Tesla at 1.2M miles, only took 14 motors & 4 batteries.

[JeffKeryk]

I think it is more likely to be Km not miles, still that is over 700K miles, which makes it even worse. he almost needs to pull a trailer with extra motors and tools.

There has to be more to the story...

 

[Trav]

Agreed.

 

[Astro14]

“Move fast and break things” is an old Silicon Valley saying that means approaching work and innovation with an emphasis on speed and experimentation. This motto insists it’s more worthwhile to make mistakes and disrupt technologies along the way than to play it safe at a slow and steady pace. I think it came it came from Zuckerberg? It gained a great degree of prominence when Mark Zuckerberg made it the official motto of his company, going so far as to hang a poster citing the phrase in every office.

The corollary is "Fail fast".
A fail fast mentality is a mindset where individuals or organizations quickly identify failures, rather than letting them persist or be discovered later in a development process.

These terms do not mean make junk; they place the emphasis on rapid development and product improvement. In Tesla's case, they implement ECOs on a continuous basis rather than at major milestones such as a new model year.

I know what it means.

Point is - it’s a great approach with software.

“Break” is an easy, cheap, and fast fix.

But “break” when it comes to the second most expensive item in your household budget leaves the customer holding the bag on expensive failures.

Not cool.

My neighbor had to PAY Carmax $20,000 to take his Model X. After two years, he was that far upside down because Tesla reduced the price on new ones and the car dropped so much in value.

When “break things” hits your customers that hard in the wallet, you’re not going to engender much future business.

 

[Trav]

“Move fast and break things” is an old Silicon Valley saying that means approaching work and innovation with an emphasis on speed and experimentation. This motto insists it’s more worthwhile to make mistakes and disrupt technologies along the way than to play it safe at a slow and steady pace. I think it came it came from Zuckerberg? It gained a great degree of prominence when Mark Zuckerberg made it the official motto of his company, going so far as to hang a poster citing the phrase in every office.

The corollary is "Fail fast".
A fail fast mentality is a mindset where individuals or organizations quickly identify failures, rather than letting them persist or be discovered later in a development process.

These terms do not mean make junk; they place the emphasis on rapid development and product improvement. In Tesla's case, they implement ECOs on a continuous basis rather than at major milestones such as a new model year.

I get the feeling the consumers are being used more and more as nothing more than beta testers with not only Ev's but many things today, many of them are big $$ items like CVT transmissions, self driving tech, 10 speed AT, engine designs and poor engineering of parts that are prone to expensive failures, etc.

 

[JeffKeryk]

I get the feeling the consumers are being used more and more as nothing more than beta testers with not only Ev's but many things today, many of them are big $$ items like CVT transmissions, self driving tech, 10 speed AT, engine designs and poor engineering of parts that are prone to expensive failures, etc.

True, but there is more to it than engineering issues. Bean counters. Executives that make unreal delivery promises.

But this is nothing new. End users are always the guinea pigs. That's manufacturing, whether a snotty nosed start-up like Tesla or a predictive analytics software application.

Fail fast is more appropriate in a Silicon Valley high tech scenario where R&D is the name of the game. Developing a new technology is trial-and-error. Fail fast means identifying and correcting the inevitable wrong R&D path quickly instead of following it down the rabbit hole. The best people admit their mistakes; in fact they tell everyone as a valuable learning tool.

Mistakes are the price of exploration. They are important and the best companies reward the fail fast mind set.

 

[Astro14]

True, but there is more to it than engineering issues. Bean counters. Executives that make unreal delivery promises.

But this is nothing new. End users are always the guinea pigs. That's manufacturing, whether a snotty nosed start-up like Tesla or a predictive analytics software application.

Fail fast is more appropriate in a Silicon Valley high tech scenario where R&D is the name of the game. Developing a new technology is trial-and-error. Fail fast means identifying and correcting the inevitable wrong R&D path quickly instead of following it down the rabbit hole. The best people admit their mistakes; in fact they tell everyone as a valuable learning tool.

Mistakes are the price of exploration. They are important and the best companies reward the fail fast mind set.

So, by that standard, Boeing is doing great!

Those 737 Max crashes are all the price of exploration.

So valuable…all that learning they’re doing…

Airbus needs to up their crash rate or they will fall far behind…

 

[4WD]

So, by that standard, Boeing is doing great!

Those 737 Max crashes are all the price of exploration.

So valuable…all that learning they’re doing…

Airbus needs to up their crash rate or they will fall far behind…

Well, I do recall you had some comments and concerns with pilots after the Max events - even discussing training etc - knowing ERP - upper body strength etc … My only add was I’m not allowed to fly those airlines bcs our aviation group does the pass/fail - not me …

 

[JeffKeryk]

So, by that standard, Boeing is doing great!

Those 737 Max crashes are all the price of exploration.

So valuable…all that learning they’re doing…

Airbus needs to up their crash rate or they will fall far behind…

The point of fail fast is to quickly identify and correct problems during the development, manufacturing and delivery cycles to build a better product or service. Early fixing of issues is a benefit to supplier and customer alike.
I see I have done a poor job of speaking to the phrase fail fast. Here is the Wikipedia entry.

I would not call Boeing's problems a successful example of any quality mindset.
At the risk of over simplification, fail fast refers to admitting to smaller problems before they become bigger problems.

 

[PandaBear]

“Move fast and break things” is fine when we’re talking about an $800 phone that I was going to replace in two years anyways.

I end up holding the bag on a $800 item. That has a short life.

But when we’re talking about a car, the cost the consumer $80,000, that borders on the criminal.

“Move fast and break things“ in that instance ends up costing me a very large amount of money.

Not OK.

As JeffKeryk said. You need to take risk if you want to build something fast.

How do you think Tesla came up with new car so fast vs a traditional car company? They are doing rapid development faster than the traditional way. For small production volume like Tesla has today it is probably ok, and their customers are more forgiving because they don't expect it to behave like a Toyota.

Also people buying early Tesla are buying toys, and a toys need to be cool and fun instead of reliable and last 20 years. Many people buy toys instead of tools when buying cars.

 

[PandaBear]

So, by that standard, Boeing is doing great!

Those 737 Max crashes are all the price of exploration.

So valuable…all that learning they’re doing…

Airbus needs to up their crash rate or they will fall far behind…

737 Max is not moving fast but more like cutting corners. There's a difference between taking risk on something to cut cost vs taking risk on something to build what you haven't before.

The Chinese high speed rail that crashes into each other after a lightning strike is move fast and break things. They tried to build their own signaling system but found out the hard way they missed something. They didn't buy from a reputable company like Siemen.

Boeing decided to not build a new narrow body and keep adding length to the previous one to save money. It cut safety margin from an existing mature product.

Tesla didn't have a reliable product to begin with, and they are building something new and cool, selling it as new and cool, to customers who want new and cool. They are not selling a truck that would last 30 years to people who build a business on its durability.

I know what it means.

Point is - it’s a great approach with software.

“Break” is an easy, cheap, and fast fix.

But “break” when it comes to the second most expensive item in your household budget leaves the customer holding the bag on expensive failures.

Not cool.

My neighbor had to PAY Carmax $20,000 to take his Model X. After two years, he was that far upside down because Tesla reduced the price on new ones and the car dropped so much in value.

When “break things” hits your customers that hard in the wallet, you’re not going to engender much future business.

Model X being 20k up side down is not just a durability problem, but rather a demand and supply problem. Think of it as a jewery or real estate, you will always have people overpaying for high price during economic boom then foreclosed in a recession. You will see this in all sorts of "assets" when the product itself has no problem and functioning just as well as the day it was manufactured.

Those EV motors should cost nothing more than $2k each if done right in parts. Even if you replace it every 100k it would only cost 4k over 200k of a lifespan.

What most people buying cars don't remember is you are not buying an asset. Demand and supply may be skewed when you buy and when you sell, but in the long run a car will depreciate even if it has nothing wrong.

 

[PandaBear]

I get the feeling the consumers are being used more and more as nothing more than beta testers with not only Ev's but many things today, many of them are big $$ items like CVT transmissions, self driving tech, 10 speed AT, engine designs and poor engineering of parts that are prone to expensive failures, etc.

People keep wanting new things instead of mature things. The money spent on buying something is no longer a big portion of their budget like rent / student loans, and the common consensus in cars is they need to look good and be cool instead of last for a long time and easy to repair.

We get what we deserve by buying what we value or not value.

 

[ripcord]

People keep wanting new things instead of mature things. The money spent on buying something is no longer a big portion of their budget like rent / student loans, and the common consensus in cars is they need to look good and be cool instead of last for a long time and easy to repair.

We get what we deserve by buying what we value or not value.

Software development is definitely following this trend. Progressive development is how we do things these days. Way fewer testers, more automated testing with abbreviated test cycles and developers are expected to deliver self tested code.

 

[IndyIan]

I know what it means.

Point is - it’s a great approach with software.

“Break” is an easy, cheap, and fast fix.

But “break” when it comes to the second most expensive item in your household budget leaves the customer holding the bag on expensive failures.

Not cool.

My neighbor had to PAY Carmax $20,000 to take his Model X. After two years, he was that far upside down because Tesla reduced the price on new ones and the car dropped so much in value.

When “break things” hits your customers that hard in the wallet, you’re not going to engender much future business.

I think there's more than few people $20k upside down on lots of vehicles, but usually they just roll it into the next payment on the next shiny vehicle, not just eat it outright selling to carmax.
I assume he had good reason to sell it, but also could afford to do that, and didn't go buy a base model RAV4 to play it safe on reliability and resale.... IMO they are still a luxury purchase, even if not always a luxury car.
I would like a Model 3 but I won't get one for a while yet, as I don't want the risks/PITA factor associated with it in my location.

 

[Fair enough]

With the electric motors wouldn’t it be mainly the bearings going bad? Not a diy repair.

 

[Trav]

I read the cooling system has also been a issue for years from Tesla using Chinese sourced cooling tubes, the failures were apparently well known and documented yet they continued using them. Check out starting around 15 min.



https://www.latimes.com/business/st...-officials-probe-tesla-battery-cooling-system

 

[JeffKeryk]

As JeffKeryk said. You need to take risk if you want to build something fast.

How do you think Tesla came up with new car so fast vs a traditional car company? They are doing rapid development faster than the traditional way. For small production volume like Tesla has today it is probably ok, and their customers are more forgiving because they don't expect it to behave like a Toyota.

Also people buying early Tesla are buying toys, and a toys need to be cool and fun instead of reliable and last 20 years. Many people buy toys instead of tools when buying cars.

The goal of the "fail fast" methodology is to learn from failure and quickly identify and fix problems so that valuable time, money, and resources aren't wasted.

Fail fast seeks to deliver a quality, always improving product by making requisite changes quickly. Traditional car companies build on a yearly, or slower, cycle. Tesla does not operate on "model years" in the same way. Tesla's fail fast mindset continuously updates its cars for problems and new functionality. I believe other manufacturers will further adopt this continuous improvement mindset; it is cheaper to fix the issue before delivering the product and having it returned for repair.

Risk is inherent in any endeavor. We all remember the Space Shuttle Challenger where we lost 7 brave astronauts. I remember part of the coverage included family members speaking; I remember one saying the astronauts understood the risk; that risk was part of exploration.

The cause of the disaster was the failure of the primary and secondary redundant o-ring seals in a joint in the shuttle's right solid rocket booster (SRB).
Test data since 1977 demonstrated a potentially catastrophic flaw in the SRBs' O-rings, but neither NASA nor SRB manufacturer Morton Thiokol had addressed this known defect. NASA managers also disregarded engineers' warnings about the dangers of launching in cold temperatures and did not report these technical concerns to their superiors.

Their actions are the opposite of the fail fast methodology. Fix it now or pay the price later.

 

[PandaBear]

The goal of the "fail fast" methodology is to learn from failure and quickly identify and fix problems so that valuable time, money, and resources aren't wasted.

Fail fast seeks to deliver a quality, always improving product by making requisite changes quickly. Traditional car companies build on a yearly, or slower, cycle. Tesla does not operate on "model years" in the same way. Tesla's fail fast mindset continuously updates its cars for problems and new functionality. I believe other manufacturers will further adopt this continuous improvement mindset; it is cheaper to fix the issue before delivering the product and having it returned for repair.

Risk is inherent in any endeavor. We all remember the Space Shuttle Challenger where we lost 7 brave astronauts. I remember part of the coverage included family members speaking; I remember one saying the astronauts understood the risk; that risk was part of exploration.

The cause of the disaster was the failure of the primary and secondary redundant o-ring seals in a joint in the shuttle's right solid rocket booster (SRB).
Test data since 1977 demonstrated a potentially catastrophic flaw in the SRBs' O-rings, but neither NASA nor SRB manufacturer Morton Thiokol had addressed this known defect. NASA managers also disregarded engineers' warnings about the dangers of launching in cold temperatures and did not report these technical concerns to their superiors.

Their actions are the opposite of the fail fast methodology. Fix it now or pay the price later.

Ultimately, it depends on what you do with the safety margin you get back from failing fast. Some companies / organizations just cut cost with it, while others speed up their development for a newer generation of releases.

Also depending on where you take risk. Having stranded because an electric motor burning out (or demagnetized, or a chip failed, or wear out the bearing, etc) is a very different type of risk than a plane crashing into the ground.

 

[Trav]

Tesla has implemented the same defects year over year, how is that quick fixing anything? Comparing anything to do with automobile engineering to putting your backside on top of a rocket and firing the thing is loony.

 

[Torrid]

Tesla has implemented the same defects year over year, how is that quick fixing anything? Comparing anything to do with automobile engineering to putting your backside on top of a rocket and firing the thing is loony.

What same defects? Keep in mind I've bought one Tesla and rarely have contact with Teslas I don't own these days other than seeing them on the road. I'm not in and out of 20 different cars these days not being in the business of servicing vehicles anymore.

 

[ecotourist]

I haven't had any problems with my Model 3 SR+ in 3 years.

On the other hand my ultra reliable Honda Accord V6 6MT needed a new transmission in the first month. "These transmissions never fail", they said. But mine did (jumping out of 1st and 2nd gear on even light deceleration).

Even reliable cars have problems.