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Tesla Model 3 Teardown Reveals a 'Symphony of Engineering,' 30 Percent Profit Margin (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Munro & Associates, a small Detroit-area firm that disassembles new cars and analyzes them down to the nuts and bolts, came out in April with damning findings that the Model 3 was poorly built and -- even worse for Tesla's long-term outlook -- costly to build. On that second point, at least, founder Sandy Munro has reversed course. Upon further analysis, his firm has found that the sedan can be profitable. It may even have the potential to make a 30 percent margin, which would be unmatched by any other other battery-powered vehicle. Munro said the systems that impressed him most were the tight integration of circuit board components, which he calls "a symphony of engineering," and the efficiency of the battery developed by Tesla and Panasonic Corp. Munro also pointed to a comprehensive side-by-side comparison of the parts and materials used by the Model 3, General Motors Co.'s Chevrolet Bolt, and BMW AG's i3, in which the Model 3 comes out favorably. The report echoes a teardown published in June by German magazine WirtschaftsWoche, which found that the Model 3 costs about $28,000 to build -- $18,000 for materials and $10,000 for production.
Then why isn't Tesla profitable?
Well, roughly, they have spent the last two years building up manufacturing capability, and only the last month has their manufacturing been putting out a reasonable number of cars, so the upfront costs are spent, but the income stream produced by the investment has only started. The key question is to look at Tesla's balance sheet in six months.
In more nerd terms, the "income" part of "income-outgo = profit" is a time integral, while a large portion of the outgo is fixed, so the profitability rises with time.
Will Tesla be profitable? Stay tuned.
Not to mention Musk's very public nervous breakdown that he's inexplicably broadcasting live to the world.
For the benefit of the mods who think the above is a troll, I'm referring to an incident on Sunday in which Musk accused the diver who saved the kids trapped in caves in Thailand a pedophile because he said Musk's submarine wouldn't have helped. It was a bizarre baseless attack on a legit hero.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
That's not what he said at all.
My favourite part (although other teardowns had already discovered this) was the battery pack. The more capable you want to make your BMS, the more individual cell connections and wires you need, the more the per-cell circuitry, etc. Every connection, every wire, every circuit, etc adds expense, so there's a strong incentive to have as few connections as possible. Tesla gets around this by having the battery pack be basically two gigantic, two meter long PCBs. The cells are like capacitors on a huge motherboard. They can route power wherever they want, whenever they want, and do whatever they want to it. Cell balancing is essentially always perfect, to within the degree of measurement error.
Summing up all of his videos: Munro had some issues with the build quality of the first car he tore down (one of the first off the line), and tore into Tesla over that (making him popular among shorts... making his statement now about eating crow all the more amusing). He tore down more Model 3s later, and noted that the build quality improved over time. Even early on, though, even before he started getting into the electronics, he said the performance and handling was incredible. He stated in particular that whoever designed the suspension could be a Formula 1 prince.
The big brain am winning again! I am the greetist! Now I am leaving for no particular raisin!
You've inadvertently illustrated one of the problems with the Model 3. How many different revisions of this thing are there and how much more difficult does that make them to repair? What differentiates Rev A, Rev B, etc? That's going to make long-term maintenance, repair and restoration a nightmare. That's why every other car manufacturer settles on a design and sticks with it for a full model year before releasing a new revision.
You don't understand. Tesla uses an agile process and keeps improving. If you got an early one it might be bad but just go buy another. The ones they make in the tent are really good ones
It's not okay, he's done this repeatedly as CEO of Tesla too. His mouth is a liability.
“Water level was actually very low & still (not flowing) — you could literally have swum to Cave 5 with no gear [1], which is obv how the kids got in [2]. If not true, then I challenge this dude to show final rescue video [3]. Huge credit to pump & generator team. Unsung heroes here[4],”
[1] a Seal diver died from lack of oxygen, he gave the kids too much of his tank when he was in the end cave. Clearly not swimable then. The kids were running out of oxygen so clearly air tight, and they brought them out 4 at a time during the day, with Seals restocking the oxygen tanks along the way at night. His claim is garbage, it belittles the risks involved.
[2]The kids climbed in before the floods and went deep into the cave as the water rose. They did not swim in.
[3] They made a rescue, not a video for PR purposes. His demand for a video shows his priorities not theirs.
[4] Same cave teams did the rescue as laid the pipes and power lines.
“You know what, don’t bother showing the video, We will make one of the mini-sub/pod going all the way to Cave 5 no problemo. Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it.”
Fuck off Musk. They didn't use your tube, you got pissy in your disappointment, one of the cavers got angry with you for the PR stunt and pissyness part and you escallated into calling him a pedo because he's in Thailand. Which is a slur on Thailand and libel against him.
If you want to help, help, don't do a PR circus when they're trying to do a rescue.
One more thing, when autopilot kills people, its not their fault they didn't turn off the autopilot to rescue the car from its bad driving. It's your bugs to blame. Don't attack customers just because they're dead and can't answer back. When the Luxembourg safety regulator complaims the brakes are awful, its because they're awful. It's not a conspiracy against your company, they just want you to fix the damn brakes. Grow up.
Tesla were designed and built more like a software development project, then a traditional automobile project, initially, later on they started to bring in _some_ of the traditional methods.
Tesla's first project was its original roadster, which was basically a repowered Lotus. You don't get more traditional than that in the EV space. The Model S and X were built fairly traditionally. Only with the Model 3 did Tesla try to use non-traditional methods, i.e. robots for everything. Then they went back to traditional methods of production (more humans on the line) when that failed. So you have that completely backwards.
However being that we have an All Electric Car being built using a different project method, scares the Traditional Automotive industry and their biases would probably have them hunting down problems in the design vs good points.
If only you had ever heard of the BMW i3 you would know that the traditional automotive industry is capable of the same kind of feat. Look into how the i3 is made, it makes the production process for a Tesla look positively ho-hum.
Tesla is currently making all electric cars that people actually wan't vs. the Tiny road legal golf carts like the Leaf that people would only want it because it is electric and affordable. The Chevy Bolt is a good contender too. But it still lacks some coolness.
Ford (which is struggling for stock price) and FCA (which is circling the bowl for a broad variety of reasons) the entrenched auto industry can afford to take the wait-and-see position while Tesla figures out what customers want. If they ever actually got desperate, they could use Tesla's patents, and license particular pieces of tech from Tesla.
There are two particularly likely outcomes for Tesla. One, they continue to succeed as an automaker, and make a small percentage of the vehicles on the road. By the time their numbers get at all big, mobility/sharing services will have decimated personal vehicle ownership. Or two, they simply become a tier 1 supplier, providing primarily batteries, electronics, and electric motors. Automakers are already getting into more powerplant sharing because customers of low-end vehicles don't care. Sooner or later, nobody will.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
overexaggerating
Not trying to be disagreeable but it's possible that he was merely exaggerating...
A lot of Vern Unsworth's criticisms of Elon Musk are contradicted by many of Elon Musk's tweets (most of which pre-date the criticisms).
During a video interview, Vern Unsworth was asked for his opinion on Musk's submarine, and he responded, "He can stick his submarine where it hurts. It just had absolutely no chance of working. He had no conception of what the cave passage was like. The submarine, I believe, was about 5 foot 5 inches long, rigid, so it wouldn't have gone round corners, or around any obstacles. It wouldn't have made the first 50 metres into the cave from the dive start point. Just a PR stunt." The interviewer then asked, "But he went into the cave, Tuesday?" Vern Unsworth responded, "And was asked to leave very quickly. And so he should have been."
From what I read on Elon Musk's twitter feed: (1) Musk had exchanged emails with at least one of the cave divers (Musk posted a copy of the emails on his twitter feed) showing that the diver(s) wanted Musk to develop the submarine as a back-up rescue option; (2) Musk got confirmation from the diver(s) that the planned submarine was small/slim enough to be navigated around tight bends in the tunnels; (3) Musk not only made the initial submarine, but also made (or at least planned to make) a second submarine that was 30cm shorter (thus making it more nimble), plus an inflatable dummy which could be used on a dry run to test that the real submarines could successfully make the journey without risk of causing a blockage (if the inflatable dummy gets jammed in a tight corner, then just puncture it to remove it); (4) a team of SpaceX engineers worked for about 48 hours almost non-stop to develop the submarine; (5) Musk used a swimming pool near the SpaceX factory to carry out a test of the submarine's manoeuvrability before flying it to Thailand; (6) contrary to what Vern Unsworth claimed about Musk being asked to leave the cave, Musk tweeted, "Only people in sight were the Thai navy/army guys, who were great. Their navy seals escorted us in - total opposite of wanting us to leave".
I also read somewhere (either on Elon Musk's twitter feed or in a newspaper article) that another company had also been asked to see if it would be possible to make a small enough submarine, but the other company was unable to do so.
One newspaper article stated that Vern Unsworth is a caver with detailed knowledge of the cave system but is not a diver. This might go some way towards explaining the disconnect between Musk's and Unsworth's viewpoints: Musk had been in contact with divers who believed the submarine could work, and that its dimensions made it nimble enough for the tight corners and passages, and encouraged Musk (and a second company) to develop it as a backup rescue option; but perhaps those divers had not discussed this submarine backup plan with Unsworth, so Unsworth had assumed incorrectly that Musk didn't know enough to be able to help with the rescue". If this is true, then it could be argued that Vern Unsworth's comments were gratuitously insulting, untrue, and even defamatory. After all, despite Musk agreeing specifications with the divers, apparently he managed to develop something that was not fit for purpose. To me, that sounds like Unsworth was claiming Musk is an incompetent engineer. It is unsurprising that Elon Musk lost his temper and chose to respond with (presumably) untrue and defamatory insults. Unfortunate, but unsurprising.