Ford Engineer Claims Tesla Has Big Issues: Shoddy Build, Unsafe Parts Ford Engineer Claims Tesla Has Big Issues: Shoddy Build, Unsafe Parts "TBH I love what Tesla has done for EVs. Simultaneously, their engineering is some of the worst shit I have ever seen in any industry. It's often horrifying. Their tech and engineering in battery and HV electronics and harnessing outpaces the industry by 5yrs easy, but their logistics and quality is so poor I'm astonished that the things have as few problems as they do. I've torn down dozens of vehicles. When we opened our Model 3 when it first came out, it had loose screws dropped randomly in the chassis near sensitive components. The fit and finish of the alignment of panels is ridiculous. Their electronics frequently flaunt safety guidelines and do not meet UL regulations."
found on road dead, fix or repair daily, or tesla? hmmm... no bias there, compared to sandy whathisnames teardowns
The two Fords I had (90 and 91) were by-far the worst vehicles I've ever owned. That said, a couple of the design "features" in the Model 3 I rode in were the worst design decisions I've ever seen on a car, and the fit-and-finish was 1950s level.
tesla is not perfect, who is? rogue ford engineer? i think tesla is improving over time, and it helps to not look at the hype, much of which has been driven by short sellers or fan boys. spending time at priuschat helps me to understand that not mechanical thing can ever be perfect. some do it better than others, but tesla is new to the game, while ford has no excuse
i like toyota quality on the whole. from what i've read, i'll be ready to take the tesla plunge when it works for me, although, at 6,000 miles per year, they may bury me in my pip
I'll become interested in Tesla when their initial quality and long-term reliability becomes a match for Toyota, and when they start producing a car I could actually use. I was interested in the Model Y for a while, but the lack of a HUD is a show-stopper, as is the price. So I'm looking at a Rav4 Prime, which has a HUD, a much lower price, and probably double the range and 10 times the quality.
Next paragraph, "So that being said, yes their engineering is top notch. They create custom solutions for vehicle programs that other OEMs could only dream due to the fact that they contract manufacture all of their parts rather than hire auto supplier companies to design it for them. A custom vehicle part for an OEM is 3x the cost of what it would be for Tesla, and the quality of the electronics when you build it in-house is far better than what you can get by adapting an industry design."
they may never catch toyota in overall quality, but there are plenty of cars and companies doing well without toyota quality. and they will likely come close enough if they aren't already there. analyzing the engineers comments: tesla is 5 years ahead of everyone else in battery, electronics and drive train tech. he doesn't mention charging build out which is probably 10 years ahead, if anyone else even cares to try. he doesn't mention ai and av, which tesla is massively out in front of the closest competitor weymo. he doesn't mention the overhead of advertising and dealerships. he puts all his eggs in the build quality basket, which he admits was one of the early models. sandy monroe did an early one and a more recent one, and said it was vastly improved. i would say ford and everyone else, regardless of the coming mach e, are the ones who have cause for concern.
So do I. It's the numbers 1, 2 and 3 reasons I choose a car. Fourth is TCO, and build quality is a huge part of that one too.
No, note the OP - screws in the chassis, etc. The one I rode in had rattles and a badly fitting interior. If you look at the Tesla forums, there are a ton of reports of door opening and window driving boards failing, cars having to be rebooted, bricked cars during updates, and so on. I saw a video on a tear-down of a Model 3 and the people doing it noted that the fender well was made out of 9 parts welded together, whereas everyone else in the industry makes them out of 1 part. They need to learn how to build a car, not just design one and make a lot of software. Design for manufacturing is hard, and doing actual manufacturing well is even harder.
ford oughta know horrifying .......... how many unsuspecting customers burned to death when the Ford Pintos got rear-ended? And Ford studies already proved it was a rolling fire bomb? Yet they chose to pay off victims families rather than fix them because that was a cheaper way to go according to the actuaries? Or does Ford think people are so stupid that their customers forgot about that. Ford - throwing stones from within their Glass House. .
Yeah..it's only been 40 years since the last Pinto was built....a lot of things change in that amount of time. I remember when Hyundai first came to the states. What a hunk of crap. Now...a whole new story. We bought a 2003 Santa Fe LX in the summer of 2003. It just broke 225k miles. Was in the shop once, about a week after we bought it when the garage door opener on the mirror stopped working. They had to order another mirror and then called us when they were ready to replace it. I would consider that drastically improved over the Hyundai early years. I think every manufacturer makes very significant improvements in very short time periods in this modern age. Unfortunately, every time I see a model 3 (saw one about an hour ago on the main road in Gatlinburg, TN), I wonder why they are so dang ugly. I find nothing about the exterior that I like, other than the Tesla hood ornament..I think they look good. And I find that strange considering how much a Gen 2 Prius has grown on me.
simple - every manufacturer of vehicles has its own history demons. Sometimes it's brought on by the engineers. Sometimes it's brought on by the bean counters. Sometimes it's just a lack of experience. What really matters is how do they deal with it. Do they hide it? Or do they pull every car in, if necessary, taking them off the road and fixing them. Tesla pulled all the cars in when they found just one or two loose seat belts. I've had disastrous things on Tesla's, and I've had them on Ford's. What ..... is everyone's memory here too short to remember the Explorers' Transmissions that were prone to fail around 60,000 miles? Or their SUV rollovers? What's the first thing they did, finger pointing between Firestone and Ford back and forth rather than get down and solve the problems. We got lucky & sold ours once we saw the writing on the wall. Ford was in business for roughly ½ century when their cars were catching fire. Yeah, a half Century later - & now they have it dialed in. Tesla has been up & running for just over half a decade. But don't get too focused on the fires, or roll overs - or whatever because as stated, they all have their demons. It's how well they handle it. .
The difference is, Tesla is having them right now, while other manufacturers aren't. Teslas now are like 80s American cars.
Do you have a link to the documentation? Or is it a bunch of antidotes brought to us by the Tesla shorts? It seems that everything, good or bad, about Tesla's is amplified via the Internet. For the record I've had zero mechanical and electrical issues with my Model 3 in 18+ months. It has never seen a service center except to get the front license plate holder attached after I got my plates. But I admit that there are many minor software issues, primarily with the touch screen entertainment software. I wish it was as solid as a Toyota product. But in all the years I owned (and still own) Toyota cars (6 in total and 4 of them Prius models) Toyota never once upgraded a software feature... other than recalls for software you never see (that were safety items) or for "paid" navigation data. In the Tesla I get new, upgraded or fixed software on a regular basis. Mike
