Former Tesla president surprised after ripping apart Chinese EV: 'They save a lot of money that way'

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

A closer look inside Chinese electric vehicles is drawing attention after a former Tesla executive said he was surprised by how efficiently they were engineered.

According to a Business Insider report, Jon McNeill revealed that Tesla engineers have examined Chinese EVs, such as those produced by automaker BYD, and found that their design choices revealed a major cost advantage.

After taking apart the vehicles to study their components, McNeill noted that their approach allows the companies to streamline production and reduce expenses by reusing parts across various models.

-snip-

The teardowns highlighted how these companies streamline multiple components across their lines and simplify manufacturing processes. By consolidating systems and reducing the number of separate parts, the company can cut both material costs and assembly time.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/former-tesla-president-surprised-after-ripping-apart-chinese-ev-they-save-a-lot-of-money-that-way/ar-AA1XMZRM

Not exactly a new idea.

[tanyev]

1. Gosh, maybe they don't get their ideas from a narcissistic CEO trying to build cool stuff he drew in 3rd grade.

[DBoon]

2. you mean like a code to make farting sounds?

I bet the Chinese EVs save money by not having that feature.

[Johonny]

3. When can we buy them?

Because I want one.

[Brother Buzz]

8. Canada - Brand spanking new market

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/chinese-evs-canada-timeline-9.7117780

[AZJonnie]

4. Lol, yeah

I have a feeling there's more to it than what the guy wants to let on publicly (which is a truly banal observation). I wonder if he's not wanting to share the extent to which US companies are now reverse-engineering Chinese technology (instead of the other way round)?

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

6. The standardization of parts between models is not new

Don't know how things currently are but many American companies did this.

[AZJonnie]

7. That's what I meant by tremendously banal

I was agreeing with ya on that point

[Johnny2X2X]

5. Welcome to the 1970s!

Congrats, you just discovered the Toyota Production System, wait until you learn about non rotary phones.

[Bluetus]

11. The smartest guy in the room doesn't waste time

learning from other people, who obviously aren't as smart.

[mainer]

9. MAGA claims China doesn't invent anything, only copies our stuff

I'm waiting for them to start yelling "cheap copies!"

[Bluetus]

10. "reduce expenses by reusing parts across various models."

As the OP said, not exactly a new idea. And that makes it especially puzzling that the former President of Tesla wouldn't already know that.

Forever, Musk has thrown around all sorts of BS buzzwords to claim that Tesla was operating at a whole different level of efficiency that the "legacy car makers" never even considered.. We heard about "3D manufacturing", as if everybody was still using Henry Ford's line concepts. We heard about single-piece stamping, which would be good if it could actually be done with today's tooling. Musk used that to jack up the stock price, but then abandoned it when they couldn't get it to work even on the smallest models.

More recently, he boasts of "unboxed" manufacturing, which is literally nothing more than the JIT sub-component concept that Toyota introduced in the 1980s.

The upshot is that Musk has been conducting massive stock fraud for 15+ years now, centered around claims that Tesla would have fantastic gross margins, like 35%. In fact, their margins are about 15%. And when you adjust for the fact that they don't have independently owned dealerships, the Tesla margin is at or below average. Nothing special.

I am sure Tesla has achieved some manufacturing economies, but much of that is lost to the fact that they simply don't have many models across which they can share components.

Compare this with Hyundai/Kia which has 40-50 models (EV, hybrid and ICE,) which all share many components. And BYD may be even a better example. It all becomes a moot point because Tesla is evidently phasing out of the car sales business They killed the Models 3 and X, the Cybertruck is as good as dead, and they have no successors to the 8+-year-old 3/Y product

[WarGamer]

12. Plastic crumple zones cheaper than steel?

Single piston calipers cheaper than multi piston?

Thinner glass?

Wonder why these things won't pass US crash spec