Elon Musk's Alleged Email To Employees on Tesla's Big Picture (jalopnik.com)

An email allegedly sent by Elon Musk to Tesla staff has announced that the Model 3, which has faced a number of production issues, will go into "24/7" production by June, resulting in 6,000 Model 3 units made per week. But apart from this update, in the email, Elon Musk sheds light on how much he values precision in his cars. An excerpt: Most of the design tolerances of the Model 3 are already better than any other car in the world. Soon, they will all be better. This is not enough. We will keep going until the Model 3 build precision is a factor of ten better than any other car in the world. I am not kidding.

Our car needs to be designed and built with such accuracy and precision that, if an owner measures dimensions, panel gaps and flushness, and their measurements don't match the Model 3 specs, it just means that their measuring tape is wrong.

Some parts suppliers will be unwilling or unable to achieve this level of precision. I understand that this will be considered an unreasonable request by some. That's ok, there are lots of other car companies with much lower standards. They just can't work with Tesla.

Comments

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

What Musk needs to do

He had delegated this work. He's back in the middle now because they failed. I don't know why, and you don't either; Tesla doesn't share enough information to know and the stuff appearing in the media about all this isn't credible for a whole bunch of reasons.

Re:Musk must be kicking himself

[hipp5]

Why would he kick himself? This email is clearly intended to be leaked. "We're doing great and we're going to do better!" Why wouldn't he want the press to repeat that message?

Re: Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

As for reusable rockets, I see you're unfamiliar with NASAs space shuttle, a far more practical design than anything he's created. For starters, it doesn't lose several tons of lift capacity by having to reserve fuel for landing.

No, the shuttle lost several tons of lift capacity by having to lug up a giant, heavy orbiter. The shuttle was an impressive technical feat, and it provided unmatched capabilities (e.g. the Hubble repair mission), but i was an economic disaster. Especially since the orbiter essentially had to be rebuild after each mission. NASA in general suffers from too much congressional interference, which means they have to source their parts and labour from the constituencies of key congress critters. In particular, they are more-or-less forced to use and reuse old technologies, so that no existing contractor starts to whine to loud.

The Falcons are certainly not perfect, but they are impressive achievements.

Re: Meh

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Both ebay and amazon predate paypal, his first venture into e commerce

Viaweb predated at least e-Bay, doesn't it?

I see you're unfamiliar with NASAs space shuttle, a far more practical design than anything he's created

Oh come on, that's just dumb, isn't it? What's "far more practical" about throwing 60% of your hardware mass away each time?

For starters, it doesn't lose several tons of lift capacity by having to reserve fuel for landing.

Reserve fuel that is cheaper than throwaway hardware. When will you people finally learn to use a calculator? And how about the Shuttle losing forty tonnes of payload by having wings and a heat shield, that doesn't bother you? How's that for your hypocrisy? :-p

Re: Meh

[HornWumpus]

Does he think other manufacturers make sloppy parts on purpose?

The process defines the margin. Tesla injection molds/presses/machines tools will _not_ be 10x more precise then others. I don't care how often Musk has them change the tooling.

I worked for a manager that didn't understand dimensioning. She added two 0s to a dimension on a drawing before sending it to a contract manufacturer. Those would have been some insanely expensive 0s, if they hadn't been just undoable. Specing an O.D. to 0.25000 inches. How do you even do that?

Tesla has _much_ bigger problems. If the documented test cars are a guide, Teslas will _all_ be junked within a few years of going out of warranty. Motor sets (22k$US) are being replaced, on average, every 2 years. Cars are being totalled by insurance companies after being caught in heavy rains with the windows open (flooded battery pack, about 50% probability that seal will hold). 'Fender benders' cost 30k$US to fix.

He is distracting. The fact is that Tesla has made some incredibly bad decisions beyond electric power...The door handles jump to mind (talk about a _dumb_ unnecessary complication). 100% aluminum body. Auto Driving vapor. An electric drivetrain was a reach, adding all sorts of 'seemed like a good idea' bells and whistles doom the company.