Five car brands delivered more electric cars than Tesla in the Netherlands this year

The problem at Tesla is apparently not that they cannot deliver quality, but faulty quality systems during scaling.

That is a profession in its own right. At a factory where 100 new employees are hired weekly, you need training plans, trainers, examiners, testing, supervision, supervision, quality engineers, investigation teams for every customer complaint, continuous improvement teams, experienced commissioning, robot calibration personnel and name everything.

Then there is the problem that factories and processes do not always copy 1 on 1 between countries. Countries and personnel have different cultures. The infrastructure is different, the number of good toolmakers that can be found is different, the suppliers, the climate: everything plays a role.

That will not easily be a problem at Volkswagen, they have been inventing and producing new models regularly for decades and many Diesel personnel are well trained in quality systems and are now trying to make the transition to electric models. By the way, just like Asians, Germans are also very good at strictly following rules and recipes.

At Tesla, that will be a bigger problem: Where in Sollicon Valley do you conjure up an army of temps who know about die-cutting, painting and dashboard assembly? Technicians who come up with way too complex door handles with Servo-Motors are up for grabs, but Poka Yoke, so design in such a way that it _can’t_ go wrong, those guys have never heard of it; that’s not part of the software culture there either. Where 1 error in 1000 lines of code is the industry standard, but if 1 in 1000 cars has crooked doors or a broken brake, then you as a car company will quickly go bankrupt. While your software updates monthly and it is resolved; and everyone accepts that it’s full of design flaws because it’s so complex. If you also design cars that way, things go wrong.

So I think it’s a whole culture shift for the people newly hired at Tesla in California or Nevada. It’s amazing that they’ve grown so big so fast, most companies that grow that fast make more mistakes. I think this will be a lot easier for them in East Germany already; this is a region with a real industrial tradition.

In other words, things can only get better at Tesla; and it certainly will.

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