2,651 hours/week * $30/hour = ~$80k/week. on a volume of cars that brings in $200m/week. so what? its a minor inefficiency.
As a point of comparison, large car manufacturers get into the "how much would a lawsuit and recall cost" when discussing adding costs of $4-$5 per car.
all tasks are massively parallelized in a production line. to reach 5000 car month tesla need to crank a car every seven minutes.
now imagine a production line that pump a car out every seven minutes and you need 37 minutes manual labor for each of them
the inefficence doesn't look so minor. it's also a logisticsl nightmare, just imagine parking all those cars while the rework stations free up.
So 6 mechanics in 6 bays at the end of the line do the rework jobs and cars continue to flow out of the plant one every 7 minutes.
An extra $20 in COGS per car. Is this really so horrible? What am I missing?
Even if it’s 10 mechanics and 10 drivers moving cars into and out of the bays, with some bays idle some of the time and let’s call it an extra $60 in COGS.
Their gross margin is already way better than anyone expected to see on the Model 3, they used some very impressive electrical design to save in so many places.
Even just their rear view mirror is more than $50 cheaper than the competition’s mirrors because of their smart electrical design. [1]
Right now they need volume more than anything else. Speaking as a reservation holder.
[1] - https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-solidly-profitable-s...
just on top on my mind tooling, factory space, training, burnout, turns, above average defects that will have to be handled by the post sales network.
> they used some very impressive electrical design
oh yes they are brilliant car, no question about that. it's less impressive when you get an engineering marvel and the build quality is random depending on the hands that worked on it in post processing.
To park a car every seven minutes? Maybe one extra full time employee?
(and btw it's 3x that because full time still only means 8 hours a day)