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Blog Musk Gives Model 3 Factory Tour; Says He Sees a ‘Path Out of Hell’

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Tesla CEO Elon Musk says he now has a “clear understanding of the path out of hell.”

In an interview with CBS This Morning, Musk gave viewers a look at the Model 3 production line that he’s anxious to improve. Musk even showed the “narrow” couch and conference room floor he’s taken to sleeping on during busy times at the factory.

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Musk said Model 3 production trouble escalated into something he did not anticipate.

“I need to figure out how to be better and then we can be better at meeting goals,” Musk said.

The company “got complacent” about “core technology,” Musk said without providing specifics about the technology. He also said Tesla put too much new technology into the Model 3 all at once. “Should have staged it,” he said.

Musk also conceded that his production line is too robotic. He would like to add more human workers.

The full segment is below.[/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/lOz7cPJQd8E” video_title=”1″][/vc_column][/vc_row]

 
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One concern that the interview highlights for me is that Elon would rather personally "take over" the Model 3 production, than to hold the people nominally in that production job accountable. Doesn't he have the skill to hire the right production manager, and then to support and manage that person/team? Seems like a management failure. Managing people is hard. But you can't grow an organization into one capable of what Tesla needs to be without being willing and able to hire successfully and manage through others.
 
Once the kinks get worked out, I think the heavy use of automation will come to Tesla's advantage by offering the speed and precision that humans cant achieve.

But right now, I see stacks of inventory just sitting around, waiting to be processed. These things happen when there are bottlenecks...

Ideally, everything would be operating on the "one piece flow", "pull", and "just in time" principles, which improves defect detection time, lowers cash burn, smooths out production, improves safety, etc...
 
Once the kinks get worked out, I think the heavy use of automation will come to Tesla's advantage by offering the speed and precision that humans cant achieve.

But right now, I see stacks of inventory just sitting around, waiting to be processed. These things happen when there are bottlenecks...

Ideally, everything would be operating on the "one piece flow", "pull", and "just in time" principles, which improves defect detection time, lowers cash burn, smooths out production, improves safety, etc...

The auto industry has among the first users of heavy automation, and improves every year. Robots for auto assy lines are 68 years old now, and there are factories nearly all robotic. There is virtually no meat left on the table anymore except speeding up the robots, and programming them quicker, making them more flexible for mixed car lines, and lowering the cost of the robots. Or the next jump past industrial robots, painting, wires, and fasteners. They are in the works.
 
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Sad that every news site picks on Elon.. He is at least addressing the problems (auto emissions). I do not think the wright brothers first flight attempt went as well. Other car companies are bowing to pressure from the petroleum industry.
PS. we like our 3 we just got last week.
I saw that interview when it first ran on CBS. I did not see anything resembling an attack; quite the contrary the interviewer and her colleagues in the studio had nothing but complimentary things to say about Elon and Tesla, apart from the interviewer confessing to feeling uncomfortable with a car driving itself.
I thought that the factory tour and interview might even have been set up pursuant to an invitation from Tesla in order to show what was being done to speed up production.
 
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One concern that the interview highlights for me is that Elon would rather personally "take over" the Model 3 production, than to hold the people nominally in that production job accountable.
Elon and I have the same personality type according to the Myers Briggs Personality Test. It gives me a clue as to where he is coming from. We share a lot of personality strengths and weaknesses. @David29 you bring up a very good and fair and valid point. If I try to get inside Elon's head a moment perhaps I can give you an answer on his behalf.

Elon is a man of vision (this is his strength), but his communication style makes it difficult to communicate that vision to those who work for him and around him (this is his weakness). Because he just cant understand that the people who work for him don't see his vision as clearly as he does, he gets frustrated and says, "I'll just do it myself." He is a man of little patience and yet demanding a lot from his employees. He also demands a lot of himself and is willing to work harder than any of his employees in an attempt to lead by example. His leadership style results in difficulty finding the right people to fill the management slots to accomplish his vision by osmosis.

There are many examples of people with Elon's personality traits who have been very, very successful and many who have been spectacular failures. It is too early to determine what category Elon ultimately fits into, but his track record so far has been pretty good. Personally, I am placing my bets on Elon succeeding despite his faults.
 
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Elon and I have the same personality type according to the Myers Briggs Personality Test. It gives me a clue as to where he is coming from. We share a lot of personality strengths and weaknesses. @David29 you bring up a very good and fair and valid point. If I try to get inside Elon's head a moment perhaps I can give you an answer on his behalf.

Elon is a man of vision (this is his strength), but his communication style makes it difficult to communicate that vision to those who work for him and around him (this is his weakness). Because he just cant understand that the people who work for him don't see his vision as clearly as he does, he gets frustrated and says, "I'll just do it myself." He is a man of little patience and yet demanding a lot from his employees. He also demands a lot of himself and is willing to work harder than any of his employees in an attempt to lead by example. His leadership style results in difficulty finding the right people to fill the management slots to accomplish his vision by osmosis.

There are many examples of people with Elon's personality traits who have been very, very successful and many who have been spectacular failures. It is too early to determine what category Elon ultimately fits into, but his track record so far has been pretty good. Personally, I am placing my bets on Elon succeeding despite his faults.

I agree that Elon is an inspirational visionary. But the methods he use appear to be failing in many areas -- the ongoing major problems with spare parts supply, factory production volume, factory production quality, tardy and insufficiently tested software, delivery experience, and customer communication (and there may be others, such as problems with the solar panel business) all point to an organization that is stretched too thin or poorly organized or both. Tesla has become too big, with too many customers dependent upon the company, for a start-up management style. The company seriously needs to learn to function much more independently of Elon's personal control. Perhaps that means Elon has to learn better management, learn to delegate and do so, not sure. In any case, he cannot be the Lone Ranger solving all the problems of the enterprise.

Sleeping on the factory floor might have shown leadership and dedication for the early boutique days of Tesla, but all it tells me now is that the manager does not have the right team, or does not trust the team, or does not know how to delegate, or all of the above.

Don't get me wrong. i love my Model S, I admire Elon greatly, and I am a stockholder. But being as objective as I can, I'd say Elon is on the wrong path to a successful, smoothly-running manufacturing company.
 
I agree that Elon is an inspirational visionary. But the methods he use appear to be failing in many areas -- the ongoing major problems with spare parts supply, factory production volume, factory production quality, tardy and insufficiently tested software, delivery experience, and customer communication (and there may be others, such as problems with the solar panel business) all point to an organization that is stretched too thin or poorly organized or both. Tesla has become too big, with too many customers dependent upon the company, for a start-up management style. The company seriously needs to learn to function much more independently of Elon's personal control. Perhaps that means Elon has to learn better management, learn to delegate and do so, not sure. In any case, he cannot be the Lone Ranger solving all the problems of the enterprise.
I know, it is difficult to understand Elon's management style unless you share his personality type.
 
People sure like to consider Elon a failure early in the game. They haven’t even been producing the Model 3 for barely 9 months and already so many say he can’t make it. But yet already the Model 3 is outselling the Bolt which is built by a company that’s been around for a century. Just goes to show that most people on here don’t have the stomach for building a billion dollar business. Give him time. This time next year and these issues will be a thing of the past.
 
Musk should not be given credit for seeing a path out of hell, he is the one who put them on the path to hell in the first place by being incredibly shortsighted. He chose to re-invent the wheel rather than using tried-and-true manufacturing methods that work. This "path out of hell" is not coming for free, all of these mistakes are costing Tesla money. Any other CEO would have been canned a long time ago. Musk's "vision" is just as much an albatross as it is blessing.

Let's get this straight: Musk is piss poor CEO.
 
Musk should not be given credit for seeing a path out of hell, he is the one who put them on the path to hell in the first place by being incredibly shortsighted. He chose to re-invent the wheel rather than using tried-and-true manufacturing methods that work. This "path out of hell" is not coming for free, all of these mistakes are costing Tesla money. Any other CEO would have been canned a long time ago. Musk's "vision" is just as much an albatross as it is blessing.

Let's get this straight: Musk is piss poor CEO.

I wouldn't have invested any money in TSLA if Musk wasn't constantly choosing to re-invent the wheel.

Look, I think Musk is probably 110% insane, and I would have used tried-and-true manufacturing methods, but he is an entrepreneur and I am not.

This is also why I don't invest all my money in TSLA. Giga-risk means potential Giga-reward. Or Giga-loss.
 
Shortsighted???

Getting us off petroleum products is INCREDIBLY *LONG* in vision.

It's the short-sighted short-sellers who want "more of the same" that other car companies produce.

I've been listening to how awful Elon Musk is since before the Model S hit the streets. The Naysayers are like Bible Doom Prophets - always moving their End of Times date.

Name me ONE person who has the list of accomplishments that Musk has. There's a reason why he's always late in delivering on his promises. It's hard to make an accurate schedule for things that have never been done before.
 
Musk should not be given credit for seeing a path out of hell, he is the one who put them on the path to hell in the first place by being incredibly shortsighted. He chose to re-invent the wheel rather than using tried-and-true manufacturing methods that work. This "path out of hell" is not coming for free, all of these mistakes are costing Tesla money. Any other CEO would have been canned a long time ago. Musk's "vision" is just as much an albatross as it is blessing.

Let's get this straight: Musk is piss poor CEO.
"incredibly shortsighted?" You are damn right! there are many such instances of him trying to re-invent the wheel has cost a ton of money.

  • He was shortsighted to have started a car company in the first place, when the experts all knew that no new car company in the US has survived the last 100 years, so we all knew it is impossible
  • He was shortsighted to have started an electric car company, when the experts like Toyota and GM knew that Hybrid is the way to go. Battery technology is simply not there to get even 200 mile range. Even better Hydrogen is the answer. The experts in Toyota told us time and again.
  • Starting a car factory in California? How shortsighted can that be? there is a reason all car manufacturing in the US is done around Detroit or in places where labor is cheap.
  • He was incredibly shortsighted to have gone with cylindrical commodity cells, when the industry was going after pouch cells specifically made for automobiles. You all know the results of that - terrible battery degradation in Tesla cars
  • He was terribly shortsighted not to go for the tried and trusted and proven customer-friendly dealership model.
  • He was insanely shortsighted to start a rocket company. I mean how stupid can that be?. We all know that only governments and big aerospace companies can launch rockets. Just think about it - what experience does he have launching rockets? [AmpedRealtor would have 100% made this comment with glee in the early years, when his first three launches were failures.]
  • Landing rockets? really? is Musk insane? NASA has not done it. Russians have not done it. Euro agency? ULA? not a chance. It only means one thing - IT CANNOT BE DONE. You cannot land rockets. How incredibly shortsighted for Musk to spend his engineering resources on this.
  • And oh the Gigafactory? What kind of shortsighted idiot builds their own huge factory to make batteries, when automobile giants knew fully well that it is always best to outsource battery manufacturing to 3rd parties. There is no way battery costs are going to come down to less than $200/kWh for another two decades. The experts told us. They are right. Musk is wrong.
You are damn right. Musk's shortsightedness has cost Tesla and SpaceX a lot of money. He should not have even started these companies in the first place. Then they would not have lost any money.
 
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