[ta76893547]

I work in manufacturing automation so I may be biased, but attempts to robotize the manufacturing of a product that's being iterated on continuously (Tesla) or automating the assembly of lots of low-volume products is always going to go poorly.

Large car companies like GM or Ford hire automation companies to build automation equipment that meets a very specific spec for assembly steps, tolerances, rates, etc. They design components with ease of manufacturing as a significant factor. How something will be assembled is a constant consideration while designing. The product being run on these lines never really changes and human are only used when the the operations are so complex that the equipment doesn't pay for itself in (typically) 2 years. This is very rare, mostly people are only there to keep the machines filled with parts.

In the sequence of

  design -> automate -> manufacture 

manufacture needs to be much larger than the others have good margins. You can't iterate on design without iterating on automate, so if you change the design a lot it's probably best to avoid trying to automate.