Yes, it's definitely doable from a technical perspective, the question is whether these greedy fucks will do it the simple way, or try to use DRM bullshit to determine our actual screen size and charge us accordingly.
The simple way would be to charge by resolution and image quality. Ultra-high-res with high-quality compression gets the highest price, low-res with excessive compression gets the lowest price. No need to use any DRM (at least for determining what kind of device you're playing it on) because you're charging by the actual quality of what's delivered: if the customer wants to play a crappy, low-res low-bitrate version on their 75" home theater with 4k screen so they can save a few bucks, they can do so, though of course it's going to look like crap on that setup.
I agree completely. Were the founders of this startup really that naive? I could have told them this was a stupid idea years ago. The USPS has two main revenue streams: 1) junk mail, and 2) small packages (they're a big fan of Ebay; they're also working with Amazon now to do Sunday deliveries in some places). They also are a fan of Netflix, and work with them to ship movies faster (the USPS scans the returned movies before Netflix gets them, so Netflix can send your next queued DVD before they get the old one back).
What ever gave them the idea that the USPS would be in favor of screwing over one of their main customers (the junk mailers)?
If you don't like junk mail, think about it this way: the junk mailers are keeping the USPS afloat, and basically subsidizing cheap First Class delivery for everyone.
Well Amazon totally failed then, because in most places you now have to pay sales tax for Amazon purchases. Their main advantage now is huge inventory and super-cheap shipping, so they frequently still make sense to buy from, but frequently not, depending on what you're buying and what kind of competition they have.
I never said corruption didn't exist there, but those countries are known to have low corruption relative to most other places. Corruption is everywhere; it's all relative. Some places are far worse than others. Do you have to bribe cops in Finland on a daily basis? In Mexico and India, you do. Are the highest levels of government blatantly sold out to corporate interests? In the USA, they are.
Local government in some places is a total mess. In other places, it works pretty well. It's not consistent; it depends entirely on the area. In wealthy areas, local government tends to work well because if it doesn't, the residents and their lawyers take action. In some areas, the people refuse to do anything about corruption, and so the corruption festers and gets worse. We see this at the national level, not just the local level. Look at countries like Mexico and the US, and compare to countries like Norway or Denmark. The former are full of corruption at many levels, the latter are famous for extremely low corruption. It's all a function of culture. Some cultures support and encourage corruption, other cultures do not.
What advantages? There's no advantages to having a franchise, except being able to ride on some company's established brand name. You take that risk yourself. I have no sympathy.
Well, that's basically what I said in my post above, with my analogy about the US citizen in a US court trying to hide information about their holdings in a foreign bank account.
Well that's pretty hard to predict, so you just need to be prepared to abandon a company quickly if they are bought out by an American or multinational. It goes back to that "don't put all your eggs in one basket" axiom, plus the idea of being self-reliant when possible.
Exactly. If this were an Irish company, located in Ireland, this wouldn't be an issue. It's no different than if the Court wanted access to your banking records in Switzerland. You're an American citizen, living in America, and sitting in an American courtroom, so they have the legal right to this information or money. If you refuse to comply, they can lock you up. If you're a Swiss citizen, living in Switzerland, and currently sitting somewhere in Europe, they have no power over you.
There's a simple lesson here: don't do business with American companies if you don't like American laws that might affect those companies (and by extension, you, as a customer of theirs). Don't worry about where the data physically resides; the only important factor is the nationality of the company. And if it's a multinational, that's even worse, because now you need to worry about the laws of ALL the countries that company is located in and does business in. The precedent this case sets is that now, an Irish court also has the right to data stored by MS on servers located in the USA, since MS is located in both countries. So the safe thing to do is to simply avoid multinationals altogether.
Sure... but then how do you use the energy you've collected in space without building collectors on the ground anyways? Collectors that will take at least as much space as solar panels .
The energy is more concentrated, probably in a MASER beam. You don't need nearly as much area.
As long as you can prove that your replacement tires meet or exceed all standards, you're golden. Good luck!
Again, that's incorrect. Go read the law. The mfgr can only deny warranty claims directly related to the replacement part. They can't deny a warranty claim on, for instance, a defective sunroof mechanism because you installed tires that didn't meet OEM specs. And a claim that non-OEM tires somehow caused a problem somewhere else in the car would be very hard to convince any court (most likely, such a thing would go to small claims court, if under $5k). This isn't quite the case for something engine-related, but even here it's been commonplace for people to use non-OEM filters (e.g. Fram) and such for many decades. It's extremely rare that mfgrs or dealers try to deny warranty claims when non-OEM parts are used, unless they're absolutely sure the non-OEM part really did cause the problem and they can prove it. I do remember reading of a case of some guy with a Dodge Neon having engine problems, where Chrysler sent out an engineering team to look at the car (after the dealership mechanics gave up), and found that he had installed "Nology" spark plug cables which were definitively causing the problem, and billed him for the expense of sending a team. (This was internet lore so I can't vouch for its accuracy.)
As for TPMS, Here's a bunch of Tesla owners talking about the issue. Regular tire shops can handle the sensors (though replacements do seem to be pricey); normal TPMSes already sit behind the valve stem. The problem is reprogramming; it looks like a visit might be necessary to recode the car to see them, but Tesla says they're working (as of 2013) a way for owners to do that themselves. I imagine the issue is fixed by now.
This is totally off-the-cuff, but it seems like space elevators should give at least 2 orders of magnitude reduction, certainly more than fully reusable rockets. The fuel cost is the big problem with rockets, and the whole problem with having to lift all the fuel, requiring even more fuel. Reusable rockets don't solve this problem, but space elevators do; the energy needed is quite small, and most of the cost is in the initial construction.
That's a good point. I wonder what the installation costs of that would be, versus the costs of building an orbital facility plus launch costs. (I imagine the ground-based option is far cheaper given current launch costs; eventually, with space elevator tech, the latter might be cheaper.)
The problem here is that Japan doesn't have any free ground to put that panel on, so you're mainly stuck with covering building rooftops with it. Also, Japan isn't a very sunny place, and has a high latitude. The losses in transmission should be fairly low by using microwaves at a frequency that don't experience much attenuation in the atmosphere (nowhere near as much attenuation as there is for sunlight). Maybe it still doesn't make economic sense even given these factors, but the equation is somewhat different for Japan than it is for other places.
I'm surprised this is being asked on a "news for nerds" site.
1) In orbit, there's no attenuation of solar energy. On the ground, you have attenuation from the atmosphere, plus the whole problem of there not being any sunlight at night. It's worse in Japan; that country isn't exactly famous for being sunny, despite the flag. It has a high latitude and is pretty rainy as I recall.
2) Japan doesn't have a lot of open area to set up solar panels. Collecting it in orbit and beaming it in concentrated form to Japan is probably more feasible and efficient than trying to cover every building in Japan with PV panels.
Once you get oil leaks, you get insulation failures. The insulation provides protection for the wire, so that leads to wire failures.
The Tesla doesn't have motor oil in it, so insulation failures from oil are quite impossible.
Also all false. German cars are famous for having these problems.
Japanese cars aren't.
They're all built out of Bosch modules and the Bosch ABS 5 and Bosch ABS 5.1 both fail very commonly.
Why? Electronics don't just fail, and there's only a few failure modes. The most common ones are: 1) electrolytic capacitors (the bane of modern electronics), which are easily replaced, 2) bad solder joints, possibly due to poor design using lead-free solder, 3) excessive heat/poor heatsinking/cooling, 4) possibly tin whiskers from lead-free solder.
The ABS 5.1 has some kind of goofy cold solder bonding that always fails eventually, and for which there are several repair services; some involving conductive epoxy, and some involving a complete rebuild which is in some ways more involved than the original production of the module and which costs several hundred dollars.
That sounds like some crappy design or manufacturing there. Luckily, overpriced German luxury cars are a very small part of the US market. Anyway, since Tesla is not German, I'd be surprised if they used a Bosch ABS module. If we knew who made some of the electronic modules (ABS, etc.) used by the Tesla, it should be pretty easy to find out if they're prone to failure, just by looking at the track record that supplier has with other vehicles those modules are used in.
Special tires? I remember the Acura NSX did that 20+ years ago, but I seriously doubt the Tesla did anything like that. The NSX had special tires that pushed against each other to give better steering response, at the expense of fuel economy. According to this, it's not hard to buy the OEM tires from a variety of places. According to this, not only can you get the Goodyear Eagle RS-A2, you can also use Michelin Energy MXV4 S8 low rolling-resistance tires, or you can get alternatives from Bridgestone or Dunlop, or even switch to winter tires like the Pirelle Winter 240 Sottozero.
As for voiding the warranty, that is flat-out bullshit and a lie. The Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act specifically forbids this from any manufacturer.
Any tire shop can replace TPMS sensors. Every new car since sometime around 2007 comes with TPMS sensors, by federal law, so every tire shop in the nation is capable of replacing these with compatible units.
Who said it was "regular"? Electronics problems happen all the time that aren't a part of regular maintenance. We have a guy in our office with a Ford Escape that has been in 4 times for fixes to the electronics - all recalls. Hell, I run a company that manufactures wire harnesses and most of our products go into automobiles. If you think they never break or need repair, you are very, very wrong.
If you have problems in a car with wire harnesses, there's a serious design problem. Copper doesn't generally go bad. As for other electronics, if you have electronic boards going bad, again you have a serious design problem; either you've used cheap-ass Chinese capacitors (see "capacitor plague"), or tried mounting it next to the exhaust manifold or something. There's also soldering problems. Decent car brands don't usually have these problems. And when they do, they usually happen early on, and are covered under warranty.
Oh and to answer your question, the last electronic maintenance I did to one of my cars happened about 4 months ago. Had a sensor that went bad.
Sensors are electromechanical; it's not too surprising they go bad once in a while, just like anything else mechanical. Even so it's pretty rare. Was it an engine sensor? Modern cars are full of engine sensors. Teslas don't have engines. They do have ABS brakes though, which requires wheel speed sensors, but any idiot mechanic can change those.
They should publish such documents but that doesn't make it a no-brainer. Some maintenance can be performed by lots of people. Some should only be performed by those who are trained and do it with some regularity.
That's just BS. Any regular maintenance can be performed by any decent backyard mechanic, and regularly is. Anything horribly complicated, like engine rebuilding, is not "maintenance". Lots of backyard mechanics have no trouble changing their own timing belts, which is probably the most difficult job I'd ever place under the "maintenance" category. And again, Teslas don't have these, since there's no engine. The only maintenance to be done is with the brakes and A/C, and none of that probably needs to be done for at least 10 years. My 9-year-old Volvo still hasn't had any work done on those (I'll change the brake fluid in a few months, just to be safe, due to the age).
but he is going to be WAY out of his depth in dealing with the drive motors, the battery pack, much of the electronics, etc.
Motors and electronics don't need maintenance. When was the last time you did "regular maintenance" on the electronics in your car? When was the last time you did maintenance on your ceiling fan motor?
Furthermore sometimes even the routine stuff sometimes has special/non-obvious requirements that can be important to ensure proper functioning and reliability.
If Tesla has published a maintenance guide/schedule, then this should be a no-brainer. Since Tesla doesn't rely on stealerships, it's likely they make all their service information freely-available to owners, rather than trying to keep it all secret like most automakers do.
BMW engines tend to last forever. They sludge up at about 80k-100k and then destroy themselves; but auto shops have learned to mix a little (half a quart or so) ATF-4 transmission fluid in around that time, run the oil for about 10 miles, and then flush it and put regular oil in. Volkswagens also sludge up randomly, but nobody is quite sure why or, more importantly, how to deal with it. Mazda 3 headlight replacement is expensive as living hell because it's 2 hours of labor... or you can tug at the headlight housing, flex it forward a little, and replace the bulb directly (normal replacement involves removing and uncabling the entire front bumper cover, which involves removing bolts from the wheel wells and the underside of the car, as well as disconnecting wiring for the fog HIDs, and then unbolting behind the bumper cover so you can slide the headlight module out...). Hell, speaking of the Mazda 3, it can throw its drive belt--the new tensioner uses an aluminum pulley, the original used ABS plastic which was prone to exploding violently well within its service interval.
Almost everything you mention here involves internal combustion engines. In case you didn't realize, the Tesla doesn't have one of these. Yes, ICE cars are hideously complex, mostly because of the engine itself. A car with no engine doesn't have these problems. And I seriously doubt changing the headlights on Teslas is that difficult (and even so, it uses xenons, so those probably last 5-10 years).
These are things Tesla maintenance centers will figure out first by coordinated collection of mass data
No, these are things that Tesla owners will figure out. In case you haven't noticed, independent mechanics are still very profitable, and they don't usually specialize on one make of car. How do you think they get by? In addition to that, lots of makes and models of cars have online forums for owners, where they frequently discuss common problems and fixes. I'm sure Teslas are no different.
As for things like brakes, you don't really think Tesla has designed its own brake hardware, do you? It just uses off-the-shelf parts; the calipers are from Brembo, no different than the brakes on a bunch of other high-end cars. If you're wondering about caliper flaws, just google for Brembo problems. The master cylinder is certainly some other off-the-shelf part too. Cars these days share all kinds of parts. My Volvo uses the same coolant reservoir that a bunch of Fords and Mazdas use.
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Yes, it's definitely doable from a technical perspective, the question is whether these greedy fucks will do it the simple way, or try to use DRM bullshit to determine our actual screen size and charge us accordingly.
The simple way would be to charge by resolution and image quality. Ultra-high-res with high-quality compression gets the highest price, low-res with excessive compression gets the lowest price. No need to use any DRM (at least for determining what kind of device you're playing it on) because you're charging by the actual quality of what's delivered: if the customer wants to play a crappy, low-res low-bitrate version on their 75" home theater with 4k screen so they can save a few bucks, they can do so, though of course it's going to look like crap on that setup.
Looks like you've already got a better business plan that these startup founders managed to come up with.
I agree completely. Were the founders of this startup really that naive? I could have told them this was a stupid idea years ago. The USPS has two main revenue streams: 1) junk mail, and 2) small packages (they're a big fan of Ebay; they're also working with Amazon now to do Sunday deliveries in some places). They also are a fan of Netflix, and work with them to ship movies faster (the USPS scans the returned movies before Netflix gets them, so Netflix can send your next queued DVD before they get the old one back).
What ever gave them the idea that the USPS would be in favor of screwing over one of their main customers (the junk mailers)?
If you don't like junk mail, think about it this way: the junk mailers are keeping the USPS afloat, and basically subsidizing cheap First Class delivery for everyone.
Make sure to negotiate a generous golden parachute. If the new guy screws up the systems, bail out immediately while the company's still solvent.
Idiocracy is coming, whether you want it or not. Might as well get used to it.
Well Amazon totally failed then, because in most places you now have to pay sales tax for Amazon purchases. Their main advantage now is huge inventory and super-cheap shipping, so they frequently still make sense to buy from, but frequently not, depending on what you're buying and what kind of competition they have.
I never said corruption didn't exist there, but those countries are known to have low corruption relative to most other places. Corruption is everywhere; it's all relative. Some places are far worse than others. Do you have to bribe cops in Finland on a daily basis? In Mexico and India, you do. Are the highest levels of government blatantly sold out to corporate interests? In the USA, they are.
Local government in some places is a total mess. In other places, it works pretty well. It's not consistent; it depends entirely on the area. In wealthy areas, local government tends to work well because if it doesn't, the residents and their lawyers take action. In some areas, the people refuse to do anything about corruption, and so the corruption festers and gets worse. We see this at the national level, not just the local level. Look at countries like Mexico and the US, and compare to countries like Norway or Denmark. The former are full of corruption at many levels, the latter are famous for extremely low corruption. It's all a function of culture. Some cultures support and encourage corruption, other cultures do not.
What advantages? There's no advantages to having a franchise, except being able to ride on some company's established brand name. You take that risk yourself. I have no sympathy.
Well, that's basically what I said in my post above, with my analogy about the US citizen in a US court trying to hide information about their holdings in a foreign bank account.
Well that's pretty hard to predict, so you just need to be prepared to abandon a company quickly if they are bought out by an American or multinational. It goes back to that "don't put all your eggs in one basket" axiom, plus the idea of being self-reliant when possible.
Exactly. If this were an Irish company, located in Ireland, this wouldn't be an issue. It's no different than if the Court wanted access to your banking records in Switzerland. You're an American citizen, living in America, and sitting in an American courtroom, so they have the legal right to this information or money. If you refuse to comply, they can lock you up. If you're a Swiss citizen, living in Switzerland, and currently sitting somewhere in Europe, they have no power over you.
There's a simple lesson here: don't do business with American companies if you don't like American laws that might affect those companies (and by extension, you, as a customer of theirs). Don't worry about where the data physically resides; the only important factor is the nationality of the company. And if it's a multinational, that's even worse, because now you need to worry about the laws of ALL the countries that company is located in and does business in. The precedent this case sets is that now, an Irish court also has the right to data stored by MS on servers located in the USA, since MS is located in both countries. So the safe thing to do is to simply avoid multinationals altogether.
Sure... but then how do you use the energy you've collected in space without building collectors on the ground anyways? Collectors that will take at least as much space as solar panels .
The energy is more concentrated, probably in a MASER beam. You don't need nearly as much area.
As long as you can prove that your replacement tires meet or exceed all standards, you're golden. Good luck!
Again, that's incorrect. Go read the law. The mfgr can only deny warranty claims directly related to the replacement part. They can't deny a warranty claim on, for instance, a defective sunroof mechanism because you installed tires that didn't meet OEM specs. And a claim that non-OEM tires somehow caused a problem somewhere else in the car would be very hard to convince any court (most likely, such a thing would go to small claims court, if under $5k). This isn't quite the case for something engine-related, but even here it's been commonplace for people to use non-OEM filters (e.g. Fram) and such for many decades. It's extremely rare that mfgrs or dealers try to deny warranty claims when non-OEM parts are used, unless they're absolutely sure the non-OEM part really did cause the problem and they can prove it. I do remember reading of a case of some guy with a Dodge Neon having engine problems, where Chrysler sent out an engineering team to look at the car (after the dealership mechanics gave up), and found that he had installed "Nology" spark plug cables which were definitively causing the problem, and billed him for the expense of sending a team. (This was internet lore so I can't vouch for its accuracy.)
As for TPMS, Here's a bunch of Tesla owners talking about the issue. Regular tire shops can handle the sensors (though replacements do seem to be pricey); normal TPMSes already sit behind the valve stem. The problem is reprogramming; it looks like a visit might be necessary to recode the car to see them, but Tesla says they're working (as of 2013) a way for owners to do that themselves. I imagine the issue is fixed by now.
This is totally off-the-cuff, but it seems like space elevators should give at least 2 orders of magnitude reduction, certainly more than fully reusable rockets. The fuel cost is the big problem with rockets, and the whole problem with having to lift all the fuel, requiring even more fuel. Reusable rockets don't solve this problem, but space elevators do; the energy needed is quite small, and most of the cost is in the initial construction.
That's a good point. I wonder what the installation costs of that would be, versus the costs of building an orbital facility plus launch costs. (I imagine the ground-based option is far cheaper given current launch costs; eventually, with space elevator tech, the latter might be cheaper.)
It's worse than that. About 80% of Japan is mountainous. Almost all the population lives in the remaining 20% of that Montana-sized landmass.
The problem here is that Japan doesn't have any free ground to put that panel on, so you're mainly stuck with covering building rooftops with it. Also, Japan isn't a very sunny place, and has a high latitude. The losses in transmission should be fairly low by using microwaves at a frequency that don't experience much attenuation in the atmosphere (nowhere near as much attenuation as there is for sunlight). Maybe it still doesn't make economic sense even given these factors, but the equation is somewhat different for Japan than it is for other places.
I'm surprised this is being asked on a "news for nerds" site.
1) In orbit, there's no attenuation of solar energy. On the ground, you have attenuation from the atmosphere, plus the whole problem of there not being any sunlight at night. It's worse in Japan; that country isn't exactly famous for being sunny, despite the flag. It has a high latitude and is pretty rainy as I recall.
2) Japan doesn't have a lot of open area to set up solar panels. Collecting it in orbit and beaming it in concentrated form to Japan is probably more feasible and efficient than trying to cover every building in Japan with PV panels.
Once you get oil leaks, you get insulation failures. The insulation provides protection for the wire, so that leads to wire failures.
The Tesla doesn't have motor oil in it, so insulation failures from oil are quite impossible.
Also all false. German cars are famous for having these problems.
Japanese cars aren't.
They're all built out of Bosch modules and the Bosch ABS 5 and Bosch ABS 5.1 both fail very commonly.
Why? Electronics don't just fail, and there's only a few failure modes. The most common ones are: 1) electrolytic capacitors (the bane of modern electronics), which are easily replaced, 2) bad solder joints, possibly due to poor design using lead-free solder, 3) excessive heat/poor heatsinking/cooling, 4) possibly tin whiskers from lead-free solder.
The ABS 5.1 has some kind of goofy cold solder bonding that always fails eventually, and for which there are several repair services; some involving conductive epoxy, and some involving a complete rebuild which is in some ways more involved than the original production of the module and which costs several hundred dollars.
That sounds like some crappy design or manufacturing there. Luckily, overpriced German luxury cars are a very small part of the US market. Anyway, since Tesla is not German, I'd be surprised if they used a Bosch ABS module. If we knew who made some of the electronic modules (ABS, etc.) used by the Tesla, it should be pretty easy to find out if they're prone to failure, just by looking at the track record that supplier has with other vehicles those modules are used in.
Special tires? I remember the Acura NSX did that 20+ years ago, but I seriously doubt the Tesla did anything like that. The NSX had special tires that pushed against each other to give better steering response, at the expense of fuel economy. According to this, it's not hard to buy the OEM tires from a variety of places. According to this, not only can you get the Goodyear Eagle RS-A2, you can also use Michelin Energy MXV4 S8 low rolling-resistance tires, or you can get alternatives from Bridgestone or Dunlop, or even switch to winter tires like the Pirelle Winter 240 Sottozero.
As for voiding the warranty, that is flat-out bullshit and a lie. The Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act specifically forbids this from any manufacturer.
Any tire shop can replace TPMS sensors. Every new car since sometime around 2007 comes with TPMS sensors, by federal law, so every tire shop in the nation is capable of replacing these with compatible units.
Who said it was "regular"? Electronics problems happen all the time that aren't a part of regular maintenance. We have a guy in our office with a Ford Escape that has been in 4 times for fixes to the electronics - all recalls. Hell, I run a company that manufactures wire harnesses and most of our products go into automobiles. If you think they never break or need repair, you are very, very wrong.
If you have problems in a car with wire harnesses, there's a serious design problem. Copper doesn't generally go bad. As for other electronics, if you have electronic boards going bad, again you have a serious design problem; either you've used cheap-ass Chinese capacitors (see "capacitor plague"), or tried mounting it next to the exhaust manifold or something. There's also soldering problems. Decent car brands don't usually have these problems. And when they do, they usually happen early on, and are covered under warranty.
Oh and to answer your question, the last electronic maintenance I did to one of my cars happened about 4 months ago. Had a sensor that went bad.
Sensors are electromechanical; it's not too surprising they go bad once in a while, just like anything else mechanical. Even so it's pretty rare. Was it an engine sensor? Modern cars are full of engine sensors. Teslas don't have engines. They do have ABS brakes though, which requires wheel speed sensors, but any idiot mechanic can change those.
They should publish such documents but that doesn't make it a no-brainer. Some maintenance can be performed by lots of people. Some should only be performed by those who are trained and do it with some regularity.
That's just BS. Any regular maintenance can be performed by any decent backyard mechanic, and regularly is. Anything horribly complicated, like engine rebuilding, is not "maintenance". Lots of backyard mechanics have no trouble changing their own timing belts, which is probably the most difficult job I'd ever place under the "maintenance" category. And again, Teslas don't have these, since there's no engine. The only maintenance to be done is with the brakes and A/C, and none of that probably needs to be done for at least 10 years. My 9-year-old Volvo still hasn't had any work done on those (I'll change the brake fluid in a few months, just to be safe, due to the age).
but he is going to be WAY out of his depth in dealing with the drive motors, the battery pack, much of the electronics, etc.
Motors and electronics don't need maintenance. When was the last time you did "regular maintenance" on the electronics in your car? When was the last time you did maintenance on your ceiling fan motor?
Furthermore sometimes even the routine stuff sometimes has special/non-obvious requirements that can be important to ensure proper functioning and reliability.
If Tesla has published a maintenance guide/schedule, then this should be a no-brainer. Since Tesla doesn't rely on stealerships, it's likely they make all their service information freely-available to owners, rather than trying to keep it all secret like most automakers do.
BMW engines tend to last forever. They sludge up at about 80k-100k and then destroy themselves; but auto shops have learned to mix a little (half a quart or so) ATF-4 transmission fluid in around that time, run the oil for about 10 miles, and then flush it and put regular oil in. Volkswagens also sludge up randomly, but nobody is quite sure why or, more importantly, how to deal with it. Mazda 3 headlight replacement is expensive as living hell because it's 2 hours of labor... or you can tug at the headlight housing, flex it forward a little, and replace the bulb directly (normal replacement involves removing and uncabling the entire front bumper cover, which involves removing bolts from the wheel wells and the underside of the car, as well as disconnecting wiring for the fog HIDs, and then unbolting behind the bumper cover so you can slide the headlight module out...). Hell, speaking of the Mazda 3, it can throw its drive belt--the new tensioner uses an aluminum pulley, the original used ABS plastic which was prone to exploding violently well within its service interval.
Almost everything you mention here involves internal combustion engines. In case you didn't realize, the Tesla doesn't have one of these. Yes, ICE cars are hideously complex, mostly because of the engine itself. A car with no engine doesn't have these problems. And I seriously doubt changing the headlights on Teslas is that difficult (and even so, it uses xenons, so those probably last 5-10 years).
These are things Tesla maintenance centers will figure out first by coordinated collection of mass data
No, these are things that Tesla owners will figure out. In case you haven't noticed, independent mechanics are still very profitable, and they don't usually specialize on one make of car. How do you think they get by? In addition to that, lots of makes and models of cars have online forums for owners, where they frequently discuss common problems and fixes. I'm sure Teslas are no different.
As for things like brakes, you don't really think Tesla has designed its own brake hardware, do you? It just uses off-the-shelf parts; the calipers are from Brembo, no different than the brakes on a bunch of other high-end cars. If you're wondering about caliper flaws, just google for Brembo problems. The master cylinder is certainly some other off-the-shelf part too. Cars these days share all kinds of parts. My Volvo uses the same coolant reservoir that a bunch of Fords and Mazdas use.
Last I heard, the Aztek was not profitable at all, which is part of why Pontiac ended up on the chopping block.