Drone footage of Tesla factory
twitter.com
twitter.com
People who don't know should check out the rest of the channel.
Originally he wasn't impressed because he found flaws. But Tesla fixed the flaws. And he changed his mind. That alone should sell you.
He is also a consultant, but a grumpy old one. That's entertaining in its own way, he goes into fun rants. Try this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g63SJwFdGTQ
Mach-E Motor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3qWBmz-j2k
VW ID.4 Battery Tray - 53% Weight Reduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjJUpqo1YDM
Tesla Plaid Thermal System: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4d2frvhcyY
Good engineering is good engineering. I'm not a hardware guy at all and this tickles my brain, the clarity of thought, the way they approach stuff.
Sure is. There's only what, 13 or so in the world at that size? And Tesla bought most of them.
Volvo has one on order, but Tesla still jas even larger ones on order for the Cybertruck
The Cybertruck will use it for the back-end but the structure will be in the exo-skelloton.
Cybertruck is already quite full of new tech. The Cell-To-Pack structural pack will still be very new. Exo-skelleton and stainless steal is totally unique (Delorian was just stainless panels). Cybertruck will have the upgraded package for 'self driving' meaning new cameras, new chips and so on. It will also have the famous security windows.
What we are not yet sure about is if it will include a higher Voltage for the internal electronics putting power and data on the same cable across the car. Tesla has been wanting to do that for quite a while.
Moving from 12v to 24 or even 48v makes a lot of sense. Not sure what you mean by power and data on the same lines, sounds like a horrible plan.
Interior unibody was just always assumed because in cars (unlike planes) nobody ever did exo.
And its not a marketing features as it has a number of real advantages. Part reduction being one and smaller easier bodyshop. Not needing any paint anymore (a modern Painshop cost 500M).
> Not sure what you mean by power and data on the same lines, sounds like a horrible plan.
Well we have this things called Ethernet and PoE. Works pretty well for me.
tri-motor can probably haul a 53 foot trailer right?
edit: from a brief googling, appears max tow capacity of tri-motor is approx 14,000 lbs, competitive with a F-350 dually; dry weight of 53 foot trailer happens to be around the same, sounds heavy to me but what do I know
Still, could be good for ~20 footers, nothing to sneeze at
Tesla CyberTowTruck.
For this reason, I think anyone who legitimately cares should be quite skeptical of any opinions he has about Tesla and EVs at large.
It was only at that point 1-2 years after he started making Tesla content that he bought shares.
He is not delusional enough to think that he himself moves the stock price. If he thought Tesla was falling behind or stopped improving he would simply sell the stock (at lots of profit) and tell people that Tesla is going in the wrong direction.
Within less then a year Tesla was pushing hard into that technology and invested many 100s of millions into it.
We don't of course know if Tesla did that because of his suggestions but they did 'the right thing'.
He also just bought a Rivian so he clearly is happy for all well engineered products.
If you have a weak stomach, don't watch while eating breakfast, you're likely to lose it.
Tesla factory looks a bit slow, I guess because it’s new.
Many steps are missing, like assembling doors/ hood before oaint shop. Interiors assembly also missing. I assume these are the more proprietary things from Tesla. What they showed are the common processes/tools across many manufacturers.
They had too many cars parked inside the factory, normally that means defects that need to be fixed.
The biggest producing automotive factory in the world is the famed VW Wolfsburg factory.
Makes me wonder how many people would notice if someone didn't inform them that it was possible.
As long as my car doesn't leak water and it drives straight, I'm a happy camper.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_Bearing_(advertisement)
As an example: Nobody cares about clubbed fingernails either, but it can indicate something much worse.
Toyota and Honda economy cars are assembled with more rigorous quality standards than a $100k Tesla.
Not playing devil's advocate for Tesla here but how long have Toyota and Honda been building cars? It's true that every iteration is superior but they started out making some fairly bad cars back in the day.
Showing my age here but when Japanes cars started getting popular in the UK it was only because British cars had become so bad. Even then, it was common knowledge that a Japanes car was only good for 2 or 3 years since the bodywork couldn't cope with our weather and would just rust away.
Global automakers in the 80’s learned the limits and perils of automation. Musk decided he had to learn that mistake for himself, years later admitting the process needed people more than he imagined.
The collective knowledge gained in making quality automobiles since Toyota started until now is widely available, especially with someone who has the resources to hire people with that experience.
Yes, this is a fair point, I do concede.
86 and 59 years, respectively. If it takes Tesla another 72 years to figure out how to build high quality cars someone else will eat their lunch.
I had the service and maintenance plan, treated it like a baby. Happened just outside of the plan. Trust gone.
Sorry, but that "common knowledge" is wrong. Source: I know people working in the VW engine research and design lab, and they can be very talkative (probably to the point where they broke NDAs while a little drunk).
What is true is that VW, at a certain point, did invest significantly more in diesel engine tech than in petrol engine tech. But not to the point where they ignored petrol engines. They couldn't afford to do so, as they were serving many markets where diesel is rather uncommon (for personal cars). And at that point in time, they already had petrol engines that were very competitive and often even leading the pack (depending on the model). Not that any of this matters a lot today, as all that is quite a bit in the past now.
That isn't to say that some VW models are rather shit when it comes to reliability. The VW Jetta, which isn't even sold in Europe I believe, has a particularly bad rep in that regard.
Specially for petrol engines, the 2006/2007 EA111 TSI (1.2l and 1.4l) have a particular bad rep for reliability, and later EA111s are a mixed bag at best. Earlier EA111s and the successor, the EA211 (1.0 to 1.4l), do not have the same bad rep, and in fact got at least decent reliability rep and favorable mpg rep. The "bigger" EA888 (1.8l/2.0l) initially had a design flaw that caused excessive oil consumption in a lot of cases, which was later fixed in future iterations of the engine.
Nobody really cares about this. Esp if Tesla build quality is poor and VW is great I'd think the fast build is doing them no favors.
Currently, the Volkswagen Wolfsburg Plant is the biggest automotive factory in the world by number of vehicles produced by a single factory. That number is 815,000 vehicles per year. The tesla factories that are currently built are in theory capable of 1 million vehicles per factory apiece, but are not there yet. If tesla can out-manufacturer VW, obviously they'll be more likely to sell more vehicles, and further erode VW's business.
Here's a similar video from Honda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCuclAl9AGo
What's missing from the Tesla video is arguably the most important part: the batteries.
These are fine operations and the piece being worked on may not be placed in the correct place to the mm, otherwise there will be constant stops and damaged parts
Adding a say simple laser distance measurement sensor to make sure the piece is at the distance it is supposed to be is not difficult, computer vision and AI maybe overkill but a simple sensor ?
Also a lot of inspection seems to done by hand, while good inspectors can be smart about finding issues , Why not scan the entire car and see if there are abnormalities over accepted range ? it is like manual QA, I rather have automation suite rather that inconsistency of a manual process.
I am sure people are already thinking about it, Musk certainly was making a big push for more automation (and ran into a ton of difficulties )
Also, most of the parts of a car that wear out are shared between EV and ICE. Modern ICE drivetrains rarely break and routinely last the lifetime of the car.
Things that break on ICE vehicles commonly EVs don’t have: * fanbelts * flywheels * alternators * starters * spark plugs * transmissions * etc
In practice, Teslas break most when other drivers hit them.
> In practice, Teslas break most when other drivers hit them.
Have you been to a service center? They're packed, especially when compared to Tesla's market penetration. And none of the cars I saw there were wrecked. Just broken.
Tesla cars will most likely last about the same length of time as a current ICE vehicle, because what mostly kills vehicles is body rot. I'm even open to the argument that Teslas will have lower average lifespan, to be honest, due to the rate of change in the EV marketplace.
Service centers are packed because there aren’t enough of them. If you look at the ratio of service centers to teslas on the road you’ll see the problem rather starkly… there aren’t enough of them.
Tesla supplants this problem by heavily leaning on mobile service, which is awesome, but fundamentally, the service org has scaled at maybe 20-30% the speed of the manufacturing org.
I’ve personally owned 3 Toyotas with over 150k miles on them with very little maintenance. One of them was from 1994. One(my wife’s current car) has almost 200k on it.
Do you have a Toyota with higher than 300k miles on it? If not, why?
https://www.thedrive.com/tech/43592/heres-how-a-tesla-model-...
The tech in the Model 3s tends to be significantly better than these old model s cars mind you and they still hold up to 400,000+ miles. I bet you’d get an engine rebuild or two and maybe a new transmission or two after 400k miles on a gas car as well.
In fact there is a lawsuit for the corolla 4 cylinder from the mid 2000s(one of the Toyotas I've owned) because the odometer stops working at 300k miles/kilometers due to some bug: https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/some-toyota-models-...
Gasoline car engines are more complex while that can in theory mean lesser reliability, we should also consider that they been around a lot longer , we have had a lot of time to develop manufacturing process and mature them .
Battery vehicles are very very fast evolving, also Tesla is not exactly known for well manufactured vehicles
Finally also the availability of know how and feasibility to fix a motor is lot harder than gasoline engines , there maybe a tendency to replace the motor than fix it because cheaper or easier for Tesla like how phones do it.
Here you go. This driver has driven three of them over 300,000 miles:
https://www.torquenews.com/1083/driver-1-million-driven-priu...
Both cases where I sold my Toyota were because I was moving cross country and had to downsize to a single car, at least temporarily. We still have the other one.
Belts are maintenance parts, and are extremely unlikely to break if changed on schedule.
> flywheels
You would need a shaped charge warhead to break a flywheel.
> alternators and starters
Electric motors and servos exist in electric cars as well, to drive fans, pumps, brake servos, and so on.
> spark plugs
It is extremely rare for spark plugs on fuel injected engines to break, but they degrade and are cheap and easy to replace. Much easier than brake pads or tires.
> transmissions
Very rarely break, but the transmissions in electric cars share the same basic components.
> In practice, Teslas break most when other drivers hit them.
If this was true, it would mean teslas are babied and only used sparingly in forgiving environments. But there are still too few old teslas around to produce meaningful statistics about drive train/chassi failure modes, which usually happen much later in the cars lives. The oldest ones are essentially babied "boutique" individuals.
Maintenance changes on cars are: tires, brake pads, fluids (oil, cooling, hydraulics), and some belts, shock absorbers and suspension parts.
It is true that electric cars don't need oil changes.
As an example, the tesla model 3 warranty is 4 yr/50,000 mi basic, 8 yr/100,000 mi powertrain.
By comparison, the BMW M4 warranty is 4 yr/50,000 mi basic, 4 yr/50,000 mi powertrain.
Now the powertrain warranty being twice that of BMWs tells me they expect it to last at least that long. Perhaps I'm misreading something here?
The oldest teslas with the most miles are primarily taxis. I'm not sure I'd call a taxicab a "babied" vehicle.
Say that's required every 200k miles on average. Lot better than a 30k battery replacement.
But, the battery costs will continue to drop, so this will be interesting to see.
https://evannex.com/blogs/news/7-myths-busted-after-200-000-...
https://enginepatrol.com/how-long-tesla-model-s-last/
https://electrek.co/2020/05/11/tesla-model-x-extreme-mileage... Note: Electrek is a Tesla fanboi blog that masquerades as news, but the facts are the facts
https://www.thedrive.com/tech/43592/heres-how-a-tesla-model-... Multiple references to teslas with 400,000+ miles
https://www.carscoops.com/2020/08/what-are-the-maintenance-c...
Etc.
The aluminum stamping on that scale is basically unique to Tesla but other companies are now slowly starting to copying that approach. However Tesla seems to be moving forward faster then others are catching up. In total this reduces the size of the bodyshop considerably.
That said their traditional welding lines seem to still not be as perfect as those from other manufactures. This is mostly true for Fremont, Shanghai has a better reputation. Berlin will hopefully follow that. In that department Tesla has no advantage.
The painting line is state of the art but not unique to Telsa, and new major expensive car factory would something similar. Most such factories are of course older so Tesla is ahead but there is certainty no moat there.
In terms of the motors, electronics/wiring and body I would consider Tesla ahead. The battery packs currently made in Berlin I would still consider state of the art but nothing that special. The packs made in Texas are actually significantly ahead (for High-Nickel cells at least).
In terms of final assembly and and interiors they are somewhat behind.
Process is very similar; stamping, welding, painting, wiring, assembling, shipping.
When I visit I often do runs around the factory which gives a good impression of the size of the area: Its a 10k run.
They did some landscaping around the factory to offset the alterations, the factory also has 3 large wind turbines and a battery storage farm made from used EV batteries.
Like the Tesla video, the secret sauce is omitted, (composite frame layup) but much attention lavished on commodity items. (motor coil winding)
If you visit any Mercedes or BMW or Audi plant, you'll see the same big orange robots, too. They are KUKA arms, probably implemented by the same system integrators.
High assembly efficacy is mainly due to large front and read aluminum castings, new battery format 4680, and unique structural battery pack onto which, floor, seats and console are mounted and later integrated, in one go, into the chassis through the bottom of the vehicle.[0]
[0]https://twitter.com/live_munro/status/1512215223268216833
[1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-04/vw-ceo-te...
VW has already announced a next generation platform where they are copying many aspects of Tesla architecture.
that's "nonsense that that results in higher service costs" to Tesla?
We don't have actual comparative data on issue. You can't just look at social media and distill facts from that. Have we really not learned this yet?
Other car makers have dealers that take the cars first. We don't know how often people go back to those dealers or how many issues get fixed at the dealer. So we don't know if manufacturing mistakes are more common with Tesla.
Service cost has not been holding back Tesla and its already turning profitable despite the majority of cars being under warranty. If it was as bad as you have made it up in your imagination this would not be happening.
In fact having complete control over service and having to cover the cost of that makes sure Tesla has financial intensive to not build broken cars, arguably more so then OEMs with a dealership model. And in fact, in the major categories like motors, batteries, electronics and software have done very, very well in terms of quality, fare better then other EV.
Tesla Mobile service can fix many issues without the owner ever having to interact with Tesla Service. This is an experience that is actually better then the majority of cars and it massively reduces the cost of fixing small and medium issues.
But I am sure Diess will take 10 extra hours in production to check the panel gaps.
There's a gazillion "how cars are made" videos on YT but they are all full of irritating voiceovers and interviews. This one is a lot more just fun to watch.
Most of what makes the Tesla video interesting is the FPV perspective negotiating all the close calls. The factory and vehicle assembly shown otherwise didn't strike me as particularly interesting, but I'm probably not the target audience.
It a cool to see the inside of the factory tho, hopefully we can get a more detailed look sometime.
> the job requirements to be a Tesla assembly person were that you're blind with no hands
One example of this that you don't see mentioned often, is that stamped door assemblies frequently need "adjustment", aka bending and beating, in to position to make them fit properly. You can see some examples of it in this video: https://youtu.be/iPhwBUnR_XA?t=216
- Material handling - moving a part from A to B. Many of the parts looked too heavy for a human to lift. Some could probably be lifted by two humans working together, but that's a really bad use for humans and easy enough to automate.
- The presses and possibly some kind of moulding/pouring process, which obviously need to be done by a machine
- Spot (?) welding
- The coating/painting
So I'd turn the question around and say: It seems like they automated only a few key processes, and many of them because human labor isn't really an option. The presses replace many different production techniques, some of which could probably be done manually, so replacing those other techniques with "just put it in the press" is an advancement and it implies automation. The painting could be done by humans but the overall process would again be a lot more complicated. Automation for the welding is well established, and you want the consistency of robots.
When was the last time a car manufacturer used humans to spray paint? Decades?
Here's the timestamped link showing a worker in a modern factory spray painting a door. https://youtu.be/iPhwBUnR_XA?t=442
Now, how common is that? No idea.
No reason that it needs to be FPV - if they have a 3D model of the factory they could have created a path for it to fly. I don't think Ardupilot or Betaflight is up to that(?), but a small team of engineers working for a couple of months would be able to make it work.
Inside-out indoor 3D positioning is an _exceptionally hard_ problem. Like, really hard. It parallels inside-out road positioning enough that there is crossover (and IIRC there is a lot of employee motion between Tesla and DJI and other drone autonomy makers), but I don't think this would be an easy "few months" project and certainly not cost effective.
Beacon systems can be used (but might not work well in metal enclosures like in the video).
Just accurate trajectory following is very difficult in itself depending on the speed/accel/turning.
The cars in the video were moving and so the drone had to be time synced. Same with the stuff inside the factory.
They built a factory using a high degree of automation in a 3D space - i.e. they have a significant staff of automation engineers.
Intel has been doing tight formation drone light shows outdoors (in weather) since at least 2014, if not earlier. Positioning drones precisely enough (i.e. within N centimeters) is therefore objectively possible if you have the right feedback system (and as a sibling comment points out, IR sensors could work for that). Offload all the processing to a computer rather than the drone, and it isn't an insurpassable problem.
A small team of engineers for a few months is <$1m, which for a marketing campaign this splashy is nothing. Granted, per one of the sibling comments they did use an FPV pilot for at least some of the shots, but there's nothing stopping them from having automated other parts of it.
I don’t have experience using it in volumes as large as the video, but in moderate sized lab space it works very well, and at high frame rates.
The trick is to invert the problem and have the active sensors off-board and the robot is the (reflected energy) beacon.
There are surely cuts in there its not a continues shot but its not all speed up either otherwise some of the machines would work way faster.
I would assume it was FPV, the other version seem like it would be more work and more expensive.
I always assumed there were some neat tricks to get HD from multiple analog channels, after all these years, but none are remotely affordable.
I'm tempted to slap an old 4g android phone onto the car (or two), and turn the cars max speed down, and use that for highish latency, but nearly infinite control range. With a little solar panel stopped on, infinite battery life, with some long, periodic, naps!
Hobbyist: RubyHD, OpenHD (make your own system using raspberrypi zero/jetson nano etc..) and get a decent connection by using off the shelf wifi hardware in monitor mode. Can cost up to $100 - $150. (2 raspberrypis, 1 camera, wifi dongles) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFGsZ_d3KBw
Commercial: HDZero (proprietary low latency HD system that is fairly popular with FPV quadcopter racers these days). Can cost up to $300. ($50 for camera, $50 for vtx, $150-250 for receiver with hdmi out).: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHa08sdKoGs . They recently released a 1Watt vtx that costs about $100, and can give you a fairly good range.
Definitely cheaper though!
disclaimer: I just bought a DJI headset. I may be biased and trying to justify my purchase to myself. ;)
The video you linked doesn't represent HDZero fairly though, because they're 2 different cameras - with different settings. Here's a more accurate representation: https://youtu.be/SmfbMTe80Uc?t=126 . (So far, of all the HDZero cameras I have tested, I liked Digisight V3 the best)
RubyHD seems pretty good - except for latency. On a better hardware I think RubyHD would be as good as DJI.
Also do check out the recent root exploit for DJI goggles. It will soon bring you "Canvas mode" (OSD like we had on Analog systems). Happy Flying!
I am still waiting for Orqa to come out with their HD system.
here's a sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EA6ntosoZYs
I have no idea how to judge those claims, but various factories creating cars, aircraft carriers, submarines, or space shuttles certainly seem like they should be candidates. Especially since they're software-controlled!
Any other candidates?
----
As an aside, I find this a lot more impressive than the Dall-E 2 illustrations on the front page right now. Because at the end of the day the cars being produced here have to run, and be sold.
In contrast, I believe our minds are largely "filling in the blanks" for the images generated by Dall-E 2. They don't have to "work" or make money ... just be sufficiently "interesting".
Another from the Macan production line at Leipzig: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3FUH9fVC_M
An OS kernel alone like Linux is around 28 million lines of code, plus around 30,000 packages available, each with thousands or more LOC. All hand written and interacting.
A vehicle might have only a few thousand physical parts, but if you start counting the computing hardware on board you might count transistors on its computers which are now in the billions; plus to be fair you'd count all its software as well.
Now, we don't have a general AI that you could just hand a pile of legos and a booklet to and we almost certainly won't have one of those for a number of years - but that task isn't out of the realm of reason for a specialized solution.
Nobody else gave a shit about EVs until Tesla did it on a large scale. I don't own a single share of TSLA or one of their vehicles (yet) and I am happy for this and will benefit from it, because I am a human living on Earth.
Don't be a hater.
Its not like Tesla went down to the local market and picked up a few toys and put a factory together.
By your standard no company in history would be 'particularly special'.
However, Tesla and all of its operations, including the factory in the video, is part of a broader context. They don't exist in a vacuum. None of this would have happened without that broader context.
https://electrek.co/2022/04/01/drone-whips-around-teslas-ber...
It's going to be a no-fun future for a lot of people.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP-gTCp5Kac
[2] or golf cart, scooter, drive, walk. Segway was that kind of 'futuristic transportation'.
There’s nothing wrong with automated QC activities, but it’s not going to replacing walking the floor (assuming the floor isn’t a lights-out facility.)
generally re: Tesla, I hope we can manage to throw similar enthusiasm and expertise behind promethean engineering projects slightly more imaginative than the self-propelled carriage and a bit more pragmatic than a mars colony
What problems would you like solved?
For me, I would like nuclear energy to get attention but the world has decided to be dumb and its not changing its mind anytime soon.
Only about 30 years late (and might be too late anyway). And who knows if it'll even happen, this government is famously u-turny.
mars colony however seems untenable as an economic enterprise barring unforeseen developments, and makes no sense as an existential hedge until we demonstrate the capacity to reliably shape and maintain natural and artificial life support systems on this planet
I would love to see more nuclear energy
Gigafactory is a name for a place that builds mega- up to gigawatt (micro-)reactors fit for any municipality or mobile habitat, not some car
Rather the media around Tesla stopped getting answers for requests and some of the personal contacts from inside Tesla that they had left the company. This lead the media concluding that Tesla had fired its PR department. Or at least those people that responded to media requests. We know that some people that were part of that moved to other position inside Tesla.
Tesla always had events and produced various kinds of media that they put out on their own channel. They clearly have a marketing or media team of some kind. The also clearly have people preparing communication for governments and shareholders, so they do have some kind of PR department, even if they internally don't call it that and those people work inside other departments.
I think you are mixing up what Musk claims and what media companies say about Tesla.
- PR - handling traditional and perhaps social media channels like TV, journals, magazines etc answer press questions, arrange interviews , make sure journalists covering them have access, in smaller orgs get journalist to cover them.
- media planning - figures out where to place advertisements and when and may handle also the buy operations . Digital is in-house in large orgs, but for traditional media like print it is external[1]
- creative agencies usually external and produce advertising content like Super Bowl ads to boring flyers
- Marcom - Marketing communications usually is responsible for Corporate communication and content that is not advertising stuff like this video.
- few other like lobbying ,crisis control etc may work in the same group or work with legal or other depts
——-
[1] this still requires relationship building unlike digital as there is no targeting , limited inches airtime available and getting the slots you want can be tricky everyone wants best prime time /first page etc for their campaigns, it is not always top price sale. As slots are sold in complex packages clubbed with less attractive media properties that don’t sell as well with the attractive ones you do want to buy .
This is why we have media groups they are more efficient, as they can better monetize properties by clubbing them in sales and are able to acquire independent publications/channels to make more money than they were making on their own.
From an article titled "Elon Musk says no to a new Tesla PR department, doesn’t believe ‘manipulating public opinion’"[1]:
> Elon Musk rejected the idea of Tesla going back to having a PR department, and his reasoning behind it is quite revealing: He doesn’t believe in “manipulating public opinion.”
[1] https://electrek.co/2021/04/28/elon-musk-no-new-tesla-pr-dep...
I trust the people.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 27, 2021
If you have evidence saying otherwise please do share.
https://jalopnik.com/teslas-pr-department-hasnt-responded-to...
The fact that they don't have a press office at all?
Then they lied. This video is an ad.
Here's another Tesla ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9id7BSPttGs
And here's another Tesla ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz394aKhfLY
I for one, am grateful that a company is showing the power of organic marketing like that, as opposed to constantly having to see Doritos ads injected into my friends' Instagram stories on iOS. (jk, I only use desktop Firefox w/ uBlock now)
That's got nothing to do with it. All that's going on here is that people have bought into a false narrative that Tesla doesn't do advertising. And instead of recognizing it as false they desperately defend the falsehood to avoid feeling foolish.
Making the claim that something which is plainly an ad is not an ad by way of silly semantics is farcical.
Oxford (https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/advertisement): "A notice or announcement in a public medium promoting a product, service, or event or publicizing a job vacancy."
Merriam Webster (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/advertisement): "a public notice, especially: one published in the press or broadcast over the air"
Collins (https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/adverti...): "An advertisement is an announcement online, or in a newspaper, on television, or on a poster about something such as a product, event, or job."
Cambridge (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/advertis...): "a picture, short film, song, etc. that tries to persuade people to buy a product or service, or a piece of text that tells people about a job, etc."
You've naively bought into a lie that Tesla has told you but that doesn't mean you need to keep repeating that lie.
This video is promotional marketing. It is not advertising. Those are two different things. You can die on that hill if you want to, but it’s fucking weird. Tesla makes some people go completely batshit insane, and I do not get it. At all.
You poor thing.
Informercial: https://electrek.co/2020/04/30/tesla-influencer-stream-adver...
Informercial: https://www.inputmag.com/culture/tesla-cyber-rodeo-rabid-elo...
Informercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUmkbzQ-BS0
Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bq4Gp4-IBg
Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz394aKhfLY
Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CorrbelUSIE
Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIehAaVTmR0
Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwZQe1s2ScM
A really, deeply cynical ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZbDg24dfN0
> This video is promotional marketing. It is not advertising.
You sweet summer child.
Suck my fat hog, cunt. None of those are ads. They are promotional marketing. I’m sorry you are so possessed by this need to hate and ridicule, but Tesla doesn’t advertise. That does not mean they do not promote their product. But — and here is what you are too willfully stupid to understand — advertising and marketing are not the same thing. Post all the YouTube links you want. Unless one of those is an ad that shows up before other videos on YT, it’s not an ad. It’s promotional marketing.
Cunt.
It's the same kind of radicalization you see with QAnon adherents. The more the objective reality of the world contradicts their beliefs, the more strongly they cling to those beliefs.
What I do care about is truth. I worship truth. It is my god. And you are a liar. You have an axe to grind against Tesla, and will pursue it in bad faith, by which I mean regardless of what facts are presented to you.
Tesla does not advertise. This is a truth. You are obsessed with Tesla. This is also a truth. But know what? You’re my project. I’m a zealot when it comes to the truth. It is, as I mentioned, my God. I want to do my holy duty. I want to fight some fuck stick on the Internet. So please continue to bring it on. Continue to use your rhetorical tricks, shift blame, and all the other tiresome tactics that trolls like you resort to.
Tesla does not advertise. They promote their products, but not through advertisements.
By the way: Ford uses WPP as their ad agency. Toyota uses Saatchi & Saatchi. Target uses Merkle.
Which advertising agency does Tesla use? For these advertisements you swear exist somewhere?
That fits. Religious zeal is often how people go wrong.
It's always best to take a step back and give yourself the opportunity to be more objective.
What's false: Tesla doesn't advertise.
What's true: Tesla advertises.
See? Simple.
Here's some more advertising. Tesla offers you the exciting opportunity of a religious experience at a live infomercial:
https://www.inputmag.com/culture/tesla-cyber-rodeo-rabid-elo...
From OED:
> a notice or announcement in a public medium promoting a product, service, or event or publicizing a job vacancy.
From Merriam-Webster:
> a public notice especially : one published in the press or broadcast over the air
The mental gymnastics Tesla fans perform to desperately rationalize Tesla's obvious lies ought to be an Olympic sport.
Tesla advertises. Accept it. Embrace the reality of it.
This kind of silly semantic argument is both weak and tedious. They're ads, start to finish. It's advertising. There is no other honest description.
One of the two definitions of an "advertisement" from Webster was quoted. The other is this:
> the act or process of advertising something
Which links to "advertising":
> the action of calling something to the attention of the public especially by paid announcements
Emphasis mine. So perhaps we have some middle ground here. I would argue that this is the advertising definition we're talking about when we're discussing whether something is an "advertisement", not the sort of public event or job posting, commonly referred to as a "classified ad", referred to by the other definition. Maybe that's where we disagree. Or maybe it's the salience of this "especially by paid announcements". In my experience, that is the general understanding of the term: advertisements are generally paid. But I acknowledge that it says "especially by", not "only by", so some room for interpretation is left.
So, given all that, I figure if you want to label this an ad, that's reasonable. What I find less reasonable is declaring anyone who disagrees to be objectively wrong, and then using dismissive language like the above to try and win an unnecessary argument.
No, you are objectively wrong. It's advertising, straight up and down.
The lengths you're going to to defend an obvious lie are strange. That's the odd psychology of it where you're more willing to keep going down the rabbit hole than you are to simply admit you're wrong.
One difference is that Tesla uses aluminum castings on a large scale. So they basically get raw aluminum melt it down and then cast it. But that is not so different the stamping parts locally.
The real difference will be in terms of batteries. Texas and Berlin both have battery cell production on site. In Texas its literally in the same building. No other manufacture has that yet as far as I am aware.
Tesla is also doing cathode and anode manufacturing in house. They seem to even be moving cathode materials production in house as well but I am not sure if that's already included in the current buildings.
I think Tesla Texas will be the most complete end to end car done in one building. Stamping, casting, plastics, seats, fabrics, glass, panting, battery cells, battery packs, motors and more besides in on big building. Thins that are still missing is of course computer chips, electronics.
If they actually do cathode materials manufacture there nobody else is even close.
It's far easier to have people with impressive resumes interview at the victim organization and directly ask questions. Fishing for information isn't difficult "I designed the Foo process and know to work around the disadvantages, and can apply that knowledge here", "Oh, we don't do that here, we have Bar, which is superior..."
But I think there’s always room for criticism:
- We shouldn’t look to cars for the future of transportation. They don’t scale especially in large cities (Dallas, Atlanta). Fly me a drone though a bus or train factory! I’m not saying for everyone to stop using cars completely, but city and suburb design shouldn’t make cars the only option…and Elon’s tunnels are the opposite of a transit solution.
- Tesla is potentially getting its lunch eaten by competitors like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and BMW i4. They need to improve their interior fit and finish to compete. Tesla’s advantage will evaporate very quickly when faced with motivated and giant rivals. Hyundai and VW in particular should scare the crap out of them.
The goal was always to cause the transition away from ICE, not stop competition. Every EV is one less ICE car
I'm relatively indifferent to Tesla, but I'm fairly confident that people have been making this prediction for many years now.
A high capacity electric bus threw a tunnel is theoretically as efficient and far more dynamic, cheaper and easier to maintain and upgrade then any Subway. Its a mistake to draw conclusion from first generation products.
Really its just like a subway but each subway-car is a bit shorter and has its own propulsion system. Each car is no longer forced to stop at each station (clearly highly ineffective) and the network can do far more complex routing and more point to point transport.
You take advantage of the millions of EV battery and motors produced to get low cost and you make the tunnels cheap and dumb.
I don't understand why people are so resistant to this.
> Tesla is potentially getting its lunch eaten by competitors
If I had a penny for every-time I have heard this since 2014 I literally be a millionaire right now. Its a complete misunderstand of the EV business and what it takes to scale EV production. Had other companies gone all in on this in 2014-2016 range it might have been true.
VW who is one of he two biggest manufactures and was pushing for EV far earlier and harder then all non-Tesla competitors has clearly stated they hope to overtake Tesla in 2024 at best.
Others like BMW or Hyundai simply don't have the battery capacity or secured battery supply-chain to produce the number of vehicles to 'eat Tesla lunch'. You can look at those companies own projects for the next few years, even the optimistic projects are not close to those of Tesla.
> evaporate very quickly when faced with motivated and giant rivals.
Actually the major advantage that these 'rivals' have, having a profitable ICE business to subsidies their EV buildup is about to disappear faster.
And if you pay attention to Tesla growth you will see that they are really not that much smaller anymore. Tesla is on track to produce about 1.5 million vehicles this year and all of them pretty premium priced.
BMW Group is aiming to produce like ~2.6 million vehicles. And of course they have a massive legacy ICE business and are nowhere near able to invest what Tesla is in EV and Battery technology. Its very likely that in 2023 Tesla will outsell BMW already.
And in terms of being 'giant' what matters is how many EV you make. That dedicates of how large you can make your supply contracts with the large battery materials producers. Tesla is both the largest buyer of batteries but they are also dealing with the raw supply of materials themselves, having major contracts with the largest lithium, nickel and cobalt producers that other companies can only dream. Tesla buys more lithium then the rest of the German and US industry combined.
Tesla is the largest battery consumer of Panasonic and also one of the largest costumers of CATL and LG (ie largest manufactures of Japan, Korea and China). Plus Tesla themselves are on track to be largest battery producer from Europe/US themselves.
Given the Gas prices now, EV demand in general and Tesla demand in particular are constrained by production. Hyundai will sell ever Ionic they can make but they simply can't make enough even if it was 10x more popular then Tesla (and they are not based on any measure).
You also only mention interiors (matter of taste) while ignoring far more important things like charging that is far more relevant when it comes to EV sales.
Don't get me wrong, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 is a great product. But the idea that because of that they are gone eat Tesla launch anytime in the next couple years will simply not hold up. The reality is 98% of the market is still non EV and every additional EV produced will not be one less EV produced by a competitor but one less ICE produced by a competitor.
The companies who you need to be afraid for is those that don't have large supply of battery and supply chains locked up over the next 4-5 years. The depreciation of ICE vehicles will be incredibly once EV hit a critical point and those manufacturers with lots of ICE exposure will be the once suffering the most.
The video gamer in me though did want to mash the forward key when they waited for the second machine to finish a round before continuing though... you could've made that jump!
The cost of a few spare drones is likely negligible compared to the overall production cost of the video.
Edit: Quite surprised/curious why this is getting downvoted so aggressively ...
> dirty and ramshackle
That's... an opinion.
> some status displays seem to be down
Perhaps to protect information?
Re dirty and ramshackle, there's just a lot of stuff standing around in what seems like temporary locations, including discarded packaging materials. Things also do frankly look a bit dusty and bruised in ways I'm just not used to seeing in these high-end factories. It may not be to levels of functional relevance, but I think it's interesting. The factories I'm used to are nearly antiseptically clean and the people who run them take great pride in them being so.
> You haven't seen entire subframes being molded before, so it would be strange to see that much mold flash falling off.
Is this what happens at 1:09?
Yep. That's a front (I think) subframe, fresh off the presses. A little mold flash is to be expected, it's operating around 5,600 to 6,200 tf, more than any industrial mold on the planet. I am friends with an excellent moldmaker, and he's in awe that it works at all.
> It may not be to levels of functional relevance, but I think it's interesting.
This makes more sense, and doesn't fit with your original tone.
> wondering if this was shot weeks ago during trial or calibration runs
Likely. This video was leaked several weeks back.
Jokes aside, that's really cool flying and great footage!