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Comment by Cookingboy | Hacker News Reader

>Supply Chain is not that big a deal to fix. They will sort out there problems there, they just imo need a few vets from a traditional car company.

Tesla have been trying to and they are still running into many problems, many industry veteran hires and tens of thousands of cars sold later.

I have talked to many people who have worked/work in production as well, and unfortunately they don't share with you the same optimism on how easy it is to scale up supply chain for a large scale luxury auto company. Daimler-Benz has had major reliability problems with both Chrysler and Mercedes and it took Mercedes over a decade to get back to industry average, while Chrysler is still in the gutters.

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It's because of the fast pace of the company. I doubt they are any worse than any other company introducing a new model. As a new model recedes into the past quality issues should decrease linearly, and maybe faster. Alot of the BSR issues (often caused by worker inaccuracy) that Tesla faces today are probably catchable nowadays with a convnet before they even go down the line.

If I had to guess right now, many years after leaving I would guess that Chrysler will eternally be a fail, it's culture is just wrong at every level. Tesla isn't hamstrung by that, or the UAW either (yet).

"I doubt they are any worse than any other company introducing a new model."

Except they are. The Model S is 5 years old (even the refresh model is a year old) and they are still running into parts and build issues. It has improved a long way but during the whole process they had to cut the number of interior and exterior colors/trims just to streamline the production. Other manufacturers introduces new fit/finish and trim options along a model's life span and Tesla does the opposite.

Case in point, the original P85+ came with sports trims inside (such as the red piping on the leather seats) and some unique fit and finishes, with unique sports suspensions and chassis tuning. But later on they eliminated all of those and now a top of the line P100D have the exact interior trim and chassis tuning as the cheapest S60 that cost less than half as much, all for the sake of streamlined production.

And even then they can't find parts for when cars need service or are in an accident.

It sounds like I won't convince you, and it probably shouldn't be convincing because it's Chrysler, but we were having problems like that and worse on a 20 year old platform. The way I got involved in Federal Torque was because we delivered a brand new vehicle that basically fell apart (lost an axle iirc) as the customer was cruising down a freeway. Even among all the problems we had, that was a pretty big deal. As a result we had many meetings about what a serious issue this was.

Chrysler was a special case. First it was saved in the 80s when it ran itself in a ditch and when rolling up a good head of steam, bought was left of AMC, and had a good partnership with Mitsubishi.

The in 98 along comes that infamous Daimler Mercedes merger where Mercedes basically looted Chrysler to prop themselves up. At that time Chrysler was making money hand over fist with their minivan.

Once bled dry, a lot because most new car projects dried up or worse, the platform sharing using older Mercedes setups, they got sold to an investment firm. There were even claims of value gone missing during that sale.

A more apt comparison is watching GM. After bankruptcy they still pushed out the first generation Volt, the second generation took longer but arrive in 2016. However the real kicked was how fast the Bolt went from conception to production. In 2015 it was shown in concept, Jan 2016 in production form, and in customer hands by end of the same year.

The Volt was rushed. As a hybrid, it's pretty good. As a car (ergonomics, user-friendliness, etc) it's not so hot. The B-pillar is in your way when you turn your head to look left. The use of capacitance switches in a car ought to be a firing offense (no tactile feedback and muscle memory is useless because there's nothing for the fingertip to guide the last millimeter of motion). Honda is learning this with the low ratings on their new volume knob-less radio.

The Bolt on the other hand, seems to addressed all those. The local car show is in a couple of weeks and I hope to see one there.

Totally agree about "The merger of equals". No such thing. The Germans took Chrysler for everything they could, like you said - to prop up product quality disasters like the ML and E class (a coworker went through 5 window regulators on his E-430 over 2 years. I had something break on my ML-320 on average every 8.5 weeks)

You forgot the biggest scam: 40 YEARS of rolling back odometers on used cars, and selling them as new (or substantially less used) http://articles.latimes.com/1987-06-25/news/mn-10607_1_odome...

My mom bought a Chrysler LeBaron that, in one year of ownership, the brakes, exhaust, cylinder head, a/c and shock absorbers required service. We were later informed by a federal court that her car was one of the "rollback" vehicles. Chrysler denied it and basically told us "see you in court."

I don't dispute your facts at all, but I think you've strongly missed the key point of how disruption works. Not having as many trim and color options because they can't shove them out the door fast enough is a textbook example of "good enough". It is this very industry's not too distant history from which the quip "they can have it in any color they like, so long as its black" comes from.

What I mean is, you appear to be trying to apply the standard of a very broadly experienced car magazine critic, which yes, will absolutely 100% find a laundry list of grave shortcomings. And they won't matter.

You've strongly missed the point he was making. Tesla has such problems with their supply chain management that they have had to reduce parts and SKUs to the point of using mass grade finishings on lower-luxury class vehicle.

Except in most cases disruption doesn't work. The canonical examples from "The Innovator's Dilemma" all fall apart under scrutiny (as in the "disrupted" companies end up eating their disrupters for breakfast). GM is now doing a better job of executing in Tesla's space than Tesla, and that situation is not going to get better for Tesla.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/23/the-disruption-...

Isn't Elon a sort of supply chain pariah at this point though? His learnings from SpaceX and Tesla so far probably make him one of the most experienced people in modern supply chains.

Not sure 'pariah' was the word you were looking for?

Trying to figure out what word he wanted... prophet?

Paragon?

Expert.

Messiah?

Guru?

It unintentionally might be accurate, though. ~90% of the parts in cars nowadays are manufactured by huge companies that sell to all the major automakers, worldwide. Tesla just doesn't have the volume to get the consistency of supply and quality that the other majors do.

Yes, this is a chicken-and-egg problem. But a real one nonetheless.

Pariah is not the word you're looking for, but either way I'd say the answer is certainly not. Making a few very expensive rockets and luxury cars is not anything like mass producing vehicles on a scale like VW/Toyota/GM/Ford/etc.

I'd say a company like Foxconn is probably a much better example. They are able to mass produce millions of widgets with astonishingly few defects and even begin doing it in secret. Very impressive logistics. If just one component of the iPhone isn't ready the whole line grinds to a halt.

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