Fact Checking
Well-Known Member
Personally I do not think this should be an embarrassment for Porsche. This is their first EV and their next will surely be better. Key positive is that it will stop the media from hyping this as a negative toward Tesla.
I disagree, I think this could be a catastrophe for Porsche: the Taycan EV platform took 6 years and billions of dollars to develop, and Porsche expects to sell hundreds of thousands of high margin ICE Porsche's alongside the Taycan to turn the Taycan investment into a break-even investment by 2023.
Anyone who thinks that Porsche can turn on a dime and tweak and iterate their EV platforms like Tesla does has no idea about how inflexible the German automotive industry still is even today. New car platforms take years to develop, generally require new factories to be built, and are only iterated incrementally, with comparably minor changes. [Maybe @avoigt can confirm.]
I believe Tesla's manufacturing and refresh flexibility derives in part from their unified "Tesla Manufacturing Operating System", which provides a single platform and programming interface for all the automation they are using. The German automotive manufacturing status quo is a fractured, heterogeneous mess where each tool manufacturer has a different programming platform and the tools rarely interoperate. In Tesla's factories the Kuka robots, the hydraulic presses and most of the other equipment are all running the same OS under Tesla's control, which is a big advantage:
'The system that controls the whole intricate dance is Tesla’s Manufacturing Operating System, which was built completely in-house, and has evolved to support nearly all of the company’s manufacturing equipment. “The custom-built operating system has allowed Tesla to fine-tune its equipment and processes,” Field writes. “It clearly comes at a cost, as every change must be vetted and developed internally, but the upshot of the additional internal complexity is flexibility. Tesla can quickly come up with a new improvement or change to its products, equipment, or centerlines and implement it before another automaker would even be able to get a formal proposal together to send to a vendor.”'
[IIRC @schonelucht is working in that industry and might be able to confirm.]
Tesla's "continuous refreshes" concept, where within 10 years they were able to constantly improve the platform is basically unheard of in the automotive industry. The closest parallel among manufacturing companies I can think of is ... SpaceX.
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