General Discussion: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[Anstandswauwau]

You're claiming to know or wanting to know why Tesla designed the pack the way they did.

Wrong. My post above was a rather universal comment on product development circles and the problems that arise when heavy and costly machinery is required for production.

NOBODY knows why outside of Tesla, including the "expert" that tore the car down.

Yeah, well, you know, that's just like, your opinion, man.

Actually it's all pretty effing straight forward: You tore it down and see Tesla's applied design principles in front of you. Every design decision tells you a story; and based on those, you can get a decently complete picture of Tesla's thinking. But what the hell do I know, right? Right?

By the way, word on the street here is, that BMW's R&D department was really impressed by what they saw when tearing down their M3. Beside the software, no signs of a "special sauce", though. Hate to brake it to you.

Some of us here have no interest in playing a guessing game or claiming to know stuff we can't possibly know because it leads to know where productive.

Thanks for letting us know. So, how again are you adding value to this discussion, Sir?

This apparently makes one a fan boy.

This, and maybe 1k+ apologetic posts in a fan boy forum.

I've noticed some emotionally unstable members posting lately, not going to name names though.

As if anyone would care

 

[Ovulation]

I looked like the guy in the bottom frame, on the right as a Chaplain's Assistant (E-5) back in 1971 while standing on the bottom side of the flat earth Amazing how things look from there.

I hope you were not a vegan back then, because if an animal had tried to eat you it would have died of food poisoning and that's not a joke according to the video at 2:22

 

[scaesare]

First rule of dual motor club: don't talk about dual motor club...

True, but I strongly believe S/X will start to use 2170 cell packs, once the production rate is there.



The battery was designed to a certain spec, which is made out of maybe hundreds of parameters like cost, weight, storage capacity, rigidity, material availability, etc. Getting those absolutely right, for a new component of such complexity is simply impossible – there are just too many levers.

So here's what you usually do for the initial design: You overspec the critical parameters (eg. safety and storage capacity), while giving others (eg. profitability, etc.) a lower priority. After all, your top priority to get it out ASAP,. Everything else is pretty much highly educated guesswork.

If your lucky and did your job as best as you could, you'll still end up with a breakthrough – like in the case of the M3 pack.

BUT here's the kicker:

As I said before, true profitability – not being 15%, but 50% cheaper than your competitors – often kicks in with later revisions, when they know what fat to trim and what parameters to adjust.

To me it is still unclear, how they'd do pack revisions without affecting the much needed 24/7 production. Major revisions could easily result in multiple weeks of downtime for a production line, and they obviously can't just add new lines for every revision. Even updating lines one-by-one would be a logistical nightmare.

Now, having a breakthrough product at hand doesn't mean it's future proof. As we speak right now, there are hundreds of people around the world reverse-engineering the M3 pack. Let's say, they find some fat to trim and combined with their own expertise, they somehow manage to come up with a pack that's 20% "better" (read: lighter at same rigidity, cheaper, etc.) than what Tesla has now. So when they start to build those reverse-engineered M3 v2 packs in eg. 2021, it's in Teslas best interest to counter those with an even better battery.

R&D wise, TSLA can do it, no doubt. But how do they plan to actually pull those revision-cycles off in the factories is not clear to me. I'm happy to hear everyones thought on this.



The M3 pack is as much a MS pack, as the iPhone 4 was an iPhone 3GS.

To address only a couple of points:

- Tesla is slipstreaming 10's of revisions a week in to the car designs, without stopping production. No reason why similar can't happen with packs.

- Companies have had opportunity to reverse engineer the S/X packs as well for the last 5 years. (And quite frankly, the pack design themselves isn't something that many other companies could replicate). Yet without the commitment to infrastructure and scale needed, they aren't gonna get anywhere near Tesla's costs. Why would this be different for Model 3?

 

[JRP3]

The M3 pack is as much a MS pack, as the iPhone 4 was an iPhone 3GS.

Please list all the differences beyond the cell size and somewhat different arrangement of existing components. I don't think your analogy is even close to accurate.

 

[BioSehnsucht]

And there are multiple ways to approach this problem, but let me boil it down to only two for the sake of argument:

1. Totally geek out and try to make it "perfect" (Juicero comes to mind)
   
   
2. Design for profit- and manufacturability

With all the production bottlenecks and comments from EM (see above), I think we could rule out approach nr. 2, can't we?

While it is a clean sheet design, that doesn't mean it was built in a knowledge vacuum. There is must they have learned from S/X and S/X in turn learned from Roadster pack design. All this knowledge informs the clean sheet design.

It was designed to be highly optimized for it's purpose, which included manufacturability of the overall vehicle by integrating more of the electronics into it to reduce the final/general assembly steps. The fact that an assembly line supplier dropped the ball and they've been playing catch up ever since doesn't make that a lie, it just shows that sometimes what you think will be easy to manufacture isn't, and you won't know until you try. But even if that had gone perfectly, they would continue to evolve the product and it's manufacture - for example, removing flufferbot. I'm sure it would have been eventually removed even if it was a very fast step not a slow one, as at some point they would look to see what they can eliminate simply to improve margin.

Having watched the EV TV teardown of a Model 3 pack, there wasn't really anything that screamed at me that it was clearly inefficient or a chasing perfection rather than just good enough. I'm not a manufacturing or battery expert, but I'm guessing you aren't either. It's only overbuilt in the context of cars being built normally just to last past the extended warranty.

If you never push the envelope, you'll never find where the true limits are. And reaching the desired volume and margin on Model 3 requires pushing the envelope to get there, with the limited resources (time, money, factory space, labor force, etc - though it pretty much all falls under money) that they have at their disposal.

 

[scaesare]

Having watched the EV TV teardown of a Model 3 pack, there wasn't really anything that screamed at me that it was clearly inefficient or a chasing perfection rather than just good enough. I'm not a manufacturing or battery expert, but I'm guessing you aren't either. It's only overbuilt in the context of cars being built normally just to last past the extended warranty.

And what's more, it's clear that Tesla's goals include high levels of safety for it's vehicles. Given the potential for the pack to not only be a significant safety concern (i.e. puncture, fire, electrocution, etc...) as well as to be an integral engineered member of the car design (it's rigidity contributes to side impact protection for instance), I suspect that the opinion that it's "overengineered" may not appreciate those other factors.

 

[RobStark]

Tesla releases some of its software to comply with open source licences

 

[Remus]

Yeah, when Elon said that, I silently cursed him myself. Elon is like this naive genius that goes around doing things that experienced people scoff at. They scoff at it because they are indeed mistakes. Elon is so hands on, though, that he realizes the mistakes and fixes them really quickly. The mistakes were necessary to learn design and production processes at a very deep level so what emerges from the other side is something that no one else can do.

The other thing that people miss about Elon is that he is a very hard ass CEO. He sets literally impossible goals, and pushes people really hard to make them. If you look at the big picture, Tesla and SpaceX have amazingly high employee productivity. It’s because they work so damn hard.

I’m having a similar debate with my 13 year gentle giant son. He’s so sensitive that he really doesn’t like coaches that yell and ride the kids. Yet if we look back at those coaches, there is no denying that those teams he was on were really good. The best coaches, of course, motivate people without having to yell at them like a drill sergeant, but those coaches are rare. The point is that the best teams are the ones that get pushed to their limits, which is what Elon always does.

Naïve is the right word. But "mature" people don't go found a rocket company and try to land orbital boosters.

 

[Navin]

 

[AlMc]

Great Video Navin.....^^^^^^^^^^^^^. Worth a look

 

[Reciprocity]

@TalkTezla is a boss. This is outstanding stuff. Not because its so creative, but because its creative and fact based. Its easy to talk smack, but its truly creative when it rings so true and is fact based. Have you ever heard the term, "its funny because its true"? Good stuff. keep up the good work.

 

[gene]

Pease share this video EVERYWHERE! Especially you defenders on Twitter.

 

[TalkTezla]

Thank you all so much!

 

[Starno]

6 more weeks to go to reach 5k/w

 

[SteveG3]

Elon on twitter,

"Working on Model 3 dual motor all-wheel drive & performance versions. Driving feel is amazing. Aiming to release config late tonight."

Elon Musk on Twitter

 

[kbM3]

Does anyone know how dual motor, performance and white interior configurations will work?

1) If you’ve already been invited but have not configured, you can immediately pay $2500 and order a new config.

2) There will be new invites, based on priority, to configure future versions.

There may be over 75k people waiting for new configurations, so if they all order at once, there could be a 3 month or more wait for delivery if Tesla follows the first option.

If Tesla does allow all people who have already been invited to order future configurations, this could be a nice little bump to cash in Q2.

 

[SteveG3]

Pease share this video EVERYWHERE! Especially you defenders on Twitter.

Exactly. The story isn't the fake news inside all those articles and Chanos, Speigel et al. gibberish talking points given airtime on the financial "news" networks, the informative story this flood of articles and on air nonsense actually conveys is the phenomena of this massive and wide campaign that involves leaving the public with false negative impressions about Tesla and its products.

We can be a part of raising awareness that each day's slew of media gibberish actually conveys the message "oh, more negative campaigning directed at Tesla" (rather than "oh, Tesla having more problems").

As gene said, please share this video!

 

[EarlyAdopter]

Elon on twitter,

"Working on Model 3 dual motor all-wheel drive & performance versions. Driving feel is amazing. Aiming to release config late tonight."

Elon Musk on Twitter

This is also good news on the manufacturing front, as Elon had previously said they would hold on the AWD config until manufacturing ramp issues were dealt with.

 

[WarpedOne]

my ignore list is getting longer and longer. universe is ultra productive ...

 

[Yuri_G]

my ignore list is getting longer and longer. universe is ultra productive ...

A sign that the bottom is near...