Can't you buy Tesla's first new cars? The former vice president of quality revealed the inside story.

SMM: according to reports, Tesla's former vice president of quality Philippe Chain mentioned the company's unusual vehicle testing methods in an article, suggesting that consumers may not buy Tesla's first new cars.

In the automotive industry, Tesla is an outlier in many ways, such as its development and testing work. While most carmakers are notoriously slow to make changes and fully test their vehicles, Tesla has always been quick and has a much shorter time to test projects than traditional carmakers. , Philippe Chain shared his insights in an article explaining why Tesla was able to move so fast.

He gives an example: Tesla failed a test by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and the company completed vehicle improvements in just five days. Chain, who has worked for Renault, Tesla and Audi, said: "what Tesla only needs one meeting and five days to solve, Renault or Audi may take six months." Traditional car companies generally conduct a thorough investigation, find the source of the error, identify the internal responsible person, investigate the supplier's mistakes, and so on. "

He believes that speed is Tesla's theme. "A fast, value-driven process that implements work through maximum decentralization and uses a flattened structure to achieve rapid decision-making is the key to Tesla's success." Tesla emphasizes speed both in making decisions and in responding to what is happening, and this pursuit of speed is also reflected in other aspects of the company's operations.

Chain tells a story about pre-market testing of Model S: "vehicle long-term durability assessment is also a good example. When Elon and I discussed this, I told him that the engineers' calculations showed that the company needed to test the car for at least 1 million miles before it went on sale to identify potential flaws and fix them. The test will take six months. This is an industry practice, and I am not asking too much, because German car companies will test a car for 10 million kilometers and two winters before releasing it. In response, Elon replied in his usual concise way: 'all right, test it. But I will not postpone the release date of the vehicle.' I said that there may be some problems in the vehicle testing process, and the mass production model needs to be modified, which will take time. In response, Elon replied:'I know that if necessary, we will make changes after the listing.' I asked him, is it okay even if a vehicle recall is involved? He said: 'yes. As for other problems, we can solve them through OTA upgrade.'"

Chain says Musk doesn't care about discrepancies in the panels of vehicles delivered to consumers, which he believes can be fixed after delivery, because he believes consumers are willing to ignore these quality issues in order to pick up the car as soon as possible.

Chain admits that he thinks Tesla's approach is too "risky", but it is also what gives Tesla a "competitive advantage". Not long ago, Tesla began to deliver Model Y, and some media revealed that the first batch of Model Y delivered to car owners did have quality problems, which were probably caused by Tesla's "pursuit of speed".

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