Tesla Death Watch 10: Ride a Painted Pony
Tesla Prez and CEO Ze'ev Drori has e-mailed customers with important news! "In large measure we deliberately limit the production until we install our own born and bred final transmission by mid-September, at which time production will start to ramp up leading toward a monthly rate of over 100 cars in December." Translation: Tesla owners at the front of the line will receive damaged goods. And the aspiring EV maker's got another promised production date for the rest of its "non-founders" customers, who were told Tesla went into "full production" on March 17 (of this year). Ze'ev also proudly touts Tesla's high-profile hire: 24-year Chrysler vet, ex-VP, and former chief engineer of future midsize products Mike Donoughe (out of the frying pan into the frialator?). Tesla's Prez highlights the fact that The Big D was tapped to head-up ChryCo's Project D. Uh, wasn't that the "emergency project" designed to rescue the craptastic Chrysler Sebring and Dodge Avenger from being the worst new cars sold in America? Whatever happened to that, anyway? Was it ever finished?
Immensely bored law student. I've also got 3 dogs.
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That's going to be expensive. It's not like they're talking about a software upgrade. A general rule-of-thumb I've heard is that pushing-off correcting a design flaw until the project is in the next phase costs 10x as much to fix. Since Tesla now has finished product that are in customers' hands, they're very much past the design stage. Now the fix is going to cost maybe 1000x as much per vehicle shipped?
I saw the same thing on Slashdot this morning. Where are they arriving?
Think thought they'd be getting Tesla's hyperefficient batteries for their own vehicles, and are playing the same game of telling customers that they'll have to be patient - going on a year now. Think is looking elsewhere for batteries. Tesla must have gone to the Veyron School of Car Assembly.
These scammers sure know how to buy time, dont they?