It's just talk to appease (my opinion), CA roughly has 14 million 248 thousand cars (14,248,000) on the road and right now they barely have enough room on the electric grid for 248 thousand minus the other 14,000,000. All their non renewal power ironically comes from burning natural gas.
Tesla Milestone: 5 Millionth Car Manufactured
- Thread starter DwightFrye
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It should be renamed the Tesla fan boy club section. LOL
Tesla has 1 key differentiator; it produces a software first vehicle from the ground up. Jim Farley stated Ford has like 150 suppliers that use chip controlled functionality. They all use propritory software that cannot communicate with each other. Oops.
That's a huge problem, according to CEO Farley. Tesla codes all its own software. As a business software integrator, I can tell you it is a nightmare. Even if you can get some integration to work, a single update can cause havoc.
That's a huge problem, according to CEO Farley. Tesla codes all its own software. As a business software integrator, I can tell you it is a nightmare. Even if you can get some integration to work, a single update can cause havoc.
It's all about the batteries. Heck, If Vinfast can build an EV anyone can.
Problem with big 3 is they relies on Japanese/Korean in battery and they own nothing (and they will be happy). They have to rely on American's desire for big SUVs and trucks to keep the lights on. If that changes due to any oil price related reason or recession, they are hosed.
https://www.reuters.com/business/en...losing-streak-tightening-supplies-2023-09-01/
Anyone parking their SUVs and pickups and start driving their Corollas yet?
There are 2 sides of every story. Tesla's "software defined" architecture can ..... lead to ECU failure because they screw up their logging and wears out their flash chips (not enough volume to test them, unlike reusing the same boring architecture for 20 years within Toyota, for example).
In large scale design and production, volume means test data and stability. Toyota wait and use proven designs so they are relatively boring and reliable. Anyone can do it, but not many "cutting edge" companies like BMW, Mercedes, etc like to do it. Tesla being way out there means they can fix a lot of their own problems with software updates, but that also means they may (and they did) cut a lot of corners and ship half baked products (they have to because they never have the same volume). Plus, you need more chips and you will get more supply shortage than your competitors with fewer chips if managed correctly.
Denso probably sell the same ECU architecture to every Toyota, Nissan, Honda, etc. You don't need too many unique spare if you flash the right firmware to it right before installation. Of course, that also means if shortage hits they run out real fast (that's the other side of the same coin).
BTW, it is easier to stuff a bunch of excessive transistors into an expensive car vs a cheap one. Just because Tesla probably put in $1000 worth of chips in every car doesn't mean it is a good idea to put in $1000 worth of chips in a Yaris. Porsche can even afford to buy a brand new Miele washer to take it apart, and scavenge a chip to finish the car, and leave the washer in a warehouse and repair it when the chip shortage is over. You can't afford that on a Golf.
Everything you said is Tesla's software leverage. And remember, Tesla was able to recode the firmware on available chips which allowed them to manage the chip shortage. The problems were far worse than the hardware availability. Traditional companies were more dependent on their suppliers.
The bigger problem is the traditional car company lack of software expertise and the resulting interface nightmare. This is a nearly impossible problem to solve.
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So will they understand they are not buying a Jeep, Ford or GM truck?
I assume that is what we are going to compare to?
What you said don't add up. Tesla relies on their chip suppliers just like Toyota indirectly relies on Denso relies on their chip suppliers.
The only way things can steer one way vs another is that you need MORE inventories if you have custom designs (not sharing chips), like Tesla do, per 100k vehicles, whereas more traditional companies need fewer inventories in stockpile as they are more "just in time". So instead of keeping 30 days of inventories Toyota may only ask Denso to keep 7, knowing that Denso may keep 2 in reality as they can pull inventories from Honda / Mazda for regular "hiccup". This is a known issue with "just in time" manufacturing.
Tesla may be able to reuse one of its own chip or controller for another, and with their volume they may be better off throwing in a more than capable controller into a smaller controller's role. They are throwing money away in exchange for flexibility and inventories. Can Toyota / Honda / Mazda / GM / Ford do this? Of course they can, but remember 1) the legacy companies has more volume so they don't have to. This is like putting 225/50/16 tires on a Yaris when all you need is a 185/60/15 but you don't want to buy custom tires for just one car. 2) the legacy companies are building cheaper cars so they need to be more cost efficient instead of throwing in oversized parts to match the volume and reduce spare inventories. Back to the same Yaris example they don't need 225/50/16 so why pay for it if 185/60/15 is enough?
Firmware is "free" as in no variable cost, if volume is high enough. It makes no sense to write your own firmware if your vendor already has a proven 20 year old "reference" design you can just "license" for pennies.
My complaint is that Tesla has waaaay too much control over your vehicle and has shown to abuse that power. Repeatedly.
Tesla blocks Scottsdale woman from charging her car
Company mistakenly insisted her car had been totaled
" A Scottsdale woman brought her Tesla in for repairs. When she got the car back, a key system no longer worked and she couldn’t get Tesla to fix the problem. That’s when she called in On Your Side.Erine Erickson loves her Tesla Model 3. But these days, the EV stays parked in her garage. “It’s, you know, 3,000 pounds of metal in a parking spot downstairs,” she said.
Erickson’s problem started last month when the battery on her Tesla died. She took it to Tesla, and they replaced the battery for free under their warranty. However, during the process, Tesla technicians turned off the key feature that allows Tesla drivers to supercharge their vehicles in 15 minutes. Erickson says she didn’t find out until she stopped at a supercharger station and could not charge her Tesla. “That’s when people saw me and came up to me and people were trying to troubleshoot it,” she said. “But nobody had ever seen anything like it.”
Turns out, Tesla had intentionally deactivated Erickson’s supercharger feature for safety reasons. Here’s why. When replacing Erickson’s battery, Tesla says they discovered that Carfax listed her car as having a salvaged title due to being totaled in a collision. As a result, Tesla removed the supercharger feature as a safety precaution."
It took a news crea to get Tesla to turn her supercharging back on. Every manufacturer has their share of issues but stuff like this shocks me that Tesla is still in business. If Apple turned off your Macbook Pro or made it charge slowly I'm fairly certain that people would stop buying them.
Yeah, when things are software based, they are subject to a whole new set of things that can go haywire. My neighbors, who are no strangers to EVs and are very computer savvy, thing our Model 3 is "too big brother".
But Tesla's customer satisfaction numbers are the envy of the auto industry. They must be doing something right, right?
There are much larger issues to be shocked about.
Should US servicemen boycott GM for illegally repossessing 71 cars ?
Manufacturers have all kinds of ways to take advantage of people that has nothing to do with software.
https://www.military.com/daily-news...sing-troops-cars-among-other-infractions.html
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Or more like the customers are clueless.
And Toyota calls the Model Y "a work of art".
Yes, they will overlook all the imperfections of the Cybertruck.
I will buy a Tesla in the future.
Don't lump Apple into Tesla. Apple actually has way more quality control and will scrap an entire generation of product because the battery life is not going to work out, and wait till the silicon shrink to reduce power consumption next year.
Tesla would just tweet doggie coins to make money and preorder vaporware to get by.
There is nothing wrong with software defined. A lot of things are software defined. FPGAs are technically "software defined" as they are verilog. You need that to reduce risk of silicon design screw up which is the #1 reason people like to reuse old proven stuff and license other companies' old stuff.
The problem is rushing to market. This is what also destroys Nissan's reputation as well.
There are different ways, but obviously Tesla is heavily software based, as opposed to automotive electronics that tend to be customized for specific applications. That being said, all these little SoC chips in a modern car typically run on an operating system with firmware.
Military electronics these days are heavily reliant on FPGAs to do the things that were previously done with ASICs and SoCs. There were reports that the US Navy bought hundreds of millions of dollars worth of FPGAs as spare parts for F-35s - since the parts were being phased out. They should be stable in storage for decades. FPGAs might not be so practical with cars since they cost more, don't have as high performance (in small form factors), and use up considerably more power. But for something that's only made in the hundreds to thousands, it's a practical solution.
Years ago, NASA or DoD contractors might use ASICs for production runs of maybe just a few hundred. FPGAs have been around for a while, but never really that high performance.
Apparently Tesla is developing some FPGAs - especially for specific applications like self-driving. They're getting customized FPGAs, but I suppose where hardware functions can be remapped and not just firmware being reprogrammed.
https://www.techpowerup.com/254820/...igns-and-deploys-its-own-self-driving-ai-chip