Anonymous wrote:I grew up in Detroit and worked at a big 3 auto company in college. Tesla quality is highly-variable. The car has some great, innovative design features, and it's impossible to argue against the fact that Tesla has made incredible contributions to the shift toward vehicle electrification. They've also innovated in other ways, such as direct-to-consumer sales. But it's a hit or miss car quality-wise.

I think a big part is that it's designed by SV engineers who think they know more than anyone [full disclosure: I'm a know-it-all SV engineer]. A friend of mine worked at Tesla in a manufacturing group, and about 5-6 years ago she was telling me her boss was interested in using data science to help with supply chain QC...stuff like sampling parts from a lot and tracking manufacturing lots. I laughed, because I did all of this with a spreadsheet and a notebook in the 90s! For whatever reason, early on Tesla opted not to learn from the things the legacy automakers did well and the lessons they'd learned from a century of mass producing consumer vehicles. They've started to hire more from legacy companies, but they're playing catch up in some ways.

If it matters, we are on our second Nissan Leaf, and DH has put in a pre-order reservation for a Cybertruck. But both he and I are on the fence of whether we'll actually want to buy it pending quality issues.

DH went to test drive a Model X a couple of years ago, and in the showroom one of the falcon doors didn't work and the back seats were stuck in an unusable position. That's in a showroom! A huge fraction of the cars have issues. People make fun of the Detroit automakers' quality, but none of them have the kind of issues that Teslas do. And stuff like the retractable door handles just feel like a part failure waiting to happen. DH and I are both trained in fields where we design for failure contingencies, longevity, and reliability...and nothing about a Tesla feels solid from that perspective.