General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Tesla Is Getting Absolutely Destroyed Right Now [View all]Ford_Prefect
(7,927 posts)term ownership. In particular they have very poor assembly design. The chassis is made of far too many small sections welded together which make them weak as a platform and subject to many possible points of failure in the longer term. The battery packs are not well protected from water incursion which has caused more than a few fires, especially if it is salt water. European buyers expect a higher quality standard than Tesla has so far delivered as a product line. No one spending what Tesla's current offerings cost is going to be willing to put up with frequent and sometimes brand-wide recalls for safety, performance, and reliability issues. There may even be government interference if there are safety issues such as we have seen here.
It is possible that the new factory operators and workers will address these and other issues in time. But they won't get far by disrespecting the people whose hands are making the vehicles.
Tesla are already losing market share to less complicated platforms from other makes with better reliability history and will likey continue to do so.
Understand that I am not bashing the brand. I am reporting known problems which the market has acknowledged cause doubt about Tesla's long term potential. Anyone starting from scratch to build a new kind of vehicle would face some of these issues. To survive Tesla needs to do as other manufacturers have done in terms of engineering and quality control. Elon hyping them is no substitute for genuine product development, and responsible awareness of how vehicles of any motivation system operate in the real world.
100 years ago, in America and Europe, there were dozens of car makers offering innovative versions of personal and commercial transportation. They faced some of the same issues regarding building a reliable and functional product. Some of them fell to economic forces, poor management decisions, or misplaced optimism. Those who survived did so because their cars delivered at least the quality of the day and evolved to continue that trend.
They also eventually had to acknowledge the unionization of labor as a part of the manufacturing process which produced quality product.