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Comment by Aromasin | Hacker News Reader

From watching some videos on the workings of their factory, it still seems like they've automated significantly more than their competitors. They reached for the stars and fell short, but that short is still ground-breaking.

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If you think Tesla's factory is amazing, you need to check out Toyota's factories. It's like the difference between a Fisher Price playset and Disneyland.

Tesla talks big about automating...but Toyota actually did it, without fanfare, and managed to do so in a manner consistent with the kanban manufacturing philosophy that has defined their productivity and quality achievements of the past several decades

Toyota used to produce ~440k cars out of that plant. Tesla does ~360k. I'm not sure that "fisher price playset" vs disneyland is the analogy that I'd use for that difference.

NUMMI was Toyota's oldest and least productive US factory, and the cars were produced on contract for GM, which sold them under a GM brand. This is one of the reasons Toyota closed the plant and sold it to Tesla.

NUMMI is also not the factory that Toyota shows off in its videos demonstrating the awesomeness of its manufacturing processes.

There's more to plant quality than output alone. I'd expect a "disneyland" factory to have other metrics, like low rework, safety, worker satisfaction/retention, responsible procurement & disposal of raw materials, etc.

Are there decent videos of both factories to compare them? It might be interesting to see the state of the practice for an established player like Toyota.

I also remember way back when steve jobs tried to automate the production of NeXT cubes and broke his company doing it. I think a lot of folks do this sort of "follow one philosophy" into ruin. They want to be amazing and lose sight of what's doable/affordable/realistic.

Tesla's manufacturing capabilities are child's play in the automotive industry. Nothing Tesla has done here is revolutionary. Their quality control is abysmal compared to other major OEMs. They make the Model 3 in a tent. There are regular garbage fires at their Fremont plant.

https://boingboing.net/2018/08/24/fire-breaks-out-at-tesla-f...

And there was another one in February this year.

How are fires at a paint shop indicative of abysmal quality control?

It is a sign for abysmal factory operations. And the first time pass rate is really bad compared to other OEMs.

> It is a sign for abysmal factory operations.

Not really. It's just a sign that their paint shop needs some work.

> And the first time pass rate is really bad compared to other OEMs.

For a few weeks in June. Great work taking isolated incidents and generalizing across the board.

The fires aren't just in the paint shop. They are all around the factory property. Inside and outside. Garbage fires on the lot happen about once a year.

Regardless, you are trying to say that paint shop fires mean they just need a new paint shop. What I'm saying is that their entire manufacturing operation is amateurish compared to the rest of the auto industry.

I mean, the BMW plant near here has fires about once a year two, if the last couple of years is a baseline. I'm not convinced that you are proving anything.

It wasn't just those few weeks in June. Their first time pass rate, on weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis is really bad compared to other OEMs. A large part of the reason they have a repair parts shortage is because spare parts that would go to existing customers are instead being used to repair newly-built cars before they leave the factory.

Tesla's gotten better at managing their first-time pass rates, but they're still close to the bottom compared to their peers.

> really bad compared to other OEM

Compared to companies that have been in operation for decades, and in some cases a century? Sure, let's make sure to compare all start-ups to entrenched incumbents.

Tesla is not a startup! It's been in business for 18 years.

Depends on your definition. I think they qualify as a startup because they're still in their hockey-stick growth phase.

In the context of the auto industry, it absolutely is.

  Peugeot - 1889
  Daimler - 1890
  Fiat - 1899
  Renault - 1899
  Buick - 1903
  Ford - 1903
  Rolls-Royce - 1904
  General Motors - 1908
  Alfa Romeo - 1910
  Dodge - 1910
  Chevrolet - 1911
  Aston Martin - 1913
  Maserati - 1914
  Mitsubishi - 1917
  Bentley - 1919
  Citroen - 1919
  Chrysler - 1925
  Mercedes-Benz - 1926 (1883 if you include Benz & Cie.)
  Nissan - 1934
  Jaguar - 1935
  Toyota - 1937
  Jeep - 1941
  Ferrari - 1947
  Honda - 1948
  Land Rover - 1948
  Lotus - 1952
  Suzuki - 1956
  Subaru - 1958
  Mini - 1959
  Mazda - 1960
  Tesla - 2003

And this is explaining why Tesla ignored more than century worth of automotive mass production knowledge again? Because they are a start-up?

Regardless of our disagreements on Tesla -- this is a great list and really interesting to see all these OEMs, in order. Thanks for this good stuff. Upvoted.

I didn't know Peugeot was the oldest of the gang!

    Detroit Electric - 1907

The granddaddy of electric cars which out-produced everyone.

Nissan finally caught up in 2010.

Tesla didn't outproduce it until 2012.

Manufacturing capabilities =/= % of process automated. I'm not saying they're effective at production output, or quality control, or a number of other things. I'm just saying that as far as I can tell as an interested outsider looking in, their automation processes are impressive compared to their competitors.

Tesla admits that large portions of their cars--even the Model 3--are essentially built or assembled by hand.

Meanwhile, Ford and Toyota have videos of almost an entire car being constructed by robots on their production factory lines (their are parts where humans assist the robots but otherwise most of the work is actually done by the robots). There'a a famous Ford video from a decade or two ago showing one of their (now-older/discontinued) model sedans from being built and finished--entirely by robots-from frame to final painting touchups. And if you don't believe the videos, you can tour their factories and actually see their factory lines in action, live.

Unfortunately it is not looks that count but results. And there Tesla is far behind. Which kind proves the incumbents right on the way they are manufacturing cars. And that is my whole point. You can have a killer product, if you are unable to produce and distribute it that doesn't mean shit.

Ideas are a dime dozen, right? Execution is what matters is the start-up advice, right? And on that front Tesla is not looking good right now.

The 'tent' was an improvisation when they realised their automation plan wasn't going to work. It was 1 of 3 lines I think, a way to expand capacity quickly. You could scoff at the 'tent', or you could think about what it takes to come up with a rapidly implemented and physically massive plan B involving hundreds of people and huge amounts of hardware when there's a huge amount at stake.

edit: Here's some pics of the tent, and description of the large scale scrambling it took https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-25/the-futur...

Or you could ask yourself what happened that you needed a tent in the first place. Again, incumbents or any of their final assembly contractors know exactly how to launch and scale assembly lines for new plants and car models. Why Tesla choose to deviate from all industry best practices in that case still puzzles me.

It's curious to read this sort of reaction on HN, because it maps pretty well to process differences between startups and big, established (some would say "fossilized") software development firms.

"That startup has no idea what they're doing. Just last week they had to hire a bunch of new developers and they went all-remote and picked up a bunch of new management SaaS to do it. Look at IBM, they always know exactly how many developers they'll need for a project."

Tesla's got some significant problems, sure, but most of their problems seem to be the sort that a rapidly growing startup would have (including the lightning-rod CEO).

Software =|= Manufacturing, comparing the two looks like a fallacy to me.

EDIT: That Tesla is still treated as a typical Silicon Valley start up and not an automotive OEM might be one of Elons greatest achievements.

Innovation is a gamble, and Tesla take big gambles. That's my point. The Tent happened because one of their big gambles failed.

And resulted in production hell, didn't it?

This is only going off of what I've read from private interviews with Tesla employees (I'm sure there are some lurking on HN that can give a better idea), but it seems the production hell came mostly from the constant product updates that were rolling through. A connector on a wire harness becomes obsolete, and all of a sudden your camera that picks out that connector from a bucket needs updating, the arm that grips it needs changing, the milling machine that machines the hole for the connector needs changing etc. One up-issue knocks on to the entire production process. This isn't an issue with humans. You tell them the new part they need to use and that's it.

building cars in a tent is called disruption

That's called dilettantism at best combined with desperation. How would call manufacturing chips in a warehouse instead of a chip fab?

Yep and scrappy, a very good attribute for a startup or even for a maturing silicon valley company.

Often that's what it takes to achieve significant progress, even as an individual. Shoot for the stars and you'll likely see modest progress, but if you aim for mediocrity, you might not even attain that.

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