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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."
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."
This has nothing to do with manufacturing capacity problems. Nope. Nothing at all.
"Customer happiness & safety matter more than a few extra cars this quarter." Say what you will about Elon but he's good at this marketing thing.
This is just one more example of Musks companies half assing things. Space ex is only cheap because they cut corners. That’s why their rockets have the worst relaiability in the history of rocketry. That’s also none of their rockets are allowed to carry passengers.
Tesla put their half assed self driving implementation on the road and it already murdered two people and cause multiple crashes.
The boring company will half ass their tunnels and kill multiple people.
So this is an ideal test ground for these Musk vehicles. Better to get the kinks out in an area known for, frankly, lousy drivers and roads, to keep things out of the news.
Compare to Tempe, the middle of nowhere, and excellent roads and (male) drivers, where a single road fatality causes so much news.
None of this is about Tesla or its products. Its about Norway having a shortage of competent delivery services.
No, see, you don't understand Seeking Alpha logic. Tesla's cars are so terrible that just being in physical contact with one will make your truck crash! It's like a hex. Load a bunch of them on the back of your truck all at once, and you're just asking for disaster.
Is your job to sit under bridges and jump out at unsuspecting travellers?
No Fucking Way,
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
That’s why their rockets have the worst relaiability in the history of rocketry.
Sorry but that is total BS. The Falcon 9 has had 51 launches of which only 2 failed giving it just over a 96% reliability. The Russian Soyuz series has had over 1700 launches with a 97.4% reliability. Hence, the Falcon 9 with far fewer launches has a reliability comparable to one of the most tried, tested and reliable launch vehicles there is (source).
The much-maligned Space Shuttle had a 98.5% record of success, and exactly the same number of fatal accidents as Soyuz. The Saturn 1B has a 100% record of success and no fatalities. So far, the Falcon is pretty good and in line with a lot of other launch vehicle records.
Well, Norway's got Slow TV, so don't worry, be happy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The space shuttle had 135 launches and only one launch failure giving it a 99.2% launch success rate.
The Saturn 1B has a 100% record of success and no fatalities
That's kinda meaningless. It flew 9 missions total. The Falcon 9 also had a 100% success rate at that point, with the exception of a "partial failure" on Flight #4 which prevented it from deploying a secondary payload (something which the Saturn 1B couldn't do at all). The first failure happened on mission 19.
None of this is about Tesla or its products. Its about Norway having a shortage of competent delivery services.
We don't, really. It's either that Tesla is cheaping out hiring other EEA-area drivers - we have a lot of foreigners coming to Norway poorly prepared, but we can't block them due to EU regulations - or they're trying to do a massive end-of-quarter batch to please the stock market which exceeds the peak capacity. Norway is not unique, but you'd better be ready for a Montana-style winter. If you're sending truck drivers from southern California or its equal, there will be trouble...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Norway is also in parts extremely hilly.
And the roads do suck.
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.
The Gothenburg harbor is being actively sabotaged by a small union which has weaponized going on strike.
These people are threatening the harbor as a whole and shipping companies are already rerouting shipments through other harbors.
So the problems of transporting will only increase.
I think it does have something to do with Tesla: NRK (Norwegian State broadcaster, for those joining us from outside the Nordic countries) reports on this: https://www.nrk.no/ostfold/tes... Google Translate works OK if you don't read Norwegian.
It says that the vehicles were mostly Lithuanian and apart from the overloading and bad tyre maintenance, they were also EURO III standard vehicles, so at least 13 years old (EURO III was superceded in 2005). That's quite old for a commercial vehicle. I'm sure there are companies with newer vehicles that could have been contracted to do this job, and I'm sure this company was cheap.
Tesla decided to use a cheap contractor rather than a quality contractor. Their attitude of trying to pay their workers and contractors less and treating them badly led to this.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
It all over Scandinavia, and it is part of the curse that the EU has become.
Truck drivers have been replaced with cheap labour from eastern Europe with the blessing of the EU.
- None of them cares about, or have time to cover their load. I see trucks every day that breaks the law and peppers the freeway with debris. On my way to work, I now avoid the main corridors where they drive and no longer do I need to have my windshield replaced every other year. The police of course are quite understaffed to take on all the problems the EU are bringing with it, so they can pretty much to as they please and these truck drivers don't give a fuck about all the damage they cause.
-To keep the price town they live in their trucks, often parked between jobs in places not equipped to handle overnight guests. One place across the street from my office comes to mind, where the shrubbery between roads have become a toilet filled with human feces.
- There are some laws put in place to limit foreign drivers basically living in the trucks and doing only work inside the country but it has not effect it seems.
- Also rest stops along the freeways are having problems with the massive amount of foreign trucks parked/camping. Some drive just south to germany only to return again across the border. And the rest stop down there have had problems with truckers camping, drinking, fighting.
I suppose it's a shitty life, enabled and approved by the EU.
L'Idiot
Hopefully norway will soon realize why so much over regulation hurts consumers and do something to limit or eliminate all the excessive regulation of the shipping industry they have. If not, I think President Trump should go after them because there regulation is hurting OUR industrys ability to compete in europe and that is a clear unfare trade practice that either needs to end or be punished harshly.
Considering that the design was at least an order of magnitude ore complex, more than twice as capable, and it was done at a time 60 years ago when no one had any idea if it would work or not, it's an impressive achievement.
My point was a little different, anyway, but part of it was "ha-ha look at the stupid americans/NASA!" and the old bullcrap about Soyuz and how Russian steam-locomotive engineering is superior. When in fact we have made VASTLY more complex and capable systems, right from the beginning, and the Shuttle in particular is pointed to as a failure. By the standards posited, the Shuttle is quite superior to anything the Russians have ever. or ever likely will do.
If Musk and company had managed to screw up, with the benefit of the absolutely *vast* amount of nearly-free-for-anyone information from NASA and others, it would have been embarrassing. They are solving a much simpler problem, and only their own arrogance has made it even slightly challenging.
Considering that the design was at least an order of magnitude ore complex,
How do you figure? It seems rather less complex to me.
more than twice as capable
This is just sheer nonsense. The falcon 9 can lift more in expendable mode. It can be reused if you want to lift less. It's cheaper, can carry multiple payloads, and is now capable of being retrofitted into a "heavy" configuration. So by what possible metric is the Saturn 1B even comparably capable, let alone twice as capable?
and it was done at a time 60 years ago when no one had any idea if it would work or not, it's an impressive achievement.
Yes, it absolutely was. But if you made it today of would be a mediocre achievement.
My point was a little different, anyway, but part of it was "ha-ha look at the stupid americans/NASA!" and the old bullcrap about Soyuz and how Russian steam-locomotive engineering is superior. When in fact we have made VASTLY more complex and capable systems, right from the beginning, and the Shuttle in particular is pointed to as a failure. By the standards posited, the Shuttle is quite superior to anything the Russians have ever. or ever likely will do.
Agreed. The Buran may have been comparable, but they scrapped it before it could do much.
If Musk and company had managed to screw up, with the benefit of the absolutely *vast* amount of nearly-free-for-anyone information from NASA and others, it would have been embarrassing. They are solving a much simpler problem, and only their own arrogance has made it even slightly challenging.
They massively reduced costs and improved capability by making novel use of composites; something no one else was really looking at. That, on it's own, was a huge gamble, and a major improvement, but they didn't stop there. They went on to champion, develop, and bring to fruition an idea which everyone else had written off as impractical: recovering rockets. Not only did they manage to recover them, they made it simple and cheap by figuring out how to land the damn things in a convenient location.
Is that what you're referring to when you use the word "arrogance"? If so, then I agree that they made it hard on themselves. And I agree that it was pretty arrogant to think that they could reduce costs, improve capability, and actually recover their launch vehicles. But goddamn did they ever deliver on that arrogance.
I'm as big a fan of Elon as anyone, but he doesn't need us to tell whoppers for him. I have the latest issue of Consumer Reports right in front of me, and it says (page 96),
Model S Reliability
2012: Average
2013: Much Worse Than Average
2014: Worse Than Average
2015: Better Than Average
2016: Average
2017: Average