Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobiles/Tesla-teardown-finds-electronics-6-years-ahead-of-Toyota-and-VW2

by mlacks • 6 years ago

126 449 6 years ago

asia.nikkei.com

notlukesky• 6 years ago

Software with a battery pack (and no headache of a drivetrain).

Luckily for Tesla, most of the other car companies disdain software engineering and see it beneath them and mechanical engineering. My friend had sold his software company to BMW in 2008 and they didn’t even ask him to join BMW. Even more shocking they used the same software for over ten years with NO upgrades and updates.

ChuckNorris89• 6 years ago

Which company is that?

ThePowerOfFuet• 6 years ago

Good luck with that.

rurban2• 6 years ago

You are misleaded. VW sees itself as mainly software company now. They don't do engines nor drivetrains, but they do heavy SW. This way they think they can control the technicians.

weregiraffe• 6 years ago

VW sees itself as mainly software company now.

Emission-cheating software?

lisk1• 6 years ago

I'm perplexed by this article what so special about tesla hardware except some custom ASICs , few days ago there was article disusing the software side of Tesla cars didnt took traction on HN , its just Ubuntu based linux with fail save boot feature, a bunch of shell scripts and QT based user interface. The interesting questions is, is it viable someone to make fully open source linux distro for tesla cars and how legal is it to install alternative software for Tesla cars , just like a PC, customer buys the hardware but have a choice to install what ever software he wants.

Shivetya• 6 years ago

What stands out from this article for me; I own a model 3; is that they are suggesting that suppliers may hold back some manufacturers who do not wish to damage their relationship with those suppliers by wholesale changing up how cars are done.

one area they suffer not highlighted is that each supplier maintains its own code base and while I bet they are obligated to share that with the automobile manufacturer it is still a separate team that does not integrate with other suppliers, all this meaning that since Tesla codes all their own ECU and everything feeds up they have a much easier time adapting to new tech and also fixing issues as they come along

OTA alone is a major headache for any traditional manufacturer to implement because they don't make all the electronics so they have to rely on the suppliers coming on board. Worse they also have to convince the dealer network this is a good change because it will take work from them. BMW just recently demonstrated their ability to OTA with some improvements sent up which allow customization of non driving related functions. We know that Audi supports limited OTA for eTron and the Chevrolet Bolt while it has the ability no one seems to report it being use.

for the most part the article is a bit too fanboi for me, after all Tesla riding this edge is just as likely to have issues with hardware that does not stand up to the abuse an automobile can give it

imtringued• 6 years ago

I think the unwillingness of ICE companies to get involved in the production of batteries is the biggest problem.

Right now everyone is worrying that batteries will become a commodity market soon and all the investments in building a battery factory will become worthless. However, the reality is that existing car manufacturers get left behind without access to batteries. Tesla is building Gigafactories everywhere and doesn't suffer from this major problem.

jaclaz2• 6 years ago

The doubt is whether stopping reading the article at:

It could end the auto industry supply chain as we know it.

or just on pargraph later at:

One stunned engineer from a major Japanese automaker examined the computer and declared, "We cannot do it."

erikpukinskis9• 6 years ago

Care to share what about those sentences caused you to lose focus?

jaclaz2• 6 years ago

Sure, no problem.

The first sentence is apodictical and catastrophic.

The second one is meaningless and sensationalistic.

No need to read further an article that is clearly a "plug" and that - besides and as per comments here on HN - is also factually inaccurate.

ciconia• 6 years ago

I'd really like to see a simple EV for a change. No screens, no AI, no Autopilot, just a 5-seat vehicle with a reasonable range (400+ km) and AC.

maxsilver• 6 years ago

So, a Chevy Bolt?

It does have an infotainment screen, but otherwise: no AI, no Autopilot, 5 seat vehicle, Air Conditioning, and a 416km range

thebruce87m• 6 years ago

If they made them for the UK I’d have one already.

jazzyjackson2• 6 years ago

I drive a plug in Prius -- it has an EV range of 40 km and a gas range of 800 km, I enjoy having a silent EV most of my in town driving, but if I want to do a day trip with 6 hours of driving in a day I don't have to plan where I'm going to park it. It's still pretty computerized of course, lane keep assist and radar cruise control.

I also have wanted an EV truck that's more old fashioned -- it's not like you need ASICs and GPUs to move charge between wheels and a battery. For getting something that's built to last and won't make decisions for you I would check out Bollinger -- I read somewhere they were keeping it as much of a self-service architecture as possible to appease customers who need to maintain the vehicle 'in the field'

From their website: "the Bollinger B1 might well be the last truck you’ll ever need to buy"

https://bollingermotors.com/

Kirby6411• 6 years ago

Unless you want a box that costs way too much money, the Bollinger B1 just seems silly. It's the Hummer H1 of EVs... in fact it's so heavy it legally isn't mandated to have airbags.

If that old-school minimalist aesthetic really appeals to you, more power to you... but it definitely doesn't seem to be meant for the majority of folks.

Kirby6411• 6 years ago

What advantages are you looking to get for a super stripped down EV? Less potential maintenance cost? Cheaper?

It's pretty clear for more car buyers the market has spoken and folks want more infotainment/screens/AI/whatever, so it seems that type of vehicle is definitely going to become less and less common.

crocodiletears2• 6 years ago

I don't think there are any strict advantages to such an EV with respect to day-to-day use. In fact, there are probably some disadvantages

Mantainability is a plus. But the big feature would be not worrying about your car getting remotely bricked for some arbitrary reason, or losing some essential function because your OEM's servers are down.

If a company is capable of constantly monitoring your machine, and updating it OTA, I don't doubt that their liability with respect to whatever you do to your car increases significantly.

Depending on how you like to drive, and where you drive, not fighting the smart driver 'assist' features of vehicles could be a feature as well. I read a commenter on HN some time ago about GPS-assisted headlamps preventing them from providing much needed illumination to something (wrecked vehicle, iirc) off the side of the road.

Personally, I've played enough Assassin's Creed and GTA to know I wouldn't trust a smart system to predict my intent in a life/death scenario.

yellowapple5• 6 years ago

Has the market really spoken, though? If it's literally impossible to buy an EV that doesn't have all these gimmicky screens and AI features in 'em, then there's no way for the market to actually speak.

jupake• 6 years ago

Tesla fans regualrly speak about how the company doesnt advertise at all.

After articles like this, I remain unconvinced.

erikpukinskis9• 6 years ago

By definition, advertising is paid for.

You’re thinking of PR, which by definition is unpaid.

rcMgD2BwE72F5• 6 years ago

One stunned engineer from a major Japanese automaker examined the computer and declared, "We cannot do it."

Ouch

kozak2• 6 years ago

I'd read that as "cannot do this in a sensible timeframe while still following Automotive SPICE".

radu_floricica2• 6 years ago

Read further. It roughly translates to "we can't do it because we already invested in a different supply chain strategy that comes with considerable advantages".

Latecomer advantages.

JohnJamesRambo• 6 years ago

This is the industry that took years to adopt the CD player, it’s not that hard to be technologically ahead of them. Whether that actually translates into more sales of cars is a different question.

ghaff2• 6 years ago

Assuming that was the case, it wouldn't surprise me that might have something to do with the reliability of early CDs across a wide range of temperature conditions and use given vibrations, potholes, etc.

millzlane• 6 years ago

Yea ESP didn't come about until the 90's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_skip_protection

h2odragon• 6 years ago

The aftermarket filled the hole quickly and with the full range of quality available. Many people put the early "discman" portable players on the dash and used FM modulators to get that signal to the car radio.

When "factory CD" units started to appear they were multiples of the price of aftermarket units, and initially of such low quality initially that the FM modulators sounded better. The disc handling on some of the early units was ludicrous, too: "just get my CD out please" was common.

* edit: also people used "CD to cassette adapters" which are worth mentioning because of how ingenious they are. Its a headphone plug on one end and a cassette shell on the other, the headphones drive coils that excite the tape player's read head.

Source: installed car audio as a sideline in the late 80s early 90s.

ambicapter• 6 years ago

As opposed to portable music CD players? I remember 25 minute "skip protection" as a feature on my siblings' players.

raisedbyninjas• 6 years ago

The development lifecyle of vehicles used to be much longer than consumer electronics and software. It's still longer, but they're improving.

beart2• 6 years ago

I just bought a 2018 Ford and the CD player skips when it's cold out.

swiley4• 6 years ago

6 years ahead electronics here means AI ASICs.

I thought that was weird, I know Toyota cars have radar and I’m not sure about Teslas. IMO as an armchair observer the sensor array is far more interesting than any of this.

Personally, if I were to buy another car (and hopefully I don’t have to any time soon) I’d want the processing electronics to be off the shelf not weird custom stuff that’s going to have all kinds of corporate social crap attached to it.

Edit: to make it clear, I’m not saying one manufacturer is better than the other. I’m upset about this because it’s (IMO) more of a marketing thing (and maybe a way to have some leverage over 3rd party repair shops) and not really a technical improvement. There’s been a lot of weird social stuff masquerading as technological advancements everywhere. these have resulted in some small groups of people abusing computers to manipulate everyone else and once you recognize that pattern you get very cynical with articles like op.

rusticpenn• 6 years ago

automotive electronics has a different set of requirements from normal electronics. Most ecus are designed by Bosch, Delphi or some big company in the field.

perl4ever8• 6 years ago

Only if you want them to last 20 years - if that's not the expectation of your customers, there is a massive opportunity.

Figuring out new ways to eliminate uneconomic quality is an ongoing revolution everywhere.

tyfon3• 6 years ago

Tesla has radar in their cars, at least in my X. I think I read somewhere that the cheapest model 3 does not have it but I can't confirm that.

kozak2• 6 years ago

So does almost any other modern car (for automatic emergency braking).

xedeon4• 6 years ago

All Tesla cars have radar, starting with Autopilot V1.

hwbehrens• 6 years ago

the sensor array is far more interesting than any of this.

8 cameras, 12 ultrasonic sensors, and 1 forward-facing radar.[0]

[0] https://www.tesla.com/autopilot

rootusrootus14• 6 years ago

Even with all that, it still ping-pongs with some regularity and has trouble with on- and off-ramps. And no top-down camera view, which even a Nissan Rogue has!

I'm not bitter, though. I knew what I was getting into when I dropped nearly 60K on this thing. But still, would like them to catch up in some areas they are lagging in.

rasz2• 6 years ago

all this and they still routinely rear end parked cars

technofiend• 6 years ago

After Tesla's recent secondary offering perhaps they'll hire some experts away from the big automakers and build a new line to automaker standards. Teslas built to Japanese or European fit and finish standards with their already ahead and ever improving electronics would (IMHO) be unbeatable.

usrusr2• 6 years ago

This has already happened at least once, I wouldn't expect revolutionary change from a repetition.

aguyfromnb4• 6 years ago

I’m upset about this because it’s (IMO) more of a marketing thing (and maybe a way to have some leverage over 3rd party repair shops) and not really a technical improvement.

The number of "tech people" that think Tesla has some chip building advantage over the likes of companies like NVIDIA is astonishing.

Tesla's marketing compares their chip to older NVIDIA boards. NVIDIA has better tech available off-the-shelf:

https://www.businessinsider.com/nvidia-fires-back-at-tesla-c...

drcross• 6 years ago

Perhaps that's the case but Nvidia can't compete in thermal efficiency.

SEJeff16• 6 years ago

Where you're defining better as faster, however, it uses enormously more energy, which impacts overall driving range. It doesn't need to be faster past a certain point. They've already got enough bandwidth to run the entire set of self driving neural networks in duplicate at production speed on the current FSD hardware version 3 computer. There is a point of diminishing returns wrt speed and I think we're quickly approaching if not already surpassing it. Now it is down to efficiency, which the Nvidia solution gets utterly spanked by Tesla's computer on. Ever ran CUDA simulations? GPUs always use enormous amounts of power to do anything, but they're incredible at floating point math.

hef198984• 6 years ago

Yeah, tesla is dancing at to many marriages. AI chips, self-driving, automation. Instead of focusing on mass-producing EVs. had they done just that, developing a top notch EV (which they did) and leverage centuries worth of automotive massproduction for everything not purely EV related we would never have had any discussion about short sellers. But they didn't, so the jury is still out on it if ask me.

perl4ever8• 6 years ago

"I’d want the processing electronics to be off the shelf not weird custom stuff that’s going to have all kinds of corporate social crap attached to it."

Off the shelf electronics are mutually exclusive of "all kinds of corporate social crap"? I would think the former is the most expedient way to deliver the latter.

swiley4• 6 years ago

That’s my point yes.

erikpukinskis9• 6 years ago

It’s eight cameras, you can’t stream a million cars times 8 cameras at full resolution times 24 hours a day, back to the mothership over 4G. It’d be way too expensive.

You need to do your learning on the car and stream back the error component to the mothership.

bengale2• 6 years ago

Tight control of the hardware and software reminds me of Apple.

almost_usual3• 6 years ago

With Larry Ellison on the board it reminds me of Oracle.

rcMgD2BwE72F5• 6 years ago

With red on the logo, it reminds me of Coca-Cola.

ginko• 6 years ago

Wait, Ellison is on the board of Tesla? That's one good reason to hate the company I guess.

bengale2• 6 years ago

Are some of the board seats allocated by people trying to counterbalance Elon though?

k__• 6 years ago

Companies like that are basically work creation schemes.

systemtest• 6 years ago

Everyone is good at something. Tesla is good at electronics, Toyota is good at manufacturing and quality control. A collaboration would be beneficial for both.

sjwright• 6 years ago

A Toyota-Tesla collaboration would never happen, except that it did. We live in a truly strange world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV#Second_generati...

iamphilrae5• 6 years ago

My brand new Toyota C-HR comes with an entertainment screen that is not Retina display. Technology that has been out for half a decade and is found in the dirt cheapest of smart phones. It honestly doesn’t surprise me that the rest of their tech is so far behind.

kevin_thibedeau• 6 years ago

Automotive grade components have to survive greater temperature extremes and vibration for 10+ years. Disposable consumer products don't operate in the same sphere. Tesla has been burned by using consumer grade screens.

iamphilrae5• 6 years ago

Seriously... it’s just some extra pixels?! The have picked cheap components, plain and simple.

radu_floricica2• 6 years ago

This used to be a good excuse, but somehow it starts to ring hollow. Ipads are as near indestructible as any hardware I've seen - drop'em, scratch'em, give'em to toddlers to play with. By comparison a car screen kinda lives a sheltered life.

xiphias22• 6 years ago

It has been burned, but the solution was to control the temperature of the car, not be behind by 10 years. Both have pros and cons.

It just usually sucks to pay a lot of money for a car that's so far behind all the cheap devices that I have.

iamatworknow• 6 years ago

Why would someone need an incredibly pixel dense infotainment display in their car anyway? Does it show all the information I need? Does it have an easy to navigate UI? Will it last a long time and be inexpensive to repair or replace if needed? That's all I really care about for a screen that I look at maybe 5% of the time I'm in my car, because for the most part I'm looking at, y'know, the road and cars around me.

hyperbovine• 6 years ago

How often do you replace your phone? How often do you replace your car?

almost_usual3• 6 years ago

Larry Ellison and Tesla definitely want you to replace your car like your phone.

iamphilrae5• 6 years ago

Exactly that my point. My car is brand new, the model is brand new, yet it’s screen looks like it’s out the bargain basement of an LCD factory. In 5 to 10 year’s time when I replace the car, it’ll look even worse!

PeterisP• 6 years ago

That works the other direction - because of this reason, cars need to have high-end components (in e.g. display resolution) in order to be future proof; because if your phone resolution is horribly obsolete you just replace the phone, but if your car built-in screen is horribly obsolete, then you're still stuck with it. It's unacceptable for a brand new car to use obsolete tech because it won't be replaced any time soon.

resters• 6 years ago

why not just make the screen a module that can be replaced or upgraded, such as by inserting a fresh iPad every few years.

Blipeep• 6 years ago

Should have buy a Tesla Model 3

ohmaigad• 6 years ago

None of the Teslas have Retina displays (> 200ppi)

fred_is_fred• 6 years ago

Every decision made on a car like that is based on cost. The C-HR is a low cost car and I'm sure the retina display is one of hundreds of cost savings decisions made. The Tesla OTOH costs about 1.5-2xx as much as what I see as the base price for the C-HR - so I'd expect more expensive components.

winry• 6 years ago

I bet your C-HR didn't cost +$40,000.

iamphilrae5• 6 years ago

£35,000... so yeah, it did

lb1lf• 6 years ago

-Toyota is rather conservative with regards to new technology, which IMHO is part of the reason they tend to score very well on all kinds of reliability barometers.

(An almost fanatical devotion to quality and process control being another major factor!)

Chances are you will still be able to buy that entertainment screen in 15-20 years' time.

SEJeff16• 6 years ago

    (An almost fanatical devotion to quality and process control being another major factor!)

They call it "kaizen" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen

They even wrote a book in it, "The Toyota Way".

swiley4• 6 years ago

My car has a monochrome segmented LCD and physical controls that I can manipulate without looking. My friend’s low res color touch LCD is bad enough, I just know the people building these UIs now unconstrained by the physical DPI would include features that require long careful looks in order to resolve.

taygetea2• 6 years ago

Glancing at the big, high-dpi navigation map and getting the info you need quickly is a pretty major feature. The Model 3 screen has a bit of this issue with buttons around the edges, but where it's important, like speed, autopilot controls, and the map, they've done well.

pier252• 6 years ago

The touchscreen system of my Honda HRV from that I bought in 2016 is ridiculously bad.

I think the new models come with Android or Apple Car integration but mine has a UI that looks and feels from 20 years ago. Not only it's fugly, but it's slow and unresponsive. Bluetooth disconnects randomly. Sometimes the phone connects but not the audio. The volume control is a fucking touchscreen slider which is totally unresponsive. Jesus, the team that did that had no idea what they were doing.

sliken10• 6 years ago

Touch screens in Subarus, BMWs, Lexus, and Fords (the ones I've personally tried) are laughably bad. Like 10 year old phones, of even older tables like the Nokia 770 tablet (2004 ish).

The Tesla was the first UI I tried that felt as good or better than this years phones. Nice large, clear, color display. Fast UI, pinch and zoom, etc. I do wish they spent a bit more on ram/SSD to keep a better local cache. Seems silly to zoom in, then zoom out and have to wait for the infill.

clouddrover5• 6 years ago

Automotive grade matters:

https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27989/teslas-screen-saga-shows...

blacklion3• 6 years ago

The computer powers the cars' self-driving capabilities as well as their advanced in-car "infotainment" system.

Now I'm scared. I hope it is mistake of Nikkei and these two subsystems doesn't have anything in common, including power supplies.

Neil44• 6 years ago

Yep to put it a different way they seem to be saying that having Spotify running on the same ECU as the driving AI is what puts them 6 years ahead.

DarmokJalad17013• 6 years ago

This is absolutely false. The new FSD chip is specifically made for Neural net inference tasks. It has a custom instruction set with ~18 instructions. Even before that, they used an NVIDIA Drive PX unit for NN inference.

The in-car entertainment system is run on a separate Intel Atom based computer. The ECU controlling the car itself is completely separate from both of these. You can reboot the main display of the car while driving on Autopilot and it will still perform the same.

DarmokJalad17013• 6 years ago

They are wrong. The ECU driving the car is separate from the computer running neural net inference (either the NVIDIA drive PX or their newer FSD computer), which is in turn separate from the display or "MCU" which controls the entertainment system which is based on an Intel Atom CPU.

tyfon3• 6 years ago

No, the "self driving computer" is independent and it actually runs itself in parallel for redundancy and error checking.

The infotainment system runs a custom linux distribution running on ARM (MCU1) or intel atom (MCU2).

They talk to each other but they are independent.

blacklion3• 6 years ago

Question is, how do they talk? For example, if they have shared memory on same bus, it is BAAAAAD.

ec1096853• 6 years ago

Auto pilot still works when you restart the infotainment and display system (holding two buttons on the steering wheel down), so the systems aren’t powered by the same OS.

blacklion3• 6 years ago

It is only half of the story. I was almost sure, that ECU and Infotaiment runs on different CPUs under different OSes. Question is, what do they share? Same bus? Some memory area? Or only something like I2C?

I could imagine situation, when hacked infotaiment system overloads power supply, and if power supply is shared, it takes down ECU too, for example.

I hope, Tesla's engineers better than that.

CrazyStat5• 6 years ago

It's false. The infotainment computer (MCU) is separate from the autopilot computer. You can even reboot the MCU while driving on autopilot and autopilot will keep chugging along happily--though I very much don't recommend doing this since you lose all your feedback from the car (speedometer, audio, ...) while it's rebooting.

There are two versions of the MCU and 3 or 4 versions, depending on how you count, of the autopilot computer.

soygul4• 6 years ago

Article praises Tesla's custom AI chip. It is something many criticize as a waste of development resources, while they could have used off-the-shelf components for the same task.

Tesla's real advantage is their battery production. No one else can compete with them on battery price or production volume at a similar quality: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/10/teslas-competitors-play-catc...

wil421• 6 years ago

Battery production seems like a problem that can be solved right now with money. VW and Toyota could partner with a 3rd party (like Tesla and Panasonic) and build factories.

Custom silicon seems like a much harder problem for VM/Toyota. Unless a supplier can build something for them I don’t see either company innovating like Tesla. Basically Tesla’s secret sauce is the Tech not the EV components.

samirm• 6 years ago

Both problems could be solved with money, but according to the article it seems the giants are refusing to move due to historical relationships (which tesla does not have).

lyime• 6 years ago

It’s both.

Continued improvements to battery tech will bring the costs down for Tesla which is important for them to do if they want to succeed.

Custom hardware and software will also give them cost advantage and help them in the long term.

cma• 6 years ago

Unless a supplier can build something for them I don’t see either company innovating like Tesla.

Mobileye?

aguyfromnb4• 6 years ago

Custom silicon seems like a much harder problem for VM/Toyota

What evidence is there that custom silicon has any advantage in the self-driving race, let alone in cost competitiveness?

nix0n• 6 years ago

Custom silicon seems like a much harder problem for VM/Toyota

Nvidia built a custom chip for Nintendo, I'm sure they would build one for Toyota or VW.

SEJeff16• 6 years ago

It isn't just production, but is also the chemistry. Tesla has the lowest amount of cobalt and nickel in their batteries of any battery manufacturer in the world. It makes their batteries cheaper, but also use less rare earth minerals (which are difficult to get ahold of at their scales). Tesla isn't sharing their chemistry, which is demonstrably better than anything LG Chem or Samsung, etc has been able to come up with. As a result, their batteries are actually better.

You can scale up manufacturing of inferior batteries, but you still will have an inferior product.

DarmokJalad17013• 6 years ago

Is it though? When they started development, there was no such chip specialized for NN tasks. NVIDIA chips are more general purpose and uses a lot more power. The FSD chip has an instruction set of around 18 instructions and is highly specialized.

aguyfromnb4• 6 years ago

Tesla's real advantage is their battery production

Battery pack production. Tesla purchases batteries from Panasonic and LG (and thus is susceptible to that supply).

soygul4• 6 years ago

They also produce the cells (though it might be Panasonic's tech): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giga_Nevada

the production rate of battery cells in the Gigafactory had reached 3.5 million '2170' cells per day.

AtlasBarfed5• 6 years ago

Tesla will make their own cells soon.

rebelde• 6 years ago

Oh, the article gives numbers!

Tesla: $158/kWh Competitors: "more than" $200/kWh

Model 3 SR+ has a 54 kWh battery.

Tesla advantage = (200 - 158) * 54 = $2268 per car.

Yes, an advantage today, but not too bad.

Vesuvium• 6 years ago

Sounds like a lot of money for such a competitive market

SEJeff16• 6 years ago

The Maxwell Technologies battery technology is allegedly 10x cheaper to manufacture due to no oven or liquids and as a result, and also lighter. Elon says the "holy grail" of batteries is being able to develop an automotive grade battery at <= $100/kWh. The Maxwell tech looks to be below that, but we'll find out specifics on the upcoming Battery Investor day.

clouddrover5• 6 years ago

Volkswagen is paying less than $100 per kWh for their MEB cars:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/08/business/volkswagen-trade...

onepremise2• 6 years ago

they could have used off-the-shelf components for the same task.

They did use off-the-shelf components. They performed poorly and they resulted to developing a custom die with the right components to handle the task of computer vision. They explicitly stated this in multiple interviews. The off-the-shelf solution was crap.

rthomas62• 6 years ago

What was wrong with using FPGAs?

soygul4• 6 years ago

AI/ML components change rapidly. What happens if they decide to use an entirely different approach. They develop a new chip? Still seems excessive to develop custom chips for unfinished/experimental tech like self-driving: https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/24/18514308/tesla-full-self-...

rrss2• 6 years ago

If it was so bad, why did tesla claim for years that all their cars were shipping with sufficient onboard capability for eventual "full self driving?"

hef198984• 6 years ago

Isn't Tesla getting batteries from Panasonic? because I had the impression tesla has now a scale advantage.

soygul4• 6 years ago

Gigafactor is also producing the battery cells (though it might be Panasonic's tech) as well as the packs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giga_Nevada

the production rate of battery cells in the Gigafactory had reached 3.5 million '2170' cells per day.

taylodl• 6 years ago

I would argue this is Tesla's real business - battery production. I don't believe they intend to stay in the auto market forever. They're in the market to create demand for quality electric cars, goad the traditional auto makers into making them, and then selling those traditional auto makers the batteries they need to make them work well. I believe that is Tesla's long-term business plan.

matahwoosh2• 6 years ago

Batteries are a commodity, so I doubt Tesla would want to reduce themselves to an OEM and shrink their margins. Their energy business might eventually be bigger than their automotive one, but either way I think they will continue selling vertically integrated products.

AtlasBarfed5• 6 years ago

Off the shelf parts can beat a custom ASIC? That is news to me.

Remember this isn't about the power of the ASIC processing, it is about minimizing the power consumption of the chip so the EV range is affected as little as possible.

NotSammyHagar7• 6 years ago

plus superchargers, engine efficiency, not being held back by supporting legacy car service (aka dealer profit center), no dealers, billions more miles to train their ml models on self driving, customer satisfaction

onetimemanytime2• 6 years ago

I am reading this on my 8 year old computer

tyingq• 6 years ago

I thought there was, though, previous discussion of Tesla using non-automotive grade electronics in places. Using stuff that's rated for the heat, moisture, vibration, etc, implies lag time as opposed to "latest/greatest".

CrazyStat5• 6 years ago

The big screen is the common example of this, as they couldn't source an automative-grade screen that big. It's suffered several issues due to heat and UV exposure.

jungturk2• 6 years ago

Seems like they made a calculated tradeoff here to sacrifice some reliability in further-toward-the-fringe conditions (extremes of heat & humidity) in order to get some wow factor with the screen.

sliken10• 6 years ago

Indeed, years ago. Keep in mind the model S started in 2012!

xedeon4• 6 years ago

The screen is automotive grade. The yellow discoloration has been traced back to a supplier changing the adhesive chemistry on the LCD panel to save cost.

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/yellow-borders-on-ma...

https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/mcu-touch-screen-yello...

bovermyer• 6 years ago

Note that the "we cannot do it" quote is not referring to the technology itself, but rather to the fact that to adopt Tesla's pattern, the legacy auto companies would need to ditch their supply chains. That's not something they can do without pissing off a lot of people.

James_Henry3• 6 years ago

The answer to this, I would think, would be to have a small part of the company whose soul purpose is to disrupt the larger company. Then Toyota and VW might have built Tesla in house without supply chain worries. When their in-house Tesla-like company proved a success, they could reasonably afford to upend their old supply chain: self-disruption.

dmix• 6 years ago

It’s still a big deal to the wider auto industry to have an entire supply chain disrupted. Even if that doesn’t mean much to the end consumer when the big car companies switch to off the shelf computing.

norswap2• 6 years ago

Considering how much money went into the making of the real Tesla, is that really something these big auto-makers could have afforded?

michaelbuckbee• 6 years ago

Maybe worth noting that GM tried this with it's Saturn brand - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Corporation

paramk• 6 years ago

So Tesla is doing what Clayton predicted twenty years back.

earthboundkid• 6 years ago

When companies try to do this, the other divisions attempt to smoother the new division in the crib and typically succeed. If you had good internal politics, they wouldn't do this, but if you had good internal politics, you wouldn't need a new division either.

jungturk2• 6 years ago

Toyota has this with Toyota Connected, a wholly-owned subsidiary that's pushing software/mobility/advanced applications across the Toyota product lines.

They make it quite clear in their public conversations that Tesla-style innovation rates are the goal, but in private conversations lament that they're stuck working in a 3-year product cycle due to the innovation rates in their supply chains (as most of the specs and hardware are generated in collaboration with external suppliers).

As a sibling comment mentions, this structure also creates lots of resentment in some of the traditional Toyota departments who are being disrupted by this.

prawn• 6 years ago

This is often referred to as a "skunkworks" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_Works

BurningFrog2• 6 years ago

I think they could easily piss off a lot of people, if it was important for the company.

What they can't do is become another kind of organization.

If new nimble competitors working in a new way appear, old companies, with vastly more money but a settled bureaucracy, just slowly die, rather than adapt.

pier252• 6 years ago

What they can't do is become another kind of organization.

That's a big problem many companies are facing in this day and age.

For example traditional newspapers companies are transitioning to digital publishing. This not only impacts how content is published but also how content is produced for a different medium.

I heard a podcast a couple fo years ago with (I believe) the CTO of the NYT. He said that the digital part of the NYT was almost a different company altogether. In the past years I worked at a paper publishing/education company and that was my experience as well. I was in charge of the digital product dept and we were like a black box inside the company. Nobody there really understood how we worked.

Ambele• 6 years ago

They're not going to want to piss people off because it's viewed as an inherently destructive act. Instead they'd look for more positive resolutions. I can only speak for one Big Japanese Car Company having worked in their corporate office in the decision-making department.

- They'll use Microsoft Sharepoint and Microsoft OneDrive for file and document management, not because they're better products but because Microsoft wishes that they don't use a competitor's products and Big Japanese Car Co respects the desires of their partners.

- After a demo between a new company with superior in-car tech and an old partner with inferior in-car tech, BJCC chooses the old in-car tech because once you're a partner with BJCC, BJCC takes care of you through the good and the bad.

- If you direct a meeting, whether small or large and you say something incorrect, the one person in the crowd that noticed your mistake won't say anything and will actually nod their head in agreement and respect. This is due to the saving-face aspect of the culture.

- Bringing others on board with a decision when you don't have access to the primary data or analytics is much easier when it involves copying a competitor. It also diffuses responsibility if things go south. Saying we did secret teardowns of a Tesla model 3s and are basing our design decisions off these teardowns means you can say it was Tesla's decision, not "my" decision.

On the other hand, BJCC has historically cared a lot more about not pissing off car owners by making more reliable vehicles at fair prices that are less likely to break down. For that reason, at the end of the day, I buy a BJCC car.

It's the old argument of individualism vs. collectivism. The right balance is probably some amount of both.

xiphias22• 6 years ago

The biggest problem of old companies is that even their cash advantage is getting less useful as their market cap is going down relative to Tesla's.

Tesla with its valuation can afford to scale up aggressively as long as it can continue decreasing manufacturing prices with Wright's law.

rblatz2• 6 years ago

For these sorts of problems I love to break out a comparison of Netflix vs Blockbuster. Blockbuster was incapable of competing with Netflix because of competing internal and external pressure. Blockbuster at its heart was a franchise, and to compete with Netflix they’d have to abandon their franchisees, and cut them out of deal.

Toyota is too dependent on their supply chain to piss them off by bringing too much in-house. Eventually they will get there but it’s going to be a slow delicate transition, because I don’t see Toyota taking a massive leap and reshaping the way they do things from top to bottom.

Invictus02• 6 years ago

Seems like these components were authorized at the height of the self driving hype cycle as a way of future proofing the cars--that is, the owner could download a self-driving software update and the hardware would already be ready for it. In retrospect, this looks foolish: doing self driving without a LIDAR is borderline unethical.

I wouldn't be surprised if newer models do away with these ASICs until the software is further along.

ec1096853• 6 years ago

Huh? Even without full level 5 self-driving, these chips allow Tesla to control steering and breaking in many situations.

Humans don’t have lidar and we are able to navigate the world. If the windows of the car was replaced by a low latency screen, showing exactly what we’d see if we looked out the window, we could drive just fine, so cameras do provide enough data to self drive. You just need a smart processor.

raxxorrax• 6 years ago

No, you would lack depth perception. It is possible to drive, but it would probably be significantly more difficult. I have a friend with a dysfunctional eye. He has a drivers license, but really doesn't like driving or catching things out of the air.

But while humans can successfully correct for this issue through extended interpretation of perceived images and training, it becomes almost a necessity for a stupid computer. I believe a fast and efficient stereoscopy would make identifying objects much easier. But it isn't neither trivial to implement, nor very performant to my knowledge.

A Lidar would be an alternative of course.

Invictus02• 6 years ago

The bar is not "being able to navigate the world". The bar is doing so 10x more safely than a human, and currently the human deaths-in-car-crash rate is something like 1.2 per 100 million miles driven [0]. For scale, that is the same distance from the Earth to the sun, and equivalent to 4000 trips around the equator. I understand it is theoretically possible to beat this without a LIDAR but you are seriously understating the difficulty of this task when you say you just need a smart processor.

[0] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state...

cozzyd2• 6 years ago

In other words, Tesla teardown finds remote bricking capability 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW.

In seriousness, it's no surprise that older vendors will incrementally upgrade their hardware and work with suppliers rather than starting from scratch and obsoleting all suppliers. Likewise, I assume $startup_du_jour has a tech stack "6 years ahead" (whatever that means) of more established players.

edit: s/de jure/du jour. Thanks lorenzhs

lorenzhs• 6 years ago

I agree, the article focuses on the "they built their own AI chip" thing a bit too much for my taste. It also doesn't explain why reducing the number of ECUs would upset supply chains to the degree claimed, there is a lot of other stuff that goes into making a car.

Off-topic, but I think you meant "du jour" (of the day) instead of "de jure" (by law) :)

cozzyd2• 6 years ago

I did mean du jour. This is what I get for writing comments before I drink enough coffee :)

blattimwind• 6 years ago

https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/htt...

Strikes me as a typical low-reliability design. Would be surprised if this unit lasts ten (or even five) years.

lallysingh• 6 years ago

How's that less reliable than many parts that can fail independently? Cars don't have much redundancy.

Causality1• 6 years ago

They are already breaking. The flash chips are wearing out because teslas obsessively log everything you do.

SEJeff16• 6 years ago

And that's been fixed in newer firwmare versions, per the hacker who fixes those in the first place.

KaiserPro4• 6 years ago

This is grand, apart from the build quality of the mechanics is ~10 years behind.

Go to a tesla showroom, Look at the doors of the model three. Note that they don't line up.

Look at the paint job, notice that there are bumps and chips, especailly on the edges of the doors. This is on a _demo_ car, stuck in a showroom. these should be perfect.

Even a budget Kia has better build quality than this.

Its not the isolated parts of a car that makes it good, its the whole package. (yes that works both ways. )

xxpor• 6 years ago

When was the last time you went and looked? Build quality has improved substantially since first Model 3 deliveries.

xvf222• 6 years ago

Just saw a 2020 top spec model 3 that still has a few misaligned gaps and bunching seals in the doors. The leather around the back where it was punched out is creased. It's a great car, but the for and finish sadly still has a ways to go.

codingmess• 6 years ago

Even 10 years ago, normal cars had doors that line up, and proper paint jobs.

latortuga• 6 years ago

This is a brand new car company that has built manufacturing from scratch. 10 years ago, car companies had been manufacturing cars for decades. This stuff doesn't happen overnight.

kenips• 6 years ago

What is your time estimate for a company to fix their assembly alignment and paint issues versus the technologies being years behind in a car? That’s the point here.

rblatz2• 6 years ago

Turns out that the average consumer of $40k+ EVs doesn’t give a shit about minor cosmetic issues if the rest of the car is years ahead of the competition. Maybe there is a lesson in there about always questioning priorities to ensure they are inline with the market.

dontdoitpls• 6 years ago

The power of marketing is incredible.

No one else could get away with Tesla quality at luxury pricing, but they sell vehicles.

neuronic2• 6 years ago

Let's take a look at the economic models again that assume all consumers are rational agents...

sailingparrot• 6 years ago

Save for the small detail that 33k USD for an electric vehicle is not luxury pricing at all.

* Nissan Leaf: 31k

* Kia Soule EV: 33k

* Chevrolet Bolt: 38k

pmorici5• 6 years ago

The Chevy Bolt is priced the same as the Tesla Model 3 and has less 'luxary' features. For example if you want leather in the Bolt that's extra where as it is standard on the 3. Other things the Bolt doesn't have at that price are Autopilot, DC Fast Charging, etc...

hef198984• 6 years ago

Oh yeah, they are at VW level regarding marketing!

matzab• 6 years ago

Do you think "build quality" has achieved its apparent importance (to some) without marketing?

For many drivers other issues take precedence.

natch5• 6 years ago

The power of marketing is incredible.

Tesla doesn’t advertise.

Guess who does? The car companies that you seem to think have a better price/value offering. Hmm, so yes, the power of marketing is incredible indeed.

NotSammyHagar7• 6 years ago

Tesla has never done commercials, they don't do ads in magazines, they don't pay people at football games to talk them up. They have a website, they make blog posts. Imagine if Ford never paid for those endless car ads. Or your local chevy dealer stopped advertising all the time. Tesla doesn't do marketing in the sense that they don't pay for ads.

Imagine if they did, what their sales would be.

netfl03• 6 years ago

These seem like legitimate but insignificant issues.

As long as it is functionally sound, I don't think minor cosmetic issues will materially impact public opinion. The general public is unaware of body panel alignment as a concept.

mark-r2• 6 years ago

That's what Detroit car companies said when Japanese car quality started taking off.

The worst fit and finish I ever saw was my sister's 1980 Dodge Aspen.

onetimemanytime2• 6 years ago

Exactly. If x chip can do the job and then some, who cares if they have one 4 times as powerful? The car has many parts...

londons_explore• 6 years ago

Yet most cars you buy today don't even have Wifi - a technology that's been around for over 20 years. There's no API for controlling them apart from a CAN bus which is barely documented, not wireless, not routable over networks, can't even deliver video feeds, and dates from 1986.

It feels like car technology stopped when the generation of those born in the 40's retired. Ever since then, younger generations have been focussed on the internet, computers and phones, and the car has become a tool like a pencil - it works well enough, and new models only see incremental changes.

wolfgke• 6 years ago

There's no API for controlling them apart from a CAN bus which is barely documented, not wireless,

The fact that the CAN bus is not wireless is rather a feature in terms of safety.

TeMPOraL2• 6 years ago

Yet most cars you buy today don't even have Wifi (...). There's no API for controlling them apart from a CAN bus which is barely documented, not wireless, not routable over networks, can't even deliver video feeds, and dates from 1986.

On the one hand - and thank God; routing car controls over networks by default sounds like a tremendously bad idea.

On the other hand - while a lucky accident in case of cars, modern electronic devices also don't have these, but for different reasons. When was the last time you could make your phone call people and send text messages over wireless connection, via an API built into the phone? Last time I remember being able to easily do it was in the feature phone era.

Modern hardware is increasingly controllable through hidden, restricted, undocumented APIs, or public APIs that require installing third-party software, go through third-party servers, and involve signing some contract or accepting some ToS. That same API-providing-software then proceeds to exfiltrate any and all data it can get its hands on. I do not want any of that in a car.

vlan0• 6 years ago

It feels like car technology stopped when the generation of those born in the 40's retired. Ever since then, younger generations have been focussed on the internet, computers and phones, and the car has become a tool like a pencil - it works well enough, and new models only see incremental changes.

What kind of "car technology" are you talking about? It sounds like you're talking about traditional tech, not tech that increases the ability of the driver on the road.

smileysteve2• 6 years ago

There's no API for controlling them apart from a CAN bus which is barely documented, not wireless, not routable over networks, can't even deliver video feeds, and dates from 1986.

Is it ironic that this post was posted using tcp/ip dating from much before 1986.

Yes, it would be nice if it was open sourced or documented outside obd2 interpreters. (Though much of it is documented for an industry insider paying fees) or if it openly supported higher bandwidth.

No reason why a 20'x8' low voltage system needs wireless, especially given that similar systems often exist < 1' a way.

rootusrootus14• 6 years ago

Yet most cars you buy today don't even have Wifi

Every single GM, but who is counting. And I bet other manufacturers as well.

pmorici5• 6 years ago

Total non-sense; this might have been true about the first ones off the line 2 years ago but hasn't been the case for some time. They also seem to be selling them faster than they can make them so even if true which it isn't the market doesn't seem to care.

kolinko• 6 years ago

The market will care when it comes to upgrading to the new model in a few years.

SEJeff16• 6 years ago

A lot of the tech in the Tesla vehicles is truly innovative. Look at the seemingly simple cooling bottle they use, which is the best in the entire automotive industry (and patented by them):

https://jalopnik.com/the-tesla-model-3s-superbottle-easter-e...

I keep hearing people talk about fit and finish problems with Tesla vehicles, but I simply don't see it. I was so paranoid when I took delivery of mine that I literally brought a measuring tape. They've long since fixed the body panel problems and it manifested itself more with older Model S/X and the very first batch of Model 3s. This "problem" is pretty much gone, and this argument is like beating a dead horse.

Disclaimer: own a Model 3 and have since Nov 2018

fiftyfifty2• 6 years ago

Agreed, I have a 2019 Model 3. My car does have a few panel gaps that are not the exact same width from one side of the car to the other, but you are literally talking about a millimeter or two here or there, no one would ever notice. I've never heard of anyone complaining about the paint job on a Tesla, the paint on ours looks perfect. The interior seats are super comfortable, probably the most comfortable car seats I've ever sat in, and I've never seen any defects with the seats either.

Overall Tesla's customer satisfaction is really, really high. Most owners are extremely satisfied with their cars, even if they have a few warts. They really are the Apple of the automotive world.

andrewtbham• 6 years ago

Even Bob Lutz thinks Tesla has good fit and finish now.

"But, when next to the car, I was stunned. Not only was the paint without any discernible flaw, but the various panels formed a body of precision that was beyond reproach. Gaps from hood to fenders, doors to frame, and all the others appeared to be perfectly even, equal side-to-side, and completely parallel. Gaps of 3.5 to 4.5mm are considered word-class. This Model 3 measured up."

https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/a28008116/tesla-model-...

rootusrootus14• 6 years ago

It's still pretty variable, actually. Mine is pretty good (built 9/19), with only a few discernible misalignment. But other people who have taken delivery in just the last couple months have had terrible alignment. Maybe most are perfectly acceptable, but it is incorrect to suggest it is a completely solved problem.

pmart123• 6 years ago

Does it really matter long-term? A lot of people seem fixated on it. I get it if you are buying a car at the moment. Then there’s an innovation vs. quality issue. For the company though, it seems like it should be far easier to catch up on the quality of the trim as it’s purely executing on something many OEMs have already figured out, and there are proven, known ways to fix those types of issues?

jays• 6 years ago

I think you’re missing the point of what consumers find valuable about Tesla cars. It’s not the body or fancy interiors. The tech is what people want and because of that, cosmetic issues is an ok tradeoff. Of course, as other companies catch up on the Tech side, they’ll need to fix those issues, but they’ve got time.

michaelt2• 6 years ago

It's true that people who have brought Teslas have accepted Tesla's current build quality. But it's the people who haven't brought Teslas where the company's growth will come from!

The worry with things like gaps between panels isn't just cosmetic - it's that the process control to achieve "reliably waterproof even after 15 years" is harder than "visibly perfect"

There was a time when a sunroof was a liability on a car as they so often developed leaks. People who can remember this time aren't looking to return to it :)

gdubs• 6 years ago

I hear this fit and finish critique of Tesla often. But the whole package of a Tesla is clearly compelling to people, who are willing to pay a luxury price for it.

High end Volvo’s are a good example of old-school quality — gorgeous interiors, beautiful trim. But they’re still predominantly internal combustion engine era designs. The height of it from a luxury finish standpoint. But, Tesla’s different.

Maybe it’s that petro cars reached a peak, and the only way to really differentiate has come down to “door sound” and body panel alignment measured in nanometers.

falcolas2• 6 years ago

Fit and Finish are exterior indicators of the quality of the entire vehicle. If they don’t care enough to make the panels line up, what assurances do we have that they do care enough to torque all of the bolts correctly, to ensure that the motor is mounted correctly, to ensure that the suspension has been properly calibrated?

Also, the condition of the body and the interior matter more to the vehicle’s resale value than the condition of the rest of the car - again they are indicators of the quality and care taken with the rest of the car.

perl4ever8• 6 years ago

"But they’re still predominantly internal combustion engine era designs"

This is implicitly saying that what matters is not even the specific car you are buying, but the image of the company and their entire lineup being electric.

This cuts in the opposite direction for me - it is a significant reason why I wouldn't buy a Tesla (other than the price). The company is so tied to Elon that if some sort of scandal happened to him, it would instantly taint owners of the cars.

dghughes• 6 years ago

Look at the doors of the model three. Note that they don't line up.

I'm not in the US but people in my region comment how all US vehicles have poor panel quality. I've spoken to paint shop employees and garage mechanics who say the panels of US cars have gaps that are embarrassingly large. In the mind of a buyer that makes you question overall quality.

And never buy a white car either they rust because the panels don't get warm enough to drive out moisture.

psadri• 6 years ago

I had never heard this about white cars! This must apply to any car maker and maybe other light colors?

fiftyfifty2• 6 years ago

It's all relative, in the American southwest nearly every car is white, it's the only color that's livable. Moisture is the least of their concerns there.

gbronner• 6 years ago

I've bought two white cars from the southewest and used them in the northeast.

One had body panels that were mostly plastic, and lasted 18 years. The other is five years old. Neither shows any sign of rust.

C14L• 6 years ago

And yet, Tesla costumers constantly poll as the most satisfied of all new car owners. Maybe there are more important things than bumps in the paint?

Just guessing, I don't own a car.

sliken10• 6 years ago

Indeed. Great headlights (without paying for the upgrade that much of the competition requires), great safety, great acceleration, great stereo, great nav, great handling, etc.

henrikschroder2• 6 years ago

And yet, Tesla costumers constantly poll as the most satisfied of all new car owners.

I wonder what the demographics are exactly of people who buy Model 3's, is it their first $40k+ vehicle?

One thing is abundantly clear, the people who are super excited about "new" tech in Teslas aren't following motor news. People seem to have no clue whatsoever that a lot of the tech you can get in a Tesla exists in other cars as well. Tesla is definitely at the top of the pack, but they're not ahead of the pack.

It looks exactly like when Apple announce a "new" feature, and all the Android owners moan and bitch that their phones have had this feature for years, yet all the apple owners are super happy about their new iPhone with this new cool feature that they've never seen before.

They "shouldn't" be happy, but due to marketing warping people's perceptions, they are. I suspect something like that might apply to Teslas and the people who buy them. If you've never owned or driven a BMW 3-series or similar, and then switched to a Tesla Model 3, I perfectly understand why you think your Tesla is the best car you've ever had.

maxcan• 6 years ago

I have an early VIN (004xxx series) model 3 from 2018. One of the earliest non employee deliveries. There are some panel gaps.

Judging a Tesla by the panel gaps is reminiscent of the Blackberry execs judging early iPhones by battery life (ironically). The game has changed.

Or, in other words:

  No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...

abc_lisper4• 6 years ago

I chuckled, as I remember reading that comment then

rcMgD2BwE72F5• 6 years ago

Less than 0.5% of owners say they are dissatisfied with the exterior appearance of their Tesla (including paint issues)[0]. And quality has continued to improve since then.

That is, by far, the most extensive and reliable source we have on this topic but please point to any other study that might say the contrary.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-tesla-model-3-survey...

GaryNumanVevo• 6 years ago

Pretty strong selection bias here, if people were turned away by the lacking build quality they wouldn't be an owner. Also a pretty huge post-hoc rationalization gap here

akmarinov• 6 years ago

The showroom comments are true for the US cars, but the China made ones are impeccable.

LyndsySimon• 6 years ago

Even a budget Kia has better build quality than this.

Perhaps ironically, Kia has really upped their game in the past few years, to the point where I'd argue they aren't a good example for this comparison.

fnordfnordfnord2• 6 years ago

Don't look at my GMC then. Panel gaps are bad. Paint so thin you can see through it. Rattles and squeaks everywhere. And the electronics are of course garbage.

sliken10• 6 years ago

Did you personally see this? Or are you just repeating what you saw somewhere. I gave my model 3 a close look before I bought it and found none of the mentioned problems.

rootusrootus14• 6 years ago

There have been some pretty egregious examples posted in the last month or so on r/teslamotors. So it still happens, though I don't know why. Mine is basically fine, though I'd say it isn't quite up to the level of fit and finish as my Camaro.

KaiserPro4• 6 years ago

Yes, tesla showroom, in a major shopping centre in the UK, in december 2019

I was _very_ skeptical of people talking about fit and finish. I was assuming its people trash talking.

However, I have now seen it with my own eyes.

Tade0• 6 years ago

I see Teslas daily and while they don't match the German Big Three (European built ones at least) on fit and finish, they aren't that far from your typical imported American car.

Nevertheless buyers don't seem to care that much about this.

jayd164• 6 years ago

Even a budget Kia has better build quality than this.

Is this a recent thing or do you mean the $20k+ as budget in this context? The last budget (cheap manual) Kia I sat in felt like a tin can deathtrap.

natch5• 6 years ago

2018

abc_lisper4• 6 years ago

I was skeptical of Tesla, I didn't buy it when all my friends got it. The car seemed bland inside, devoid of any fashion/art/decor etc. The panel gaps .. ughh..

I test drove it 3 times. Hated it the first time in 2018. Late 2019, I used auto-pilot on 880 and 101. I was sold. There isn't a car available now that can drive on Autopilot with that confidence. I don't let it drive on auto over 30mph, and under it is where it really shines, takes the edge off of bumper to bumper traffic. I bought it.

I took delivery on the last day of year, was a little pissed off at Tesla, that they left me with little choice if there were any issues with it. I got home, saw no issues and felt relieved. I now love the car. The Audio is turned on the moment I open the door. The temperature is set to my liking and I glide with one finger press. There are no keys, and my car knows I go to work in the morning, so the directions are set. I get on the freeway, usually bumper to bumper, set autopilot, chill out and listen to radio. I think I am a much happier person now.

rootusrootus14• 6 years ago

I live in a rainy area of the country. Periodically my car annoys me to the point of cursing, because the auto wipers are extremely stupid. And because there is only one non-touch/voice control for them, you're kinda stuck.

I also wish it would not refuse to unlock about 10% of the time. I may just get the fob.

lacker• 6 years ago

It does annoy me that my Mazda takes forever to go from turning the car on to Spotify playing via CarPlay. There’s even a pointless popup warning you not to get distracted that you have to click through.

JPKab• 6 years ago

I'm not a Tesla owner. In fact, I find the company's hype driven marketing annoying.

That being said, your info is out of date. The fit and finish isn't an issue anymore.

rootusrootus14• 6 years ago

People still have problems. I hang out on r/teslamotors periodically, and I own a recently built Model 3. They have gotten better, but some people have significant issues to this day.

KaiserPro4• 6 years ago

unless they've changed the stock in the showroom in the last 2 months, then this is a false assertion.

ehnto• 6 years ago

You can buy a car for one focus or another though. I think it is fair to assume technology is the main focus of buying a Tesla.

In the 90s there were a myriad of pragmatic sports cars built, with the focus on performance over fine details.

Door gaps has been a funny development, it's important aesthetically of course, but I think unfairly it has become a shorthand for a car's overall build quality.

matt-attack• 6 years ago

People like tangible, easily understood, and (typically) one-dimensional metrics for assessing product quality. Look at: Mega-pixels for cameras back in the day, and sheet thread-count. Neither of those things is telling the whole story nor are they even directly related to quality. But people latch on to them because they’re a single number, and easy to compare.

No one understands what’s actually inside a car and what physically distinguishes a good car from a bad one, so they latch onto the one parameter they can actually see and touch and understand: body panel alignment and paint quality.

dagw• 6 years ago

Is this purely an aesthetic thing or is it an actual structural problem that has an appreciable effect on the day to day operation or reliability of the car.

Or is your argument more that if they can't fix the 'easy' things then that is an indication of more systemic problems with the integrity of the car

spectrum1234• 6 years ago

I just checked my garage. It looks fine. Which one of us is lying?

RaceWon• 6 years ago

So Toyota and VW are concerned about the other companies, which currently supply their ECU's, having to lay off staff if they (Toyota and VW) switched over to Teslaesque style control modules. REALLY?! I find that laughable on its face.

ishi• 6 years ago

It might be related to the fact that Toyota championed "Just-in-time manufacturing" which requires tight control over the supply chain. You have to be able to trust your suppliers to deliver what you need on time and in high quality. So you must cultivate close relations with your suppliers over many years. They almost become your partners. You can't just stop working with one supplier and switch to another on a whim.

"Toyota believes in developing mutually beneficial, long-term relationships based on mutual trust with all suppliers. To foster that trust, we pursue close and wide-ranging communication to share our business knowledge to enhance our business relationship." (https://www.toyotauk.com/toyota-in-the-uk/supplier-relations...)

tim333• 6 years ago

They didn't really need to tear down a model 3 to see the HW3 computer, they could have just watched last years Tesla presentation. Also I don't know how they calculate 6 years - Nvidia will probably have something comparable they can buy within a year or so.

aguyfromnb4• 6 years ago

Nvidia will probably have something comparable they can buy within a year or so.

NVIDIA already did, at the time the Tesla chip was publicized:

It’s not useful to compare the performance of Tesla’s two-chip Full Self Driving computer against NVIDIA’s single-chip driver assistance system. Tesla’s two-chip FSD computer at 144 TOPs would compare against the NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Pegasus computer which runs at 320 TOPS for AI perception, localization and path planning.

And more in the pipe...

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2019/04/23/tesla-self-driving/

nickik2• 6 years ago

Tesla didn't do this to do one chip, they did it to have the need knowledge to build a new one every year. And not a generic one but a very specific one to their need.

LoSboccacc• 6 years ago

Industry insiders expect such technology to take hold around 2025 at the earliest.

there's many interpretations. the most obvious is that industry insiders were wrong about their expectations, since the technology has reached the market this early. the other is that the 6 years estimate is way too generous, given production units exists, and late adoption cycle is usually two years. the third is this is a "my darling tesla" advertisement.

somehow I am more inclined to sit between position one and two, especially since the productization of ai chips is already in the works[1], but still.

[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613305/this-chip-was-demo...

claudeganon5• 6 years ago

Realistically though, Tesla will got bought out by one of these larger companies, so they can integrate (while undoubtedly making worse) the underlying tech.

Tesla hasn’t show any capacity to deliver quality cars at scale, nor provide service to them, whatever their ambitions. Combined with all their SEC problems, it’s reminiscent of Preston Tucker’s car company:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Tucker

codeulike• 6 years ago

Tesla sold 367,500 cars in 2019

(as of mid-January) Tesla's market capitalization is $93 billion, compared to $50 billion for General Motors and $37 billion for Ford

No other car company is going to be buying them out unless they crash very very badly

claudeganon5• 6 years ago

Toyota’s market cap is more than twice that of Tesla, around 200 billion, and they sold 10 million cars last year.

I do expect Tesla’s is dramatically inflated, I have no idea if Toyota would buy them, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility. If Toyota could successfully integrate all the Tesla stuff into their vehicles, it would also have a greater impact than anything Tesla will likely accomplish on their own.

SEJeff16• 6 years ago

That and the most obvious reality that love the guy or hate him, Tesla isn't Tesla without Elon. Unlike SpaceX, Tesla has to Gwynne Shotwell. It is Musk who drives the engineering (and causes an enormous amount of turnover as a result). It would be a hard sell for a lot of share holders (including Elon and Kimbal Musk) to take the temporary raise in share price of a buyout knowing it would tank the max upside of the company in the long term.

jshowa33• 6 years ago

A result of the cancer that is continuously floating silicon valley companies in perpetuity despite them not making a profit for years. Tesla is overvalued simply by name. Same with Apple. Autonomous driving is still years out and their custom AI chip apparently doesn't do much in the way of helping that yet.

caconym_3• 6 years ago

Tesla hasn’t show any capacity to deliver quality cars at scale, nor provide service to them, whatever their ambitions. Combined with all their SEC problems, it’s reminiscent of Preston Tucker’s car company

What universe are you living in? Can't be the same one I'm in ... pretty cool, though, that HN has implemented a multiverse-spanning internet forum.

claudeganon5• 6 years ago

What universe are you living in? Can't be the same one I'm in ...

I feel the same when I see people falling for all the marketing hype around Musk and his companies.

He’s definitely inherited Jobs’ capacity for reality distortion. But Apple is still chugging on long on that, despite years of quality and design problems, so who know how it will all pan out.

ilikehurdles4• 6 years ago

While I don't expect the results to be that much different, I feel like Tesla teardown should be compared to a BMW, Audi, or Lexus teardown. The cutting edge electronics stuff is usually tried first on the luxury brands before it trickles down into economy models.

A brand like Toyota or VW has to ship at magnitudes greater scale and at much lower price points. Manufacturers have much less breathing room for component failure on a Golf or Corolla, so they choose battle-tested parts or either from prior generations or whatever they've found works well on their luxury brands.

archi422• 6 years ago

Absolutely, scaling is one of the imho two keys here: As per [1], in 2019 Tesla sold 158k Model 3 in the US (pop ~329M). Local news[2] said VW sold 204k Golf in 2019, in Germany (pop ~83M), and they have many more well selling cars on the SAME platform across multiple brands.

2nd: Car tech was traditionally slow moving, which has a lot to do with a strong focus on safety (at least from my experience with automotive customers).

[1] http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/tesla/tesla-model-... [2] https://www.heise.de/autos/artikel/Deutschlands-meistverkauf...

nickik2• 6 years ago

At least in comparison to the i3 the Tesla was way more advanced. Its all in the Munro teardown, and the i3 was billions of $ investment for BMW.

ilikehurdles4• 6 years ago

I agree! But newer BMWs have some hands-free driving and driverless parking features along with traffic jam and lane keep assist plus a good chunk of interior and drivetrain/suspension tech, things you won't find to that extent in a ~$20k-ish range vehicle.

I expect that they're behind Tesla on most electronics, but my complaint was that comparing an economy brand like Toyota or VW with Tesla isn't an apples-to-apples comparison for a lot of reasons.

danmg• 6 years ago

It's easy to get ahead when you're not concerned with lifing and having automotive grade components that will last 20 years.

pacaro2• 6 years ago

It feels to me like there is a symmetry of arrogance here.

Traditional car companies are finding that making an electric car is hard (emphasis on electric)

Tesla is finding that making an electric car is hard (emphasis on car)

emiliobumachar3• 6 years ago

Interesting, but why would you think any of them ever thought that making an electric car would be easy?

pacaro2• 6 years ago

Good question, and I don't know that easy/hard is the correct dimension here.

They do seem to be been caught off guard by some combination of how quickly the electric car market has taken off, and what is possible to build.

There seems to have been a reliance on the argument that people need a range of X and because that isn't achievable the market will be small.

I think that complacency and/or conservatism may be the real issues here.

It's not entirely dissimilar to the slow response of the American car industry to the rise in quality of Japanese cars. But that also provides a model for how they might (albeit slowly) rise to the challenge

AtlasBarfed5• 6 years ago

My view of the economics is that most recently Tesla knows how to make a car. The battery pack is still more expensive than an ICE drivetrain, but that is a matter of time.

My view of that is based on the rapid construction of the China gigafactory, and the sooner-than-expected Model Y deliveries.

The only company with proper prioritization of EV development outside of Tesla is VW. GM would be next, but they still are going too slow and clearly don't have full C-level executive buyin

threeseed4• 6 years ago

The only company with proper prioritization of EV development outside of Tesla is VW

That is simply not true.

All of the manufacturers apart from say Toyota have made EV the number one priority for their companies. Mainly because of the impending EU regulations on emissions.

Porsche has the best EV car on the market. BMW sacked their CEO because of a lack of EV progress, Mercedes has most of their innovation going into the EQC series. There are stories everywhere on how the companies are rapidly shifting to EV.

threeseed4• 6 years ago

Car companies aren't finding making an electric car hard at all.

Taycan is by most reviews the best EV car out there. And we have EVs from BMW, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes, Volvo, VW etc already being sold today in pretty sizeable numbers.

The problem is (a) getting enough battery supply, (b) convincing consumers to buy them, (c) getting the costs down and (d) the somewhat lacklustre growth in EV demand.

xedeon4• 6 years ago

Taycan is by most reviews the best EV car out there

Citation needed.

jshowa33• 6 years ago

I fail to see how a custom AI computer will "invalidate the supply chain".

It's not like Tesla manufactured the chips and components in house unless I'm not aware that Tesla now has its own PCBA and component factory.

coob• 6 years ago

Does anyone know if Tesla are using SiFive[1] for their custom silicon design?

[1] https://www.sifive.com

celerrimus• 6 years ago

But also is probably 6 years ahead in problems and issues related to bugs in design and software. Ie, recent news about wearing SSD that is causing already and will brick every Tesla model available, problems with updates, etc. Also, security risks have to be considered with such vehicle.

It's not that Toyota or VW can't afford in software/hardware research - because they have more than enough resources for this. Those are the biggest car manufacturers in the world. They simply price more reliability. Especially Toyota is good example for that, their models are usually 3-5 years in "gadgets" behind VW group or Korean makers, but their cars offer solid reliability and usually they simply drive for years without much troubles.

Another example of how Tesla is ahead: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a30361800/tesla-model-3-lo... >Not only is this the first time we've ever had a long-term car suffer a catastrophic failure while parked, it's also an extraordinarily rare case of any car leaving us stranded, something unacceptable for any new vehicle, particularly one that costs $57,690 and with merely 5286 miles on the odometer. Even our problem-prone Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio was at least able to limp to the dealer following each one of its numerous issues.

moduspol• 6 years ago

recent news about wearing SSD that is causing already and will brick every Tesla model available

Unless you're describing something else, that issue is limited to older Teslas:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/flash-memory-wear-killing-...

Not only is this the first time we've ever had a long-term car suffer a catastrophic failure while parked

Any other car "being parked and then later failing to start" is not newsworthy. It was interesting in this case because it was detected and the owner notified via push notification that it occurred.

Obviously it shouldn't have happened, especially since it's a newer car. But it's the push notification that made it newsworthy. "My car wouldn't start and had to be towed to a dealer to get fixed for an incredibly rare issue that happened to me" could be written for any car, and nobody would care.

nottorp2• 6 years ago

Is Tesla still controlled just from one tablet-like surface in the center?

Meaning you can't adjust anything while driving?

1123581321• 6 years ago

Model 3s have hardware buttons on the steering wheel.

nottorp2• 6 years ago

Please downmod more:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21127243/tesla-model-s-aut...

Looks like we're talking about the same Tesla that disables features remotely on your car.

It doesn't even matter who was in the right on that incident, looks like a dangerous car to me. And I did used to envy the US for having it available...

t0mas886• 6 years ago

This feels very much like a marketing fluff piece pushed by Tesla PR.

Take this gem: "Young companies like Tesla, on the other hand, are not shackled to suppliers and are free to pursue the best technologies available."

Try the automated windscreen wipers on any big car brand, they're mostly made by Bosch and they work, even on a 15 year old car. Then Tesla came along with their own approach, guess what, they didn't work for more than a year on any second generation model S because they switched from buying a working module to creating their own in software.

After having driven a model S for a while I'm very much a Tesla sceptic. Because I noticed I was accepting a lot of things from them that I would never have from BMW or Audi. When the "this is a cool innovation" feeling goes away, you're looking at a very mediocre car that can't compete in the price range that it's in.

igrekel• 6 years ago

I agree with you this is mainly a fluff piece and must be taken with a grain of salt. I also agree that Tesla overcomplexifies some aspects of their cars and I would appreciate a simpler efficient design. After all, its the simplicity of an electric drivetrain that appealed to me.

That being said, I'm puzzled when you say its mediocre in comparison. My 3 got smashed and I have a Mercedes replacement for a few days during repairs and it really feels like a big, loud and clumsy car with an obnoxious amount of chrome. Maybe its the difference in price range, the 3 completes at a much lower price point.

t0mas886• 6 years ago

Prices here are incomparable to the US due to tax, but a model S starts at 90k if you accept it being only available in white (nobody does at that price). If you pick any other color, reasonable rims and a "luxury interior" as you would expect on cars in this price range it's 110k to 120k euro. That's more than a full option BMW 5 series or Audi A6 and comparable to a very high-end Audi A8 or BMW 7 series.

Not sure about Mercedes, but I guess they gave you an A or B class without much luxury options as a loaner. I've seen those as rental cars as well, not great compared to their higher end cars. That would be a 30-40k kind of car here, the model 3 starts at 64k if you pick anything but white and want long range (not performance), and that's excluding autopilot.

So in my opinion they're pricing themselves into a market their cars can't really compete in.

dmode2• 6 years ago

I used to be a BMW driver and then have been driving a model S for 4 years. I would say I receive WAY more things from Tesla that I ever did from BMW. My car today is actually better than the one I bought 4 years back. I remember when I bought my X5, the map was outdated the minute I stepped out of the dealer lot and needed a $200 CD based upgrade. BMW never improved a single feature in 4 years of ownership. The voice recognition sucked, the driver assistant didn't improve beyond basics, acceleration, efficiency didn't change, no new infotainment features were added etc etc. The story is fluff, but Tesla provides so much more to its customers than traditional branda

vardump3• 6 years ago

Because I noticed I was accepting a lot of things from them that I would never have from BMW or Audi.

Could you elaborate a bit, please? I'd like to know what I'd miss if I chose Tesla.

t0mas886• 6 years ago

Interior:

- Quality in general with a lot of rattling sounds and cheap materials. Asked them to fix a few of these, service was super friendly, but they never really got it fixed. Not easy to describe but the magnitude of this is really worse than a low-end VW. Which is super annoying if you live in a place with non-perfect streets. (And the engines being quite makes it worse because it's more noticeable)

- Seats were not what other brands offer in adjustability etc. I didn't mind so much in the test drive, but it's annoying if you drive a lot (this has been fixed in the newer generations so you should be fine now).

Software:

- Automatic windscreen wipers just not working, for which they promised an update. Took almost a year for them to work.

- Entertainment system crashes, had to sort of reboot it sometimes to get things back to work.

Mechanical:

- Adjustable suspension failed twice, about a year apart. They claimed it was my fault for driving over speedbumps, but our other car (BMW 5 GT) is older, has the same system, and never failed.

- One door handle failed, which I think was a build quality issue, it just didn't come out anymore.

- Sunroof was leaking after winter, which took them multiple attempts to fix. And after that it had annoying wind noise at highway speed as if something was misaligned. Did not bring it back again after that because I was a bit done with it, just bought another brand as a next car.

NoPicklez• 6 years ago

I don't think it is, there was an article a year or so ago where a famous detroit car expert, that specialised in tearing down cars and inspecting them did so for the Tesla.

What he said was that the electronics were light years ahead anything he had seen before, but he wasn't surprised given its a silicon valley car. The chassis on the other hand was way behind the likes of Toyoda.

I can understand that your mileage may have varied but this was through visually inspecting the electronics, not using them in action.

t0mas886• 6 years ago

I don't disagree that they've put much more advanced chips in their car, the point I disagree with is that it's "ahead by 6 years" and "others can't keep up due to supply chains" because Tesla's super advanced chips couldn't get something as simple as my automatic windscreen wipers to work while every other brand has them working fine.

The difference is that everyone just buys a simple moisture sensor and Tesla decided to go with a needlessly complex setup based on their cameras. Sure that requires a way more advanced image processing chip, an impressive software achievement in image processing etc.

However, from the consumer perspective (that matters much more if you sell millions of cars to the masses instead of a few hundred thousand to enthusiasts): They had no working automatic windscreen wipers, that puts them 15 to 20 years behind the others. Not 6 years ahead.

They really need to get better at the basics of car making quickly, before the likes of Ford, BMW, Volkswagen etc get good at building electric cars. I guess they have several years left to do it because the big guys move slow, but in their current state they're going to be in trouble no matter how advanced their CPU is.

oftenwrong• 6 years ago

I am a bit skeptical. Remember when Tesla ventured outside of the typical automotive supply chain to obtain large screens in their cars?

https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27989/teslas-screen-saga-shows...

yellowapple5• 6 years ago

Exactly. And unlike this AI module thingamabob, a touchscreen doesn't have the power to fatally slam me into a wall at 70MPH going down the 101.

I'd rather wait for the likes of Toyota to do things right with automotive-grade components and automotive-grade programming and automotive-grade testing than trust my life to whatever hackery Tesla wants to brogrammer into its ASICs.

The article's probably right about some Japanese engineer saying "I can't do this". Not because that engineer doesn't know how to do it, or because of some relationship with component manufacturers, but because doing so would be ethically questionable at best.

fnordfnordfnord2• 6 years ago

You'd rather wait for Toyota of all people? Toyota is infamous for the bad quality of their software/firmware. Not that I'd expect much better from other established car makers.

boredishBoi• 6 years ago

Automotive grade programming is a joke. There have been numerous posts here including one a couple days ago about the auto accelerating Toyota’s and it was pretty clear that the problem was with Toyota’s programming as well as their lack of testing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10437117

Not to mention the numerous ways current automotive manufacturers fail at cyber security. Stuff like OnStar and being able to shut down cars remotely.

bestnameever• 6 years ago

I think the real meat of this story is down towards the bottom.

The real reason for holding off? Automakers worry that computers like Tesla's will render obsolete the parts supply chains they have cultivated over decades, the engineer said.

emiliobumachar3• 6 years ago

Duplicate discussion with far more comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22347806

hansdieter1337• 6 years ago

Those “AI chips” are produced by NVIDIA... (NVIDIA PX2) So, any car manufacturer could get the same in a short amount of time. Src: Working in that field

vardump3• 6 years ago

Not true for Tesla HW3, since April 2019.

jryan49• 6 years ago

So all the electronics in the car are more centralized? Doesn't that mean there's only one point of failure now?

mrtweetyhack• 6 years ago

They haven't beaten anyone by 6 years when you can't even use that feature.

erikpukinskis9• 6 years ago

They have if you need to collect 6 years of “fleet scale” data before you can get the feature certified.

alkonaut• 6 years ago

Oh it’s about self driving and computers. When it comes to car electronics I care more about how the parking sensors and power windows will work in 10 years than how many watts of outdated neural processor it has.

On an electric car I do care about battery management electronics though. That’s where I thought Tesla had the important edge over the competition.

gdrift• 6 years ago

Meanwhile, my 2019 Volvo runs windows CE.

solotronics• 6 years ago

I actually like having discrete control units for different components in cars. Recently I upgraded the suspension control computer in my sports car to a much more advanced aftermarket one that calculates and controls each shock absorber dynamically. This wouldn't be possible with a "monolithic" control unit like the Tesla has.

marsokod• 6 years ago

The big question for me is whether they reused it for SpaceX Starlink. The satellites are in low enough orbit that common COTS should work without any issue, and the automotive grade HW is usually well suited in these environment. And they would benefit from volumes.

jerome-jh• 6 years ago

Hum that is "information" for investors, nothing technical, except that oh wait they use an ASIC!!! How great ...

Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

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