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Musk endeavours

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vrdiver
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Re: Musk endeavours

#129783

Postby vrdiver » April 3rd, 2018, 6:29 pm

I read the link: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/04 ... italism%29 but concluded the author had little knowledge of manufacturing, or more importantly, manufacturing development, when I got to
In final assembly, robots can apply torque consistently — but they don’t detect and account for threads that aren’t straight, bolts that don’t quite fit, fasteners that don’t align, or seals that have a defect

Pretty much all the factories I worked at had developed systems to identify and reject components not up to spec before they got anywhere near the production line. Key components were validated by suppliers before delivery, so space, time and stock shock issues were eliminated. Manufacturing processes were engineered so that things like alignment were not optional but automatically within tolerance simply by forcing components to fit together only one way.

Robots can assemble to very tight tolerances: it's only when the spec is loose that you need a chap with a mallet to fettle things. Tesla may have production issues, but I'd be surprised if they were a repeat of Japanese/American learnings of the 1970s!

Humans are funny things though. Being killed by a Frankenstein monster seems a greater fear than being killed by our fellow man. In the case of cars, it would be crazy to reject automation that offers significant reductions in fatalities, yet that is what is happening with single crash events being cited as reason enough to delay any mass roll-out.

If we applied the same logic to medicine, say cancer treatment, imagine the furore as patients were denied remedies because they had some side effects, possibly lethal in a small number of cases? Whilst the medical analogy is based on a starting point of dying, and the car logic starts with being fit and healthy, in both scenarios the outcomes are better for the group as a whole.

Perhaps it is our self-perception as invincible behind the wheel that needs more work, rather than the driverless system?

VRD

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Re: Musk endeavours

#129803

Postby odysseus2000 » April 3rd, 2018, 7:12 pm

dspp

You are the first to pick out the assy automation which is what did interest me. What he is discussing is the same issue that the auto-industry is watching in fascination. If they succeed Tesla has a real chance as a game-changer. If they fail then, if nothing else, they have accelerated EVs by at least 5-years imho. But merely putting cars together is not quite as easy as it looks, and Musk himself has said as much. I wonder if that is the real reason for the uncluttered internal design styles, i.e. they have designed out all the fiddly bits.


In one of the conference calls Musk spoke of how they had made the model X too complicated and that this had made production difficult. They had learned from this and had engineered the model 3 for ease and speed of manufacture right from the beginning.

Unofficial production numbers for the model 3 are 2000 cars per week which suggests to me that they have made substantial progress in the art of mass production.

If production continues to ramp the bull case for Tesla is enormous.

I added to my underwater holding in Tesla.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#129846

Postby odysseus2000 » April 3rd, 2018, 10:28 pm

Tesla q1 2018 production numbers, released today:

http://ir.tesla.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=1062670

They note:

PALO ALTO, Calif., April 03, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Q1 production totaled 34,494 vehicles, a 40% increase from Q4 and by far the most productive quarter in Tesla history. 24,728 were Model S and Model X, and 9,766 were Model 3. The Model 3 output increased exponentially, representing a fourfold increase over last quarter. This is the fastest growth of any automotive company in the modern era. If this rate of growth continues, it will exceed even that of Ford and the Model T.

We were able to double the weekly Model 3 production rate during the quarter by rapidly addressing production and supply chain bottlenecks, including several short factory shutdowns to upgrade equipment.

In the past seven days, Tesla produced 2,020 Model 3 vehicles. In the next seven days, we expect to produce 2,000 Model S and X vehicles and 2,000 Model 3 vehicles. It is a testament to the ability of the Tesla production team that Model 3 volume now exceeds Model S and Model X combined. What took our team five years for S/X, took only nine months for Model 3.


This is amazing given they are making a far more complicated model than Ford and is likely being viewed with alarm in rival car company boardrooms as it likely means cars can be made cheaper which opens up a potential Ford gambit, where he cut the price of his model T so low that the Dodge brothers sued him for unfair business practice. Ford on the witness stand was asked if his car price was too low and he replied that it was too high and he wanted it to be cheaper so that more people could have a car.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#129852

Postby BobbyD » April 3rd, 2018, 10:59 pm

It's also one of the lowest baselines in modern automotive history, and a rate which has.been beaten by every auto manufacturer which produced it's first car in the 'moder era'.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#129854

Postby dspp » April 3rd, 2018, 11:09 pm

From the press release Tesla managed 34,494 vehicles in a quarter, and are now doing 2,000 model 3's per week. Meanwhile:

Sunderland, March 23, 2016. Nissan still cannot keep pace with the continued growth of the crossover market it created with Qashqai, despite record volumes of 300,000 cars every year on Line 1 at the company’s Sunderland Plant, round-the-clock production and a build rate of one car every minute.

So the Tesla model 3 line is now at 100,000/year versus (say) one of Nissan's lines at 300,000/year. Looking ahead they are targeting 5,000 units per week and lets be charitable and assume the ambiguity in the statement is all model 3's, so that is 250,000/year. Not so different.

It would be interesting to know what is the total labour content of a model 3 vs (say) the BMW 3-series which is fairly comparable. Anyone know ?

regards, dspp

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Re: Musk endeavours

#129858

Postby odysseus2000 » April 3rd, 2018, 11:30 pm

Don't know the Labour content of specific models, but overall:

Ford employees 202,000

Nissan 137,000

Tesla 37,000

If Tesla can make 250,000 cars with circa 30% of the employees of Nissan, the human content per car must be well down.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#129860

Postby dspp » April 3rd, 2018, 11:37 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:Don't know the Labour content of specific models, but overall:

Ford employees 202,000

Nissan 137,000

Tesla 37,000

If Tesla can make 250,000 cars with circa 30% of the employees of Nissan, the human content per car must be well down.

Regards,



Nissan UK workforce is about 5,000 employees, doing 500,000 vehicles per year. You are comparing global workforces and Nissan have an awful lot of production lines and factories. But in both cases it is important to understand the total manhours per car, irrespective of whether in-sourced or out-sourced.

regards, dspp

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Re: Musk endeavours

#129863

Postby odysseus2000 » April 3rd, 2018, 11:47 pm

dspp


Nissan UK workforce is about 5,000 employees, doing 500,000 vehicles per year. You are comparing global workforces and Nissan have an awful lot of production lines and factories. But in both cases it is important to understand the total manhours per car, irrespective of whether in-sourced or out-sourced.


Yes, thank you for correcting my mistake.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#130076

Postby odysseus2000 » April 4th, 2018, 11:31 pm

This is video with stills added to the rather poor audio of the last conference call:

https://youtu.be/HTa8sUplsK4

In it Musk says they believe they can get 20-30% more production out of their lines than Toyota can get out of a similar sized facility.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#130106

Postby PeterGray » April 5th, 2018, 9:09 am

In it Musk says they believe they can get 20-30% more production out of their lines than Toyota can get out of a similar sized facility.

That may well be true.

However, while I'm no expert on car production I would have thought that one of the key characteristics is that man hours/car has fallen significantly, and fairly steadily over at least the past few decades. And that new production lines generally have lower human labour requirements than the ones they replace. In that context I suspect a 20-30% in a new line designed and built from the ground up compared to Toyata's average, which will include many lines designed and built years ago, is not anything very special.

Peter

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Re: Musk endeavours

#130203

Postby PeterGray » April 5th, 2018, 4:11 pm

Interesting article here on Muck and Tesla:

http://business.financialpost.com/opini ... e-business

Some may not agree! And I haven't done the research to make a proper judgement, but one statistic popped out at me:

Tesla stock is now valued at US$801,000 per car sold in 2016, compared to $26,000 per BMW sold and $5,000 per GM car sold.

OK, they are growing the rate at which they produce, but by enough to justify that?

Peter

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Re: Musk endeavours

#130275

Postby odysseus2000 » April 5th, 2018, 9:49 pm

Hi Peter,

Thank you for that link which brought a greater and greater smile to my face the more I read of it.

The premise that governments supports industries is correct and the numbers that are quoted look about right for relative valuations in terms of cars sold etc, see e.g.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/tesla-val ... art-2017-4

However, where the author goes off on a tangent is in the way he singles out Tesla as being something special and better for his case is where he says that Tesla cars are only playthings for the rich. He then backs up his argument by describing how nuclear power has been a financial disaster (I would agree) but by this stage he has dropped his second argument as saying nuclear power is a play thing for the rich would be hard to argue.

The situation that exists is what democracy has created. Once you give most adults the vote the politicians have to do things to get them to vote for them.

This has included the political funding to develop the road infra structure, lighting and signals, the granting of planning permission for refineries, fuel stations, the insistence that all retail developments had to have good parking, the Beeching cuts of competing rail technology, the ignoring of the carbon dioxide put into the air and for many years the allowance of lead, nitrous oxides and high levels of unburnt hydrocarbon from inter combustion engines …One might also add how the US bailed out GM in the last financial crisis to secure auto workers votes.

Ever since the granting of universal suffrage ,and it began well before, politicians have relentless intervened to support things that they feel the voters will like and such that they will receive the votes.

With electric cars there is a clear belief that voters will like them and will vote for the politicians who help make such things happen creating cleaner air etc.

One can argue about how much Tesla has had, Musk often says it is very little but it is so complicated a subject that few can sensibly quantify it, and one can also argue that Tesla may yet go bankrupt wasting what ever subsidies it has had.

This government funding is what one gets in democracies and one can argue that it is very bad, but all the political parties do it and most industries collect substantial amounts of money one way or the other from the tax payer. I used to know a jewellery seller who was always delighted when ever benefits went up as he knew that he would have folk coming with the extra benefits money to buy.

Sure Tesla has produced luxury cars, but that was always their plan, using the income from these to make a mass market car which they have. If the production estimates for model 3 are right the cost per car will fall rapidly and based on the deposits that Tesla holds there are many many more buyers than even the most optimistic production numbers. With that kind of supply demand one expects the business to sell on a higher multiple than bigger producers who can not grow anything like as fast.

Tesla has never been a traditional widows and orphans stock, but it has been good to a lot of investors and traders both long and short and of course such folk also vote.

Regards,

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Re: Musk endeavours

#130892

Postby dspp » April 9th, 2018, 12:17 pm

An updated seekingalpha article on Tesla's last set of quarterly numbers
https://seekingalpha.com/article/416122 ... le-numbers

Tesla will likely hit an important milestone in the next few months when it delivers its 200,000th vehicle in the United States. When it hits this mark, the calendar watching begins for the phase out of the $7,500 US Federal EV tax credit. With another three months of estimates in the books from InsideEvs, we can see that Tesla is getting close to the key level.
Image

(*Through Q1 2018. Does not include impact of Roadster deliveries. Source: InsideEvs monthly scorecard)


The way I see it the consumer wins either way. Either Tesla succeed and good quality lower priced EVs are available from Tesla, or Tesla fails but in the meantime causes all the legacy automakers to accelerate their EV programmes.

regards, dspp

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Re: Musk endeavours

#132121

Postby odysseus2000 » April 14th, 2018, 10:58 am

Im this video from 9:15 Musk discusses production, notes that the best production lines achieve about 0.2 metres per second which is about tortoise speed, whereas human easy walking speed is about 1 m per second, fast 1.5 m per second. He sees dramatic opportunities to greatly increase production by orders of magnitude & is recruiting computer engineers who are used to making bits of a computer communicate swiftly. This was in 2016, but he has recently wondered if too many robots were used on the model 3 line, so perhaps he is no longer thinking of such large gains, or maybe more experienced into how to go faster. If he can get anywhere near 100 % increase, let alone his more ambitious thoughts he can likely raise margins very strongly & cause serious competition for existing auto makers who would have to follow or be uncompetitive.

https://youtu.be/n6xsjQCxQ9c

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Re: Musk endeavours

#132853

Postby BobbyD » April 17th, 2018, 3:55 pm

Tesla denies Model 3 production line shutdown is safety-related
Plant set to be offline for up to five days with staff having to take vacation time

...

Monday’s shutdown comes amid recurring concerns about safety at Tesla’s facilities, as the company races to catch up with a large backlog of orders for the lower-priced electric vehicle.

...

The Fremont plant’s former lead safety professional, Justine White, told reporters at the non-profit organisation: “Everything took a back seat to production . . . It’s just a matter of time before somebody gets killed.”

...

Nonetheless, Elon Musk, Tesla’s co-founder and chief executive, has admitted to mis-steps in how the facility was set up, by relying too much on automated production robots. 

“Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake,” Mr Musk said on Twitter last week. “To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated.”



- https://www.ft.com/content/509c934a-41e ... 5c97e6fd0b

Tesla has temporarily suspended its Model 3 assembly line as Elon Musk’s electric car firm struggles to deliver on targets.

The company said the move was a planned production pause of up to five days. It is the second time since February that Tesla has halted its production line for the Model 3 at its Fremont, California plant.

...

Car manufacturers typically stop or slow production of new models when ironing out problems with production. Tesla took shortcuts with testing of its production line in order to get to market more quickly, which some experts say have resulted in early manufacturing problems.

Musk recently admitted that “excessive automation” at the Tesla plant had contributed to what he calls “manufacturing hell” and had actually slowed down manufacturing of the crucial mass-market model.

“We had this crazy, complex network of conveyor belts … And it was not working, so we got rid of that whole thing,” Musk told CBS.




- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... automation

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Re: Musk endeavours

#134017

Postby odysseus2000 » April 23rd, 2018, 7:15 am

Electric milres driven & power produced by Tesla:

https://electrek.co/2018/04/22/tesla-fl ... wF8Do5UPPq

Kind of looks revolutionary to me.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#135395

Postby BobbyD » April 28th, 2018, 9:46 pm

BobbyD wrote:The wisdom of seeking to work up.through the automation gears starting with level.1 add one and evolving through to a level 5 system on road, whilst advertising future performance based on fitted hardware is questionable and risks poisoning the well for everyone in the sector. At the very least attention needs to be paid to the significant psychological effects which partial automation has, and ways to maximise the effectiveness of safety drivers during on road testing.



...and to shear idiocy

'Autopilot driver' who sat in passenger seat is banned for 18 months
Bhavesh Patel, 39, was spotted beside empty driver’s seat as his Tesla s60 travelled along M1 motorway last year


- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... -18-months

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Re: Musk endeavours

#135437

Postby Itsallaguess » April 29th, 2018, 8:20 am

BobbyD wrote:
...and to shear idiocy

'Autopilot driver' who sat in passenger seat is banned for 18 months

Bhavesh Patel, 39, was spotted beside empty driver’s seat as his Tesla s60 travelled along M1 motorway last year


- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... -18-months


I really do think that with regards to vehicle automation, we're in danger of marvelling at the technological advances so much that we allow ourselves to ignore the huge difficulty in overcoming the human-element that will always limit such advances.

The above guy, who decided to climb into the passenger seat whilst his car rumbled on in auto-pilot mode, is just one example of this, but I really do think that it's going to be a huge hurdle to overcome with regards to the acceptance of this technology.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

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Re: Musk endeavours

#135513

Postby BobbyD » April 29th, 2018, 12:37 pm

Itsallaguess wrote:
I really do think that with regards to vehicle automation, we're in danger of marvelling at the technological advances so much that we allow ourselves to ignore the huge difficulty in overcoming the human-element that will always limit such advances.


As I said further upthread I think the wisdom of trying to evolve from level 1 to level 5'on the road' is severely questionable, and that those companies looking to hit the road at level 4/5 are following a far more responsible path. Tesla in particular, still advertising

Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars
- https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/autopilot

are I think the biggest threat to self-driving technology.

Tesla's overgrown cruise control should not be refereed to as an autopilot, they should make it clear that whilst they believe the cars they sell at the moment come equipped with everything which will ultimately be required for full self driving the cars are not capable of or licensed to self drive and nobody knows what the full technological or legal requirements for self driving will be, and that whilst the potential in the future may be great what they currently supply is not an autopilot but a driving aid akin to cruise control or collision avoidance systems.

The grey area between human and computer control can not be eradicated if for no other rerason than the need for testing but it should be minimised and accurately described, especially in cars sold to consumers.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#135617

Postby odysseus2000 » April 29th, 2018, 11:08 pm

BobbyD
Tesla's overgrown cruise control should not be refereed to as an autopilot, they should make it clear that whilst they believe the cars they sell at the moment come equipped with everything which will ultimately be required for full self driving the cars are not capable of or licensed to self drive and nobody knows what the full technological or legal requirements for self driving will be, and that whilst the potential in the future may be great what they currently supply is not an autopilot but a driving aid akin to cruise control or collision avoidance systems.

The grey area between human and computer control can not be eradicated if for no other rerason than the need for testing but it should be minimised and accurately described, especially in cars sold to consumers.


Yes, but there is another dynamic.

When do you decide that safe is safe enough? I.e. what reduction in the chance of being in an auto accident is enough to make a system better than the current human driver system?

You can argue that the very sophisticated and advanced systems that use lots of radars etc are better than e.g. Tesla's system, but at what cost and how much better?

Politicians looking at this have to decide if the current accident rate could be reduced enough by using e.g. a Tesla system to make it worth legalising. If e.g. the simulations say you can reduce the accident figures by 90%, that is a lot of money, lives and injuries saved and it would be hard to refuse it. However, if the simulations say it is only 5% then it would be easy to refuse it.

I guess at some point someone somewhere decides to legalise a Tesla like system for a probation period of maybe 12 months and then every government on the planet compares the previous accident rate to the probation period and makes a decision not on simulations that may be badly off, but on the real data from the probation period.

The dynamic here will be cost and performance. We all recall how Sony Betamax was better than vhs, but vhs was good enough and now both are obsolete.

Politicians in democracies can't wait for perfection. They act in what ever way likely brings them the most votes, knowing that as techonology continues to improve so should accidents reduce, but they have to work in the now with what is available now.

Regards,


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