Car manufacturers learned these lessons incrementally over decades while their competitors were doing the same. Tesla finds themself being inexperienced in a market where the established players are really good.

As an aside, car companies actually consult for others industries because they're so good at manufacturing. When I worked for a big defense/aerospace company I got a tour of their satellite assembly and they actually paid Honda to come in and improve their manufacturing pipeline. They claim the changes sped them up and lowered bugs found after manufacturing.

Most definitely and everyone knew Tesla was going to suffer from the manufacturing side of things. They went at it with the wrong attitude while it's by far the hardest part of being a car company pushing large volume.

Where I was wrong is that I thought the market would punish them heavily for that as customers for a car in this price range would care. I totally missed that the segment of rich people with enough disposable income to buy an average electric car as a statement was big enough to be viable. So, well played Tesla I guess.

Well if you listen to some Tesla fanatics including boss man Elon himself, traditional car companies carry too much baggage from their ICE platforms to transition to EVs successfully, so all this “experience” they have is a net drag.

Meanwhile outside the Tesla/Musk bubble, traditional car companies do not have QC issues like Tesla’s and are even outselling Tesla in major EV markets like Europe.

At least Musk is finally admitting to the QC issues.

Not really, older car companies just make the same cars over and over again with slightly changed designs. They have decades of iteration on their designs and any major changes always end up having problems. Even then they have iterated into cheap junk for the most part aside from a few automakers. Plus, anything software related on these cars is horrible stinking garbage. Check any car older than 5 years and there will be 1-2 recalls on them.

Tesla is pretty much going through the same thing all automakers go through except it's "Tesla." Sure if they hired a few engineers out of retirement to consult they could have identified a few of these issues, but then they wouldn't have released before the balloon went up and the bulls gored them.

Generally, this isn't Tesla's biggest problem. Delivery, support, and maintenance are the big ones they are losing out on. That's what's making this recall such a big issue for them. They didn't have enough dealers to make repairs or spare parts which is why they are dragging their heels on recalls. But they are catching up there as well in typical Tesla fashion.

Sure they will piss off a few car owners, but people tend to be REALLY loyal to car brands. Just ask any Porsche owner who spends more time at the mechanic than on the road.

Yes, but many car companies are 100 years older than Tesla.

They'll probably be going through growing pains for years to come. Rapid expansion at the cost of quality. However, they clearly don't have a demand problem as people are willing to tolerate these issues, for now.

Not really. I worked in the production line of an automobile company as a mech engineer.

When we release new cars, there are huge production line issues and inefficiencies. There are a huge number of little things that add up, and most of this wisdom is held by people who have been these companies for a life time.

I am surprised that Tesla hasn't acqui-hired a smaller automobile company just for knowledge transfer.

Yes. I've heard from a few sources connected with the Tesla that Musk felt that engineers (both design and process) from existing US auto companies were "yesterdays news" who were not up to Tesla's standards.

Turned out that there are huge number of issues when manufacturing an automobile. And that the knowledge to prevent or resolve a lot of those issues exist only in the heads of people who have gone through it before.

The build quality of early Tesla's was... not great. And while my understanding is that it has improved quite a bit in recent years. That said, most people in the industry seem to feel that Tesla still has a ways to go before they are "world class" in build quality.

Well you would think they were solved by the way people react to Tesla however just reviewing NHTSA records and enthusiast forums you will see manufacturers have all sorts of issues which includes fires and more.

This does not excuse Tesla, I do own a model 3 from September 2018 and still find it a great car, but the idea that other manufacturers don't have problems is ludicrous. Ford had to issue a STOP SALE on Mach E because of issues.

Tesla has introduced so many innovations from OTA which other manufacturers will have to adapt to as well remote vehicle services which for the most part you cannot get elsewhere. VW suffered a lot of issues on this, their software stack is apparently really a mess.

https://fordauthority.com/2021/01/ford-issues-mustang-mach-e...

Iteration on actual real products and factories takes a long time. I think people who mostly deal with software forget that very easily.

Before Tesla, the last successful American car company was Jeep in 1941. Tesla is catching up but obviously things take time.

I think other car companies prioritize shipping cars over shipping good cars differently.

It helps that they have money that allows them to delay shipping one of their models, if needed.

It takes time and effort and learning to do that.