
Tesla Hires Aston Martin's Vehicle Engineering Leader - Pasanpr
http://ir.teslamotors.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=762317
======
kmfrk
As someone who's anything but a greasemonkey, how good are Aston Martin from
an engineering standpoint compared to the competition?

~~~
nlh
So here's the thing - they're not actually that good. Let me preface this by
saying that a) my perspective isn't a normal consumer one -- my business has
put tens of thousands of miles on various Aston Martin models (we rent them)
and b) the last model I've dealt with extensively is an '06 DB9, so things may
have changed a lot in the past few years.

But that being said, despite being IMHO the most gorgeous cars on the road,
Astons are not particularly well-engineered.

First, we had an '02 Vanquish and an '03 Vanquish, both of which had a very
fundamental and deeply expensive flaw in the transmission design. Without
getting too deep into it, they used a "auto manual" style transmission, which
was basically a 6-speed manual combined with hydrolic actuators to shift
automatically. No manual clutchwork required (same design, basically, as BMWs
SMG). On just about all similar cars, after a while (i.e. 12k - 15k miles) the
clutch needs to be replaced. On Ferraris and Lamborghinis, it's a simple job
that costs a few $thousand - drop the transmission, replace clutch and
flywheel, and you're good. On both the Vanquishes, the way in which the clutch
would fail would literally destroy the entire transmission, and we TWICE had
to spend $15,000 to rebuild the entire transmission after a failed clutch (one
on each car). I've never seen another car with design like that, and since it
happened the exact same way on two different cars, we're pretty sure it's
endemic to the design.

Move to the later models - we had a bunch of 05 & 06 DB9s, and they just
weren't great. The brakes were notoriously bad, the bodyflex was particularly
bad on the convertibles, and they suffered repeated electrical gremlins.

So from my purely technical perspective as a heavy user of Astons, I'd say I'm
not impressed with their engineering.

NOW - that all being said, I'm not going to make any judgment about this guy
and his work at Tesla and what this means about that. There is far too much
that goes into the production of a car to make any real judgment call about
things to come -- Astons could have been beautifully engineered and then
ruined with bad supplier decisions, that were outside this guy's control. Etc.
etc.

So them's my $0.02.

~~~
voltagex_
The things you don't hear about on Top Gear. Do you think there's anywhere
else I can go to read stuff like what you wrote?

~~~
cdi
Top Gear is an entertainment show. With staff of writers and producers.
Everything is preplanned, everything that is said is said with entertainment
and marketing in mind. Almost no factual substance. I think it's hardly
surprising that they don't do thorough technical analysis.

------
coob
TSLA is up on the news - have a look at the end of today's graph:
[https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ATSLA&ei=vSGIUe...](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ATSLA&ei=vSGIUeCSGcGHwAOwOQ)

~~~
toomuchtodo
As someone who bought several thousand shares at $17/share when it went IPO,
its hard not to be excited for TSLA.

~~~
enraged_camel
Heck, I bought 100 shares when it was at $40 and even I feel incredibly lucky!

~~~
gcb0
Tesla shares are the only reason this is on the front page here.

------
mrkmcknz
Tesla also recruited Henrik Fisker from Aston Martin. Those who don't know of
Fisker, he went on to found his own company after a couple of years at
Tesla(<http://www.fiskerautomotive.com/>).

Looks like Aston Martin have some serious talent working on those machines.

~~~
kiba
Fisker then left Fisker Automatives, and that company is now in the process of
dying or dead.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Fisker Karma. What irony.

~~~
mtgx
Must've been bad karma from leaving Tesla.

------
gigabytejack
Could have something to do with a pending deal with AMG which would lead to a
very different development cycle. [http://www.leftlanenews.com/aston-martin-
in-talks-for-amg-en...](http://www.leftlanenews.com/aston-martin-in-talks-for-
amg-engines.html)

From a reliability standpoint there have been more problems with them than
their German counterparts (ie: Lamborghini - engineered by Audi with Italian
design, or Porsche). From an engine perspective this move makes a lot of sense
with the rising cost of compliance with EU emission standards.

Cars will continue to look awesome, will be more reliable and cheaper
(relatively) to service.

------
aashaykumar92
I was wondering why Elon tweeted, "Anyone interested in doing ultra hardcore
vehicle engineering at Tesla, please apply!" but now it makes sense.

On a similar note, isn't it odd that this position is just being filled?

Elon's Twitter Page: <https://twitter.com/elonmusk>

~~~
changdizzle
His previous tweet before that read "Chris Porritt from Aston Martin just
joined as head of vehicle engineering at Tesla"

<https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/331489911842689025>

------
DerekAlia
Hilarious review of an Aston Martin Vantage -
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi0yXeuqBjU>

------
calinet6
Man I wish I had capital now... or a year ago... or 13 years ago when I told
my parents they should buy AAPL.

Oh well. The best investment you can make is always yourself.

