[Robotbeat]

Tesla wishes to do full automation of basically everything, even final assembly. According to this recent Bernstein report (by a Tesla critic), this hasn't ever been successfully done before: https://twitter.com/valleyhack/status/979434674144423936

The point of the report is that Tesla is trying to automate too much, beyond what everyone else does today and where others have tried and failed spectacularly. The report uses that history as proof it cannot be done and therefore Tesla will fail.

Are you disputing that by saying Benz does full automation of even final assembly?

[agumonkey]

bmw x2 is impressively devoid of humans

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TubOzvqOCmI

if you look closely in the background at 10:14 you can catch a wild homo sapiens wandering between an army of robocop arm prototypes

[Robotbeat]

Your video makes my point very nicely.

From 12:00 onward, though, humans are used for many tasks, including multiple assembly steps and especially final assembly. These are things that Tesla wishes to fully automate and which industry experts think they're crazy for trying. And honestly, looking at that video (especially the wire harness installation at 17:00), it sure looks like an incredibly hard problem to solve and the industry experts certainly have a good point.

[agumonkey]

I think it would be hard if approached as a human technique automation, but there might be other ways to connect power and signal lines in a car in more mechanical ways. Depending on how much thought and desire has been spent by experienced factory designers...

[Robotbeat]

You're absolutely right, and there's a lot of innovation that comes not from automating existing human technique but from changing how things are made so that the technique can be easily automated. For example: from through-hole components in PCBs to surface mount components in PCBs. Or even the PCB itself, which replaced wire wrapping (which, granted, can be automated) and soldering components together with free wires.

The design and the technique are critical variables that must be tweaked to make automation feasible.

[agumonkey]

Yeah, that's exactly the kind of shift I was thinking about. Now that said, I don't think Tesla is ready to do this, which would somehow prove old timers right. If Tesla managed to this bmw level of automation they'd be pushing enough cars to fulfill demands and keep investors. Later they'll make that 20% jump if Musk really wants to make a SpaceX kind of leap.

[Robotbeat]

They are pushing enough cars, I think. One factory producing about 4000 cars per week is a very large factory, indeed!

I think Tesla is continually thinking of ways to improve the design, develop new techniques that can be automated easier. And I don't think these are all making it into the Model 3. Some will need to wait until the Model Y or even later. For instance, apparently the Model Y will ditch the 12 volt battery and feature a MUCH shorter/simpler wiring harness (which is one thing that's incredibly hard to automate, so making it simpler should help a lot): https://insideevs.com/tesla-model-y-ditch-12-volt-battery-95...

(with the caveat that Model Y plans seem to change each quarter)

[qaq]

What industry experts were saying about Falcon?