Hacker News Reader

Comment by williamdclt | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, a tesla car has little in common with an "item that has been mass produced by many different companies, from around the world, for about 100 years now". Almost all of the internals are as different as a computer is to a typewriter (please don't argue on the analogy, it's bad but gets the point)

View on HN

If the problems were limited to the drive train, then I might concede the point, but we'd still be talking about 15 years of experience. From what I understand, the batteries aren't blowing up, and electric motors work, so I guess the drive train is fine.

The damning part is that these not the problems that people are talking about. People are reporting not being able to put a piece of metal on straight. We're talking about gluing a rubber gasket on to a piece of glass. This is 100 years old, and this is what they're fucking up.

Electric cars are generally simpler than their ICE counterparts. There are way less total working pieces in an electric vehicle than a ICE one.

Also, a huge part of the manufacturing process doesn't even deal with the real guts of the car, it is making sure that the seats are installed, or there aren't panel gaps, or that the paint has been applied properly. All of those are exactly the same for Tesla as they would be for any other automaker.

Electric motor is indeed like a typewriter. And BMW’s B58 engine is a computer. That’s why Chinese guys failed develop their own internal combustion engines, but can do great cheap electric cars. Tesla never had a chance if they needed to build something like B58.

Could you explain this more? A Tesla car is largely the same as any other modern car in how it functions and is manufactured. The major difference is the battery + electric motor. So besides the production of the battery and motor, how are the internals so different? Certainly nothing on the scale of computer vs. typewriter.

I would suggest mechanical vs. electric typewriter as a better analogy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com