[elindbe2]

But why turn around a legacy automaker, even if he thinks he could? It would have to fit into his greater strategy, e.g. providing branding for his EVs or providing auto workers that would otherwise be hard to find, etc.

I took this as just an offhand comment saying "we might be willing to do this if they can convince us it will benefit Tesla" not a statement on how likely it is to happen.

[bumby]

The benefit would be the manufacturing expertise they would gain. I believe he’s on the record saying mass production is a much harder problem than the type of technical challenges with building rockets.

[elindbe2]

Good point. I wonder how much expertise would actually transfer over from ICE manufacturers.

[bumby]

I used to program robots that made body panels. I think people get fixated on the “electric vs. combustion” part and can lose sight of how much other manufacturing is involved. The traditional auto companies have decades of lessons learned related to quality. To their credit, Tesla seems to learn fast but has had a lot of growing pains related to areas like quality control. There’s a surprisingly large amount of issues to prepare for when you make a seemingly straightforward design change like changing the material composition of an component to save money or weight, for instance.