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Comment by xiphias | Hacker News Reader

Missing production target is OK. Shipping crappy cars is not OK.

I can't tell if you're suggesting Tesla is shipping crappy cars, or if you're saying that missing the production target is OK because they aren't shipping crappy cars.

A Tesla Model S is about the furthest possible thing from a "crappy car".

Eh... by all accounts, it's pretty 'crappy' compared to other vehicles in its class. Lots of recurring issues that seem to have eluded quality control.

While I think it's mostly a symbolic gesture, it's clear from the fact that Elon has set up an office for himself (with a cot for sleeping) at the end of the Tesla production line that he agrees there is a lot of room for improvement in the quality of their cars.

It's easy to make 100 cars well. It's much harder to make 10,000 cars well.

I'm not a fan of the Tesla brand/vehicles and I have a number of criticisms for the Model S but I wouldn't go so far as to call it 'crappy.' I think more appropriate phrases would be "not fully refined" and "unpolished."

The cars work, and work well. The important systems are handled properly, if they weren't I'd be complaining about them. Quality control is a hard thing to get right at scale, I think the company deserves a little respect for handling the critical systems well.

> I'm not a fan of the Tesla brand/vehicles and I have a number of criticisms for the Model S but I wouldn't go so far as to call it 'crappy.' I think more appropriate phrases would be "not fully refined" and "unpolished."

It's "crappy" for a higher end luxury vehicle, not for a car in general. A $70-90k car should be fully refined and quite polished.

A lot of those 90k goes towards the battery. That leaves a lot less for perfectly stitched leather upholstery.

If the batteries are so expensive they can't have a proper interior it is odd that Tesla ships some models with extra battery capacity for future purchase options:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/5/11597508/tesla-model-s-70-b...

I think the interior is shit because it's hard to do at scale and Tesla hasn't been doing it for very long.

> I think more appropriate phrases would be "not fully refined" and "unpolished."

When companies like Toyota, which have been in the car manufacturing game for 80 years, still suffer from recalls ( 11 recalls in 2016 alone! http://toyotanews.pressroom.toyota.com/section_display.cfm?s... ), why do we have a stratospheric bar for Tesla?

>"not fully refined" and "unpolished."

When you are talking about 100k luxury sedans isn't that exactly what you are paying for? I expect those things out of my car that costs ~40k.

I still give Tesla a thumb up at trying. Others have had many generations to fine-tune their cars. This is only their first generation cars.

The cot story was about the Model X, not Model S. The X is (was?) still experiencing a lot of trouble due to the over-ambitious nature of the product and the fact that they're just starting to gain experience with producing it. The S is much more mature, having been out for four years now.

I think the S's quality issues are exaggerated. It's not the most reliable car in the world, but it's probably around average. It just gets a lot more attention, partly because people love to talk about Tesla, and partly because people think (and Tesla certainly encourages thinking) that EVs are inherently more reliable.

From everything I've heard, your final comment is exactly backwards. The early Model Xs, when they were building them by the dozen or hundred, were plagued with problems. These days, now that they're building them by the thousands each month, they're much better. The early Ss likewise had a lot of problems, which smoothed out as volume ramped up.

No. The Model S is pretty bad too. If you compare it to other cars in its price range it simply isn't that competitive. The interior is more comparable to a Hyundai or Mazda than a BMW, Mercedes or Range Rover. And of course the notable quality issues. They do get a lot of things right e.g. exterior design, EV, performance so I wouldn't call it a crap car. But I also would never purchase one.

Some people love the interior. In any case, that's a different sort of "quality" than the mechanical reliability being discussed here.

What do you mean by "And of course the notable quality issues"?

It's hard for me to imagine the Model X, with its automated everything can be made to be reliable. There are just too many motors and hinges and tracks, especially on the rear doors.

Which will be compounded by the misguided belief that "electric cars don't need maintenance" and the growing charging network making EV ownership more attractive to people living in the Northeast, Midwest and other places where they dump corrosive chemicals on the road every week or so for a good chunk of the year.

There have been a number of reports from different owners that the Model X has had some serious quality issues[1], and there was definitely a story posted here a week or so ago about Tesla reaching an NDA'd settlement with at least one buyer.

[1]:http://www.consumerreports.org/tesla/tesla-model-x-quality-i...

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