Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Tesla: A Trust-based company

I used to work in the auto industry.

On our way to elder-care I pointed out to Mrs ERJ that the over-flow parking lots in Lansing were filling up with newly built automobiles.

That means that something was found that was not to specification. When that happens the factory goes into something called "containment".

The rules are arcane. The job is not shipped off-property. When they run out of room to park the vehicles within the fence enclosing the factory, they rent property and ship them there. Still not considered "shipped off-property" because they are shipped to on-property.

A key point is that ownership of the vehicle is not released by the factory. It cannot legally be "shipped".

Parts that are within specification will eventually show up whether from Muncie, Indiana or South Korea, China or South Africa. Then the vehicles will flow back to the factory and be repaired on-property and run through all of the final, end-of-line quality checks.

Tesla is a trust-based company. They ship the vehicles that are out-of-spec to the dealer and trust that the dealer can fix them.

Tesla stepped on a sensitive piece of anatomy recently. They announced which dealerships they were closing next. I am not totally trusting. I wonder how careful those dealerships and repair technicians were when they repaired the vehicles Tesla dumped on them.

1 comment:

  1. Interesting. I did not know that - yet another sign of foreboding for Tesla. Have you followed Coyote Blog's articles on Tesla? Suffice to say, I do not have great faith in the company. I do not have even little faith in them.
    http://www.coyoteblog.com/

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