Tesla is facing issues with the bare metal construction of the Cybertruck, which Elon Musk warned was as tricky to do as making Lego bricks
It’s almost like he hears about how bad the build quality of Tesla cars have become, so he thinks the solution is more accurrate, more expensive parts. Kind of like he has absolutely no clue what he’s doing, and doesn’t want to listen to smarter people telling him what they need.
I think it’s more likely that he is looking for excuses for the years of delays on the cyber truck.
Now he can blame it on his “desire for perfection” instead of admitting that his timeline was never viable
The design isn’t viable. They could have developed a new car in less time if it wasn’t going to be an absolute nightmare to produce reliably.
Let’s not forget about the new Roadster that was due to enter production 3 years ago.
Everyone that bought one gave Tesla a $250k interest-free loan.This is all starting to seem intentional.
At some point, once consumer rights are eroded enough , the straightest path to profits is just downright theft. Take money now, worry about product later. It’s literally inevitable and the video game industry is really fuckin good at it.
10 microns is .4 thou, about the width of a cotton fiber. Its possible to machine those tolerances, but very time consuming as machine maintainance steps up. Its also small enough that the thermal expansion of the sheets will be larger than that
Which just shows he has no idea how tolerances work. Small machined parts have different tolerances than large stamped parts. The key is setting the right tolerances for each part, designing the vehicle for desired gaps with those tolerances, and continuous improvement to fix and design out issues.
None at all. He also doesn’t understend that the issues tesla has faced are largely due to poor process design rather than automotive design. The plans may call for small gaps ore big gaps, but they certainly don’t call for iconsistent gaps
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Isn’t that 10 microns? 0.01mm?
Which is 0.4 thou
Oh haha, yeah, I understand my error now. Thanks for bearing with me
0.4 thou = 0.4 mil
(TIL about thous, all my engineering textbooks referencing US units must be old or something)
decimal inches is basically only used in machining. The only time ive ever seen it is in schematics and an indicators.
Thanks, I understand my error now. Corrected
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Imagine measuring door panels on a granite block in a climate controlled room, and sending it off to the surface grinder for rework. 🤣 Or sending the frame off to get scraped. Truly, this is the most idiotic idea on the planet and it’s all because he didn’t care about tolerances early on. His self own has turned into whatever the hell this crap was.
I can confirm this
Machinist here.
.004 ? That is exagerated but .0004 this is insane
This is not a airplane engine !!!
If LEGO and soda cans, which are very low cost, can do this, so can we.
This man is a certifiable idiot, and I feel bad for anyone working for him.
I mean, to be fair, he’s not entirely wrong, you can get that accuracy on larger parts given sufficient time, materials, tools, expertise, etc.
But a car has more parts than a Lego brick
Yeah anything is possible with enough time and money, it’s just that is about the most textbook example of comparing apples to oranges I’ve seen IRL.
Also, I suppose Lego bricks might be considered low cost if you’re a billionaire, but in the grand scheme of molded plastics they are very much a premium product.
Yeah compared to car plastics they’re crazy expensive
Which will balloon the cost exponentially.
What happens when you put that large metal part in the sun? He is entirely wrong.
Well, of course. It doesn’t change my statement though.
And the guys down the lab could go “well, we don’t have to make it out of metal.” And then it starts a rabbit hole of further insane requests that are technically possible, but to people unfamiliar with engineering (Elon) say “damn the cost” betting (incorrectly) that the time or financial cost to fulfill the requests is still profitable.
Happens to a lot of products, unfortunately. People making demands are better off knowing what the demand entails. When they do not, this is what we get.
He’s also probably confusing his experience with Space-X too. He can’t think critically, and it’s going to be his undoing. I hope at least.
Maybe he can build the truck out of LEGOs - it would cost about a bajillion dollars to make something that size, but maybe less than the parts he’s demanding would be.
“All parts for this vehicle, whether internal or from suppliers, need to be designed and built to sub 10 micron accuracy.”
LOL
Yeah ok.
Tell me you know nothing about manufacturing, without telling me you know nothing about manufacturing.
That one quote - assuming it is accurate - explains that Musk is even more of an idiot than everyone already knew he was. You don’t make things at those tight tolerances. A couple of dimensions on a part might be (for instance the bore on a press fit sleeve), but you’d almost never, ever hold an entire part to that tight of a tolerance.
In imperial units, 10 microns is .00039". A human hair is roughly .001 to .005" thick. So he is asking for a tolerance that is 3 to 10x smaller than the thickness of a human hair. To put the absurdity of Musk’s demand into perspective, most parts that go into a car are roughly an order of magnitude looser in tolerance with some dimensions being 2 orders of magnitude looser.
That difference might not sound like a lot, but holding something to +/-.0039 versus +/-.00039" could easily triple the price of an item or more. Easy. You use a tight tolerance only when you need to - that’s engineering 101. Some parts could easily be +/- .039" and not affect their performance on bit. Close tolerance engine parts might be held at what Musk is demanding, but never “ALL PARTS” would be held to that.
Not to mention the fact all the tolerances should have been determined before mass production began. You determine the dimensional requirements and develop the manufacturing process to deliver that.
There is absolutely no way they have the systems and tools in place to properly measure every part with sub 10-micron accuracy and precision either. To control those dimensions you need to go a whole additional order of magnitude out. I pity the fool that has to manage that control plan.
develop the manufacturing process to deliver that.
Exactly. I’m sure his engineers did the right thing and know what they are doing, and now the top executive steps his foot into the mix and will muck everything up.
I know exactly how the people that I have worked with in the past would have dealt with this - surrly engineers and quality managers who knew how to handle tough bosses. They would let the whole situation cool off for a day or two first. Then go tell him how much more expensive the truck would be if they tried to hold every dimension of every part to +/-.0004". Any sane CEO would quickly know he fucked up and issue some retract. If that still didn’t sway him because of his ego, we probably would stop even listening to him altogether. He has shown that he is utterly clues, so would he even know a part held to 10 microns versus one held to 100 or even 1000?? I’m guessing no. If he asked if these new parts were held to the tighter tolerance, we’d say yes and just go on about our day.
Except this is Musk, and anyone that embarrasses him by showing him how stupid he is, will get fired and publicly shamed on twitter.
In many ways, it is their own fault for wanting to work for that clown. It’s not like it isn’t known that he is a terrible person and incompetent boss. We would get lots of fresh grads post up on the engineering subs on Reddit asking about jobs at Tesla. WTF? Why would you WANT to work there? We would try to talk sense into these people but few would ever listen.
twitter
*shitter
I work in semiconductor industry where machines need to have sub-micron positioning accuracy and even we don’t generally design parts with 10 micron tolerances, unless it really needs to.
engineering 101
Mechanical engineering 101, us sparkies don’t get to learn that stuff until we get into the real world. Not bitter just disappointed in my uni.
Really? I’d have thought EEs would learn it in the context of something like circuit breakers using bimetallic strips or the effect of heat-cycling on soldered joints.
Seems like EEs are not taught a lot of practical things in school.
Yes. The field is way too broad and has been for decades. I have all this knowledge in my head that I never get to use (integration of 1 over the square root of arctan squared of x cubed), knowledge that would have bern useful in the 1970s (this is how to build a class C amplifier without soldering), and knowledge that would have been useful but wasnt taught (this is what FLA is).
The ideal would be to break it up into a few different degrees. Guys and gals working in Software Defined Radio shouldn’t have the same training as those planning powerlines.
I lost it on an intern a while back who wanted to drop out because “we aren’t learning anything practical”. Yeah I know kid, get your piece of paper and get to work.
I’ve heard almost the exact same thing from MEs as well. Both are sooo broad. I mead I get WHY they try to teach you anything and everything, but it does seem overwhelming and at the same time seems like you haven’t learned anything useful even when you really have. You simply don’t know if you’ll be working at a nuclear power plant dealing with thermodynamics or a car maker mostly dealing with design or as a project manager at some other company dealing with vibrations. There’s just no way to know. The path your work life leads is impossible to predict so they sort of have to teach you a little about everything.
Damn, I’m an EE and my university wasn’t too bad for having a good mix of theory vs practical. But I’m aware a lot of EE courses don’t do that.
BTW, are you Australian too?
Nope. I might have been to harsh a bit. My sub-field (controls and automation) is notorious for being poorly documented and most of the tech being very vendor specific. So you learn on the job.
I am sure plenty of the semiconductor EEs will disagree with me.
Ah yeh, fair enough. I didn’t do any controls and am. Now having to learn a bit for my job, but I like learning at work. It’s more fun than university.
I’ve told many (usually new) design engineers that they’re stupid for asking for 0.001" tolerance on parts when they only need 0.005 “or 0.010”. The difference between 0.010" and sub-10 micron is easily a factor of 100 in most parts, ESPECIALLY when you’re talking larger steel components like panels on a freaking car.
ESPECIALLY when you’re talking larger steel components like panels on a freaking car.
not just that, he said “all parts”. The stitching on the seats, the floor carpets, USB ports, cupholders and the A/C vents have to be more accurate than the width of a human hair too
Unless you are talking about a press fit location or some kind of high precision alignment issue, almost nothing needs anything tighter than .001" and .005 or .010" is perfectly fine for most things. I work with a lot of weldments so if we’re within .030" we consider that good enough.
+/- .030 good enough for most skin panels on airplanes.
Gear teeth I believe need to be precision ground to less than a thou for best efficiency and life. But that’s not for most things.
When I was young I got a job at a manufacturing place that made all sorts of parts for sensitive equipment. Younger people, or people with steady hands would debur and smooth. We would have these huge magnifiers and friggin microscopes and be working with what looked like a really long tiny exacto knives that needed to be replaced every 5 minutes or a couple dozen uses to get that stuff to spec. You can spend 20 minutes on a piece, think it’s perfect and then QC would send it right back because they somehow found some tiny inconsistency or groove you didn’t or couldn’t notice.
There is no way you can expect that level of accuracy, unless your willing to pay for clean room level stuff. Even we weren’t always quite that accurate depending on the end use and they charged like almost $50 for something that looked quite like something you get a hardware store for 50 cents.
huge magnifiers
Probably an optical comparator.
Using a comparator for deburring breaks my QA addled mind.
hah historically Teslas body panels are closer to +/- .39"
Just coming in to say you are completely and absolutely correct. 🍻
I don’t see anywhere in the article where Musk says “tolerance”. He specifically says “accuracy” and goes on the talk about listing more decimal places instead of rounding. Any mention of tolerance is done by the author of the article. If certain dimensions are not naturally rounded to one, or even two decimals, there is no reason not to list it to three or more on modern drawings. GD&T can specify whatever tolerance is necessary without relying on a decimal-based block tolerance. I’d be interested in seeing the original email but it seems like there is a misunderstanding by the author given the context being discussed.
I default to three decimal places for all my basic dimensions on both in and mm drawings. One of the benefits of GD&T is that you can give provide additional dimensional accuracy, completely independent of the tolerance being specified.
That’s a really good point. If this is actually for the intervening calculations, that’d make a lot more sense.
The linguistics of metrology is not exactly a topic I’m particularly passionate about, but if yiu look at the technical definition of accuracy, it essentially is the same as a tolerance.
Accuracy: the degree to which the result of a measurement, calculation, or specification conforms to the correct value or a standard.
And when it comes to decimal places, you’d never display more than you really need. If a dimension is +/- .010" there is absolutely no reason to display it to 4 decimal places. That doesn’t win you anything. More importantly, I’m sure a company like Tesla doesn’t even use drawings at all. I’m sure they are paperless and send out their models for machining.
I think there is a very important distinction between accuracy and tolerance in engineering. +/- .010" is not a dimension, but a tolerance that can be applied to a dimension. However if your example was changed to a .010" dimension, I would agree with you as I stated in my last comment. There is no need to give any further accuracy to that dimension if you are just adding zeros to the end (unless you are using block tolerances that rely on a specific number of digits to correspond with a standard tolerance). Unfortunately, not everything is designed using the same units and you will inevitably end up with a part designed in mm that uses a bolt-on component using a hole span in inches (for example, a nice round 1-in span). If you want a +/-1 mm tolerance on that part, you wouldn’t want to round every dimension to the nearest mm because you may end up with a tolerance of 24-26 mm when you really wanted 24.4 to 26.4 mm. I like to provide true dimensional accuracy (to microns or .0001" if I’m not just adding zeros) and then apply a suitable tolerance independently, using GD&T.
Regarding paperless manufacturing, I agree that many components are made straight from the models these days and imported directly into a CNC machine. However, there should always be a drawing or a digital equivalent a drawing. This is the contract that specifies acceptable tolerances to the manufacturer, and it will be used during QA inspection to determine if an acceptable part has been delivered.
I think there is an important distinction between accuracy and precision in engineering. I’m having flashbacks of sitting in class when the professor was going over this stuff. I honestly always found it some of the most boring topics in the curriculum.
One of my physics profs had a story about this. He needed two resistors to be very similar in performance for a circuit he was making, so he asked for a couple of the super-high-quality ones.
His advisor said “fuck that, get the 1% bin, they’ll be bimodal at 1% above and below rating, sort em and find two that match to the degree you need”
That’s kind of analogous; do you need to try to hit a particular value (accuracy) or do you need things in a consistent relation to one another (precision)?
Engine parts? Tesla’s don’t have engines, they have electric motors which shouldn’t need this level of precision. Electric motors they have today work pretty well already.
These tolerances are very possible to hold while machining, but speaking from my perspective having been a machinist by trade for 20+ years, holding those tolerances for every single part on a vehicle is going to get prohibitively expensive really fucking fast.
He’s probably hyper self conscious about people ripping into Teslas over their clearances (with inconsistencies measured in millimetres). But, no, instead of saying “VW can produce stuff that doesn’t look like it fell from a truck and you will figure it out, too” he’s going overboard.
Elon: “Stacking” tolerances? No, we will not tolerate anything less than micron precision on every aspect of the design.
Micron, as in 0.00004"? Yes you COULD hold it, with second ops and temp control.
The article states “sub 10 micron”, which I interpreted to be +/- .0004" in practice
The total tolerance is .0004". In equally disposed bilateral tolerancing it will be ±.0002".
Eh, if someone tells me to reduce a tolerance from 5 to 10 thou at work, it’s understood that it’s +/-5 and 10. I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone use the full range of a tolerance in conversation. If the tolerance isn’t bilateral, it would be said like plus 5, minus zero. Anyways, +/- .0005" is our standard tolerance on the span of all dowel hole pairs.
Bilateral tolerancing is a Machinist’s first introduction to tolerancing so it’s no surprise to run that as default. And I suppose GD&T is not heavily used where you are.
If you’re given a parallelism tolerance of 10 micron are you assuming that to be ±10 micron? True position? Angularity of 5 thou? Etc… The only feature control that could be interpreted as bilateral by default is profile and it’s still communicated by its total tolerance.
Simple ± tolerancing isn’t the industry standard anymore. And if Tesla prints are anything like spaceX ones… It’s basically all GD&T and minimal title block tolerances.
I use GD&T on all my drawings, including 100% of my hole callouts. However I’m one of the more enthusiastic adopters of ASME Y14.5 at the place I work. Therefore, I get what your saying regarding the tolerance range, but since most of my coworkers are still relying on block tolerances, I’ll refer to a .010" positional tolerance as a “+/- .005” equivalent" in conversation so there is no miscommunication. I can see how this is not the norm.
On the dowel hole point, just measuring this stuff is going to take at the bare minimum an automated and purpose built CMM, which will drive the cost up even more. If we are to assume +/- 5 microns for every single part - we are talking about the level of manufacturing that Mitutoyo or Starrett have. This will be a multi-million dollar vehicle that noone would buy.
Just curious… what does Starrett have that Tesla will need?
Starrett isn’t known for quality precision metrology.
Well, in terms of for real metrology, you are correct. A better comparison would have been Brown and Sharpe. However, Starrett has more than enough reputation of everything that they produce being of a very high standard- primarily layout tools like calipers, precision levels, etc.
ETA: This could very well be my bias as an American showing. I know from experience that the fit and finish of a high end pair of Mitutoyo calipers have what I consider to be subpar to the Starrett equivalent in terms of fit and finish. There is also a $500 ish price difference which could also be a subconscious bias.
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Ethically I agree completely but this should only be done if you’re past your warranty (or don’t care about it).
I agree. And be ready for the insurance company to deny all claims related to the vehicle once they discover the “modification”.
can’t you just install a honeypot that simulates the stock firmware?
Sure. But you cant pretend that its some super secret that only non corpos know about and be surprised when the tech who makes the inspection knows what to look for
Yeah I forgot not everyone has terminal and code experience necessary to add customisations…
People do car modifications all the time, and the car is still covered under warranty.
Since the vehicles don’t burn any gas and don’t have any emission standards to comply with, the issue here is even less important.
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That tells you of Elon’s brain surface roughness
Variations below 10 microns, like the car parts?
Like a bowling ball
Hahhaahhahaah
Due to the nature of Cybertruck, which is made of bright metal with mostly straight edges, any dimensional variation shows up like a sore thumb.
It sounds to me like the reasonable conclusion to draw from this would be to modify the design of the car. I’d also assume you don’t need tolerances to be the same for literally all parts inside and out. I’d also think that, if the car looks that bad if things are 10 or more microns out of place, these cars are going to age terribly after regular use.
But what do I know? If I were smart, I’d be rich, right? And Elon is so rich, he must be a genius!
Tesla is know for shoddy panel alignment correct? This is gonna look horrific.
They are, and that undoubtedly gets under his sub micron thick skin, which is why he’s going overboard about it with this.
The awkward moment where you sit on the car watching the sunset with your sweetheart and the next day your stainless steel car is bent.
It’s just marketing. Elon wants dumb tesla bros to think their truck is built to that accuracy. No need for it to be reality.
As opposed to smart tesla bros?
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Sadly this could work, no one’s gonna be verifying this shit and the ones who do won’t reach enough tesla bros
Well his paranoia was fed (rightly) by sites like Reddit who ate his lunch over panel gaps on the model 3. He wants this to be better and there’s nothing wrong with that!
Will the steering wheel fall off still? We need more innovative features like that
Cybertruck, Cybertruck,
Engineers say “what the fuck”
Micron fits for auto steel?
Those are not a thing that’s real
So deal! Deal with it, Cybertruck.I read that in the Spiderman themesong’s rhythm lmao
This is what the refrance
Why does Space Karen still have all his fanbois? Do they really think he’s some kind of software/technology/business genius, even after all that has come out about him?
He is talented, just not at engineering or science particularly.
His talents lie in obtaining government subsidies and trolling.
Yes, agreed.
Him and his companies have achieved some very impressive things, most notably Tesla being so far ahead of the pack with EV technology, and Space X with their reusable rockets.
Regardless of your opinion of him as a person, he has achieved some impressive things.
Which part(s) did he do, though?
Sounds like a pr campaign
If Elon would have looked back, he would have seen that Delorean has already tried bare metal, and it’s nearly impossible to fix. Dent your truck? May as well paint it.
I mean, Elon obviously doesn’t care about repairability, but the first few fender benders will result in a pile of articles about how unfixable the body panels actually are.
But at least John DeLorean didn’t demand that the parts be accurate to within a few microns. Maybe he was too busy making cocaine deals to do it, but still…
I just realized how accurate the comparison probably is…
Although Musk is famously on Ketamine instead.
to build it to that accuracy the car would have to cost millions
To build it with that accuracy would be physically impossible. Guess he forgot about thermal expansion and contraction. Guess he forgot about the weather…
Musk is a scammer who has almost no practical understanding of engineering.
He (and unfortunately many after him) forgot about thermal expansion and contraction as well with his dumbass Hyperloop idea. Have a hermetically sealed metal tube with a vacuum run exposed for 200km and let’s just ignore thermal expansion. One station would have to move left and right for several meters throughout the day, every day for that, the 200km pipe somehow would need to be able to move about… His “designs” and “ideas” are engineering nightmares
Indeed, that’s about 10 to 100 times more accuracy than other automakers. Those tolerances just aren’t necessary so no supplier is going to have the tools or infrastructure in place to make parts to such a high degree. Body shop alone sees fluctuations in millimeters because industrial robots can’t do any better than half millimeter accuracy, if they’re brand new.
If you can even get something like +/-3 or 4 mm with say a cpk of 1,33 you are doing pretty well for a whole body.
It’s probably a pr stunt. If this is real then they are doomed because they have not yet understood that you need to compensate tolerances and design a robust assembly that can handle this. If you are trying to get crazy high part precision you have not understood how big scale manufacturing works. This is why the Japanese are often so highly regarded in this and might be the true art of car (or large scale) engineering.
Two things, not necessarily related.
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The cybertronk looks highly regarded when put together correctly. Imagine if it has the panel gaps of other cars TSLA makes.
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My tinfoil hat theory on why Elon is acting all right wing all of the sudden is to get those idiots to buy electric bare metal Pontiac Aztecs with “unbreakable” windows instead of F-150’s
My theory is he’s a wealthy dude, so he’s going to have right wing tendencies since the right wing benefits wealthy dudes.
Also, one of his kids came out as trans, he went nuts, blamed social media for making his kid a “degenerate”. Then bought twitter to destroy it out of revenge.
He’s kinda like a James Bond villain, but so much dumber.
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My tinfoil hat theory on why Elon is acting all right wing all of the sudden is to get those idiots to buy electric bare metal Pontiac Aztecs with “unbreakable” windows instead of F-150’s
can he recoup $44 billion tho…? it’s a bold move.meme
wouldn’t it be nice to have some kind of logical explanation for his demented thrashings?
While I don’t know the cost to develop the cyber truck assuming it was 0 dollars to make the cost of the Twitter deal from cyber truck alone, it would take 88 thousand of them at elon getting 100% of the money from the sales. ( how he expects to sell an electric truck for 50k is beyond me)
I don’t think he actually cares about the money he blew on Twitter. Money is a construct and that is even more true for rich people. If he cared about the money, he wouldn’t have tossed Twitter down the shitter.
I think he cares more about the impression he is making, whether it be good or bad. People are talking about Elon and that’s all that matters.
He was ordered by the court to proceed with the Twitter deal, that he vocally tried to back out of.
That doesn’t mean he cares about the money.
100% everyone is making fun of teslas already, so imagine how the people feel who pre-ordered some garbage years ago. Now with their “leaked” email they can tell people how their future car will have toleraces that are on an qtomic level. These are also the prople who believed that teslas can fly in 3 years. Which was in 2016 i believe
I had exactly the same theory for 2. He seems to genuinely want to save humanity (reusable rockets, electric vehicles etc) and so converting right wingers to electric would fit the goal
You people still exist?
“Had” is past tense. “Theory” is “a supposition or system of ideas indended to explain something”. I didn’t say that I thought that was the most likely theory. I thought lemmy was supposed to be able to hold a nuanced conversation?
Dumbest comment I’ve seen on lemmy to date
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I’m sorry but that’s utterly delusional. That’s the same logic as saying that Trump was playing chess with everytime and covfefe was on purpose.
This is what I was alluding to, however people seem to have jumped on the “oh he is an Elon fan, quick, tell him he is an idiot!” Rather than accepting nuance
You can’t be serious
“Theory” is “a supposition or system of ideas indended to explain something”. I didn’t say that it was the most likely theory
Lol no one that replied to you is replying to your first sentence dude. Elon doesn’t want to save the world.
Here is a video showing why tech billionaires are idiots. They only care about $$$, not the world.
Electric vehicles aren’t meant to save humanity. They are meant to save the car. If we removed all gas vehicles off the road right that wouldn’t even stop 30 percent of emissions. The only way to save humanity at this point is to stop capitalism. As long as we continue to expect the market to find a solution to a problem that has no profit motivator we will never save humanity. Elon included.
Ahem, if we removed all gas vehicles from the road right now, including farm vehicles, humanity would starve to death within a few months. Some subsistence farmers in developing countries that don’t need fertilizer would survive.
But it would definitely be the end of industrial society.
Emissions from transportation are a large proportion of global greenhouse gas emissions, so it absolutely does make sense to decarbonize them. This isn’t really debatable. It’s been part of the ICC strategy and negotiations for decades now.
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