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VW has to cut production in Wolfsburg again

Volkswagen partially shuts down the belts a good two weeks after the restart due to the corona-related slump in sales.

Production in the main plant in Wolfsburg should not take place for a total of four days in May, as VW HR manager Arne Meiswinkel said in an interview published on the carmaker's intranet. So-called closing days had been agreed for May 15, 20, 25 and 29. According to insiders, the production of the SUV models VW Tiguan and Seat Tarraco and the compact van Touran is affected. On these days there is also one shift in the assembly of the new Golf 8. "We also organize the driving styles in the other Volkswagen AG plants so flexibly and appropriately," said Meiswinkel.


Googly translated from: VW muss Produktion in Wolfsburg wieder drosseln
 
I'd like to believe that, and there are many reasons to believe so. But I feel his judgement was a bit clouded when he tweeted no more new cases by end of April...

That clearly turned out to be incorrect, but nonetheless I've probably gained respect for Elon throughout all of this, even though I already held him in extremely high regard.

It's easy to forget how courageous Elon is for being so unafraid to share his opinion openly. It is 1000x easier to just adopt the opinion of the majority, or have a different opinion but refrain from sharing it, because the majority will not take kindly to controversial opinions.

There's a lot of downside and relatively little upside, because if you turn out to be wrong, you'll be thought of as a fool. Even if you're right, you'll be ridiculed initially, and there's a risk of the majority never even realising they are wrong.

I have a lot of respect for Elon (and others) who stand up for what they believe in, especially if it goes against the grain.

The only criticism I have of Elon throughout this is the way in which he shared his opinion. I'd have liked to see more constructive, thoughtful blog posts like the one on Tesla.com a few days ago, and less attention-seeking (or whatever it was) "FREE AMERICA NOW" and "Stock Price is too high" tweets.
 
If I was a GM,Ford, VW etc exec, I would be pissing in my pants now from fear as at how Elon masterminded the opening of Freemont. The relentness pursuit of the goal, at all levels, from twitter to Trump, from lawyers to governors, coupled with the utter and all-encompassing belief that the ONLY thing holding back Tesla from world domination in car sales (and other technologies) is production and production only and not demand.... I think this Freemont saga will open a lot of eyes at the OEMs, and they are finally seeing a cybertruck rushing at them in full speed, with nowhere to duck :)
 
I think I’m done with the social media for some time. Too much Elon Man Bad, Orange Man Bad, FUD being spread by the far left Twitter, mindless attacks by blue checkmarks, a lot of people can’t keep an open mind... why must there be only two options, right or left? Do people not have brains for themselves? What tf is wrong with this hive mind mentality, why do people lick the boots of the media? Look at Elon, he can agree with both sides on different issues. Ending fossil fuels, UBI, constitution rights, capitalism. The amount of flak Elon is getting for saying thank you to the president is insane, like he is suddenly Hitler lmao

premarket looking bullish af tho :cool:
 
That clearly turned out to be incorrect, but nonetheless I've probably gained respect for Elon throughout all of this, even though I already held him in extremely high regard.
I also understand where this comes from. If you're smart and have a proven track record of building a leading electric car company and a private space company building reusable rockets which can land themselves, and you spend a few hours looking at some data on this global pandemic, there is the risk you might feel confident enough to give your opinion which is not necessarily in line with what some policymakers and science heads are saying. Even if you'd call it ego, in quite a lot of regard he has all the right to have earned that ego.

But that doesn't mean you'll always be right. That doesn't have to be a problem though; Elon certainly champions the errors and mistakes approach to building great things.

The only criticism I have of Elon throughout this is the way in which he shared his opinion. I'd have liked to see more constructive, thoughtful blog posts like the one on Tesla.com a few days ago, and less attention-seeking (or whatever it was) "FREE AMERICA NOW" and "Stock Price is too high" tweets.
Yes, that felt icky, but it does reach another public which up to now was disregarding Tesla and Elon for being a leftist subsidised tree-hugger.
 
I think I’m done with the social media for some time. Too much Elon Man Bad, Orange Man Bad, FUD being spread by the far left Twitter, mindless attacks by blue checkmarks, a lot of people can’t keep an open mind... why must there be only two options, right or left? Do people not have brains for themselves? What tf is wrong with this hive mind mentality, why do people lick the boots of the media? Look at Elon, he can agree with both sides on different issues. Ending fossil fuels, UBI, constitution rights, capitalism. The amount of flak Elon is getting for saying thank you to the president is insane, like he is suddenly Hitler lmao

premarket looking bullish af tho :cool:
A lot more ppl are binary in thought than you think. And I as well. I was shocked at being called a “Trump supporter” for simply complimenting Trump on his real estate empire and hot wife before by a colleague.. go figure. And funny enough, the guy brought Hitler into the conversation as well, to which I argued, he must’ve had some great traits as well... I don’t believe there’s a single soul on this world that is fully bad through and through. You can learn something from anyone
 
He doesn't seem sufficiently enthusiastic about an electric bike. I do think it could be good for the brand to do so. That is, it is important for Tesla to have a more comprehensive approach to sustainable transport. That vision should be inclusive of bicycles, scooters and other personal mobility concepts. Having an comprehensive vision, however, does not mean that Tesla must manufacture it. For the moment there seems to be an abundance of scooters and ebikes on the market. Though, I do think there is plenty of room for innovation, particularly around cool personal mobility that is stable and safe.
The huge areas for improvement, IMO, are in motor efficiency, gearing, and cost.

Battery density is decent (my e-bike, for instance, is using Samsung INR18650-35E cells, which have similar density to Tesla's current cells), but it's about $800 at retail for a 500 Wh pack, that has 40 cells in it.

As far as motors go, though... ugh.

Low-end e-bikes and many DIY e-bikes use hub motors, and these are almost universally surface permanent magnet (and many have thick laminations). This means there's no reluctance torque, so cogging losses when coasting are high, and they don't respond to field weakening very well at all, so hub motors are actually wound to hit the RPM defined by their Kv constant at the expected top speed of the bicycle, greatly reducing low-end torque (whereas the motors in Tesla's cars respond quite well to field weakening, to the point that they hit their Kv constant-based maximum RPM and introduce field weakening at about 2/5 of their peak RPM, IIRC). Additionally, if gear reduction is used, hub motor manufacturers almost invariably include a freewheel to prevent the cogging losses from being an issue when coasting or pedaling without assistance, but this prevents regenerative braking.

Higher-end e-bikes, and a couple of DIY retrofit kits, use mid-drive motors, that mount where the bottom bracket on a conventional bicycle goes. This improves weight distribution for mountain bikes, and the mid-drives tend to have better magnetic configurations (including ones that can actually generate decent amounts of reluctance torque, and respond well to field weakening)... but there's usually a couple freewheels in the mid-drive unit itself (to prevent the pedals from either driving the motor (and causing losses there), or being driven by the motor (which would be dangerous)), and then everything goes through the bicycle's gearing which has another freewheel. Drivetrain losses can end up higher, and regen is impossible here.

There's a lot of room for Tesla to make a good geared hub motor with efficient gear reduction, no freewheel, excellent magnetic configuration, and a good controller.

Also worth noting that what's happening in the e-bike space is, for higher-end stuff, people seem to select the electric drive system they want, and then select a bike that has it. (I went the other way around, selecting a style of bike, realizing that there was one manufacturer at my local dealer that did it well, and then riding two models with different systems. ...but the Bosch system being better was a deciding factor in which bike I bought.) This may mean there's room for Tesla to enter the market as a supplier, instead of as a bicycle manufacturer - but would Tesla want to give up that much control?

And then, for gearing... your choices right now basically boil down to, derailleur gearing (simple, lightweight, cheap, efficient, but fully exposed to the elements, finicky if done wrong, and can't be shifted at a stop), hub gears (heavier, more expensive, many can't be shifted under load, usually less efficient than derailleurs, and usually incompatible with rear hub motors (except for one 5-speed hub gear and one hub motor designed around that 5-speed hub) but can be shifted at a stop, and fully protected from the elements), and the Enviolo CVP (all of the downsides of hub gears, absolutely hideous efficiency, and doesn't like to be shifted at a stop either, but it's a CVT). A couple companies have been working on power split devices for e-bikes, it'll be interesting to see how those go... but damn good motor/generators and power electronics are needed to pull that off with any kind of efficiency (after all, at 90% efficiency for both motor/generator systems, that means 81% system efficiency for the serial path, lower than an Enviolo CVP - you need at least 92% efficiency for both motor/generators to beat Enviolo's efficiency on the serial path).

So, yeah, there's a lot of room for improvement, and that could be a market that Tesla could break into and generate goodwill among urbanists that currently see Tesla as part of the problem because their transportation solutions are all cars currently.

You have a Governor washed his hand and ignore federal defined CISA.
CISA declares almost everything as critical infrastructure, though. It wasn't intended to deal with pandemics, it was intended to deal with terrorist attacks, where the threat model is completely different.

If you follow CISA's critical infrastructure definitions to the letter, GameStop is critical infrastructure. Casinos are critical infrastructure. Sporting events are critical infrastructure.
 
Apparently the health Department won a major concession from Tesla when Tesla agreed that employees will have their temperature checked before getting on buses headed to the factory.

I kid you not!
Common technique when presenting info to incompetent management is to intentionally omit an obvious key item so that management can (if actually awake) point it out or demand it’s inclusion. They can therefor feel they earned their pay without thinking up some moronic addition on their own that will make your life miserable. “Yes, sir. That’s a great catch, sir. We will implement that ASAP.”

edit: @mongo beat me to it (again). Missing Duck.
 
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If I was a GM,Ford, VW etc exec, I would be pissing in my pants now from fear as at how Elon masterminded the opening of Freemont. The relentness pursuit of the goal, at all levels, from twitter to Trump, from lawyers to governors, coupled with the utter and all-encompassing belief that the ONLY thing holding back Tesla from world domination in car sales (and other technologies) is production and production only and not demand.... I think this Freemont saga will open a lot of eyes at the OEMs, and they are finally seeing a cybertruck rushing at them in full speed, with nowhere to duck :)
Only thing I would add to this is that I firmly believe said executives already know, and have known for a while, what a freight train Tesla has become and how irrelevant their products, business models and future plans are.

Dan
 
Very bullish, Tesla was 5 years ahead, then they improved a lot. And likely cut costs by being clever. And designed it for robotaxi with redundancy. Imo this is why Tesla will win, they innovate faster. And they got here while learning and while being small, imagine what they can do when they have experience and have a large organization!
 
Very bullish, Tesla was 5 years ahead, then they improved a lot. And likely cut costs by being clever.

People don't always realize what a self-reinforcing phenomena this is. Tesla is cutting edge, so the best engineers want to work there...so tesla stays cutting edge...so the best engineers...

In my field (computer game design), this is a nightmare, and 'broken' because it makes the game too easy to win. As an investor with TSLA stock, I consider this to be working as intended :D.