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They claim it is because the subsidies are gong away so they have to find a way to lower their prices. I think that is more a ploy to put political pressure to maintain the subsidies than it is a representation of what is really going on.
The automakers are very much aware a downturn is coming. This are already slowing for the automakers. This time, they are going into it prepared rather than being blindsided and nearly going out of business.
They also realize self driving and electric are what will pull them through the downturn. They are focusing on development rather than production. Most companies that are laying off production people, are hiring engineers and designers at the same time.
Tesla has been focusing on design and development a now that they are trying to go into production, a downturn is coming plus they have to do more design and development to try to stay ahead of their big competitors. Tesla only still exists because they got there ahead of their competitors (and because of subsidies by government and private investors). If they do not stay ahead, they will fail. Yet, they cannot ramp up production if their product is not going to sell. they are cutting back on production costs just like everyone else is.
I'm not sure I'd say that 7% is "slashing." But SpaceX also cut 10% of its workforce just as some very big projects are ramping up.
7% is quite significant, but I get what you're saying. I'd saying anything more than 15% would look like impending doom, but I think we have to view this company as non-traditional. They are much more of a technology company than an auto manufacturer, which is evidenced by their terrible production rollout numbers. It takes them years to scale-up while the quality suffers in the pursuit of pushing delivery numbers. Tesla upped their workforce to get the Model 3 off the line (I have friend who spent his last 6 years working on the 3). Now that the production is where it needs to be and automation is getting to scale, they can cut their workforce and focus on profitability (like every other publicly traded company). Automation will allow for more than work shifts beyond 8 hours, provides greater consistency with tighter tolerances, and should self-report errors. Musk seems to prefer robotics to a human workforce.
Automation will allow for more than work shifts beyond 8 hours, provides greater consistency with tighter tolerances, and should self-report errors. Musk seems to prefer robotics to a human workforce.
Automation was the precise cause of last summer's production crisis.
You can always tell a tech-ween... but you sure can't tell 'em much.
Automation was the precise cause of last summer's production crisis.
You can always tell a tech-ween... but you sure can't tell 'em much.
HA! Yeah, automation isn't a cure-all. In fact it can really royally muck things up if it's not set up correctly. I heard a keynote speaker at Berkeley's Masters of Engineering commencement say that programs/robots/automation is only as good as the engineers who designed them. They are not self-learning and only work within the parameters in which they were created and that the creator's blindspot bias can have implications on society. He used the automatic touchless water faucet and early generation airbags as an example. The former did not work for people of color unless they turned their palms towards the sensor because the engineers designed unwittingly designed them for folks with lighter pigmentation. The latter had a higher result of death/injury to females because the engineers unwittingly designed air bag deployment systems for larger and heavier human beings (males) and did not consider the impact upon smaller and lighter humans. Both design teams (like much of engineering) was not very diverse and that was demonstrated in the products. They worked as designed, but the design was flawed for much of the population.
Anyways, a screwed up system of automation has the potential to make a flawed product...and at a much faster rate. Fix the system, fix the flaw.
Last edited by kwong7; 01-18-2019 at 01:30 PM..
Reason: censor didn't like the phrase "skrew up"
Well, the problem with the automation, if you weren't aware, was that it ran X fast and only X fast... so it had absolutely no way to speed up production. Unlike a more traditional line where you can jam more workers in to speed up each process, there wasn't even room to put a few people in key areas for the purpose.
Tesla's problems all boil down to one single cause: it was conceived and run by someone who thought great brilliance and techspertise could solve all problems and trump all competing ideas. Which is one thing for software, apps and iPhones, but quite another for a heavy industry. And I don't think Musk has yet fully learned that throwing more code monkeys at a problem won't solve industrial bottlnecks. It's a foreign notion to him.
But yeah, I collect and treasure bad product design choices like those.
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