At the beginning of this month, a recall document pushed Tesla into the whirlpool of public opinion. It stands to reason that recalls, especially voluntary recalls, are responsible for companies. But the problem is that this recall announcement directly named Tesla's suppliers, so the outside world believes that Tesla threw the "pot" to the suppliers, causing controversy.
Tesla Model Y
According to the recall announcement, Tesla China decided to recall some domestic Model Y electric vehicles with production dates from February 4, 2021 to October 30, 2021, in accordance with the relevant recall requirements, with a total of 21,599 units. Due to the manufacturer's manufacturing reasons, the strength of the front and rear steering knuckles of the above vehicles may not meet the design requirements, and the knuckles may be deformed or broken during the driving process, and the suspension linkage may be detached from the knuckle under extreme stress conditions, affecting the driving control of the vehicle, increasing the risk of collision accidents, and there are safety hazards.
Afterwards, Tuopu Group issued an announcement that the steering knuckles used in the Model Y within the scope of the recall were indeed directly supplied by the company, and some of the products were not completely immersed in quenching fluid on a heat treatment production line, which led to the strength of the knuckles or did not meet the design requirements. However, the supplier stressed that the steering knuckles are only for the Model Y model, and the probability of defects is about 0.2%-1.0%.
Affected by this, the stock prices of Tesla and supplier Tuopu Group both fell sharply.
What is the supplier of "throwing the pot"?
In fact, as early as September this year, foreign insiders revealed that the Model Y has very serious quality problems, and Tesla is quietly preparing to recall this model, but at that time, this news did not cause much turmoil.
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According to information released by NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration), since mid-September this year, Tesla has noticed that there are insufficiently strong steering knuckles flowing to the production line. Subsequently, Tesla and the supplier began to examine the knuckles of the production line and analyze the causes of the knuckle deformation. From mid-October to the end of October, Tesla identified the size of vehicles that might be affected. Then in November, Tesla made a recall decision in the United States.
It may be that there are more affected vehicles in China, so Tesla's recall decision in China came a little late, until a large number of car owners found that the suspension fell off, And Tesla's recall announcement in China was announced on December 3.
Although Tesla subjectively did not throw the pot to the supplier, the pot still let the Tuopu Group carry it after all. In the eyes of many people, the Shanghai Gigafactory that produces Model Y is a "tall" place, and Tesla has always emphasized the rigor of its production, but Tesla frequently exposes many product quality problems, which is an objective fact.
Tesla production line
It is understood that Tesla will implement the quality control of the whole life cycle of each product, which connects the supplier to the part inspection, to the manufacturing process, and finally to the customer. Through the digital and intelligent manufacturing control system, Tesla can collect the dimensional inspection data of parts in the vehicle factory and the whole supply chain in real time. At the same time, for key components such as batteries and motors, Tesla uses nearly 50 sets of automatic testing equipment for testing. Through these, it is not difficult to see that Tesla seems to understand manufacturing more from the aspect of electronic software.
Judging from the statement of Tuopu Group, the company should be held responsible for this matter. But Tesla is not completely without responsibility. This time Tesla has a problem on the supplier side, and the so-called "quality control of the whole life cycle" seems to have lost its effectiveness. Some commentators believe that "compared with the century-old automobile industry, Tesla is still only a 'newborn calf', the understanding of the automobile manufacturing industry is still lacking, and there is still room for improvement in supply chain management and quality control system."
Get the bang for it! Expansion of the Shanghai Gigafactory to produce more Model Y
For a while, the Model 3 was Tesla's best-selling electric car, but that's not the case now. According to Tesla's November sales data, model 3 sales were 8615 units in November, compared with 121121 in the first 11 months of this year; Model Y sales in the same month were 23117 units, and cumulative sales in the first 11 months were 130104 units. In contrast, Model Y sales have outperformed the Model 3.
Shanghai Gigafactory
At present, the Shanghai Gigafactory is in full swing, preparing to produce more Model 3 and Model Y through production expansion. On November 26, according to an environmental impact assessment report, the Expansion Project of the Shanghai Gigafactory had no plans to add new production equipment, but instead increased production capacity by increasing working hours, increasing the number of employees, and increasing the frequency of material turnover. It is reported that after the completion of the expansion project, the production area will add 4,000 new employees, and the total number of employees in the Shanghai super factory will reach 19,000; the Shanghai factory, which originally had only 450,000 annual output, is expected to achieve the production target of 550,000 output by the end of the year.
Tesla Model 3
Before the release of the EIA report on the expansion of the factory, Tesla had already made a recall decision in the United States. A few days after November 26, the recall plan of Model Y was also announced in China.
Despite a large number of Model Y quality control problems, Tesla still decided to increase the production of model Y. However, it is important to note that there is no necessary link between expansion and recall. This only shows that the Model Y is too important to Tesla, and Tesla wants to use its goal of delivering one million units a year.
Tesla "added bricks and tiles" to FSD, but ignored design flaws?
In response to the recall, Tesla did not make unnecessary moves.
Shortly after the recall announcement, Tesla pushed the fully automated driving FSD Beta 10.6 version to users. This time, Tesla aims to improve the accuracy of target detection, reducing the average relative error by 18.5%. At the same time, the new version also improves the detection accuracy of specific still objects in the night environment by 17%.
Dojo D1 chip
Tesla has been "adding bricks" to FSD, in order to achieve the goal of full automatic driving, Tesla launched the Dojo D1 chip in August this year, and its stacked Dojo supercomputer is the basis for Tesla's "pure vision" autopilot program to achieve
But as the previous criticism said, Tesla's understanding of the automobile manufacturing industry is still lacking. In fact, the outside world has been worried about Tesla's quality control problems. After the Tesla recall, some experts in the industry believe that the possibility of defects in Tesla's electric vehicle design is not ruled out.
As mentioned earlier, Tesla's production seems to be more inclined to the refined production of electronic components. This is not difficult to understand, because Tesla electric cars are equipped with batteries, motors and other components, as well as fully autonomous driving FSD technology. However, Tesla still seems to have neglected the most basic parts manufacturing links.