Former Tesla employee claims he is a whistleblower
latimes.com
latimes.com
I am beginning to think Feds are onto it. Tesla isn't fighting this blue collar worker, they expect a fight with the Feds and SEC.
https://www.law.com/therecorder/2018/06/20/tesla-brings-on-f...
What does veganism have to do with an electric car company? His eating or not of meat has about a .000001% greenhouse gas impact relative to his investments in renewable energy and electrification.
My opinion of Musk really went south after that. I'm not giving him the benefit of the doubt on anything, anymore.
Fortunately Aurora managed to escape that near death experience and has an autonomous driving dream team together, solid funding, and has partnerships with 2 of the top 3 biggest automakers in the world.
Robotaxis stand to challenge the economics of personal vehicle ownership and have the potential to dramatically reduce the impact our transportation system has on the environment, and that's what Musk was out to destroy.
My strategy for mass producing the Model 3 also would have been grounded in reality. And I certainly wouldn't have spent $2.6 billion buying a failing solar installation company with $2.9 billion in debt.
The last few years of Musk's reign over Tesla have been marked by colossal strategic errors made unilaterally in stubborn defiance of conventional wisdom and against the better advice of the experts and specialists he's surrounded by. I don't know why you guys keep defending him, he's incompetent. He has an established track record of paranoia, delusions, cronyism, lies, threats and petty vengeance. For all his claims of Tesla's many enemies, the only legit threat to Tesla's future success is Musk himself. Big boy car companies don't operate this way, and for very good reasons. Very good reasons.
It would be a lot easier to root for Tesla the company if it could be separated from Elon Musk the personality cult.
And that they knew that when making the "sources unknown" claim.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/18/elon-musk-email-employee-con...
> I was dismayed to learn this weekend about a Tesla employee who had conducted quite extensive and damaging sabotage to our operations. This included making direct code changes to the Tesla Manufacturing Operating System under false usernames and exporting large amounts of highly sensitive Tesla data to unknown third parties.
For all we know, these code changes to the Tesla system could have been the code needed to exfiltrate the data and info that he allegedly leaked to media as a whistleblower.
I don't want cruise control, lane following, stability control, automatic braking, automatic collision avoidance, anti-lock brakes, etc.
I just want a brake pedal connected directly to the brakes, and a throttle pedal connected directly to an ESC, and a motor connected directly to the wheels.
I don't want a computer controlling everything from behind the scenes, and I certainly don't want it "cloud-connected" or otherwise reporting to the mothership.
Is that too much to ask? It should be much cheaper and easier to make than other electric cars, but nobody is doing it.
Granted the Electric Smart is "only" $23K, but you have to look at the overall value (e.g. depreciation, utility, battery aging). I'd prefer to pay $27K for a plug-in Prius Prime (up to 25 mile electric, then gas).
The bulk of the cost of producing an electric car comes from battery packs, and cost is also increased because the reduced production numbers cannot achieve higher costs saving from mass production. But all of that is changing every day towards cheaper electric cars.
Pretty much all you mention is actually cheap to include, because it's shared with traditional vehicles, so it's not a major driver in car cost. Actually: if you're going to make a car expensive, then throw in some stuff that people with money (who will actually buy the vehicle) will appreciate.
But you can also get a Smart Fortwo EV, a Bolloré Bluecar, a Mitsubishi i-MIEV… Which are rather basic vehicles and they're electric. The Chevy Bolt is a pretty good middle ground too, if you're in the U.S.
Have you actually looked into the EV market beyond Tesla, with an actual intention of acquiring a vehicle, or are you just thinking out loud?
The reason computer controlled is used is because in order for electric vehicles to be efficient they need a special transmission, nobody has designed a fully mechanical transmission that compares to computer controlled (not least of all because mechanical transmissions are reactive, not proactive, meaning you're always less efficient than you could be, because that very inefficiency is what drives the transmission to shift).
You'd also lose regenerative braking which is a major "win" for electric vehicles.
Electric cars don't have transmissions. At least the Leaf and Teslas don't, that I can say with certainty.
Having an efficient electric motor requires a computer controlling it. A standard ESC (VSI topology) is an indirect command on its own and the power depends on transient conditions. The controller doesn't know much about the motor and doesn't account for nonlinearities that cause loss under acceleration. The driving experience is the same as a subway train.
To run a motor at maximum efficiency under all load conditions you need a computer in the loop, running vector/field-oriented/direct-torque control or something similar. It's not an insignificant loss otherwise, particularly with induction motors. It's also a flat-out requirement for some of the best motors- the EV industry is moving towards permanent magnet assisted reluctance motors, which are ~10% efficient without computer control.
He's personally promised 5k model 3s a month (on behalf of everyone working at Tesla, but let's face it I'm sure in his mind he is Tesla), he's personally now living at the factory in order to "ensure it happens". And so if they can't actually deliver, it's on him.
Therefore, start blaming saboteurs, dark forces of established rivals, and so on, because his out-sized ego can't possibly suffer a deflationary embarrassment like not achieving this rashly promised target.
Martin Tripp ending up in prison is extraordinarily unlikely, even if Tesla is 100% correct. That you even considered the possibility means that Tesla’s strategy of sprinkling the word “illegal” throughout the complaint to paint a criminal picture worked.
VW plant, making their top of the line model. solder arm robots have two air input hoses. one wide, high pressure and slow response that is the "power". another nibler but fast response that is the actuator and only moves a small part that open/close the power valve.
the hoses were switched in one chassis line robot. causing the strong power line to simply hold the actuator always open. the small line was going to the " power" input, effectively controlling the soldering arm movement with the low power normally used only for the control valve.
it did solder the chassis. was it up to spec? hardly. did all the chasis went down the line without more than a visual inspection? yep.
If you are relying on humans catching every mistake you are going to have mistakes happen. You need to make it so that it requires active effort to fuck up if you want avoid issues
he could use a vacation or something.
edit:// Seems to be available in Google Cache at ( http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6Zh46Sr... ).
As suspected, more of a press release than anything else. Just because the name "Tesla" is in it this gets upvoted?
edit2:// This is the original article which has much more detail and is overall better:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/06/20...
> Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.
Until then, invest in a VPN that lets you appear to be from elsewhere.
Martin Tripp ... spoke out after seeing "some really scary things" ... including dangerously punctured batteries installed in cars
http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-3-scrap-waste-hig...
>plastic housing (called a clamshell)
is an external insulating case for the whole battery pack, there is metal case inside it, and another one on top of it.
Emphasis mine. I interpreted that as also popping some of the individual cells. If you replaced the individual cells that were breached you could probably be okay, but at the same time, look at how minor the defect was that was causing Samsung phones to catch fire
There’s often a handful of units per line that end up being bad, even great manufacturers deal with less than 100% yield from their processses.