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Tesla Employees Say Gigafactory Problems Are Worse Than Known (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Tesla's problems with battery production at the company's Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada, are worse than the company has acknowledged and could cause further delays and quality issues for the new Model 3, according to a number of current and former Tesla employees. These problems include Tesla needing to make some of the batteries by hand and borrowing scores of employees from one of its suppliers to help with this manual assembly, said these people. Tesla's future as a mass-market carmaker hinges on automated production of the Model 3, which more than 400,000 people have already reserved, paying $1,000 refundable fees to do so. The company has already delayed production, citing problems at the Gigafactory. On Nov. 1, 2017, CEO Elon Musk assured investors in an earnings call that Tesla was making strides to correct its manufacturing issues and get the Model 3 out. But more than a month later, in mid-December, Tesla was still making its Model 3 batteries partly by hand, according to current engineers and ex-Tesla employees who worked at the Gigafactory in recent months. They say Tesla had to "borrow" scores of employees from Panasonic, which is a partner in the Gigafactory and supplies lithium-ion battery cells, to help with this manual assembly. Tesla is still not close to mass producing batteries for the basic $35,000 model of this electric sedan, sources say.
How is that different than every other company in the world? I have worked with and for at a lot of places over the years and one thing is universal, most of the people have no idea at all what they are doing.
It is amazing to me that some companies are even able to put products on the market at all. I am not talking only about the small guys either.
I was once testing a wireless product for one of the largest companies in Europe for global radio certification (FCC/ISED/CE and many others). Once I got the devices I told them.. hey, thanks a lot for sending these samples, but it would be great if you could send them with a SMA connector so we could test the radios as well.
What is a SMA connector, was the response. After explaining it a couple of days went by and they called me up and explained that the guy who knows how to do that quit the company so it would be better if we changed the design for them to make it work.
Of course this kind of shit happens ever every company every single day. These are not things which people know about it.
So, you can say that 100% of companies are shittier than people on the outside know about.
There were problems
There are problems
There will be problems
Whining about problems will not make the problems go away - solving them, on the other hand, do !
And how would employing more people who know how to build cars in particular help overcome problems with building a battery factory? I mean, besides their generic manufacturing experience.
Ezekiel 23:20
Building the first factory is the hardest part about building factories. Once you've built it, you can build 200 more just like it in a fraction of the time.
Except nobody builds lots of factories all the same. Automakers for example build different factories with different lines to produce different vehicles. The building is not the interesting part, the production line is. And the production lines are different for each vehicle. Also, by the time you've got the first factory completed, new techniques have been developed, and new equipment has hit the market. Maybe you've been just welding all your cars together, and now you're starting to use structural adhesives. Now you're going to change the line again.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
LOL someone's never seen a factory start up before. I love these oh-so-wise internet commenters who come in with harsh rhetoric for other people, with zero knowledge of the topic at hand or how things usually work. I mean, seriously, "Musk and his band of semiskilled dimwits"? This is some kind of emotional release going on here.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I have seen factory startups before. It's what I've been doing for living since 1996. Automotive factory startups, that is. And, yeah, Tesla is a dysfunctional organization. This is organizational incompetence. That's not to say that they won't recover, but this is not normal startup pains. This is a collosal fuckup.
I'd suggest that you're correct about the semiskilled dimwits; Tesla has hired a lot of smart people. But without skilled leadership, you end up with the manufacturing capabilities of Tesla. (I mean operational leadership; this isn't a dig at Elon.)
--Jim (me)
I wouldn't be surprised if this weren't some hidden PR bullshit being spread by the competition. Do you remember the blatant lies about the first tests on the model s that were quickly debunked by the data provided by the test models? This has very much the same smell. There are reports of paid goons renting Teslas and deliberately mistreating them to put them out of service. This article is along these lines IMHO.
I'd trust Tesla and Musk more than I'd trust any news outlet, that's for sure.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I think a bigger story would be "Company is pushing the envelope and nothing goes wrong at all."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I suggest that there's a difference between bringing up the first factory of its kind and bringing up a factory which is just a variation on what's been done many times before. Even if an entire vehicle is fundamentally more complex than an enormous battery back, the number of novel solutions you need to come up with is probably a truer measure of engineering risk.
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