This Tesla engineer is not a happy bunny
Discussion
Had a read of these. Very entertaining.
To be honest, from other things I've read about how they've designed the cars, the parts, asking suppliers to produce them (and iterating as they go instead of nailing the design down so the supplier knows what he has to supply), I think they've been pretty fly by night with the whole operation.
That works fine when you're designing an app for a phone but for products that people are going to get inside of and ride all over the country at speed for a number of years, its not very confidence inspiring.
They've had a right rollercoaster ride as well with Elon's twitter outbursts...not least the "i'm taking the company private and have the funding".... which now turns out to have been, "I didn't have the funding and we are staying public (because retail investors can't buy in - well durrr!)". Either he's had his collar felt by the SEC over the first one, or he's about to have is collar felt because surely what he's done with those tweets can't be too far from stock manipulation.
They've achieved so much. They've forced change on the industry. I think what they really should have done was get someone in from one of the "Dinosaur" big manufacturers, who knows how to manage and structure a business to mass produce cars to a high quality. Someone who knows what they're doing, who'll do it diligently and quietly. Maybe, they wouldn't be celebrating 5,000 a week then because it'd have been an easy milestone.
As well, I've read from a Wall Street report (some analysts had a model 3 torn down), that the quality issues are quite bad and that over 4000 of that first 5000 a week batch needed significant remedial work before sale.
They didn't need to try reinvent the manufacturing wheel just yet. Reinventing the passenger car was enough! the former would have come with time. Its like they didn't realise that auto-manufacturing is already as roboticised as it can be, its already finely tuned and highly efficient. Ignoring all that wasn't smart.
To be honest, from other things I've read about how they've designed the cars, the parts, asking suppliers to produce them (and iterating as they go instead of nailing the design down so the supplier knows what he has to supply), I think they've been pretty fly by night with the whole operation.
That works fine when you're designing an app for a phone but for products that people are going to get inside of and ride all over the country at speed for a number of years, its not very confidence inspiring.
They've had a right rollercoaster ride as well with Elon's twitter outbursts...not least the "i'm taking the company private and have the funding".... which now turns out to have been, "I didn't have the funding and we are staying public (because retail investors can't buy in - well durrr!)". Either he's had his collar felt by the SEC over the first one, or he's about to have is collar felt because surely what he's done with those tweets can't be too far from stock manipulation.
They've achieved so much. They've forced change on the industry. I think what they really should have done was get someone in from one of the "Dinosaur" big manufacturers, who knows how to manage and structure a business to mass produce cars to a high quality. Someone who knows what they're doing, who'll do it diligently and quietly. Maybe, they wouldn't be celebrating 5,000 a week then because it'd have been an easy milestone.
As well, I've read from a Wall Street report (some analysts had a model 3 torn down), that the quality issues are quite bad and that over 4000 of that first 5000 a week batch needed significant remedial work before sale.
They didn't need to try reinvent the manufacturing wheel just yet. Reinventing the passenger car was enough! the former would have come with time. Its like they didn't realise that auto-manufacturing is already as roboticised as it can be, its already finely tuned and highly efficient. Ignoring all that wasn't smart.
every single car company is one that puts together a vast number of f**k ups and somehow, pushes out a, mostly, working car at the end. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't been in the industry very long!
The golden rules is to try not to do anything that:
a) kills anyone
b) bankrupts the company
Every single engineer on any project always thinks they can do a better job, and i'm sure they could, but you know what, they'd NEVER actually get to the point of having a product on sale. All the little bodges, fixes, be they mechanical, or in software are unfortunately, a necessary evil of complex projects that involve thousands of people working simultaneously across multiple countries to get a vehicle into production.......
The golden rules is to try not to do anything that:
a) kills anyone
b) bankrupts the company
Every single engineer on any project always thinks they can do a better job, and i'm sure they could, but you know what, they'd NEVER actually get to the point of having a product on sale. All the little bodges, fixes, be they mechanical, or in software are unfortunately, a necessary evil of complex projects that involve thousands of people working simultaneously across multiple countries to get a vehicle into production.......
Edited by anonymous-user on Sunday 26th August 13:07
Are the more established car companies any better at IT security (for example) though?
https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/21/9009213/chrysle...
https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/21/9009213/chrysle...
jjwilde said:
He's pretty much describing every project I've ever worked on. That is just how backend tech tends to be.
The 'one giant C file' did make me laugh, we have all done it/seen it at one point.
Yep - we had a VB4 program which couldn't be compiled as it was over the code size limit for a single file and had to run in debug mode in the development tool.The 'one giant C file' did make me laugh, we have all done it/seen it at one point.
That was inherited from another company we acquired... Was still a key part of our production environment for about 2 years!
Max_Torque said:
every single car company is one that puts together a vast number of f**k ups and somehow, pushes out a, mostly, working car at the end. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't been in the industry very long!
The golden rules is to try not to do anything that:
a) kills anyone
How many people has Autopilot killed already?The golden rules is to try not to do anything that:
a) kills anyone
Three?
jjwilde said:
He's pretty much describing every project I've ever worked on. That is just how backend tech tends to be.
The 'one giant C file' did make me laugh, we have all done it/seen it at one point.
We, on an older product, had an ECU that had it's code, lookup tables and all, in one c file. Granted the guy who wrote that also designed and built the hardware so I guess there was only so much he could do in the time.The 'one giant C file' did make me laugh, we have all done it/seen it at one point.
Who wouldn't do it better second time round?
Three?None?
RJG46 said:
Max_Torque said:
every single car company is one that puts together a vast number of f**k ups and somehow, pushes out a, mostly, working car at the end. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't been in the industry very long!
The golden rules is to try not to do anything that:
a) kills anyone
How many people has Autopilot killed already?The golden rules is to try not to do anything that:
a) kills anyone
Three?
Evanivitch said:
None?
You could argue one quite successfully, that turn off one was pretty bad even if the driver had been watching carefully. The others not so. What you don't ever see in stats is how many lives has autopilot saved. Because we've seen many videos of it avoiding accidents drives probably wouldn't have.
As for software etc that's all pretty standard. I know others in car development, major manufacturers with emergency late changes to braking systems etc because of serious f
kups.. Increasingly, as platforms share more parts and systems, and time to market pressures mean even shorted dev programs, those programs are really becoming integration programs rather than actual engineering ones. ie, most of the parts have bee used before, and must "simply" be made to work in their new home, in conjunction with a massive number of other parts and systems, all of which have their own code and control. Bringing all that together, after a necessarily highly parallel program is always going to turn up mistakes and un-expected behavoir, which WILL require last minuted fixes to, er, fix. And those fixes will not be pretty and necessarily will often be far from the ideal option. Despite what you read in the "built without compromise" b*llsh*t marketing w*ank, in fact engineering is ALL ABOUT COMPROMISE.
(An F1 car for example, often touted as "without compromise" is of course, a massive cludge of necessary compromises, sure, they are multi-million£-titatium-carbon cludges, but cludges never-the-less ;-) )
And as software generally is the last thing in the line to be completed, it is most often the victim of the most cludges. This is the way of the world.
(An F1 car for example, often touted as "without compromise" is of course, a massive cludge of necessary compromises, sure, they are multi-million£-titatium-carbon cludges, but cludges never-the-less ;-) )
And as software generally is the last thing in the line to be completed, it is most often the victim of the most cludges. This is the way of the world.
Max_Torque said:
every single car company is one that puts together a vast number of f**k ups and somehow, pushes out a, mostly, working car at the end. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't been in the industry very long!
The golden rules is to try not to do anything that:
a) kills anyone
b) bankrupts the company
Link is asking for login details I don't have to hand.The golden rules is to try not to do anything that:
a) kills anyone
b) bankrupts the company
However having spent 6-7years work for a major UK manufacturing company making mainstream construction and agricultural equipment I can vouch for that.
A lot of effort is putting in to making a good product, that is safe and reliable and goes down the line well. However at the end of the day nothing is perfect and there is plenty of rework, as well as in the case of construction equipment, 100% testing of every product that leaves the line. Each month end there is a scrabble to find a couple of extra machines to hit the build target, every now and then something major happens and in between that as you say. Don't do anything that kills someone, and or big enough to bankrupt the company.
Daniel
Gassing Station | EV and Alternative Fuels | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff