Early owners of Tesla's Model 3 are reporting quality problems | Hacker News Reader

Early owners of Tesla's Model 3 are reporting quality problems

latimes.com

92 pointsedward135 comments

About a year ago, Tesla had a little demo setup in downtown Burlingame (here in SV area). There was a Model X and a Model S. I love cars, so I went to take a peek, but when I looked at the Model X, I instantly saw so many manufacturing flaws. I could not believe how badly a $100K (or about) was assembled. I thought to myself most cars in $20k range are not that poorly manufactured. One side of the hood had such a larger gap compared to the other side. The lines of the vehicle from A pillar to back did not align.

While I was there, a couple arrived with their BWM i3. We started talking and I pointed out the Tesla flaws and decided to examine their i3. It was like one care was made in a first-world and the other one assembled in a third-world country. The gaps were so tight compared to the Model X with near perfect symmetry. You can see the difference between a company with a history of auto making and one stumbling to catch up.

These cars should all be labeled "Beta". That's the only honest thing, Musk can and should do.

I don't disagree with your assessment, but I point out that it makes the implicit assumption that Tesla customers care about fit and finish.

Tesla is selling every car they make. Not a single one lands in a parking lot at a dealer while picky buyers survey it and compare it to something else. At the moment, the Tesla market is completely people who will buy it even if it has old In-n-Out wrappers in the back seat.

What that means is that for Tesla, today, putting any money into fit and finish, rather than in speed of production, loses them money. Once they have a pipeline that can make more cars than they have pre-orders for, and start putting them out on lots for more discerning eyes, then the investment in fit and finish will give a marginal boost in sales.

In that case, I'll wait a few years, until the fit and finish catches up.

Tesla is already starting to see competitors... if they don't get better quality control, it will probably hurt them soon enough

The reason why Teslas don't sit at a dealership is because Tesla doesn't have dealerships.

Sure they do - they just own and operate them themselves.

They’re not, in the scheme of things, making very many cars, though. Once the true believers are exhausted, I suspect they’re in trouble.

The idea of the Model 3 is that there is another, much larger, set of true believers who will pay $30-40k, behind those that already paid $100k. Behind that, a much larger set if they get to $20k. In each case, early adopters can subsidize learning about the production run, and be happy as long as they get a unique experience (bumps allowed). I know a dozen folks who were part of the $100k group, and zero of them are "exhausted".

If it was getting better all the time, this might be convincing. But there’s no reason to think it is. They’ve been making cars for years, now, and the quality still seems to be dubious.

If anything, achieving significant volume may make it worse; imagine how overloaded their service department will be in a couple of years if they’re still around.

That idea has yet to be tested. That will happen when/if (pick a word depending on your opinion of Tesla) Tesla’s production levels get large enough to make serious progress on fulfilling the existing pre-orders, especially of the cheaper models (afaik, Tesla is only delivering the more expensive variants of the 3, for now)

GP didn't mean "exhausted" as in tired, they meant "they've run out", i.e., once all the true believers with cash to buy have bought, and Tesla now has to sell to the population at large.

I think the problem people are pointing out is that those cars go sold so quickly because of Tesla's great marketing and brand image. Quality problems could change that. If Tesla goes from being "the sexy new car company" to "the first company that really made proper electric cars, but now other people do it better", then they could lose it all very, very quickly.

The problem is that Tesla sells 100% of their cars to their base of automatic buyers, and they still lose money. When they try to sell more cars and compete with car makers, they will need to have comparable build quality in order to at least break even.

>Tesla is selling every car they make. Not a single one lands in a parking lot at a dealer while picky buyers survey it and compare it to something else.

What are you talking about? There are plenty of inventory Model S and Model X around. Very often you also see these sub-50 mile cars get slapped with a "demo discount" as stores try to unload them.

Model S and Model X's sale is definitely, definitely not supply constrained. You can check their earning reports to see the inventory.

As I understand it, that "inventory" is from their policy to repurchase cars from owners to assure a high resale value. They discontinued that program in 2016 apparently [1]. They also repossess cars that they financed for buyers.

I haven't found any evidence yet that they don't sell every car that comes off the assembly line, to an end user.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-prices/no-more-tesl...

No, inventory cars can be new ones as well. They were literally involved in a "scandal" last year as some sales rep put a "demo" sticker on brand new cars to give it showroom discount, in order trying to move them off the lot.

Yes, they do have less inventory than most cheaper manufacturers because 1. Their stores do not order them in advance and 2. They are built to order. That alone doesn't mean they are supply constrained because they do have the capacity to manufacturer more.

I disagree with the assumption that anyone spending $100K on a vehicle cares nothing about fit and finish. They may be willing to buy into the vision, but the segment of the population who can afford these fancy toys definitely care about their appearance.

That conflates two things in the discussion. People can care about something and have it affect their buying behavior, and people can car about something without it affecting their buying behavior.

There are certainly people who are not buying Tesla cars because they don't feel they have the value or quality for the money they cost. And I am sure there are people who own Tesla's who wished that the fit and finish was better than it is.

But from Tesla's perspective, improvements to fit and finish are addressed on the assembly line and they slow down the number of cars per day they can build. They also reduce yield by increasing quality check fallout from the manufacturing line. Taking that hit to production rate or yield does not make sense when the current customers are not either cancelling orders or returning cars purchased due to "minor" fit and finish issues.

That comes with an assumption that right now is the only time Tesla want customers to buy a car from them. Tesla wants these customers to buy another car from them again 3 years from now, and wants them to show off their Tesla to all their friends and have them remark about how cool it is, so that they want to buy a Tesla three years from now.

Not having the fit and finish perfect is going to be something that works against them on both those fronts. If Tesla is truly deciding to optimize for production targets over quality, that seems incredibly shortsighted.

That is a fair point, the 'second' car sale is going to be tougher. And yet that has always been the case since if Tesla is/was successful the second car purchase would come at a time where there were many more choices.

Very few people are alive today who have witnessed the founding, growth, and eventual success of an automobile company. It is an insanely cash intensive kind of thing. The whole notion of discriminating on fit and finish is its own interesting story when Japan, which was synonymous with "junk" cars decided to compete with American car makers on fit and finish. Until that point, only very high end German cars were achieving the level of precision that defined good engineering at that level.

There is an interesting lesson here for people who are able to see it, around prioritizing cash expenditures to achieve the highest revenue (and thus survival), rather than engineering excellence. There are examples of dead companies that went the other way. Understanding this trade off is the difference between a senior engineer and an engineer who can operate at the executive level.

> The whole notion of discriminating on fit and finish is its own interesting story when Japan, which was synonymous with "junk" cars decided to compete with American car makers on fit and finish.

In that case, I think there's a big distinction because of the different market segments Toyota/Honda operated in at the time vs. Tesla now. People buying a $20,000 car are more willing to accept a couple of quality kinks. That's not nearly the same case in the premium segment that Tesla still competes in.

> There is an interesting lesson here for people who are able to see it, around prioritizing cash expenditures to achieve the highest revenue (and thus survival), rather than engineering excellence.

That's a possibility -- that Tesla needs to get to profitability fast enough in order to stave off death. But I'm not entirely sure that if their brand doesn't survive that it's a fate worth living.

Also, that doesn't really entirely jive with their behavior. Tesla has been burning hordes of cash investing in new initiatives like the Tesla semi-truck, operating SolarCity, the PowerWall, etc. If they were so concerned about getting to profitability why would they be making those massive investments now? Also, why would they not issue more debt or equity in order to give themselves a longer runaway? Given their earlier bond sales, they easily could acquire more capital at a low coupon.

Owner surveys show that Tesla is #1 in "would you buy another one". Can you suggest any data that shows Tesla is having a significant problem?

Personally, when I look at the UI on the vast majority of cars, it's embarassing. Fonts don't even match, it's like looking at a website from 1996. I could say that all Fords should be labeled "Beta" until they can get up to Tesla quality. But, people just care about different things in a car. Some people do not care about how many millimeters the gap next to the hood is.

One can argue the quality of physical manufacturing process has a larger impact to the long term reliability and core functionality of a car than say... fonts in the infotainment system.

But maybe that's just crazy talk.

I'd be on board with you if we were talking about cars falling apart or actual maintenance.

UX in radio receivers drive me crazy every day. Slightly non-symmetrical gaps in hardware I don't look at? Not really ever.

And you'd think the latter would tell you something about maintenance costs. Maybe it does in aggregate? But I've had expensive lemons and beaters that withstood anything, and vice versa, it just really depends.

You're right, to a degree. The benefit of electric cars is they're mechanically simpler, and so these tolerances do not matter quite as much for long-term reliability.

EVs are only simpler when it comes to drive train. When it comes to body fit/finish this is the reason early Tesla Model S had issues with door handles being stuck and leaky moon roofs.

I don't know about you, but if my $100k car is literally leaking water during a rainstorm, I'd call it a reliability issue.

If electric vehicles are so much simpler then why does Tesla have relatively poor drivetrain reliability ratings compared to gasoline vehicles? By contrast the Toyota Prius is mechanically extremely complex, yet it's one of the most reliable and durable vehicles on the road.

This is exactly my impression. A friend bought a new Tesla S and one day while getting out of it I saw some quality problems that are easily seen on the outside by just passing by. I wonder what problems could arise if I inspect it in details.

We have developed one of the modules for all BMW series and I used to visit some of the BMW plants in Europe so I have a relatively good impression of their quality. Just an example: the tires are screwed manually by hand. With an automatic screwdriver, but still by hand... in Germany. When I asked why, they said that they have tried doing this automatically, but back then ( 5 years ago) there was no robot that could do it with that quality. So sometimes quality depends heavily on experience. And Tesla does not have enough experience.

This friend of mine had to bring back his Tesla a couple of weeks after he bought it, because the salesman told him on the day he received the car, that there were some small details that needed some improvements. On a 100k car. And unfortunately they have not fixed the flaws that I observed. Apparently there were also other things to fix.

I am huge fan of Tesla. I hope they succeed. But I will not but one in the 10 years. I will just let them gain some experience with serial production first.

Oh really? Didn't Elon Mask call Toyota's manufacturing "slower than a Grandma with a walker" and he thinks Tesla will school Toyota, the company that literally wrote the book on efficient manufacturing?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2018/02/16/tesla-th...

Silicon Valley hubris can be downright embarrassing sometimes.

>Didn't Elon Mask call Toyota's manufacturing "slower than a Grandma with a walker"

No, he said that of "Today's auto factories" not of Toyota in particular.

>and he thinks Tesla will school Toyota

The title of the article says that, but it doesn't appear Elon ever did, at least he is not quoted as such in that article. He is claiming he thinks they can eventually reach, via great difficulty, 5% more production from that plant than Toyota did.

>No, he said that of "Today's auto factories" not of Toyota in particular.

Last time I checked the big automakers all operate under Toyota's manufacturing philosophy (again, they literally wrote the book on this subject), and more than once Elon has dismissed industry's knowledge and experience in this field.

Even without involving Toyota, most of "today's auto factories" operate at a better efficiency and are producing higher quality vehicles in a larger quantity than the Tesla factories. Maybe Elon is right, but it's best to say that kind of things after you are proven right.

They aren't "Toyota's manufacturing philosophy". Kaizen is, generally, a result of Deming and total quality management. Deming failed to convince top brass of American auto manufacturing and took his process elsewhere. Toyota and Mazda being the two more notables to adopt early.

Read about GM's Hamtramck failures in the 80s for context on the ignorance of US auto brands as they tried to outdo Toyota after starting to lose the quality wars.

You're all over the comments on this article dumping on Tesla's quality, but evidence seems to be anecdotal (in the form of comments on a forum for this article).

Also last time I checked, the big automakers investigated and then abandoned Toyota's manufacturing strategies, and it's the Korean manufacturers who have taken top quality marks lately while Toyota has fallen. GM and American manufacturers may have improved, but are still straight garbage when it comes to quality control... I dare you to buy a Buick.

You might be write, but as you said it's best to say that kind of things after you are proven right, and anecdotes and comments in a forum are hardly proof.

There are few surveys of Tesla owners because Tesla refuses to disclose buyer lists to third-party research companies that have been trying to conduct such surveys.

Also, anecdotes are data. They're not observational data, but they're data all the same. One or two anecdotes might not indicate anything, but when you're dealing with dozens or even hundreds of anecdotes from disparate groups of owners, that's data that something is seriously amiss with Tesla build quality.

> Tesla refuses to disclose buyer lists to third-party research companies that have been trying to conduct such surveys.

I would prefer it if my car manufacturer wasn't selling out my personal details so I can be harassed for surveys.

Is disclosing a buyer list really that big an obstacle to those research companies? Like, how much could I charge for a (large) list of Tesla owners?

It seems like an easy thing to motivate (share your Tesla story, learn about other owners', here's a free t-shirt) and confirm (what's your VIN). Much easier than other target audiences to develop a true survey audience...

> Also last time I checked, the big automakers investigated and then abandoned Toyota's manufacturing strategies, and it's the Korean manufacturers who have taken top quality marks lately while Toyota has fallen.

Is there anywhere I can read about this? I was still under the impression that Kanban/Kaizen and the whole package are the state of the art.

Here's the evidence. It's not a true random sample though.

https://www.truedelta.com/Tesla-Model-S/powertrain-reliabili...

The Forbes article quotes Musk saying 50% more production should be achievable.

> The title of the article says that, but it doesn't appear Elon ever did, at least he is not quoted as such in that article. He is claiming he thinks they can eventually reach, via great difficulty, 5% more production from that plant than Toyota did.

From the article:

But that's just the beginning. Musk said he is considering a subterranean conveyance system that would carry seats and other sub-assemblies from nearby facilities to the assembly plant via new tunnels dug by The Boring Company, Musk's newest company.

"These things get increasingly difficult, but they're all doable," he said. "But I can see a path where we get to, say, 600,000 Model 3 production and 100,000 S and X, so maybe 700,000, which should be like almost 50% more than GM or Toyota got out of the plant. I mean that seems achievable."

Thanks for the quote! However:

> he thinks Tesla will school Toyota

> These things get increasingly difficult, but they're all doable [...] should be like almost 50% more than GM or Toyota got out of the plant. I mean that seems achievable.

Musk has a lot of problems with idealism, but he seems to be pretty grounded here. Maybe still too idealistic ... But "seems achievable" === "Sillicon Valley hubris"? Should we stop with even thinking about improving anything?

I didn't mean to set you off. I was pointing out that your quote of 5% was wrong. It should be 50%.

> and he thinks Tesla will school Toyota

When did he say that he thinks that?

IIRC the video where Musk was talking about how fast the assembly line moves, the "slower than a Grandma with a walker" on the speed of current auto line velocities is literally correct. He was discussing manufacturing plant efficiencies and how he was hoping to get Tesla's lines up to at least a walking speed. With Tesla right now, I think he is focusing more on the efficiency of the manufacturing process than the output quality. Maybe that is a bad idea and it might fail. But if he ends up with a large reductions in manufacturing costs/per car and can get quality up to industry standards, he will once again revolutionize the auto industry and other manufactures follow have to follow his lead.

I think he is focusing more on the efficiency of the manufacturing process than the output quality.

Citation needed. Tesla's current process is known to be a magnitude (or more) less efficient than any other Western car maker. Just a few months ago, they were still building Model 3 cars by hand.

Tesla's having difficulty scaling up to monthly quantities that other car manufacturers can reach in under a week, and Tesla's quality control has dropped through the floor while it struggles to achieve that paltry output. Tesla might be able to achieve "large reductions in costs" and get quality up to industry standards, but after 10 years and 4 models of cars, they have yet to prove that they can achieve either.

The F150 assembly line in Dearborn Assembly is ~650 trucks per 10 hour shift. They can't keep up with single shift numbers, much less weekly output.

> Just a few months ago, they were still building Model 3 cars by hand.

And this why quality is all over the map. Manufacturing cars at scale is hard. It's a similar problem that Apple has. There are designs and components, and then there are designs and components you can manufacture at scale. The two are often very different.

A summary of Musk's factory improvement ambitions can be read here[1]. But I really recommend spending some time viewing Musk in long video formats if you want to get a good idea of what he is thinking and his general philosophy. The video of the shareholders meeting that the article is discussing can be found on youtube (part I [2] and part II [3]) and has a good summary of Tesla from the people involved.

[1] https://www.teslarati.com/musk-aims-tesla-factory-100-times-... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cZhsp_oRSg [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WyaO29XDf8

Edit:Where Musk talks about the factory of the future. [4] https://youtu.be/6WyaO29XDf8?t=4928

Given the number of times that Tesla PR has been forced to walk back Musk's claims, I would take anything he says about Tesla's future with mountains of salt.

And in [1], Musk has added yet another task to Tesla's growing todo list. Not content with building cars, he wants Tesla to make the machines that make the cars, despite not yet having achieved even the basic competence (on a company basis) with the machine they've purchased to do that. Before you can dream about revolutionizing manufacturing processes, you have to prove you understand the process enough to revolutionize it, and Tesla (and Musk) clearly doesn't.

The Model S was like this, too. My Model S had a not-quite-fitting front bumper (still problematic), thoroughly dysfunctional rear seatbelts (seemed to affect all of the first several thousand cars including the demo cars, now fixed), some air leaks (gradually getting fixed at service visits), a 12V battery that needed replacement at least once a year (fixed by firmware upgrade -- the original charging algorithm seems to have been written without any consideration for how lead-acid batteries behave), goo dripping out of the sunroof ("fixed" by putting silicone sealant over the goo source), windshield sprayers that are almost impossible to align correctly (design error, presumably still affects current production), and probably several more problems that I've forgotten about.

Did you ever get tempted of returning it back?

I don't think you can "return" a car if you are not satisfied with it.

You can if it's defective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_law

I wasn't talking about if it was defective

No, but my general opinion of Tesla is that they did a fantastic job of making themselves able to sell the Model S. A marque like GM, Ford, or Toyota couldn't have done it -- the price point would be too high. On the other hand, a marque like BMW, Mercedes, or Lexus couldn't either -- the Model S is nowhere near good enough. Just take a look at the interior of the Model S (or X or 3) and compare it to a luxury car. Luxury cars have storage, comfort handles, adequate cup holders, easy-to-use controls, and a certain degree of elegance. Tesla interiors are spartan in a way that appeals to Elon Musk's sensibilities and maybe to some Apple fans but don't actually make for great cars.

I'm a Model X owner. I have quality issues (loose seal & forgotten tow package at delivery, Falcon Wing Door "alignment" issues), but the rest of the car is well worth it. I consider the quality problems to just be the price of driving the car of the future (though I really could do w/o those silly falcon wing doors).

I don't think I have ever had a car that I love so much. It is big enough for family and friends, burns no fossil fuel, and leaves almost any other car in the dust off the line.

And it keeps getting better and better with software updates. In just the 4 months that I've owned the car, auto pilot has gotten noticeably better and we've gotten tons of new little features.

The combination of known quality problems and frequent over-the-air updates to software worries me a bit.

Software is harder to get right than seals and tow packages, and they are not paying very close attention to the latter.

Apple's devices fit together just so, but even with their vast resources their software drifts around in quality.

I think you nailed it on the head.

Even with the build issues they make better overall cars than anyone else.

I'd agree that Tesla's all-electric powertrains offer a better everyday driving experience than a traditional internal combustion engine. However, we're talking about $70k-$100k+ cars here, and there are some really competitive ICE cars in that price range when you start looking at everything else.

For instance, while the entry-level cars from Mercedes don't really impress me that much, their more expensive models do, like a well-optioned E43 or E63 AMG. They really nail luxury in a way that Tesla doesn't. Also, I dare say I prefer their approach to the infotainment system.

Not just Mercedes, there is the new BMW M5 which will do 0-60mph in 3.1 seconds (https://youtu.be/hxsBUkm9vBs), Audi RS6 Performance and Porsche Panamera Turbo/Turbo S.

A those cars have beautiful interiors, fit 2 kids and a dog and go like lightening.

And burn tons of gas. The Plugin range for most cars is just terrible (except the Volt), and there were no competitive all electric until the Jaguar ipace (which just came out).

It’s not that bad if driven sensibly: I’ve seen 40MPG (Imperial) from these cars on long trips. The trouble is it’s almost impossible to be sensible where there is a twin turbo V8 at your feet waiting to be unleashed.

What’s the range like on the Model X if driven in a similar manner?

For some reason I could not reply to your message asking the range of the X. The rated range is roughly 300mi, and you can get close to that in moderate weather if you drive sensibly. If it is cold all bets are off, since the heater is just pure resistance and takes a huge bite out of the range.

The Tesla was kind of a compromise. We both wanted something that would be big and roomy, but burn less gas than our Prius. I wanted something that would be faster than the sports car that I had before I was forced to get the Prius.

When deciding on the Tesla, we drove a Volvo XC90 PHEV. It was, on paper, better than the Tesla for considerably less. But I just could not stand the automatic transmission or all the floor space wasted by the drivetrain hump. And the terrible battery-only range meant we'd be burning gas for most trips.

The Jaguar Ipace is about the only other car I'd consider, but it was not yet available when we got the Tesla.

This is emblematic of who Tesla's customer is until (if/when) the Model 3 gets really going. Almost no one can pay $100k to have a car "without a drivetrain hump" and that doesn't burn gas. Sure, those are nice things to have, but $100k is a lot of money to almost everyone in the world.

Spoken like someone who hasn't really driven a lot of cars. Does Tesla make better overall all electric cars than anyone else? Well, yeah, at the price point they sell them at. A Bolt EV is pretty damn good too.

Better overall cars period? That's insane. Just nuts. As some sibling commentators pointed out you can buy a hell of a lot of car for ~80-100k.

I mean, you can buy a Volvo Polestar V60 for ~63k which has a lovely interior and overall quality, and is both cheaper and faster than the base Model S. https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2017-volvo-v60-polestar...

I have a $20,000 Honda, and none of the listed issues are even imaginable. Considering my model is not among the top selling ones, I'd say what you describe counts as pretty significant quality control issues.

I call baloney. A simple google search for "honda door alignment issues" brings up a ton of forum posts of people complaining about this, from brand new current models, going back many many years.

No question that Honda likely has fewer issues, but to claim they are not 'even imaginable' is horse-puckey.

ironically, a simple google search for "Honda falcon wing door alignment issues" brings up only Tesla results.

How many Honda’s have falcon wings?

Ditto for my $8,500 Nissan Leaf EV. I have read the issue is Tesla has no experience with steel manufacturing.

How often do you use the autopilot?

Could you give any more detail on what improvements you noticed?

I use it mainly on the interstate.

There is a section of interstate near my house with a long, sweeping high speed curve. When I first got the car, I'd have to take control on that curve, as AP would drift too far to the outside of the lane. Now I can leave AP on.

When I first got the car, driver initiated AP controlled lane changes (using the signal to tell AP to change lanes) took a long time to initiate, and when they finally started, they were very abrupt. They now start sooner, and are much smoother.

In the earlier versions, if you didn't hold the the turn signal long enough, the lane change would abort in a terrifying swerve back into the original lane. I have not seen that in quite a while (then again, I may have trained myself to always hold the turn signal long enough)

Curious to know how much of a factor is it to have something like a supercharger network across the country. Would you have bought this car if there was no such network? How often do you use it?

I feel many many electric cars are coming up to compete with Tesla in every aspect, but no one seems to be bothered about something like the supercharger network.

It takes a fairly significant amount of time to charge a car - sometimes equivalent to a commute. So most consumers base their purchase on charging at home, meaning apartment renters are more likely to get a hybrid.

One of the oft-mentioned benefits of an electric car is simply charging it overnight, so it's ready to go the next day. Part of this not having to think about an extra trip for fuel every few weeks. It seems odd that someone would forgo this convenience to travel somewhere else for a recharge, or purchase a vehicle that could not travel a round trip on a charge.

I really dislike this trend that Tesla are setting where their customers are little more than beta testers and I fear that the other automakers will follow in their footsteps. When I purchase a car, whether it be Ford, Tesla or VW, panel gap like (https://twitter.com/model3owners/status/842449318749601793, https://twitter.com/bgluckman/status/965664986298306561?lang...) is just not acceptable.

It's interesting that many Tesla fans tout the OTA feature as how Tesla will be giving out free new features/updates to owners.

It does happen sometimes (such as "uncorking" the performance on the 100D models), but most of the time it's there to ship/fix features that people already paid for, or should be there in the first place (eg. rain sensing windshield wiper).

"I'll give you the recipe. I called all the body engineers, stamping people, manufacturing, and executives into my conference room. And I said, 'I am tired of all these lousy body fits. You have six weeks to achieve world-class body fits. I have all your names. If we do not have good body fits in six weeks, I will replace all of you. Thank you for your time today."

-Ferdinand Piëch

There needs to be a culture from the top down of giving a shit about fit and finish. It's exceedingly clear that Elon Musk does not care.

"It's exceedingly clear that Elon Musk does not care."

Being CEO of only one company of this size is already a huge job. Being CEO of two just seems like a big ego trip.

Its been done before. Apple and Pixar did well under one leader for a time. "Huge job" is relative to the person and their management style. If he has realtively independent and driven teams for each company that require little micromanagement than his job may not be as much work as you might imagine. Who knows though?

This is a really good comment and I thoroughly agree.

I have taken in my Model X for a front end vibration issue that they refuse to fix 4 times. This is a June 2017 build, which is rather recent.

Tesla is deferring quality issues to their service centers instead of fixing them at the factory.

It's a familiar situation. I want better quality but if you want the tech and convenience a Tesla provides you really have no other option. There is a wide gap between the lower end electric drive cars (Leaf, Bolt) vs Tesla. I love my X I just wish the quality matched the price.

This teardown previously on HN:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCIo8e12sBM

Convinced me that Tesla has some major issues in manufacturing. To get into a Model 3 with most of the features people want is closer to 45K, at which point you could get a pretty damn good car from another manufacturer.

I'm cheering for Tesla, but come on, fit and finish should be on par with the best, not something I should have to overlook.

My concern is that constrained production and quality issues could lead to long repair times. There was a Motley Fool story last year about someone whose Model S was in the shop for over seven months:

https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/03/07/repairing-my-tesla...

Discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13821109

This is a general product lesson. I read someone comment the other day that if you build a flying car, people will still complain about the door handles and trim. Tesla has revolutionized a technology, like an unimaginably odds beating underdog that changes the economics of human civilization. But the business, the function that decides whether they survive to affect the change they've proven is possible is really a question of, are they building a better car?

As someone bootstrapping a product, (and of course I think my product is the flying car game changer of my market) during the final painful trade offs before MVP, it's the scores of "details" like this I'm taking on water to resolve before showing it. Personally, I think you can only get way with breaking rules if you've demonstrated you know them first, and quality/experience issues cannot be sins of omission.

Where I'm confident I've developed a technology that will change the economics of a market, the moment someone puts their faith in it and lets it into a relationship they have with their stakeholders and it burns a bridge for them, for me to exclaim, "but, but, flying car!" means nothing.

These are not details and corner cases, they are the existential aspects of the business.

I think where Tesla is acceptable is that they are still in a market with legacies like Land Rover, Jaguar, and used supercars, where people tolerate bizarre diseconomies that would seem laughable to Toyota, Mercedes, and even KIA owners.

However, there is a chasm for them to cross fully where they are no longer a revolutionary technology, but actually a good car company. The lesson I take from articles like this is that what I think of as details as a technologist are in fact the differentiators in a business.

> However, there is a chasm for them to cross fully where they are no longer a revolutionary technology, but actually a good car company.

This kind of stuff made sense when they were making the original Roadster and hand assembled them (?). But the model S is now 6 years old and this is still happening.

Fine, it was their first ‘real’ car. The Roadster was very low volume.

But the X has the same problem. And now the 3.

At what point does Tesla start acting like a ‘real’ company and decide these kinds of defects aren’t acceptable?

The stuff I hear about Tesla’s process for this stuff sounds like the descriptions of GM factories in The Machine That Changed The World. Just make the cars, fix the worst of it at the end of the line, let service centers do more after delivery to the customer.

>At what point does Tesla start acting like a ‘real’ company and decide these kinds of defects aren’t acceptable?

Just as soon as people stop lining up to buy their cars.

edit: downvote if you please, but they're selling cars faster than they can make them. Tesla has zero financial incentive to start focusing on stopping those defects until the pre-orders dry up and people start voting with their wallets.

Corporations understand exactly one thing.

The problem with that strategy is the instant the line disappears they’re screwed.

At that point they have to compete with all the normal cars plus all the new electric cars that manufacturers are trying to release. Their quality doesn’t seem to be able to stand up, and their service reputation is terrible.

Where as if they learn to fix these kind of quality control issues years ago on the model S (the way they should’ve) we wouldn’t even be talking about this right now and there wouldn’t be anything to worry about when the pre-orders stop.

Of course they wouldn’t HAVE pre-orders except the only reason THAT is going on is because they don’t seem to be able to build the cars at a volume close to what they claimed.

So the question is: are they doing the best they can on quality and that’s slowing down their production, or are they going as fast as they can and ignoring quality?

Neither one of those would be a good answer.

6 years is really long for many fields e.g. software. It may be really short for cars though, especially if you are up against incumbents. The massive demand probably doesn't help either.

It's not like it's intentional... It's simply the best there is currently and it's competing against idealized thoughtforms. Of course reality can't match the perfection of what can be thought.

The incumbents aren’t going into their factories and sabotaging their build quality. Tesla is just not making it a priority either via ignorance of how to do it, or willfully not spending what it costs to do the job correctly.

I’m not asking for a platonic ideal. I’m asking for what multiple other car companies do every day. Even the ‘bad’ carmakers can do better on fit and finish than Tesla.

> At what point does Tesla start acting like a ‘real’ company and decide these kinds of defects aren’t acceptable?

They aren't even close to having a production line that can push out the preordered cars in any reasonable amount of time. Probably some time after they can do that.

The Bolt sort of shows that Tesla isn't all that revolutionary. The Model 3 beats in on a bunch of measures, but they are all modest wins, a bit better range, a little faster acceleration, etc.

And quite a few of the major automakers have electric vehicles that they put small batteries in and sell for a lot less than $40,000.

As a reservation holder, I can answer fairly quickly: Not really. I suspect many early issues will be worked out by the time they finally get around to building mine.

And most importantly: there is no other car I want more that I can afford. So I will tolerate some quality issues.

But there will be a point where Tesla has to sell to beyond the fanbase and early reservation holder/enthusiasts, they have to sell it to the masses who don't even necessarily know who Elon Musk is.

The Model 3 is aimed to be that car, but I have a feeling the general buyers will be a lot less tolerant about issues than early adopters/long time fans.

They have a long backlog of enthusiasts to sell to first. That's a long runway to improve quality.

They have been building cars for literally 10 years, and their quality is still way below industry average.

The "long backlog" of enthusiasts is a few hundred thousands or so, and that's an absolute small percentage of the total market in this segment.

I shouldn't have to point this out since Tesla, after all, is the company that "focus on long term visions". Well I'm kindly suggesting Elon to see further than their immediate backlog.

You make a fine point.

People buy bmws and Mercedes and those cars all kinds of quality issues especially after the warranty ends.

And Tesla has all kinds of issues when the car is brand new. One can only guess how bad they will get after the warranty ends.

And Mercedes and BMW don't go out there and make fun of other people's manufacturing.

Just sold my Audi to get a Tesla. 3.5 years and 42,000 miles and the car was never in the service center for more than a scheduled service.

Tesla has been in the SC 4 times in 6 months of ownership.

Presumably, they're still working out problems in their manufacturing process. By the time they're selling to people who don't care about Tesla and just want a car, most of those issues will have been long ago solved.

The unknown is where the quality level will be when it levels off after all the obvious inefficiencies and easy-to-fix flaws are addressed. There's a limit to the quality that some organization can achieve at a particular price point.

That’s what the Model S was for. If they didn’t figure out how to build that without these issues in 6 years why do we think they’ll figure it out for the 3?

> There's a limit to the quality that some organization can achieve at a particular price point.

Look at a Honda Fit at $16k. Look at how well it’s made.

Why can’t the $35k Model 3 do that? The $74k S? The $79 X?

Maybe cars are complicated and it takes more than six years to figure out how to make them well? Maybe Tesla is using a very different process to make the Model 3 than the model S? Maybe we shouldn't compare a car that's been in production (with some changes) for 17 years with a car that's been in production for a couple months?

The Model 3 is substantially different than the Model S and has been in production a couple months. Just because Tesla made a similar car before doesn't mean that making cars is a solved problem and there won't be new problems with each new model that have to be overcome.

New models from the big companies like Honda or Toyota don’t have those issues. Not new model years (like most 2019s), not real overhauls (like the 2018 Accord), but turkey new models (like the Honda HR-V).

They don’t get an excuse.

> I suspect many early issues will be worked out by the time they finally get around to building mine.

I had this same attitude with an ICE car I purchased. The pre 2015 models had weak CV joints that appeared to fail after 10/20,000 miles. It sucked for owners of those earlier cars, but the good news is that dealerships will replace the CV joints on the S1 free of charge without question irrespective of milage.

I hope that Tesla do the same with the first Model 3 owners because it's just the right thing to do.

Yeah? My $100k+ Model X built over a year after the release has been into the service center 4 times to fix 42 issues. One of which they refuse to.

What do they refuse to fix? Did you try another SC?

They say it's within spec.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VABAR362zLw

EDIT: I emailed the Seattle SC and they seemed indifferent at best.

I can't quite figure out what's going on in that video. Is it the quick decelerating?

Listen to the audio. The whole front dash is shaking during acceleration. The front suspension of the car vibrates pretty badly during moderate to heavy acceleration. They claim that of the 5 suspension settings (Very High, High, Standard, Low and Very Low) that one should keep their car in "Low". In Standard it feels like the car is trying to create rattles. I feel like this is BS because it's an engineering flaw that they haven't figured out how to fix yet.

What's happening is premature wear of the front half shafts and CV joints and they CAN fix it they just won't.

That's consistent with the review by Sandy Munro [1] who reported really poor fit and finish quality - rattling doors, poorly fitted gaps around the trunk, and so on.

Computer gamers know the perils of pre-ordering - you've got no recourse if the product has reliability, quality or completeness problems. I hope Tesla enthusiasts who pre-ordered realised the gamble they were taking.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCIo8e12sBM and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVfpotxHUzA

Same thing happened with early Model S and X production.

No one cares, they are still selling those models faster than they can produce.

Instant torque, Full charge each morning, Supercharging, Autopilot, OTA updates, FSD ready > Random small issues

Ok, lots of quality problems, but let's think about things in terms of their larger significance.

Have the Tesla cars, in spite of their quality problems, revolutionized the auto industry, pushing almost every major manufacturer to start BEV programs and thereby being a major force in dealing with global warming and hence the future of the human race? Yes.

Will Tesla, in the next year or two, greatly improve the quality of the Model 3? Probably.

Will Tesla autos continue to sell well? Probably.

So should you feel basically positive about Tesla? I say yes. Unless, of course, you are in the fossil fuels or ICE business.

Looking at this from another angle, it seems to me that Musk had a choice between going slowly so he could produce automobiles with few quality problems, and charging ahead full speed to produce a large number of revolutionary autos. I think he picked the smart option.

The question is, can the incumbent luxury car manufacturers figure out the technology and supply chain of electric cars and batteries before Tesla can figure out how to manufacture high quality cars?

Owner of a M3. My first Tesla. I have number 40xx.

I adore the damn thing. Seeing software updates makes me happy. I compare it to my last favorite car, my Volt which claimed to support updates; but never patched it’s awful UI.

It is a bit raw. I had to leave the car at the service center due to some door handle issues. I received a loaner model S, and it’s was fixed impeccably. The X had a trunk issue for a ton of cars needing a rain proof cover on the trunk- and every owner got it.

There are quality issues. So far I’ve seen everything fixed at Tesla’s expense, with similar reports on TMC. It is a different paradigm though - far more a reliable software platform (where they fix things when they are broke) than the typical “here is your car” model.

There is a bit of fandom in which earlier adopters are willing to put up with issues. As I said, I love the car, and as long as they keep patching issues (HW & SW) that come up, I’ll accept some issues.

Don’t want the issues? Wait a half year. But recall that they have 18 months of backlog. Most would consider that a commercial success.

Today I saw a X P100DL on the parking lot at work, I immediately noticed that both (!) the tail lights had moisture in them. This is a brand new 160.000 euro* car, this should in no way be acceptable. If that was my car, I'd would have returned it to dealership.

* In the Netherlands, the base price of a 'ludicrous' edition is 159.430,- euro.

I really hope Tesla manages to pull it together because competition is good for everyone, but the quality bar they have to meet has gotten pretty high.

My Civic is still holding up exceptionally well in regards to materials and fit and finish at 12 years old. The only rattles come from the fact that I installed 3rd party speakers the car was not meant to handle.

I expect Tesla to be at least as well built as an econobox from the mid 2000s

Pre-reveal non-owner reservation holder here. I suspect this will be unusual: between constant delays and consistent quality problems, I cancelled my reservation last week. I got a plug-in hybrid instead, for about the same price as the Model 3.

I'm a huge believer in the tech and Musk's vision of the future. I learned I am not a believer in Musk-the-executor when it comes to cars.

I'm very happy with my P90D, but when it was time to get a second electric car, we got a Chevy Bolt, which we're also very happy with. I don't like to order things that aren't shipping yet. There have been no quality issues or bugs with my Bolt. It's never been back to the dealer.

Musk has a long track record of delivering late (think how late falcon 9 heavy is, how late falcon 9 was)

We call difficult things "rocket science" for a reason, you know ... so, not the most apt comparison.

However, even if Tesla goes out of business because they can't scale up, I will be grateful to Musk for kicking the incumbents in the ass about electric cars. I suspect we wouldn't have the Leaf or Volt without Tesla (see: GM EV-1, for example).

no doubt, but also the teslas were all released later than expected, too, IIRC.

Nobody’s saying the work is easy, only that it is consistently late over and over (and he’s the one setting his own deadlines).

No doubt. Failing the same way a whole bunch of times with no course correction doesn’t give me confidence.

actually my point was that he succeeds, but never on schedule. On should not expect anything on time from Elon Musk.

I got a used Nissan Leaf for $8000 and installed the Level 2 charging station that the seller threw in for free myself. Couldn't be happier. Also, that extra $30000-$100000k in my bank account (depending on the Tesla I didn't buy) feels good too.

This is to be expected. Consumer reports ranks Tesla close to the bottom in reliability. So far people who buy Tesla are willing to tolerate low quality if they get the features they want. Camaro has low reliability as well.

The real question is if this strategy works when manufacturing volume grows.

> Consumer reports ranks Tesla close to the bottom in reliability.

This is simply false. I have the March 2018 Car Issue of Consumer Reports in my hand. They segmented Tesla P85D into a group: "Cars: Ultra-Luxury" and put it at the top in the overall rating. In specifically the Predicted Reliablity rating the P85D was rated "Above Average". The other car with "Above Average" reliablity in that group was the BMW 750i xDrive.

The remaining cars were: Genesis G90, MB S550, Audi A8, Jaguar XJL. To avoid fouling CU's copyright I will give the reliability ratings out of order to the list of cars. The rating of the group excluding the BMW and Tesla: Average, Less Than Average, Average, Average.

No car in the group rated higher for reliability than the Tesla. Hardly "close to the bottom".

For the curious Consumer Reports reliability ratings are based on an annual detailed survey of their membership. They have had a consistent methodology for years and have defended in in court (manufacturers don't like to be called "Worse than Average") successfully repeatedly. I don't take them as gospel on everything, but the car reliability data seems solid.

Look at the December 2017 issue of consumer reports brand reliability report [1].

As I said, Model 3 is different. Musk said that Model 3 is supposed to be Audi A4, BMW 3 Series, Mercedes-Benz C-Class type car with large production volume.

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[1]: Car Brands Reliability: How They Stack Up Ranking the brands and showing their most and least reliable cars https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisf...

Ok, the article I linked was model specific to the model S and is four months newer. I retract the "simply false", it is complexly somewhat false maybe. Sigh. For instance from the same issue as your post we have "Tesla Model S Owners Report Improved Reliability" [1]

I guess the crystal ball has not settled yet and we may have to wait a while to find out what CU really thinks. I suspect the model X which has had some problems is weighing down the brand average. I also recall that for a while CU was not recommending Teslas due to reliability, but later restored the rating citing improved reliability.

[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisf...

The issue not raised is that every quality problem Tesla fixes after a car delivered is going to have a cost associated with it and that will raise the cost of the whole run. What becomes very important is if a crash or injury gets linked back to a manufacturing defect. I am just amazed it can get past not only the factory but the delivery center in that condition.

I am really wondering the entry level model will ever come out or if by late this year Tesla will discontinue it because of "lack of interest". As in, save money by dropping what would not be a profitable model but pass it off as a customer decision.

I still plan to wait a bit before I got BEV, the range hit in winter months is just too dramatic; a reddit poster observed that near freezing freeway drives brought his range to 230 from 310.

If anything with the burn rate they have they should retrench and put out the big ticket items first, the semi and sports car.

Oh look, the Muskonauts have flagged this story, which should be in the top 3 based on pts/time to the bottom of the 2nd page. Yes there are other factors that can drop a post's rank, but not by that much.

I thought HN had a vouch system to counter flag abuse, was it done away with?

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