It's remarkable how simple it appears to build lots of cars, but its one of those things that is completely and utterly counter-intuitive.
Logic says - get all these parts together, assemble them and off a car comes out. Forget about engineering - assume all R&D work is done/frozen, the supply-chain complexity alone is staggering. 2000+ suppliers, with multiple redundancies. Keeping the assembly line moving without a hiccup is a compounding a chain of all problems - all probabilities of things going wrong at each station/module/step.
Another beast of an industry(which I am intimately familiar with) is semiconductor manufacturing. But, it actually appears to be hard unlike car manufacturing. Making 4 million chips a day, containing 2 billion transistors sounds hard af and it is.
Manufacturing is a very interesting field to get into (even as software engineers). Ever heard of this game - Factorio? You get to play that in real life (with some pain and big rewards). If you can master manufacturing, you're unbeatable because the entry point is so steep, learning curve is steeper and scaling up is nothing like spinning up Kubernetes clusters and instances (no offense meant).
Hey, kudos to all the people that burned midnight oil, persevered through tough times at Tesla, congratulations. If you work at Tesla plant, please share your story!
That's a really imperssive milestone. And Tesla still has a huge prospect of the mass market in the future(e.g. in China or India), and that's exactly what their current direction.
Over the last year? Oh no, in its entire lifetime. Still it is valued more than many traditional manufacturers, and there is no mystery tech in building an EV.
Tesla should now focus on a mass market electric vehicle to take the climate crisis- something like a closed two-wheeler with broad tyres. Good for traffic and temperature controlled too. Chinese people would buy it in droves.
Two-wheeled Chinese vehicles is a market that's already cornered by cost-effective incumbent Chinese manufacturers. What exactly would this American luxury brand have in that market?
That's one take, but I'm more excited by the cybertruck and what it means for larger electric vehicles. I could see all-electric camper vans or RVs being a thing that a certain group of people wouldn't mind paying a premium for.
I have seen some tiny single seater electric "cars" around recently. They are kind of like your regular mobility scooter but with a roof and windows. I saw a short mention of these about to be trialed somewhere in Europe which would allow children to drive them around since they have the same top speed as ebikes which kids are also allowed to use.
Seems like a good idea tbh. Kids largely get locked out of the outside world due to car centric design. This seems like a pretty good solution which is no less safe than cycling. Maybe even more safe since its more visible.
It's great what tesla has done to push electric vehicles to the point of a status symbol, and prove their viability as an every day driving car.
Tesla is a remarkable company, but they are terrible at building and delivering cars, which is very much the primary competence needed to succeed as a company that sells cars. Their production rates have dramatically trailed their promises, and while they are valued at around $160B, they are hoping to build about 500k cars this year. Volkswagon builds that many cars every 2 weeks or so, and actually makes a profit on each car, as does Toyota (10M cars each, per year, for VW and Toyota, 7M for GM and Hyundai, per year). Tesla is worth more than any two other car companies (other than Toyota) while producing around 5% as many cars as any one of them, if Tesla hits their goals.
Success as as a car company is more about being able to produce cars that people want -- efficiently, than it is about designing cars that people want. Otherwise Lamborghini would be selling more cars than all the other car companies combined, if posters and dreams could somehow translate into units shipped without regard to price or ability to actually build cars in the necessary volume. The two huge success stories in cars are Ford, who invented the assembly line, and Toyota, who invented Kanban, both of which dramatically increased the quality while decreasing the labor input of manufacturing cars. Tesla, with all their claims of automation, produces cars using about 1/3 the automation of Toyota today (9 vs 24 cars for full-time employee per year) while using accounting tricks to claim large per car margins, while showing a large loss using standard accounting practices.
I think if I had to make a guess, Tesla will be in the same chapter in the history of cars as DeLorian and Duesenberg.
> I think if I had to make a guess, Tesla will be in the same chapter in the history of cars as DeLorian and Duesenberg.
I don't actually know what chapter that would be. Delorean was around for 3 years, and made ~9000 cars. Duesenberg (of which I had never heard) made race cars, somewhere under 1000... There really isn't a good comparison to be made with Tesla.
Tesla is just starting to ramp up their gigafactories. The one in Reno is still only 20-25% built. Plus china, new one in Germany, and rumors of one soon to be announced in Brazil.
The one thing I don't get is that everybody assumes there is unlimited demand for Tesla cars, Tesla just needs to be able to produce. But realistically, let's assume that in 1-2 years government subsidies will end then how many people will still want an EV for a price tag of minimum 30k & can afford it? All that Tesla produces are cars for the premium segment despite some mass market rhetoric.
It's being on a mature market vs being on a new, not yet well-developed market. The second has a much larger growth potential. That is, while Toyota is great, it's unlikely that your investment in it will return tenfold. With Tesla, the chances are much higher.
Also, Toyota started making cars in 1933 (licensed GM models), Tesla, in 2012 (an all-new class of cars).
I am surprised. A few short months ago, many were writing Tesla's obituary. (Mostly in the financial news. Maybe it was an attempt to manipulate the stock price.)
The funny thing is that the corona virus will do more to reduce pollution than tesla cars ever will. Currently, they just sell luxury vehicles that are much heavier than existing cars (where did all that mass come from?), require hours to refill, and have poor range. The one trick they have is that they can accelerate fast, once. What progressives never mention is that the number one cause of pollution is population size.
Elon Musk is another one of those progressive tech people that the rest of society has stopped caring about because they realized that we weren't progressing to anywhere good, and that technology doesn't solve anything. None of them are leaders to anyone other than a small group of naive 20 somethings.
[+] [-] spectramax|6 years ago|reply
Logic says - get all these parts together, assemble them and off a car comes out. Forget about engineering - assume all R&D work is done/frozen, the supply-chain complexity alone is staggering. 2000+ suppliers, with multiple redundancies. Keeping the assembly line moving without a hiccup is a compounding a chain of all problems - all probabilities of things going wrong at each station/module/step.
Another beast of an industry(which I am intimately familiar with) is semiconductor manufacturing. But, it actually appears to be hard unlike car manufacturing. Making 4 million chips a day, containing 2 billion transistors sounds hard af and it is.
Manufacturing is a very interesting field to get into (even as software engineers). Ever heard of this game - Factorio? You get to play that in real life (with some pain and big rewards). If you can master manufacturing, you're unbeatable because the entry point is so steep, learning curve is steeper and scaling up is nothing like spinning up Kubernetes clusters and instances (no offense meant).
Hey, kudos to all the people that burned midnight oil, persevered through tough times at Tesla, congratulations. If you work at Tesla plant, please share your story!
[+] [-] jfim|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chirau|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lqs469|6 years ago|reply
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/06/tesla-gets-ok-to-produce-l...
[2] https://fortune.com/2020/01/07/elon-musk-tesla-gigafactory-s...
[3] https://www.benzinga.com/news/20/03/15507012/tesla-now-china...
[+] [-] jerome-jh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anordal|6 years ago|reply
https://www.tu.no/artikler/na-har-tesla-solgt-50-000-biler-i...
[+] [-] coder1001|6 years ago|reply
It is intriguing to see what these companies do to deal with disrupted supply chains!
[+] [-] est|6 years ago|reply
http://www.xinhuanet.com/2020-02/10/c_1125555728.htm
However I do think the supply chain will need more time to recover.
And consumer market wise it's quite uncertain. People are locked in doors with limited travelling needs, and oil prices are historically low.
[+] [-] animalnewbie|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whatshisface|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sudosteph|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Polylactic_acid|6 years ago|reply
Seems like a good idea tbh. Kids largely get locked out of the outside world due to car centric design. This seems like a pretty good solution which is no less safe than cycling. Maybe even more safe since its more visible.
[+] [-] aaronblohowiak|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bdamm|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ltbarcly3|6 years ago|reply
Tesla is a remarkable company, but they are terrible at building and delivering cars, which is very much the primary competence needed to succeed as a company that sells cars. Their production rates have dramatically trailed their promises, and while they are valued at around $160B, they are hoping to build about 500k cars this year. Volkswagon builds that many cars every 2 weeks or so, and actually makes a profit on each car, as does Toyota (10M cars each, per year, for VW and Toyota, 7M for GM and Hyundai, per year). Tesla is worth more than any two other car companies (other than Toyota) while producing around 5% as many cars as any one of them, if Tesla hits their goals.
Success as as a car company is more about being able to produce cars that people want -- efficiently, than it is about designing cars that people want. Otherwise Lamborghini would be selling more cars than all the other car companies combined, if posters and dreams could somehow translate into units shipped without regard to price or ability to actually build cars in the necessary volume. The two huge success stories in cars are Ford, who invented the assembly line, and Toyota, who invented Kanban, both of which dramatically increased the quality while decreasing the labor input of manufacturing cars. Tesla, with all their claims of automation, produces cars using about 1/3 the automation of Toyota today (9 vs 24 cars for full-time employee per year) while using accounting tricks to claim large per car margins, while showing a large loss using standard accounting practices.
I think if I had to make a guess, Tesla will be in the same chapter in the history of cars as DeLorian and Duesenberg.
[+] [-] SECProto|6 years ago|reply
I don't actually know what chapter that would be. Delorean was around for 3 years, and made ~9000 cars. Duesenberg (of which I had never heard) made race cars, somewhere under 1000... There really isn't a good comparison to be made with Tesla.
[+] [-] briffle|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eBombzor|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baluicu|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gordon_freeman|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ro-_-b|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnJamesRambo|6 years ago|reply
Toyota makes ~9 million cars every year.
Tesla just made its millionth car ever.
Toyota market cap 201B.
Tesla market cap 112B (was ~170B at peak).
The stock market still has very far to fall before it comes back to reality again.
[+] [-] nine_k|6 years ago|reply
Also, Toyota started making cars in 1933 (licensed GM models), Tesla, in 2012 (an all-new class of cars).
[+] [-] Harlekuin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dusted|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RickJWagner|6 years ago|reply
I'm glad to see this. Keep rocking, Tesla!
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] asaph|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baluicu|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Alex_P13|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] chirau|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] chirau|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] antisocial_|6 years ago|reply
Elon Musk is another one of those progressive tech people that the rest of society has stopped caring about because they realized that we weren't progressing to anywhere good, and that technology doesn't solve anything. None of them are leaders to anyone other than a small group of naive 20 somethings.