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Comment by sschueller | Hacker News Reader

Someone tweeted this video[1] of the tent production line a over a week ago. It looks a lot less clean than the picture Elon tweeted thats in the article.

I don't know if I would purchase a 35K+ car that was assembled outside in the open. Also it appears quite chaotic with chassis being transported around also in the open.

[1] https://twitter.com/IspyTsla/status/1009134913881190400?s=19

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I have nothing to compare against, so if I was in the market for a $35k car [1] I’d probably be fine with this.

[1] I’d prefer to invest most of the money and have a cheaper second hand car, and if I had enough spare that $35k was pocket change, I’d be more interested in a tiny aircraft or a small liveaboard boat.

if I had enough spare that $35k was pocket change

If that was the case you'd probably only be buying a Model 3 out of curiosity rather than as your main, every day car. Most people aren't in that position, and will be buying a Model 3 because they think it's the best car for their money. They'll be a lot less willing to accept defects.

>I'd prefer to invest most of the money

Is "I don't own a car" the new "I don't own a TV" virtue signalling?

Seriously, you are offering up your opinion on a product you admittedly have no knowledge of,and no interest in owning.

Everything humans do, including asking questions about virtue signalling, is virtue signaling.

That said, although I don’t own a car, I didn’t actually say that in my previous post. I’m lucky that where I live, I don’t need to. That situation is likely to change, and I have no intention to build an identity of, or make a virtue out of, either having or not having a car. If that seems contradictory, consider it virtue signaling “flexibility”.

>Everything humans do, including asking questions about virtue signalling, is virtue signaling.

Do you not believe in the existence of true dialectics?

I had to look up the word dialectics. Rarely, is my answer to the definition I saw, and to my memory thus far only in the context that the tripartite definition of knowledge is horribly flawed because nobody can be 100% certain that what they call knowledge is really true, that instead all we have is the belief — an opinion, in one sense of the word — that the thing we are claiming to know is in fact true.

The cars being assembled now are not being sold for $35K, are they?

No. They’re all upgraded model 3s

It's not a $35k car; there is no $35k option that you can buy, and no timeline for such an option existing.

Do we know if that 35k car will ever be available? how many of those deposit holders are there still holding out hope to one day buy that car? Tesla cars will no longer qualify for the $7500 tax refund soon so that might put off more of them, it will be down to 3750 I think.

The danger to Tesla was from two fronts, running out of money before getting into positive cash flow or failing to execute long enough for other manufacturers to take market. Jaguar will certainly eat into higher end vehicles from Tesla as they have a storied brand and other similar brands are not far behind.

If Tesla has timed it right and I understand the rule correctly, they will have six months from Monday until the tax rebate is halved. Assuming they are able to increase the production pace further, this means that a good portion of the initial Model 3 reservation holders will get the full tax rebate.

The precedent being the original Citroen 2CV factory that nobody was allowed to see because of the bare earth floor.

There will be more dust, no doubt. Tesla needs desperately money from the orders, they have no choice but take a risk.

Some issues may arise later. Tesla plans to fix them later and that's doable because their production volumes are still low and they manufacture only expensive cars.

Tesla owners know by now that they get a car that is incredible to drive, has very high quality 'skateboard' but all the normal parts build on top of that are low quality with high tolerances compared to other manufacturers. It seems to be accepted trade-off.

Tesla need to take money from new clients to make their existing clients whole. That's kind of a bad sign...

I wonder if they are doing this because a bunch of people have requested a refund on the first round of Model 3 orders.

Ah that's entirely possible

> Tesla need to take money from new clients to make their existing clients whole.

How did you come to that conclusion? Are there customers who aren't whole? Are there customers who have ordered a Model 3 that wasn't delivered as promised?

Look at it this way...

Tesla is operating at a loss and is reliant on investors to keep it afloat until it becomes profitable. The only way to do that is to demonstrate to investors that you will eventually become profitable by meeting your own schedules, timelines, and sales targets.

Tesla can hit it's 5000 cars a week mark by the end of June but if there aren't customers to deliver those vehicles to then they're not hitting their sales numbers and still fail.

Tesla has said that they're not producing the low end Model 3 and instead focusing on the high margin trim levels. What percentage of reservations are holding out for the low end Model 3? We know there's ~450000 reservations, what percentage are in the US/Canada? Lets pretend it's 50% or 225000. How many of those reservations are holding out for the cheapest model? Lets pretend that to is 50% or 112500. That leaves 112500 reservations who will buy a high trim level Tesla 3.

If Tesla has hit it's 5000 vehicles a week mark and is promising fulfillment in 2-4 months then by the 4 month mark they'll have produced 80000 Model 3s. That's pretty close to the hypothetical 112500 number.

I’m just putting the pieces together and summarising what was said. The implication from the person I replied to was that they’re due to deliver people cars and they need money to produce these (or survive long enough to produce them). Seems less than rosy tbh

As I posted in a similar thread. They use the tent manufactureing to increase the production in part of the assembly line. They don’t do everything in the tent.

I'm curious as to why you would be reluctant to buy a car assembled "in the open" ? Would you be afraid to drive it outside too ?

Because certain parts should not be exposed to the outside until assembled or they need to be cleaned again. You want clean welding joints and seems where you glue things together. Certain glues or compounds don't work well in certain temperatures/humidities, you want a controlled environment.

I'm sure that the guys there are not that stupid. You can weld "in the open". Just have to make sure that there are not big air flows

>are not that stupid

Then why are they producing cars in a tent in then first place? NUMMI was building 6000 cars a week at its peak,and Teslas are supposed to be simpler and the manufacturing process more advanced.

I don't know what their precise constraints are, but they are already building 2500 S/X per week there, add the 5000 Model 3 and you are already at 7500 cars per week. Tesla also produces more parts in house than other car manufacturers, that might contribute to the space constraints.

They are only doing parts of the assembly there. Processes that require a cleanroom e.g. paintjobs are done inside the factory.

As long as it isn't painted in the open I think it's ok. Although driving an assembled product in the open is a bit different still than the assembly parts.

I mean if you have a waterproof smartphone and it was made under water (I know, taking it to the extreme here)...

It also implies a sort of amateurish, poorly thought-out, cowboy attitude not generally associated with an expensive item like a Tesla.

Lockheed and Douglas used to build multi-million-dollar airliners outside in the California air.

Good point. I would buy a bmw and keep it locked under cover in my garage and definitely never open it

Technically I have nothing against solid tent lines. If this was only to avoid administration delays + wall costs and not hurried cheap solution ..

This might even act as a precedent for other factories :D

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