Teslupdate (again)
Good lord was there a lot of Tesla news in the last few weeks. Looking at my browser as I wrote this, there were no fewer than sixteen tabs open. And unless you were living in self-imposed media detox, which I would completely understand given the current political climate, you probably heard about the biggest story, which was SpaceX’s launch of the Falcon Heavy. But hold on, we have some ground to cover before then.
First up, a report from CNBC indicated that Tesla was having employees hand-assemble the battery packs to be used in the Model 3s while the machines that were meant to produce them were still being built. As part of this “production hell” that Elon Musk talked about, Tesla was apparently loaned “scores of employees” from Gigafactory partner Panasonic, who make the individual cells for each of the batteries. Concerns were raised that the hand assembly was pretty slapdash and the resulting products were incomplete or unsafe, which the company responded was an allegation that was “detached from reality.”
Unfortunately for Tesla, it came back to bite the company later last week when Sandy Munro, the founder of Munro & Associates, a Detroit-based engineering firm specializing in reverse engineering products like cars and planes, compared the quality of a Model 3 he was tearing apart to a Kia in the 90s. Calling out panel gaps and fit and finish issues, as well as mechanical quirks, Munro says he hasn’t seen poor fitment tolerances on a car like the Model 3 since the 1970s. In one part of the car, he was able to fit a fingernail in between panel gaps, while on the other end of the same panel, his whole thumb nearly fit. Munro also pointed out how complex the cars were to get in and out of in case of an emergency, noting especially the fact that the rear passengers don’t have mechanical door handles, only electronic. This could be a serious problem if an accident ignites the batteries and cuts power. Of course it’s hypothetical, and these are some of the first models to come out, so hopefully the company is getting these issues all figured out, but not a great first impression to set.
Video by Autoline.tv
So how did the company respond to Munro’s comments? Flamethrowers! That’s right, Elon Musk fired up the old hype machine on Instagram and announced the sale of 20,000 actual flamethrowers labeled with his Boring Company logo because I guess that was the brand flamethrowers make the most sense under. What they basically did here was take a nerf blaster, cut out the nerf darts and springs and paint it black and white, then insert a $50 Lincoln Electric Inferno propane torch kit, which you can buy at Home Depot, and call it a day. Oh, and they’re charging $500 for the privilege of owning it. Oh, and they’re already sold out, so Elon Musk just made $10 million in the span of a few hours. Oh, and god damn I wish I would’ve thought of this first because this is some Grade A genius shit. Seriously, it looks badass and sure, it’s a ripoff, sure it’s unnecessary, but it’s fun and I do admire a company that can have fun for the sake of it, even if the sake of it is also the sake of distracting you from all the other bad shit going on.
Speaking of bad shit, Elon, zeh Germanz are coming for you! (You may need one of those flamethrowers, so hang on to it.) Porsche announced this week that it's doubling its investment in electric vehicles to an amount nearing $7 billion, which is in addition to what they’ve already spent on their really sexy looking Mission E electric sedan. Some of that will go toward the hybridization and electrification of the Cayenne, Macan, Panamera and 911 and 718 Boxster/Cayman twins, but much will go to future vehicle programs, and they’ve promised that their cars will remain focused on fun. CEO Oliver Blume recently spoke at the 70th anniversary of Porsche sports cars, saying, “At Porsche, the driving experience will always be at the forefront, but in a traffic jam or when you park a car, the driver might want to hand over control of the vehicle.” Finally, someone gets me. Thank you, Oliver! In addition to the spending on vehicles, Porsche has committed almost a billion each will go to expanding their facilities and the development of a charging infrastructure.
But they’re not the only Germans on Elon’s tail. Volkswagen is busy trying to atone for its Dieselgate scandal, from which a big part of the settlement will go toward a massive charging infrastructure, the size of which will rival Tesla’s. Last February, Electrify America, the name of the initiative, announced a very adorable 500 charger network in the first phase. Well, after signing on infrastructure company Greenlots, they’ve gotten a bit more ambitious. Electrify America has announced their first phase will actually now be 4,800 chargers, beginning with 2,800 level 2 chargers in America’s 17 largest cities by 2019 and another 2,000 level 3 chargers throughout 39 states thereafter. Those level 3 chargers will restore 80 percent of a battery’s charge (depending on the battery, of course) in around 30 minutes. Tesla, meanwhile, hopes to have 5,300 chargers up by the end of this year, which is a respectable tally, but we know how Tesla is about keeping promises.
To that point, Elon Musk kept a promise this week when he sent his Tesla Roadster into space on the Falcon Heavy rocket launched by one of his other companies, SpaceX. The launch went off pretty well and successfully launched the car and its passenger, StarMan in his custom-designed spacesuit, on a trajectory toward Mars. In a truly un-Elon-like turn of events, SpaceX actually over-delivered on his promise because the Roadster is on course to overshoot Mars and end up somewhere in the asteroid belt. Whoops.
And speaking of whoops, yesterday Tesla’s quarterly earnings came out, showing the company lost $675.4 million in the three months ending in December. This is compared with losing just $121 million for the same period in 2016, which accentuates just how much the company is spending on the production of the Model 3. The production hell, however, only resulted in 2,425 Model 3s being shipped in the same quarter. It’s not abnormal for startups and tech companies to go for a while without posting a profit. Look at Twitter, they just scored their first ever quarterly profit in last part of last year. But Twitter’s product is entirely digital. To create and make real cars is a completely different undertaking than building a digital platform like PayPal or anything else Musk is familiar with. What’s critical not just for the company but for maintaining the confidence of investors is to show that Tesla isn’t making money right now, but has a roadmap to get there. If the constant production problems and quality issues continue, and if they can’t ramp up to the point where they’re meeting their 2,500 unit per week production target, Elon is going to need to sell a whole lot more flamethrowers.
Germany’s “Things You Just Do Not Do”
In one of the most bizarrely horrible stories to come out of the automotive world in recent memory, news broke this week that a research group operating at the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, commissioned a test to prove that diesel fumes were not as dangerous as the World Health Organization indicated. The test itself involved locking ten monkeys in a sealed room and having them watch cartoons while the exhaust fumes from a Volkswagen Beetle were piped in. There are also rumours that there was a similar test conducted on humans, though it’s difficult to believe anyone would’ve signed up for that. It’s actually difficult to believe this whole thing was ever thought of as a valid option. The European Research Group on Environment and Health in the Transport Sector was funded by Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler, who hoped tests conducted would refute evidence that pointed to diesel engines’ potential for harm. Meanwhile VW and several other companies were installing clever software in their cars so the diesel engines could pollute more without being caught.
What really gets me about this is the stubbornness of the whole thing. We’ve known for a long time that diesel emissions aren’t safe and yet the Germans, who were so heavily invested in the development of diesel technology, simply couldn’t accept the fact that the rest of the world wanted a cleaner way to drive vehicles. The realization that diesels were bad could’ve been a turning point for Germany. They could have said, “You know what? You’re right. This is dangerous, and even though it’s more efficient, we need to find a better way to move forward.” They could’ve led the field in hybrid petrol powertrain development, or in electric vehicles or in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Instead, they found a way to make their diesels motors look cleaner while in fact being much dirtier. And they locked some poor monkeys in a room and probably gave them cancer trying to prove that the rest of the world’s scientific community was wrong.
So what happens now? Volkswagen has set up a lobbyist as a patsy who has accepted blame, despite the fact that internal emails leaked to the German paper BILD suggest that senior management was made aware of the details of the testing. What we get is another scandal for Volkswagen, and let’s not forget BMW and Daimler who helped fund the research, to sweep under the rug.
Does someone have Elon Musk’s number? I think I know a few people who would like to borrow his hype machine.
Authored by
Devlin Riggs