At the nearby Gruenheide factory outside of Berlin, Tesla is currently trucking along and set to achieve the goal of making an electric vehicle in under 10 hours. At this time, Volkswagen’s main Zwickau plant requires 30 hours per vehicle. Diess hopes to reduce that to 20 hours per vehicle by next year.
Conclusion: Neither Tesla nor VW are producing EVs in ten hours. And Zwickau is not a dedicated EV plant and needs rebuilding to become one. Interesting that we only get concrete numbers from VW, so. I have to admit, it is funny to see VW, which was the most marketing dependent car maker I know up until Tesla showed up, and Tesla to slug it out in a PR and marketing war!
Even if you want to make the most pessimistic possible attitude.
Tesla went from a company who had never manufactures anything in large quantity, 5 years later they are seriously comparing to VW a company that has been a globally dominate automaker for decades.
So look at Tesla in 2017 and say 'Musk is an idiot he thinks he can automate production' and then look at how Tesla produces cars in 2022 and tell me he is an idiot.
Musk still is an idiot when it comes to car manufacturing. Why? Because he gives a fuck about first pass yield and those things. Plus, Tesla is still almost a factor 10 away from production volumes of VW, Toyota and the like.
From publicly available footage, a Tesla factory looks not any more impressive, even less so from commentary that knows much about automotive manufacturing than I do, than state of the art factories from legacy coomoanues.
Tesla and SpaceX are impressive feats, I don't get the urge to pass Tesla and Musk as all encompassing geniusus that know everything better than encumbents.
> Because he gives a fuck about first pass yield and those things.
Do you mean he doesn't? Anyway whatever you are trying to say, fact is Tesla is producing a lot of vehicles, they are a major automaker, they are growing fast, and they have industry leading margins.
> Plus, Tesla is still almost a factor 10 away from production volumes of VW, Toyota and the like.
What an absurd argument is that? So do you think BMW, Daimler and co are also all shit at manufacturing? Because they don't make as many cars as VW either.
So in your mind, only if Tesla creates the largest car company in the world he can be considered good at manufacturing? You realize that is a totally absurd position right?
Tesla went from selling a few 100 vehicles 10 years ago to likely outproducing BMW and Geely in 2023. That means they had continues massive growth curve for 10+ years straight.
If you compare the output of individual plants, Tesla plant in Shanghai is easily one of the most productive car plants in the world and that is the first plant that Tesla ever even built.
> I don't get the urge to pass Tesla and Musk as all encompassing geniusus that know everything better than encumbents.
That not the argument anybody made. Tesla is not better at everything. But they are actually very good and anybody that still thinks of Tesla in 2017 is just stuck in time. In some important they are actually better, body structure, electronics, battery integration is just ahead of everybody else.
If you want to dislike Tesla and Musk that's fine, but your arguments about him being and idiot and Tesla being depended on marketing just don't have a bases in reality.
Ford is on track to deliver 1.6 million cars this year. Tesla is doing 300k a quarter with two factories and about to open two more factories. Volkswagen is targeting 2.4 million this year. Consensus from the street (not provided by Tesla) is that Tesla will deliver around 1.5 million as it works through the Germany and Texas ramp up.
So non EV cars don't count anynore or what? VW is just a tad above 10 M cars per year, that is without Audi, Skoda, SEAT and the trucks under MAN / Scania. Ford is at 6.4 M cars.
Not sure where you get your numbers from, but they are incorrect per WSJ / NYT. A quick Google doesn't validate your 6.4 million number anwhere.
On Ford -
"The Detroit automaker sold 1,905,955 vehicles in 2021, ending up behind new U.S. leader Toyota Motor Corp (7203. T) and rival General Motors Co (GM. N). Ford had sold 2,044,744 vehicles a year earlier.Jan 5, 2022"
VW (not including sub-brands, which are managed and mostly built separately):
4,896,900
It's worth noting both of those companies production is failing, while Tesla is increasing 50% YoY.
Edit: Turned out it was more like 2017 numbers... This source here has 9.5 million units for Toyota, 8.8 million for VW, both after steep drops in 2020. Ford is down to 3.9 million, I am honestly surprised by this. But then I undersetimated the drop in car deliveries in 2020.
What we are seeing now in the car industry that there is a lot of grouping up to save cost.
We will have a few really large groups, VW, Toyota, Stellantis, Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi alliance. GM has also lost a gigantic amount of vehicle volume in the last 10 years. There will likely be even more consolidation.
In general volume is going down and because of supply issues its not going up as much as people thought this year.
At the nearby Gruenheide factory outside of Berlin, Tesla is currently trucking along and set to achieve the goal of making an electric vehicle in under 10 hours. At this time, Volkswagen’s main Zwickau plant requires 30 hours per vehicle. Diess hopes to reduce that to 20 hours per vehicle by next year.
Conclusion: Neither Tesla nor VW are producing EVs in ten hours. And Zwickau is not a dedicated EV plant and needs rebuilding to become one. Interesting that we only get concrete numbers from VW, so. I have to admit, it is funny to see VW, which was the most marketing dependent car maker I know up until Tesla showed up, and Tesla to slug it out in a PR and marketing war!
EDIT: Zwickau wasn't a EV plant until 2020.