
Tesla's Simultaneous Brilliance and Incompetence Revealed in Teardown of Model 3 - Maro
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2018/04/25/teslas-brilliance-and-inexperience-revealed-in-benchmarking-study-of-model-3/#20391fcd67c3
======
tlb
Is the intellectual asymmetry between creating a design and analyzing it so
large that a small teardown team can reliably analyze trade-offs in a design
created by a large engineering group?

For example, when they say "this flange is larger than necessary", how can
they know all the possible reasons it might be necessary? Perhaps it adds
stiffness or crash energy absorption, or is used to grasp the part during
assembly, or avoids a resonant frequency.

~~~
thisisit
> Is the intellectual asymmetry between creating a design and analyzing it so
> large that a small teardown team can reliably analyze trade-offs in a design
> created by a large engineering group?

I don't understand this. So you are saying the reviewer's small team doesn't
understand the expertise which might have gone in the car.

But isn't that true for every product review and article out there? Take for
example a phone. If a reviewer doubts the CPU benchmark on a phone, are we
going to talk about how a single reviewer cannot understand the trade-off a
bigger team at Apple/Samsung/Google has put?

Or if a journalist talking about FB's decision on data sharing has the
capacity to know the trade-offs made by a much larger technical and business
group at FB.

We can only look at the past work. If HN is voting this up then we know these
guys have done some good work in the past.

Unless of course we think everyone who doubts Tesla's expertise doesn't
understand their genius.

~~~
jaggederest
Munro and Associates is _the_ firm that does this kind of analysis in the
automotive industry.

It's really fascinating. For the record, it would be hard to produce a design
that Munro couldn't find something to talk about, good or bad. They employ
extremely gifted engineers with a ridiculously large amount of experience at
doing this exact task.

As a software engineer, I wish there were an equivalent firm in the industry
that did teardowns like this so that we could, as an industry, improve over
time the way that the automotive industry does.

I feel like it may be one of the factors holding software engineering back
from achieving true professional engineering standardization.

~~~
decacorn1
No they are not. Car companies do not go to Munro, period.

There are far more reputable sources, speaking from someone in the industry.
Munro is just trying to get free advertising with this sh*t.

~~~
luckydata
That's interesting. Which sources are in your view more reputable? Where do
you work? One of the big three or a Japanese carmaker?

------
cvaidya1986
They are iterating and optimizing the hardware rapidly treating it just like
software. And pushing out versions that work fine to improve stuff later. It’s
as if the car is communicating the Silicon Valley ethos with its seemingly
random features that are simply optimized towards something that can be
shipped ASAP. Interesting how one can deduce culture just by looking deep
inside an artefact. One day aliens will try to decipher how early humans
behaved by analyzing excavated iPhones.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
One of the problems with that is that hardware is not software and at some
point it will have to be repaired. It's bad enough when a part changes design
halfway through the model year. I can't imagine trying to repair a Model 3
five years from now and finding out that e.g., the right front wheel bearing
has 10 different versions and it's not completely clear which one I need.

~~~
annerajb
You call Tesla give your serial they will tell you the latest version of the
bearing that you should upgrade too. They been d9o ing that for 10 years now.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Oh, that will work _so_ well when they have 10 million of these things running
around!

------
ucaetano
"The fact that Tesla can simultaneously demonstrate brilliance and
incompetence in the same vehicle is not surprising, considering it is a high-
tech software company trying to master complex manufacturing processes that
took established automakers more than 100 years to perfect."

High-tech software company?

Tesla is an automaker, not a software company. Sure, Elon comes from the
software/tech/payments industry, but putting Zuckerberg in charge of Exxon
wouldn't change the fact that Exxon is an energy/oil company.

~~~
sjm-lbm
It's a bit awkwardly worded, but I get their point (I think) - take your
example and swap it, for instance: if you were to exchange all the employees
at Facebook for employees at Exxon, the company structurally and culturally
would still be an energy/oil company even if the product they were making was
software. Likewise, Tesla runs, structurally and culturally, like a software
company, even though they are building cars.

~~~
samfisher83
You definitely don't want to "Move fast and break things" at an oil company.
They have very defined procedures for everything. Now days safety is
paramount. You can't just change procedures even if its better because they
can't afford a blowout or leak or accident. At Exxon you have a manual for
everything and deviating from it is frowned upon.

~~~
wand3r
To carry the analogy from above, Exxon moved fast and broke the Prince William
Sound. Safety is important obviously but innovation has real costs and
software companies seem to learn a lot more and innovate more when they break
things vs energy companies-- at least that is the meme.

Also, energy companies move slow and still break things like the environment.

~~~
jackfoxy
IIRC The alcoholic master handed over navigation to a very inexperienced 3rd
mate and left the bridge for him to navigate out the channel by himself.
That's an individual screw-up that can happen in any organization's culture. I
wouldn't say the whole organization (Exxon) moved fast and broke things.

~~~
opencl
The boat had a collision avoidance radar which had been non-functional for
over a year because Exxon wouldn't spend the money to maintain it.

~~~
jackfoxy
It collided with an underwater reef.

~~~
opencl
There was an above-water radar reflector in place specifically so shipboard
radar could warn of an impending collision with the reef.

~~~
jackfoxy
...and an inexperienced 3rd mate was alone on the bridge.

------
samfriedman
> _Most confounding to Munro and his team was the body construction of the
> Model 3. "This car is the heaviest body-in-white I've ever seen," he said,
> calling the construction "ridiculous" and highlighting areas where Tesla
> needlessly added weight with things like excess metal flanges and
> overlapping layers of steel. "This adds weight without value," he said._

Optimizing structural design is hard. There are plenty of examples of talented
young engineers with lots of budget who can make a really clever and strong
design, but it will frequently also be overengineered and far over weight or
cost for its design purpose. An infamous example would be the Juicero
juicer[0]. It takes a lot of experience and knowledge to make a highly
optimized frame or structural component.

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

~~~
Obi_Juan_Kenobi
Maybe somewhat OT, but the flange review triggers some of the same criticisms
I have of AvE.

With Uncle B, any time he gets something wrong (and there are plenty of
examples) it's always "I'm just a dude in the shop, having a laugh, etc. etc."
But when he's tearing things about it's always, "this design is shit, these
engineers suck, they're trying to fuck you over here there and everywhere."
There's a huge disconnect in how he presents these critiques as though they're
gospel truth, but he won't eat the humble pie. There's the exception here or
there, he'll nibble at a particularly big piece, but overall it just doesn't
serve the purpose of learning and understanding. He veers into some sort of
moralizing about modern manufacturing.

Don't get me wrong, on balance it's great and the juice-squeezer _definitely_
deserved it, but it keeps me wary.

In the same sense, I don't know about that flange. Is it wasteful? Could well
be. Or maybe there's a good reason it's there. What I'd like is a good
explanation of how they can be sure it's excessive. Tell me why. Maybe they
do; I haven't a bit of the autoline video, but I don't see a good writeup.

~~~
Corrado
In order to know the how's and why's of the M&A teardown, you probably have to
pay. I'm certain that their detailed analysis includes good explanations of
how they know that flange is excessive, but they're not going to tell you for
free.

------
TimJYoung
For contrast, here's Sandy Munro on the Autoline Network show talking about
his teardown of the BMW i3:

[https://youtu.be/uDr4L6BzpP8](https://youtu.be/uDr4L6BzpP8)

~~~
cowsandmilk
And here's him discussing the Model 3 teardown on Autoline (don't see a link
to this in the article)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpCrkO1x-Qo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpCrkO1x-Qo)

~~~
Nokinside
He is really praising the batteries and electronics as revolutionary. "Other
automakers ignore Tesla's electronic at their peril, but Tesla ignored
traditional car manufacturing so they are in peril."

At one point Munro says that had Tesla outsourced the manufacture and design
of of the car to a company like Magna they would have hit every target and
even Toyota would be crapping their pants now. If the traditional mechanical
parts of the car would have been even decent, Tesla would have mopped the
floor with everybody.

~~~
alasdair_
>At one point Munro says that had Tesla outsourced the manufacture and design
of of the car to a company like Magna they would have hit every target and
even Toyota would be crapping their pants now.

This would lead to hitting short-term targets at the expense of never really
learning how to perform such tasks well in-house. Being able to design and
manufacture cars seems pretty important stuff for a car maker to know how to
do.

~~~
Nokinside
They are now risking with running out of money and bankruptcy.

It would have been better idea to make money from outsourced Model 3 and
continue R&D.

~~~
mlindner
You make the assumption that people won't give them more money.

~~~
Nokinside
Their debt is already rated junk. Any new debt comes with huge interest rate.
Tesla's whole future is tied to Model 3 sales. They don't have another change
if it fails.

------
SteveCoast
I just read a book about Henry Ford. They evolved the model T rapidly so
models coming off the line weeks or months apart had significant differences.
They kept evolving it for _years_

Reminded me of the model 3. So, I don't have a ton of faith in a single
datapoint on Tesla build quality.

~~~
pests
Skunk Works did the same. Ben Rich mentions how by the time #9 of a plane
rolled off the manufacturing floor they had devised new methods or better way
of doing things. With meticulous record keeping they would be able to go back
and re-engineer earlier planes.

------
birdman3131
>The fact that Tesla can simultaneously demonstrate brilliance and
incompetence in the same vehicle is not surprising, considering it is a high-
tech software company trying to master complex manufacturing processes that
took established automakers more than 100 years to perfect.

This is wrong. At the very least it would be since the 60's and probably
later. Seeing as 1963 was the first time CNC was used by the auto industry as
far as I can tell. While they have been making cars for over 100 years you
really can't include the time before technologies like CAD and CAM. And even
those took a while to see widespread usage. Add to that the ability modern CAD
software has to model stresses bases on the different forces in play makes a
hell of a difference.

Even just going back 12 years and the amount of computing you have access to
vastly changes. That was when AWS came out. AWS lets you compute massive
amount of engineering data without having to invest into a super computer.
(Not to say the auto industry did not have those super computers before then.)

~~~
joe_the_user
I think it's reasonable to talk of a culture of engineering (or design) going
back earlier than a given technology. A large company has to make sure at any
given that a new approach does everything that an older approach does. The
company may have access large customers for testing and requirements gathering
so they can wind-up doing technology X "correctly" even if they start-out
behind on technology X.

With the variety of changes different companies go through (being bought,
sold, spun-off, etc), it's certainly an interesting question whether a company
retains a given "core competency" or any core competency at a given time.

I know in the case of CNC manufacturing, the devices were essentially
programmable lathes and one can talk of a "CNC programmer" but the system was
designed to leverage the existing knowledge and population of manual lathe
operators and there's no relation to computer programmers and instead the
"touch stone" is ordinary lath operation I believe (a CNC programmer makes
$22/hour average conveniently). Thus it's reasonable to say manufacturing
culture in the US references things earlier than CNC.

You can see a similar thing in the way Photoshop, Illustrator and cousins ape
paper and pencil tools - the standards, skills and terminology of layout were
carried through the transition (to the point that these industry standard
tools have an interface that seems fairly pathological to newbies).

~~~
davidgould
_I know in the case of CNC manufacturing, the devices were essentially
programmable lathes and one can talk of a "CNC programmer" but the system was
designed to leverage the existing knowledge and population of manual lathe
operators and there's no relation to computer programmers and instead the
"touch stone" is ordinary lath operation_

There is a fascinating book "Forces of Production" [0] that analyzes the
history of the development of numerical control in the 1960s that argues
exactly the opposite. I read it many years ago, but I will try to summarize it
TLDR style below:

Before software ate the world there were two competing approaches to
automating machine tools:

\- Record and Playback: a skilled machinist makes the part and the motions and
operations are recorded. Subsequent parts can be made by playing back the
recording on a machine with the assistance of a less skilled worker.

\- Numerical Control: A white collar worker in an office writes a script (in G
Code [1]) to control the tool which is then played on the machine attended by
a less skilled worker.

This was a hard problem at the time and technically Record and Playback was
easier and worked better. However management, particularly at GE, resented the
power of the skilled machinists who had effective unions and were not
replaceable in the event of a strike. So despite the advantages of
Record/Playback they persisted for years to create the NC technology as it let
them replace highly skilled union labor with coding monkeys. The parallels
with the present day seem obvious but oddly underappreciated.

[0]
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/625055.Forces_of_Product...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/625055.Forces_of_Production)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-code](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-code)

~~~
joe_the_user
That is indeed an interesting story but my searches seem to say that even
G-codes are now entered by machinists rather than office workers or
specialized G-code programmers ( a G-code programming guide describes it as
final thing a machinist learns in their career).

My guess is that management was conflicted in what it wanted - on the one
hand, a drop-in replacement system and on the other hand, a system so simple
they could hire people off the street to do it.

~~~
davidgould
As I remember from the book, the machinists fought this pretty hard and
eventually forced a compromise resulting in the situation you describe.

------
jonknee
This quote is brutal:

> A Tesla spokesperson said the primary car evaluated by Munro was built in
> 2017, adding: "We have significantly refined our production processes since
> then, and while there’s always room for improvement, our data already shows
> that Model 3 quality is rapidly getting better.”

Sounds like Tesla is agreeing that they sold sub-par vehicles?

~~~
thaumaturgy
Warren Buffett: "I am 7 billion dollars richer in 2017 than I was in 2016."

You: "So you were poor in 2016 then?"

~~~
jonknee
That has nothing at all to do with the changing quality of a manufactured
product.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Correct!

------
venning
> _Everything that 's below the floor pan is amazing. Everything above it is
> what it is._

Honest question: Is everything below the floor pan designed and built by
Panasonic?

~~~
cowsandmilk
He was very complimentary of the circuit boards, saying he has no idea where
they were sourced and basically saying they were the only company using
cutting edge circuitry of a quality and density similar to the latest cell
phones.

~~~
solarkraft
Which quite surprised me. Aren't circuit boards a large, already well
researched and optimized field since they're inside everything? Is the
autopilot board better than that of a laptop or smartphone?

Sure, hardware is hard, but it doesn't seem like differentiating knowledge in
the tech industry (while maybe the other car makers are a few years behind in
optimisation).

~~~
gmueckl
Circuit board layouts can be a nightmare. Automatic routing algorithms suck
for networks of realistic sizes, so a lot of the work is done by hand and that
is a mixture of tedium and art. If you are designing high power or high
frequency circuits you also need to observe a lot of constraints in your
layouts as well (distances between parts, potential cross talk between
parallel traces, signal travelling time along the traces belonging to the same
bus...).

~~~
solarkraft
Sure. Doesn't seem to change much for cars though. It doesn't seem like
something Tesla has a significant competence in.

Even in high-stress environments, unless I missed something.

------
olivermarks
[https://youtu.be/CpCrkO1x-Qo](https://youtu.be/CpCrkO1x-Qo) 90 minute
discussion of Tesla 3 with Munro and others on the excellent autoline network
youtube channel ('Really heavy, really expensive')

------
nojvek
87k for a benchmark report. That’s something. Car makers manufacture in
millions so 87k is a tiny expense for a high quality competitive analysis by a
3rd party unbiased firm.

I love tiny business that are the forefront leaders in a small profitable
nice.

------
inertial
There's was also this article a few months ago on some glaring flaws in Tesla
vs i3

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16305520](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16305520)

------
happertiger
Are they working with Tesla to provid this feedback into their production
flow? There is no mention of it. Does anyone know?

------
_ph_
It would seem odd that as Elon has his experience with SpaceX in the
background, and SpaceX engineers are consulting for Tesla, that the metal
construction was done overly clumsy without a reason. Equally likely is, that
they had a clear plan when designing the metal work on the Model 3 - but it is
not obvious to people trained in the way the automobile industry works, as
Tesla certainly is thinking differently.

------
cvaidya1986
Perhaps we can extrapolate from this how the first AI will behave. This
empirical iterative approach towards optimization by its creator engineers
will be baked into its ‘DNA’. The way it optimizes human happiness might be
unexpected and we might be as puzzled as these analysts. I hope we know what
we are doing in terms of AI development. This iterative approach can quickly
lead to dangerous outcomes.

------
dsfyu404ed
That manufacturing a car isn't something a tech company excels in even though
they can build a good battery doesn't surprise me one bit.

