[mdorazio]

100% agree with you, having been in and around automotive factories for years. Tesla is really capitalizing on two things here:

1) Tesla customers seem extraordinarily willing to overlook production defects and servicing/repair issues compared to customers of other OEMs. This lets them get away with lower manufacturing quality tolerances than they normally would, as noted in the article mentioning the water ingress issues. Seems like they're going to further capitalize on this customer tolerance with the paint process changes.

2) As a result of only building BEVs with no legacy support requirements, Tesla is able to design the manufacturing process and vehicles themselves to be more efficient to assemble. It's a definite competitive advantage today and that's another thing some of their intended changes here will try to capitalize on. The question to me is how long it will be until the traditional OEMs catch up here.

[cptskippy]

> As a result of only building BEVs with no legacy support requirements, Tesla is able to design the manufacturing process and vehicles themselves to be more efficient to assemble.

While automakers reuse factories, they have no qualms about building new ones and closing old. I have family that works on assembly lines and every couple years they get an offer to move to New Mexico, Arizona, Tennessee, Georgia or wherever the new factory is being built.

What is the legacy albatross that hangs around ICE manufacturer necks?

[mdorazio]

A combination of supply chains, unions, dealers (they hate BEVs), support requirements for existing vehicles, cannibalization of existing vehicle lines, and (at the moment) cost of capital.