Stories like this are a Rorschach test for how one views Tesla. This can be a lazy and dangerous design process that shows the company's unprofessionalism or it can be a smart hack to get the job done while minimizing costs and supply chain restraints.
I have no views on Tesla, I know a bit about the cars and the company, but not much. I honestly can't understand how anyone can see this as anything but a lazy and dangerous design process that shows the company's unprofessionalism. MAYBE it's not dangerous, but if they're doing this, what else have they done that no one has found yet? It's crazy that a car that costs this much would have something like that in place from the factory.
Assuming this really is random consumer crap, and not just an automotive product that is designed to look like something from the cheaper end of Ikea for some reason, I really don't see how this could possibly be seen in a good light. How will this material react to the 10+ years of hot/cold cycles it'll be exposed to? What are its fire properties? Will it decay/mold (if it's an MDF-ish product, which it _looks_ like, though who knows). And so on. There are just too many unanswered questions and the whole issue could be solved by doing things properly.
And if they need to do this (due to part shortages?) what OTHER bizarre substitutions might they be making?
Again, there's an outside chance that this is a proper product that just looks really cheap-DIY-y, but I wouldn't bet on it.
First, they designed this cool octovalve thing so they could use the one heat pump for all the heating and cooling needs of the car.
Second, they have this LCC hanging off the side of it, a top heavy part mounted laterally with no support other than where it's bolted to the octovalve at its base.
Third, they realise there's a problem and need to relieve stress from the mounting point. So there we get the metal strap with a spreader.
Fourth, they realise there's no point getting plastic moulded parts specially made when they can just use bamboo, wood, or fake wood which are not only cheaper but have better vibration damping qualities than the plastic part.
No doubt they'll redesign this part at a later stage, but since it's a contract-manufactured part they need to give the contractor time to roll out the new part and they need to deplete inventory. Will the new design involve modifications to the octovalve? Perhaps the new design will simply have a bracket down the side to provide vertical support?
> This can be a lazy and dangerous design process that shows the company's unprofessionalism or it can be a smart hack to get the job done while minimizing costs and supply chain restraints.
It can be a dessert topping and a floor wax; its a hack, potentially smart depending on the constraints posed to those doing the hack, to get the job done whole minimizing costs and supply chain constraints.
It's also, quite arguably, something evidencing a lazy and dangerous design process at a higher level than the level at which it is a potentially smart hack.
I think this is cool! It reminds me of how Ferrari did a very similar thing with the dabs of yellow paint they used to mark bolts that had to withstand intense vibration:
That's standard operating procedure in a whole lot of industries where proper torque is mission critical. If you ever find yourself near high precision manufacturing or industrial lifting equipment (think hooks and lifting eyes where a crane picks a load up) you can't miss the torque marks on bolt heads and/or nuts.
Same deal with GM restoration judging. Judges at Bloomington Gold will get very specific about the bolts used on a car, but a panel was held with a retired GM factory employee who put together first or second-gen Corvettes, and he said something similar: Sometimes they ran out of bolts at the factory, and when they did somebody would run down to the local hardware outlet and just buy whatever bolts fit the spec.
This kind of thing is done in aviation, and the stuff is called Torque Seal or Inspection Lacquer. You tighten the nut to the proper torque, and put a dab of lacquer across the thread and nut. Whenever you inspect the part later, if you see the seal broken or mis-aligned, you know the part has vibrated out of spec, and need to replace and re-torque the bolt.
Unfortunately it's more the opposite - literally cutting this corner would be not bothering with the extra material that's presumably there to keep the strap off the heatsink, i.e. so giving it a wider corner.
It looks like a bit of a bodge, but plenty of that goes on, and the less automated a process the more it will happen. (Because if highly automated it's more difficult/expensive vs. ditching the problem unit, or waiting for the designed-in part rather than re-tool.)
There is a lot of room for cutting corner in manufacturing and it all translates to quality and consistency.
My brother in law has a law firm and he happen to work with two different car manufacturing brands. He was explaining how two brands choose the glue differently to build the same part of their products. While for the Chinese brand it was only important that the glue has the minimum standard to be used in their production line, the Japanese brand was very specific about which exact glue from two particular brands can be used there. Which both happen to be more expensive than similar products with same standard on paper. But Japanese would only use that particular product because they did all their quality and durability tests with that.
This is something you saw all the time back in the day from normal car manufacturers (heck, some GM cars were famous for coming off of the production lines with bottles and trash inside of panels).
This only seems so chintzy to us today because of how much we take for granted from manufacturing today. Modern automakers are running lean operations that are insanely optimized (being able to keep consistent production with barely any inventory). Tesla has famously had problems achieving lean production (keeping huge inventories of other parts, and consistently running out of others).
This wouldn't be so embarrassing if Musk had not spent so much time throwing shade on other car manufacturers.
This looks and sounds bad, but is it actually bad? Regardless, beyond the simple perception of "cheapness", the humor value lent by the specific choice of material certainly doesn't help the optics.
Besides looking like a kid's go-cart, I think it's bad in the sense that cars go through safety testing and are governed by a ton of rules and regulations, and it's unlikely they've tested the cars with parts scrounged from Home Depot.
Assuming it's safe, then the worst part, for Tesla, is probably just the terrible optics. It's one thing for a do-it-yourselfer to hack their own car, but I suspect nobody really wants to drop $60k on a new car that's hacked together.
If there's any reason for that metal strap to exist (i.e. it meaningfully prevents the part from falling off the car) then the crush strength and so forth of that wood needs to be considered.
I was on a call with Tesla salesperson to purchase a Model Y. After watching a few Youtube videos on quality and now this I'm 100% backing off from it. A BMW is cheaper and much better built
Yeah, you don't buy a tesla for build quality. You buy a Tesla if you want and EV that has solid self driving with top performance. It lacks in premium service and manufacturing quality.
His handlebars had started slipping. Not badly, he said, just a little when you shoved hard on them. I warned him not to use his adjustable wrench on the tightening nuts. It was likely to damage the chrome and start small rust spots. He agreed to use my metric sockets and box-ends.
When he brought his motorcycle over I got my wrenches out but then noticed that no amount of tightening would stop the slippage, because the ends of the collars were pinched shut.
"You’re going to have to shim those out," I said.
"What’s shim?"
"It’s a thin, flat strip of metal. You just slip it around the handlebar under the collar there and it will open up the collar to where you can tighten it again. You use shims like that to make adjustments in all kinds of machines."
"Oh," he said. He was getting interested. "Good. Where do you buy them?"
"I’ve got some right here," I said gleefully, holding up a can of beer in my hand.
He didn’t understand for a moment. Then he said, "What, the can?"
"Sure," I said, "best shim stock in the world."
I thought this was pretty clever myself. Save him a trip to God knows where to get shim stock. Save him time. Save him money.
But to my surprise he didn’t see the cleverness of this at all. In fact he got noticeably haughty about the whole thing. Pretty soon he was dodging and filling with all kinds of excuses and, before I realized what his real attitude was, we had decided not to fix the handlebars after all.
As far as I know those handlebars are still loose. And I believe now that he was actually offended at the time. I had had the nerve to propose repair of his new eighteen-hundred dollar BMW, the pride of a half-century of German mechanical finesse, with a piece of old beer can!
Ach, du lieber!
Since then we have had very few conversations about motorcycle maintenance. None, now that I think of it.
You push it any further and suddenly you are angry, without knowing why.
I should say, to explain this, that beer-can aluminum is soft and sticky, as metals go. Perfect for the application. Aluminum doesn’t oxidize in wet weather...or, more precisely, it always has a thin layer of oxide that prevents any further oxidation. Also perfect.
In other words, any true German mechanic, with a half-century of mechanical finesse behind him, would have concluded that this particular solution to this particular technical problem was perfect.
For a while I thought what I should have done was sneak over to the workbench, cut a shim from the beer can, remove the printing and then come back and tell him we were in luck, it was the last one I had, specially imported from Germany. That would have done it. A special shim from the private stock of Baron Alfred Krupp, who had to sell it at a great sacrifice. Then he would have gone gaga over it.
That Krupp’s-private-shim fantasy gratified me for a while, but then it wore off and I saw it was just being vindictive. In its place grew that old feeling I’ve talked about before, a feeling that there’s something bigger involved than is apparent on the surface. You follow these little discrepancies long enough and they sometimes open up into huge revelations. There was just a feeling on my part that this was something a little bigger than I wanted to take on without thinking about it, and I turned instead to my usual habit of trying to extract causes and effects to see what was involved that could possibly lead to such an impasse between John’s view of that lovely shim and my own. This comes up all the time in mechanical work. A hang-up. You just sit and stare and think, and search randomly for new information, and go away and come back again, and after a while the unseen factors start to emerge.
What emerged in vague form at first and then in sharper outline was the explanation that I had been seeing that shim in a kind of intellectual, rational, cerebral way in which the scientific properties of the metal were all that counted. John was going at it immediately and intuitively, grooving on it. I was going at it in terms of underlying form. He was going at it in terms of immediate appearance. I was seeing what the shim meant. He was seeing what the shim was. That’s how I arrived at that distinction. And when you see what the shim is, in this case, it’s depressing. Who likes to think of a beautiful precision machine fixed with an old hunk of junk?
-- Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
From Jalopnik, Munro is quoted as saying:
“The metal bad routes through the Plastic housing for the Thermal system and the band cracked a portion of it.”
I’m still kind of in shock that Tesla still sells software upgrades for things like disabling traction control “Drift Mode” or for turning on the rear seat heaters. Perhaps I’m old fashioned, but if I’m purchasing a vehicle I can be allowed to wrench on it without being banned from supercharger stations
I would expext this on Yugo. I dont mind the fix if it works, but I would expect this from someone doing it at home not from a $50k car. If I would find this in my car I would just return it to the factory and the linked article is right. What else can be found?
Electrics don't.. all of the intense heat from an internal combustion car comes from the combustion process itself. There's probably some heat built up in the drive components on the Tesla and surely by the wheels from the braking, but not in the 'engine bay'/frunk.
the "official" part is a piece of clear plastic, which is probably acrylic, which melts around 160C. (it could be something else, but it's transparent and there's no reason to make it transparent other than that's what's cheap. and making transparent non-acrylic plastics isn't cheap)
…an electric car? Unless there’s a V8 Hemi option for the Model Y I’m not aware of.
And anyway, this is seemingly taking the place of a plastic part, and if the heat exchanger wasn’t melting the factory-spec plastic, I imagine it’s not hot enough to start this wood smoldering.
(I still would prefer my fancy car have the proper, automative grade plastic.)
[+] [-] slg|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blakesterz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsynnott|5 years ago|reply
And if they need to do this (due to part shortages?) what OTHER bizarre substitutions might they be making?
Again, there's an outside chance that this is a proper product that just looks really cheap-DIY-y, but I wouldn't bet on it.
[+] [-] manicdee|5 years ago|reply
First, they designed this cool octovalve thing so they could use the one heat pump for all the heating and cooling needs of the car.
Second, they have this LCC hanging off the side of it, a top heavy part mounted laterally with no support other than where it's bolted to the octovalve at its base.
Third, they realise there's a problem and need to relieve stress from the mounting point. So there we get the metal strap with a spreader.
Fourth, they realise there's no point getting plastic moulded parts specially made when they can just use bamboo, wood, or fake wood which are not only cheaper but have better vibration damping qualities than the plastic part.
No doubt they'll redesign this part at a later stage, but since it's a contract-manufactured part they need to give the contractor time to roll out the new part and they need to deplete inventory. Will the new design involve modifications to the octovalve? Perhaps the new design will simply have a bracket down the side to provide vertical support?
[+] [-] sschueller|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HumblyTossed|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragonwriter|5 years ago|reply
It can be a dessert topping and a floor wax; its a hack, potentially smart depending on the constraints posed to those doing the hack, to get the job done whole minimizing costs and supply chain constraints.
It's also, quite arguably, something evidencing a lazy and dangerous design process at a higher level than the level at which it is a potentially smart hack.
[+] [-] dleslie|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] maxharris|5 years ago|reply
http://www.tomyang.net/cars/story1.htm
[+] [-] dan_quixote|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Scramblejams|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryandrake|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xeromal|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sedatk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] temp0826|5 years ago|reply
Well, yah. Is it that big of an ego-blemish to have "something so cheap" in your space-chariot?
[+] [-] xeromal|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeffbee|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msoad|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OJFord|5 years ago|reply
It looks like a bit of a bodge, but plenty of that goes on, and the less automated a process the more it will happen. (Because if highly automated it's more difficult/expensive vs. ditching the problem unit, or waiting for the designed-in part rather than re-tool.)
[+] [-] cbhl|5 years ago|reply
Here's an interview Elon did with Sal Khan back in 2013. He literally had employees running around to buy as many USB cables as he could.
https://youtu.be/vDwzmJpI4io?t=31
[+] [-] stunt|5 years ago|reply
My brother in law has a law firm and he happen to work with two different car manufacturing brands. He was explaining how two brands choose the glue differently to build the same part of their products. While for the Chinese brand it was only important that the glue has the minimum standard to be used in their production line, the Japanese brand was very specific about which exact glue from two particular brands can be used there. Which both happen to be more expensive than similar products with same standard on paper. But Japanese would only use that particular product because they did all their quality and durability tests with that.
[+] [-] legitster|5 years ago|reply
This only seems so chintzy to us today because of how much we take for granted from manufacturing today. Modern automakers are running lean operations that are insanely optimized (being able to keep consistent production with barely any inventory). Tesla has famously had problems achieving lean production (keeping huge inventories of other parts, and consistently running out of others).
This wouldn't be so embarrassing if Musk had not spent so much time throwing shade on other car manufacturers.
[+] [-] nabla9|5 years ago|reply
Or it can be sign that Tesla still runs their supply chain management in a style that works for small volume luxury sports cars.
[+] [-] happytoexplain|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlarocco|5 years ago|reply
Assuming it's safe, then the worst part, for Tesla, is probably just the terrible optics. It's one thing for a do-it-yourselfer to hack their own car, but I suspect nobody really wants to drop $60k on a new car that's hacked together.
[+] [-] jeffbee|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msoad|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xeromal|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] et2o|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dawnerd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] winrid|5 years ago|reply
Anyway it looks like poor supply chain management. They ran out of the plastic corner pieces.
[+] [-] AlliedEnvy|5 years ago|reply
When he brought his motorcycle over I got my wrenches out but then noticed that no amount of tightening would stop the slippage, because the ends of the collars were pinched shut.
"You’re going to have to shim those out," I said.
"What’s shim?"
"It’s a thin, flat strip of metal. You just slip it around the handlebar under the collar there and it will open up the collar to where you can tighten it again. You use shims like that to make adjustments in all kinds of machines."
"Oh," he said. He was getting interested. "Good. Where do you buy them?"
"I’ve got some right here," I said gleefully, holding up a can of beer in my hand.
He didn’t understand for a moment. Then he said, "What, the can?"
"Sure," I said, "best shim stock in the world."
I thought this was pretty clever myself. Save him a trip to God knows where to get shim stock. Save him time. Save him money.
But to my surprise he didn’t see the cleverness of this at all. In fact he got noticeably haughty about the whole thing. Pretty soon he was dodging and filling with all kinds of excuses and, before I realized what his real attitude was, we had decided not to fix the handlebars after all.
As far as I know those handlebars are still loose. And I believe now that he was actually offended at the time. I had had the nerve to propose repair of his new eighteen-hundred dollar BMW, the pride of a half-century of German mechanical finesse, with a piece of old beer can!
Ach, du lieber!
Since then we have had very few conversations about motorcycle maintenance. None, now that I think of it.
You push it any further and suddenly you are angry, without knowing why.
I should say, to explain this, that beer-can aluminum is soft and sticky, as metals go. Perfect for the application. Aluminum doesn’t oxidize in wet weather...or, more precisely, it always has a thin layer of oxide that prevents any further oxidation. Also perfect.
In other words, any true German mechanic, with a half-century of mechanical finesse behind him, would have concluded that this particular solution to this particular technical problem was perfect.
For a while I thought what I should have done was sneak over to the workbench, cut a shim from the beer can, remove the printing and then come back and tell him we were in luck, it was the last one I had, specially imported from Germany. That would have done it. A special shim from the private stock of Baron Alfred Krupp, who had to sell it at a great sacrifice. Then he would have gone gaga over it.
That Krupp’s-private-shim fantasy gratified me for a while, but then it wore off and I saw it was just being vindictive. In its place grew that old feeling I’ve talked about before, a feeling that there’s something bigger involved than is apparent on the surface. You follow these little discrepancies long enough and they sometimes open up into huge revelations. There was just a feeling on my part that this was something a little bigger than I wanted to take on without thinking about it, and I turned instead to my usual habit of trying to extract causes and effects to see what was involved that could possibly lead to such an impasse between John’s view of that lovely shim and my own. This comes up all the time in mechanical work. A hang-up. You just sit and stare and think, and search randomly for new information, and go away and come back again, and after a while the unseen factors start to emerge.
What emerged in vague form at first and then in sharper outline was the explanation that I had been seeing that shim in a kind of intellectual, rational, cerebral way in which the scientific properties of the metal were all that counted. John was going at it immediately and intuitively, grooving on it. I was going at it in terms of underlying form. He was going at it in terms of immediate appearance. I was seeing what the shim meant. He was seeing what the shim was. That’s how I arrived at that distinction. And when you see what the shim is, in this case, it’s depressing. Who likes to think of a beautiful precision machine fixed with an old hunk of junk?
-- Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Tarragon|5 years ago|reply
https://jalopnik.com/tesla-model-y-owners-have-found-home-de...
[+] [-] GaryNumanVevo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stiray|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rasz|5 years ago|reply
Rob, I hope you never look at the welds on Ferrari Testarossa, F40, Dino, or any Maserati from the <=80s for that matter.
[+] [-] Grustaf|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] werber|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeyouse|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notatoad|5 years ago|reply
wood won't burn at 160C.
[+] [-] perardi|5 years ago|reply
And anyway, this is seemingly taking the place of a plastic part, and if the heat exchanger wasn’t melting the factory-spec plastic, I imagine it’s not hot enough to start this wood smoldering.
(I still would prefer my fancy car have the proper, automative grade plastic.)
[+] [-] webignition|5 years ago|reply