Tesla Master Plan: Part Deux

[Eunos_Cosmo]

Chassis prototype. I work for a manufacture, pre-prduction prototypes are never going to be anywhere near production level. Seems like nitpicking.

It is nitpicky, but the problem is not specific to the Nurburgring cars, nor even the specific fit & finish of individual cars. It's the design itself. Let me try to explain. This isn't meant to be Tesla bashing, but its definitely a critique of their quality.

(Edit: The front of the refreshed Model S is not bad, it's everything behind the A-pillar that the following is a critique of)
Compare these two designs. Telsa and Audi. Notice how the panel join lines seem somewhat arbitrary on the Tesla whereas they flow with other design elements in the Audi. Notice also that the Audi's panel joins are not only smaller, but they are "finished" to a higher degree of detail...it's hard to see in the picture but the edges are filleted in such a way as to convey that the body panels have thickness and strength. By comparison, the panel edges on the Tesla appear flat and kind of two-dimensional. It makes the body panels look thin as paper, they haven't really got the "return" edge detail figured out. The front door's rear edge ends in the center of the B pillar, but the rear-doors cut rear cut line ends in a kind of vague spot near the C-pillar. The bottom edge of the doors ends abruptly and its very visible, compared to the Audi. Towards the rear of that same line (bottom right corner of the rear door) the cut line is an un-radiused hard angle - not only does this clash with the curvaceuous body, but its also a weaker shape, and it necessitates a 3-panel join which both looks bad and also makes the assembly process more difficult (the rocker panel, rear door, and fender all meet at one discrete point). Take a look at the cut line for the hatches. In the Audi, its completely hidden behind a solid element of the rear pillar. In the Tesla its awkwardly visible. The rear arch (the flat part, towards the face of the wheel) on the Tesla just sort of ends at the bottom of the car, whereas in the Audi, it's cleanly incorporated into the rear bumper/fascia. These are just some examples. All these small little things add up to a car that looks good from 100ft away, but starts to look worse the closer you get. Teslas just look insubstantial and unresolved to me, lacking finish. With its very well resolved details across the board, the Audi appears both stronger and lighter simultaneously. It's all in the details.

That's my problem with Tesla's cars, aesthetically. They all look like pre-production prototypes. It's like they haven't quite figured out how to make industry-standard level cars yet. It's not fair to say they look like kit cars, and they are definitely getting better...but they aren't there yet.

 

[CodeRedR51]

I don't see much difference other than the Audi having the kink with the design feature on the side and the rounded part at the bottom of the rear doors. The last of which is present on the Model 3. As the Model S was their first real design and it's fairly old at this point, I think the Model 3 is a better comparison.

 

[Joey D]

We have a couple Model 3's at my work. I've looked them over, they look fine to me.

Which is part of the problem. The ones in the garage at my work have panel gaps you could drive a truck through. However, I've seen some with fairly acceptable gaps in them, albeit not even remotely close to what should be on a car that can cost over $100k.

It's less about the panel gaps though and more about how Tesla's quality control is garbage. This comes down to poor management and setting unrealistic goals. Musk and Tesla as a whole want to be profitable as quickly as possible, which makes sense. However, it seems like everyone in charge at Tesla grossly underestimated how difficult building a car is and how complex it is to run an auto company. Tesla was never going to be profitable in the short term, especially since it chose to develop everything, including its factories, from the ground up.

Due to this, the company has cut corners and set unrealistic production goals for its products. This leads to shoddy quality control and things like bumpers falling off in the rain, awful panel gaps, cars randomly catching on fire, or autonomous systems behaving badly.

 

[homeforsummer]

Teslas just look insubstantial and unresolved to me, lacking finish. With its very well resolved details across the board, the Audi appears both stronger and lighter simultaneously. It's all in the details.

In Tesla's defence, I don't think the overall designs are too bad. When you say it's all in the details, I'd qualify that by saying it seems to be in the manufacturing details rather than the design (and particularly in styling aspects of design rather than product design).

Now to be clear, I'm not saying I necessarily like the way Teslas look. The Model S still looks good in a slightly generic sort of way, but both the Model X and to a lesser extent the Model 3 suffer from iffy proportions. The X just looks massive and bloated, and the 3 looks like someone has squeezed an S lengthways in a vice, shortening it and squeezing the roofline upwards (and as an aside, it's insane that it's not a hatchback). I do think that's angle-dependent however, and cars on aftermarket wheels and suspension actually look pretty good, to me:

Lack of embellishment, particularly in the current Audi style where the shapes are basically good but they go overboard on details, is actually a point in Tesla's favour I'd say. Though I'd like to see their designers come up with something slightly better at the front than the 3's sewn-up mouth look - the Model S's tiny grille slit looks better. And a wider range of colours would be nice, but given production difficulties I'm not surprised it's limited for the time being.

From what I've seen though, it's the nitty-gritty that Tesla isn't quite getting right (though I'm led to believe it's improving). Panel gaps are the obvious one, but I've seen lots of things like ill-fitting plastic trim, unfinished seals, paint defects, premature wearing of certain bits of trim (mainly due to poor fit and finish), moisture in light units, that kind of thing. They're not design issues so much as evidence that the company is rushing assembly somewhat, or was when it first tried to put Model 3s in particular onto the market.

The real test will be how these cars last. Mechanically I assume they'll generally be fine, teething troubles aside. But where something like a Lexus can still look basically brand new after 15 years, I suspect a Model 3 might show greater signs of age given even new ones can be patchy.

 

[VXR]

Following a Model 3 home the other night didn't half make it look like more glasshouse than body side. Very odd.

 

[homeforsummer]

Following a Model 3 home the other night didn't half make it look like more glasshouse than body side. Very odd.

In theory extra glasshouse shouldn't be a bad thing as it's more like how cars used to be, but like I mention above, the 3's proportions are slightly wonky, so from some angles it looks more like one of those cartoonishly shortened car drawings that used to be all the rage in the Max Power days.

 

[CodeRedR51]

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

 

[CodeRedR51]

Hmm, on one hand I can't believe the system didn't see the car backing out in front if it. But I also am not surprised that the person backing out didn't see the car already moving behind them.

 

[ProjectWHaT]

There's been a lot of videos of Teslas (almost) getting hit with the new summon feature





https://www.thedrive.com/news/30074...s-with-teslas-driverless-smart-summon-feature


It also can't tell the difference between road and grass

 

[TexRex]

Blecch...is that last one wrapped?

 

[VXR]

I'm sorry but until every car on the road has this feature it's purely pie in the sky nonsense. Hopefully the insurance companies refuse to pay out for negligent use.

 

[FT-1]

The Model S has returned to the ring with even meatier aero enhancements

 

[MatskiMonk]

Meh... needs more diffuser.

 

[Vegard]

So they're basically developing a brand new version of the Model S to beat the Porsche's time?

Competition is healthy confirmed.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

The blue car is my favorite model S.

Because they took off the hideous chrome strip that runs across the back, a preposterously kitschy bit of pep-boys flair.

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

The blue car is my favorite model S.

Because they took off the hideous chrome strip that runs across the back, a preposterously kitschy bit of pep-boys flair.

That or it fell off. Not sure why they would take it off. Weight savings?

 

[CodeRedR51]

That or it fell off. Not sure why they would take it off. Weight savings?

Non-essential parts on a test car probably and that they don't care.

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

There could be an opportunity there for someone to sell body colored trim. Bonus points for black and carbon fiber

 

[Joey D]

Imagine having your car bricked because of a terrible software & hardware design flaw: https://insideevs.com/news/376037/tesla-mcu-emmc-memory-issue/

It's not a cheap fix either to swap out the chip. According to the article, it's about $1,800 to fix the issue. I'm sure you could do it yourself assuming you could find the chip somewhere, but I'm guessing you'd run into copyright issues and at the very least your car could end up with a branded title since the chip controls the odometer.

Tesla probably should issue a recall here, which will be for a ton of cars since pretty much every Model S and X used the MCUv1 through last year.

 

[EngieDiesel]

Imagine having your car bricked because of a terrible software & hardware design flaw: https://insideevs.com/news/376037/tesla-mcu-emmc-memory-issue/

Seems like the main issue is the firmware bloating massively in size and the excessive data logging. Solid state media has a finite lifespan, but it shouldn't be wearing out so quickly even if it's near capacity.

There's also the concern of why the car is logging such huge amounts of data in the first place if so much of it isn't even relevant to whatever Tesla needs it for.

 

[CodeRedR51]

So I hear a rumor the red car was crashed on Friday in wet conditions. And the blue car has sprouted a huge wing. Doubt the production car will have that, so they're probably just experimenting a bit.

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

So I hear a rumor the red car was crashed on Friday in wet conditions. And the blue car has sprouted a huge wing. Doubt the production car will have that, so they're probably just experimenting a bit.

And the chrome trim piece is back on. I read that the big wing is just for downforce calibration purposes. Here it is: https://www.autoblog.com/2019/10/23/tesla-model-s-huge-wing-nurburgring/

 

[Danoff]

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-s-plaid-nurburgring-new-record/

7:13. I have to say, regardless of how it was achieved (stripping the car, giant diffuser, huge wing, track tires) it's still far better than I'd have expected the car could achieve.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Now they can come back in the spring with full interior cars and try to duplicate it.

 

[TS050]

I can’t wait for the Tesla fanboys to take this time as gospel and immediately start drawing comparisons to the Taycan time

 

[CodeRedR51]

I can’t wait for the Tesla fanboys to take this time as gospel and immediately start drawing comparisons to the Taycan time

Making comments like this doesn't make you any better, just sayin'.

 

[TS050]

Making comments like this doesn't make you any better, just sayin'.

By all means, 7:13 is an great time for such a big car, but the fact that the bodywork is massively changed, the tires are near-slicks, it has a huge diffuser at the back and the car is completely stripped out kinda dampens that achievement for me and doesn’t make the time that surprising in the end

Even more so considering how cult-like some of Elon’s fans are, hence why they’ll take a time from a car that’s a prototype in every sense of the word and use that as leverage to prove its a faster car than the Taycan.

A good amount bring up that the Taycan “wasn’t a production car” when lapping, without noticing the hypocrisy in praising a car that is much less production ready for beating it

 

[CodeRedR51]

By all means, 7:13 is an great time for such a big car, but the fact that the bodywork is massively changed, the tires are near-slicks, it has a huge diffuser at the back and the car is completely stripped out kinda dampens that achievement for me and doesn’t make the time that surprising in the end

Even more so considering how cult-like some of Elon’s fans are, hence why they’ll take a time from a car that’s a prototype in every sense of the word and use that as leverage to prove its a faster car than the Taycan.

A good amount bring up that the Taycan “wasn’t a production car” when lapping, without noticing the hypocrisy in praising a car that is much less production ready for beating it

One word: Unofficial.

All that needs to be said.

 

[McLaren]

It's blistering fast, but it's not really impressive in the sense of "production records" (which is the end goal) considering it had to literally become a race car to achieve the time. I highly doubt re-adding the interior, stripping all its extreme aero, and adding back more street-friendly tires will still make it capable of such a time.