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Elon Musk Slows Tesla Deliveries On 'Dangerous' Trucks (electrek.co)

An anonymous reader quotes Electrek: Tesla is always very busy in Norway, its biggest market per capita, but it has recently been difficult for the automaker to deliver its vehicles as its shipments keep being taken off the road for using transporters with "dangerous" trucks that do not conform to the rules. The California-based automaker generally ships its vehicles to Norway through the port of Drammen, but it is experiencing capacity issues so they are instead going through Gothenburg port and having to use more trucks to move the cars to its stores and service centers.

According to several media reports in Norway, over half a dozen of those trucks have been stopped by the authorities for a variety of safety reasons during inspections and one of the trucks that wasn't stopped ended up in an accident. Two Model S vehicles were crushed on the trailer involved in the accident. Tesla says that it is having difficulties finding competent transporters that comply to Norway's road requirements. On top of the safety issues, Tesla is also using transporters operating Euro 3 class trucks, which are more polluting.

Elon Musk tweeted in response to the article that "I have just asked our team to slow down deliveries.

"It is clear that we are exceeding the local logistics capacity due to batch build and delivery. Customer happiness & safety matter more than a few extra cars this quarter."

6 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Cutting corners by Rei · · Score: 4, Informative

    50/51 flown missions successful on the primary payload, 49/51 on all payloads, plus one ground failure, doesn't even remotely resemble "the worst relaiability in the history of rocketry". The average failure rate is 5,8%. Not worst - average. And the reason that none are allowed to carry passengers, apart from the fact that qualification takes years, is that they don't have a manned capsule completed yet. What do you want them to do, launch people strapped to a chair on the side of a rocket like something out of Kerbal Space Program?

    Tesla put their half assed self driving implementation on the road and it already murdered two people and cause multiple crashes.

    In somewhere around a billion miles, there has been one confirmed death (plus one "I think my son was using autopilot but I'm not going to let Tesla check the logs"). The normal rate of driving deaths is one per around 80 million miles. In the one death, the NTHSA investigated and found Tesla to not be at fault; the driver had ample time to react but did nothing (if I recall correctly, the semi was visible in his path for something like 7 seconds), and that Tesla's attempts to ensure that drivers paid attention were sufficient (that said, Tesla followed up with more driver pestering, and Model 3 has a driver-facing camera which is expected to be used for eye tracking).

    --
    Is your job to sit under bridges and jump out at unsuspecting travellers?
  2. Re:Cutting corners by Rei · · Score: 4, Informative

    Tesla has gotten over 8 billion dollars in direct subsidies between the USSG and state of California

    Add to the list of myths that just won't die.

    SpaceX got their space rating when congress told the USAF that it would happen

    No, they had to sue the USAF to break ULA's monopoly. USAF was sued because they made endless delays in conducting their engineering analysis, which SpaceX accused of being due to the fact that ULA offers an effective revolving-door policy for former USAF officials involved in approvals. SpaceX had already turned over all of the data that was supposed to qualify them to launch. And you want to talk about the fact that some people in congress have supported SpaceX... far more people in congress have continually and consistently lined up behind ULA, which carefully spreads its jobs around various congressional districts and spends large amounts on lobbying.

    I'll never get why you people love crazy-expensive monopolies run by defense giants so much.

    --
    Is your job to sit under bridges and jump out at unsuspecting travellers?
  3. Re:Cutting corners by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Informative

    Now back in reality:
    SpaceX reliability is right on average for the space industry even if you take into account early experimental failures. If you only count payloads lost it's better than average. They are beaten only by ULA, and only because of one single failure to deliver a payload.

    Telsa's Autopilot according to the NHSTA drops the highway accident rate of these vehicles by 40% making an autopilot driven Tesla currently the safest way to move on the highway. https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/i... (Figure 11)

    Mind you if you did get into an accident you'll probably want to be in a Tesla given that most of the models are widely considered the safest cars on the road, and the Model S achieved a record high rating by the NHTSA and NCAP and the Model X was the only SUV to ever be awarded 5 stars by the NHTSA as well. https://www.nhtsa.gov/vehicle/...

    As for the Boring company, no doubt its safety will be a story as boring as your lame post.

  4. Re:Cutting corners by rmdingler · · Score: 3, Informative

    Clearly a lone wolf amongst entrenched automakers.

    Ford's seatbelt that released on impact, Toyota's pedal entrapment, Honda's airbags with accessory shrapnel, GM's randomly detachable rear suspension... with barely a closing mention on the Ford Pinto and GM's side saddle gasoline tanks.

    A prominent vehicle manufacturer who places safety above product distribution... ready his stake, villagers.

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    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

  5. This has little to do with Tesla by CptJeanLuc · · Score: 5, Informative

    Norwegian here. This is just how the transportation market seems to be overall these days, and a follow-on effect of the European open market. It has nothing to do with Tesla specifically. It is not their trucks, and it happens for all other kinds of transportation of goods and services. This really should not be a story that so strongly features Tesla.

    The pattern is pretty much this, that we keep reading about trucks that were stopped or investigated following an accident, that seem to 95% of the time come from Eastern Europe (the Baltic countries, Poland, and Rumania are typically the points of origin), due to non-functional brakes, tires that are wore down, cargo that is not secured, or whatever. Plus zombie drivers who have skipped the mandatory sleep.

    This is particularly prominent in Winter, when we get typical Norwegian weather and some idiot truck driver halts all traffic on a clogged main road due to losing traction on a main road and somehow ending up blocking every lane. And afterwards you read that "the truck had summer tires".

    A problem that really needs fixing. These drivers and truck companies ought to start getting something more than a little slap on the wrist for these issues. Super heavy fines and some jail time ought to be a good motivation to follow European safety standards. I see zero reason to cut those crooks any slack.

  6. Re:Cutting corners by Rei · · Score: 4, Informative

    Go here. Let's pick a relatively recent year, so it reflects relatively modern manufacturing, but not so modern that there won't be time for problems to come up. Say, 2015? So punch in, say, "2015 Tesla" in one year, then pick some other manufacture and do the same thing - I'll do "2015 BMW" or "2015 Mercedes". Let's see how many recalls come up for each of the models that come up.

    Tesla: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1
    BMW: 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 1, 1, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 0, 0, 0, 3, 1, 0, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2...
    Mercedes: 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 4, 1, 8, 8, 8, 8, 0, 0, 3, 3, 3, 3, 8, 8, 7, 7, 1, 1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 6, 6....

    My god, look at that horrible Tesla build quality!

    Furthermore, Tesla has - very unusually - never had a mandatory recall forced on them by the NHTSA, or one that started from a NHTSA investigation. Every single recall Tesla has ever had has come internally.

    --
    Is your job to sit under bridges and jump out at unsuspecting travellers?