
gamblor956
Tesla makes a 20% profit per car if you ignore standard auto industry
accounting practices and use magic voodoo accounting and ignore the capex that
goes into developing and building those cars. Notably, the only sites claiming
that Tesla realizes per-car profits are tech companies which defend the use of
non-standard accounting practices.

Note: Most other car companies make hundreds of thousands of cars at each of
their factories, and sell hundreds of thousands to millions of cars each year,
which substantially reduces the per-car capex. Tesla sells comparatively very
few cars, so its per-car capex dwarfs the rest of the industry.

~~~
Robotbeat
Except that Tesla is now producing at a weekly rate equivalent to hundreds of
thousands of cars per year at their Fremont factory, comparable to other car
companies.

But they're still ramping up. The factory will be outputting something like
500,000 to 700,000 cars per year after they're done ramping. They'll need
Model Y and/or Semi and at least another factory before they're going to be
comparable to other mid-range manufacturers. They'll need at least half a
dozen factories to be a major manufacturer. Or they'll need to change how cars
are made entirely.

If they can get millions of cars from a single factory, then the high
automation that they're shooting for (and which Model 3 had to back off of)
might make sense (and is required for getting that kind of production from a
single line). But even that will likely need multiple factories to justify the
R&D into the factory line itself.

~~~
rgbrenner
_Tesla is now producing at a weekly rate equivalent to hundreds of thousands
of cars per year_

That's only true if you're a time traveler from the future. But it's only
April 2018 here, and Tesla is producing about 2600 cars a week. They produced
12000 cars during the first 3 months of the year.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-
tracker/](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/)

Also it would be very difficult to get millions of cars out of the Fremont
facility.. they already ran out of space there over a year ago.

~~~
surrealize
It's an annualized rate of hundreds of thousands if you include all the
models. For the model 3, 2600/wk makes for well over 100k/yr. Model S and X
combined are going at an annualized rate of about 100k/yr, extrapolating from
last quarter's 24,728 number. Altogether it's over 200k annualized.

~~~
rgbrenner
you're right.. I missed that it said model 3.

although q1 production was 34k x 4 = 136k.. so they still have some growth
before it's hundredS.

------
Robotbeat
> "Far from leapfrogging the techniques of conventional automakers, Tesla is
> now struggling just to match the efficiency of its more established rivals."

I don't think this is true any more. Tesla switched Model 3 from high
automation approach at the end of 2017 to a more conventional approach using
human labor where appropriate, but still is ramping up quickly and seems to
find using human labor very effectively. That doesn't sound like they're
struggling with the more traditional approach, but rather embracing it
successfully (for Model 3).

But I thought this line was good:

> "Instead of easing robots onto the line a few at a time, providing for
> inevitable debugging problems with redundant equipment, GM bet the entire
> Hamtramck production system on the proposition that leading-edge automation
> would work instantaneously."

Tesla does seem to be learning this lesson. And this is the right takeaway:
learn respect for the way things are done, without losing the realization that
something far better is possible. That reminds me of the ramp up of Falcon 9.

> "Musk likely could have spared himself a lot of short-term headaches if he
> had relied more heavily on auto industry veterans to warn him against
> repeating mistakes made by other car companies in previous decades. But if
> he had done that, he would also be less likely to discover ways to optimize
> the manufacturing process—particularly optimizations that work particularly
> well for a company specializing entirely in electric vehicles."

This is a good insight as well. Good article.

~~~
dmckeon
1) Consider an assembly line where all tasks and material movements are done
by humans. Over years, line operations are tuned to improve faster & better
production. Even the vehicle designs are influenced by the capabilities of the
line.

2) Machinery is introduced incrementally, supplementing or replacing each
human task or material movement. Operations and designs continue to be tuned.

3) Eventually, a line has no humans - but the line design was created around
humans, and still inherits constraints for human interaction.

4) Now, imagine a line where the entire line is designed for robots from the
start. No humans doing production tasks at all, ever. Even the vehicles being
produced are designed to facilitate robotic production.

Henry Ford was level 1. Most modern US production is level 2, hoping to reach
level 3. Tesla hoped to reach level 4, settled for available tech at level 3,
and is having to fall back to level 2 in some areas. (IMHO).

Is anyone manufacturing entire cars at level 4? How about major components
(engines, transmssions, drivetrains)?

edit: 1..3 are evolutionary, 4 is revolutionary.

~~~
blattimwind
> How about major components (engines, transmssions, drivetrains)?

Yes.

------
FartyMcFarter
> Musk said he wants all parts of the company ready to prepare 6,000 Model 3
> cars per week by the end of June, triple the rate Tesla has achieved in the
> recent weeks.

This sounds like madness, and I wonder if anyone believes them.

Has anyone made a timeline or visualisation of Tesla's promised production
rates vs reality? They appear to be constantly off, and now they're apparently
doubling down and promising a production target that seems even less realistic
than the ones they already failed to achieve.

~~~
richardfeynman
Moreover, even if they achieve 6k/week, it'd take about 83 weeks to go through
the 500k+ model 3 reservations.

~~~
Robotbeat
Only if you (strangely) assume they won't keep ramping up.

~~~
Lionsion
Are they planning on opening other assembly plants? Their facility is going to
hit a hard limit at some point, even if they do get their act together.

~~~
Robotbeat
Yes, they are.

------
joobus
> At the same time, it's rarely a good idea to underestimate Musk. Musk has a
> long history of setting optimistic deadlines for his companies and then
> failing to meet them.

What? Don't underestimate him because he can't do what he says?

~~~
binarybits
Maybe you should quote the entire paragraph instead of truncating it in a way
that makes it look ridiculous. As I said in the next sentence, "Musk is
persistent and a quick learner."

And then as I write later in the piece:

"Musk ignored the conventional wisdom, and he has gotten much further than
anyone expected. He has sold hundreds of thousands of cars and has hundreds of
thousands more people eager to buy the Model 3 as soon as it's available.
Moreover, Tesla has had a huge influence on the broader car industry, forcing
every major carmaker to take battery electric vehicles seriously."

~~~
joobus
I didn't think the rest of the paragraph helped your cause in any way. You
appear to admit he fails at his objectives, but threw in an unsubstantiated
claim that he's a quick learner. If he was a quick learner, he would have
learned he makes outrageous claims, and tempered his statements.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Failing at your objectives is different than consistently succeeding later
than you expected.

------
latch
Although the article is focused on automation, I'd say almost all of the
software industry is in a 20 year period of failing to learn much from
TPS/lean (with no end in sight).

------
x3y3z3
A friend of mine who worked at one of Elon's companies for a number of years
was often flabbergasted by the hubris involved in a culture that seemed to
insist on repeating almost every single mistake of the past in search of
solutions known to those skilled in the art. Valuable time and very large
amounts of money are being wasted on engaging in a constant game of
reinventing the wheel.

I was told many people brought this up to Elon internally, often with
materially negative effect for them. My friend never did, BTW, because he saw
what happened and didn't want any part of it. He kept his mouth shut and
moved-on on to a competitor where engineers don't waste time and money
reinventing every last thing.

He said that Elon is a very smart and truly remarkable guy, but one who lives
in an echo chamber within which nobody has the balls to oppose him. Elon seems
to be known for unleashing verbal hell in meetings at anyone who dares,
insulting them and generally chopping them up in front of their colleagues.
Very soon nobody wants to say anything more than necessary, if that. Everyone
is in fear of going into a meeting with Elon and getting shredded.

The above is an account I heard from a third party. I have no clue as to the
veracity of these statements. The reader is advised to assume them to be false
and conduct their own research.

------
na85
>Musk is discovering that large-scale car manufacturing is really hard, and
it's not easy to improve on the methods of conventional automakers. And while
automation obviously plays an important role in car manufacturing, it's not
the magic bullet Musk imagined a couple of years ago. Far from leapfrogging
the techniques of conventional automakers, Tesla is now struggling just to
match the efficiency of its more established rivals.

This was the money quote for me. Maybe this dose of humble pie will be good.
Not for Musk but for the legion of hero-worshippers who believe that some guy
who founded PayPal can just "think from first principles" and outwit nearly a
century of manufacturing and industrial innovation.

~~~
walshemj
Then again that is what W. Edwards Deming did for Japanese industry after
being rebuffed by Ford etal

------
HillaryBriss
"... automation works best when it's added incrementally to a production
process that's already working smoothly. And Musk seems to have made the same
mistake Smith did: bringing in way too many robots, way too quickly, leaving
little time for testing and refining the process."

There's a certain naivete to the Tesla story. It has both strengths and
weaknesses. I think Tesla will eventually be sold to an existing major car
maker or just shut down.

~~~
maxxxxx
"I think Tesla will eventually be sold to an existing major car maker or just
shut down."

I think Musk will lose interest once EVs are fully commoditized, progress
slows down and Tesla needs to be optimized to every detail. He seems to be
more interested in "heroic" achievements and big steps. Maybe they'll find a
manager who is willing to run a regular company and then Tesla will just be
another manufacturer.

~~~
sowbug
That fits with Tesla's stated plan, which is "to accelerate the advent of
sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to
market as soon as possible." Tesla doesn't have to be the #1 auto
manufacturer, nor does it even need to survive. As long as EVs are "fully
commoditized," the company achieved its mission.

~~~
maxxxxx
I hope the investors have read this.

~~~
HillaryBriss
yes. so true.

and, beyond merely selling off their shares, investors who could prove that
management pursued a goal which significantly obstructed a reasonable return
on investment probably have a viable lawsuit against management.

the managers of publicly traded companies are supposed to pursue providing a
return on investment. they aren't entitled to _exclusively_ pursue other
_obstructive_ goals, even goals generally beneficial to society, company
workers, the poor, etc. that's not what investors are buying into.

of course, that doesn't mean investors _would_ sue and it doesn't mean the
government _would necessarily_ investigate such a company. but there would be
reasonable grounds for a lawsuit...

~~~
Negitivefrags
This isn't true at all. A company can pursue any not-profit related goal it
likes.

All that is required is that this information is clearly disclosed to
investors.

------
azinman2
“that if Musk had listened to the experts, he probably wouldn't have started
Tesla in the first place”

Except he didn’t start Tesla, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning did. Musk
soon joined, but that’s not what was implied.

I honestly expect better from Ars Technica. To me this is just more
glorification of personality to god-like status. Yes he’s an impressive guy,
but he’s never the only one singlehandedly making all the decisions,
innovations, or executing the work.

~~~
pbreit
Technically those other two filed the incorporation papers and started
noodling around. It’s easy to imagine Tesla with Elon but impossible without.
The “founders” didn’t get very far and the future was bleak.

~~~
azinman2
I’m not saying he wasn’t important. He’s considered a founder by Tesla. I’m
just taking issue with the statement that he wouldn’t have started it if...
because he didn’t.

------
ggm
A common story in manufacturing is an anti-union story: labour pricing itself
above what capital wants to spend. And a common sub-story in this story, is
trying to use automation as a big cudgel to beat labour, especially organized
labour with.

And, Elon Musk is said (by unionists) to be pretty anti union. Silicon Valley
is said to be pretty anti-union. New capital, the Ayn Randeans, they're pretty
anti-union.

So, I suspect there is another side to this story: If you want to try and use
robots to avoid confronting your labour issues, you need to understand the
value labour brings to an endevour. There is no dumb labour, there is only
expensive and cheap labour. Cheap labour is rarely worth it. Expensive labour
is often necessary.

Cutting corners includes trying to avoid having to employ people.

Jeff Bizos is also very anti unions. But, he automated very slowly. I think
his work floor practices in the packing mills he runs is very bad, but if we
discount that, it is perhaps far more sensible: learn how to run supply chain
logistics with the minimum sensible automation, then slowly increase.

I suspect had Musk swallowed his pride, and his anti union and anti labour
views, and employed people, and organised labour, he might have avoided this
problem. Of course, he would have walked into another problem: organised
labour is not cheap.

But then, a tesla isn't cheap either.

How does he make rockets? Does he use robots, or people, or a blend of both?

------
pipio21
I have devoted my professional live to manufacturing automation.

From my point of view, what Musk tries to do is very hard, but if someone
could do it it is him.

There are differences between the 1880 and the 2018, in particular
AI(artificial intelligence) today is "out of this world" tech compared to
1880s. Today you could solve things just by brute force AI that was simply
impossible in the past. And Musk will probably do just that. If I had hundreds
of millions of dollars I will do too.

The great thing about automation is that once you solve something, it works
forever. It takes way more work, of course getting it to work in the first
place.

Musk has as his best gift his total lack of doubt like young people that
believe that nothing is impossible. It is very typical for this young people
to crash over walls as they repeat the mistakes others have done. At the same
time, it is young people who change the world when conditions change(and
making the same mistakes do not yield the same output).

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man.”

------
btcindivist
I'm confused that Tesla did not hire these experts. I see Munro & Associates
dropping criticism, and am baffled, given so much expert knowledge available
that no one hired these guys or their competition.

~~~
pbreit
Why would you hire a bunch of critics? “Experts” are stuck in the past. It’s
hard to find experts willing or able to let go of their baggage and apply
their expertise to a current situation.

~~~
Rebelgecko
If you're trying to diagnose and fix problems, aren't critics exactly the
kinds of people you want to to hire? Having a bunch of uncritical yes-men
won't help you improve. When I watched the Munroe video, there's only one or
two of their criticisms that I think a reasonable person would disagree with.
Janky weatherstripping and doors that rub against the body of the car are bad
regardless of any personal baggage.

------
unclebucknasty
> _" Excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake," Musk tweeted recently.
> "Humans are underrated."_

Ironic to hear this from a company that is aiming to build autonomous
vehicles.

------
subroutine
In an alternative universe Elon-5000 is slowly figuring out that his plan to
fully autoprimate his vehicle plants using the latest in primate tech- humans;
slow and weak swarm entities that are extremely cognitively flexible, cheap,
energy efficient (fueld by almost anything green), with built in error
checking, is not working out. A mix of traditional robotics from the 80s and
advanced primate tech will be most efficient.

------
DennisP
I think it's reasonable to hypothesize that robotics has improved enough
thirty years to try it again. Just didn't work out.

~~~
kreetx
Exactly, it weren't probably the same mistakes that were made, but new ones --
related to automation, yes, with similar robot-tech, no.

I'm also guessing that he's probably going to try again. ;)

------
xvilka
The exact problems are not listed, moreover highly likely just a robot control
program bugs.

------
dnautics
Well at least they aren't repeating mistakes from the 1920s

------
illwrks
What happens to customer owned Tesla cars IF Tesla fails?

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otterley
My guess, based on the history of thousands of bankrupt companies past, is
that a legacy auto manufacturer will buy Tesla's assets at an enormous
discount and will serve Tesla's existing customer base as long as it's
profitable to do so.

Large companies rarely die, even in "failure" \-- they just become part of a
different company or are resurrected by hedge fund investors.

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fit2rule
Yeah, but .. that was the 80's, wasn't it? Its not like we haven't advanced
things in the state of the art massively, since then - or?

I mean, the Internet was really hard in the 80's too. But now look at it!

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madengr
I pulled behind a Model C a couple of days ago. Coukdn’t believe how poor the
body panel alignment is, visible from 10’ away. There are no cars with these
issues, not even economy cars.

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yosito
TL;DR the time and investment it takes to perfect fully automated car
production is still prohibitive and has a poor return on investment. GM
learned this the hard way in the 80s and Tesla is getting the same hard lesson
now.

~~~
Robotbeat
You didn't read until the end of the article. For instance:

> "Musk likely could have spared himself a lot of short-term headaches if he
> had relied more heavily on auto industry veterans to warn him against
> repeating mistakes made by other car companies in previous decades. But if
> he had done that, he would also be less likely to discover ways to optimize
> the manufacturing process—particularly optimizations that work particularly
> well for a company specializing entirely in electric vehicles."

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buvanshak
Seriously. I sometimes thing if these articles are doing for Elon Musk.

So Mr Musk is attempting something, let us call this X. If he simply do it, no
one else notices, and the future potential investors might fail to
notice...Same if he fails.

So he has to make sure that they notice when he succeeds. What better way than
to make a bunch of articles that says what he is trying to do is impossible.
Then if he succeeds, then the (artificial) voices that were saying what he is
doing is impossible, ends up amplifying his success 100 fold. If he fails,
then not much of his current reputation is changed.

So if you are handling PR for Elon Musk. Why wouldn't you make these articles
happen?

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ebbv
Same topic already discussed:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16891651](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16891651)

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willart4food
"Experts".

Experts in . . . what?

