Passenger and pedestrian safety is very important, and this is quite an achievement.
I do wonder about the manufacturing and supply chain, and how environmentally (and worker) friendly it is given the extremely low price.
I do wonder about the manufacturing and supply chain, and how environmentally (and worker) friendly it is given the extremely low price.
The parts quality, worker treatment and environmental considerations are excellent (especially compared to what I came in expecting).
These are well-paying stable jobs for low-skilled labor. The plants were clean and significant precautions were taken before operating risky machines. Unionized plants tend to be more worker friendly but also worse run.
The thing about making $8k cars is they only make sense at scale. And effective operation at scale needs a well oiled workforce with little leeway for the kind of inefficiencies that come with haphazard work.
Now, 3rd party supplier conditions are more suspect. They can range from being at parity to looking like a proper sweat shop. But the mines where Apple's silicon is mined isn't that different either.