Lol, I saw that after I sent it, but was absolutely not confident enough to change it. I don’t work in that field any more so that is not the only thing about materials that you probably know better than me. And I’m sorry for the wall of text. My bad.
Musk thinks everything should be electric because it’s cool.
I strongly disagree. Things are getting more and more electric across all manufacturing because it is cheap. A single touch screen that drops in place under a snap on bezel with a premade cable harness and some programming time is so much faster and cheaper than designing, installing, wiring, coding, and testing physical buttons or mechanical linkages. PCBs can be tested in a negligible amount of time.
Mechanical door locks would have been cheaper.
No. Sorry, but no. The locks were going to be electrically operated no matter what. But the inclusion of standard mechanical components would increase the cost significantly.
very common, cheap technology
Yes, but that would be electrical components. It’s not very intuitive, I agree. But cost is the sole reason things are becoming more “electronic”. Electronics are extremely cheap compared to their analog ancestors. And not only that, but since very few mfrs are using off the shelf mechanical components, they are now less supplied and harder to get. So their cost is going up. Electronics are going down.
I don’t know the engineering endeavors that he may or may not have been directly involved with. I’m not entirely sure what “from on high” means, but I would presume you are referring to his net value and authority. In that case, I would say he is no different than literally any other CEO. He made decisions that made him a profit. That’s what they do. GE is a great test case for this. Nearly destroyed the company in the long term so that board members see a small financial gain in the short term, then dump the carcass on the next guy. It’s just money. That’s all.
engineered these crazy locks
I would joke that since they don’t work then I doubt any engineering went into them at all. But I know that isn’t true.
So I wonder if you could elaborate on what you mean by “crazy locks”? I did a lot of work investigating the manufacturing equipment and their use, so I remember a bit about their components, design, and assembly; but I did not work with those directly so I could be missing something entirely. I don’t remember there being anything groundbreaking about the mechanics of the door locks. But the general build always felt… “thinner”. Most manufacturers stay away from minimum standards by at least the standard deviation or two, so if the required gauge was 18 ± 1, a typical mfr would use 20+. Tesla would use 18. On the nose. That was a lot more common in automotive but even hyundai/kia used wide margins for safety. All that to say, I have a hard time believing the door locks were so complex that a sizable investment would be anything other than reinventing the wheel, but even moreso that it was even worth the superfluous cost.
One of the last jobs I had there was a machine that they picked up third hand and cobbled together with some very sketchy safety systems that wildly failed requirements. I was there for days and it was one of the more extensive reports I’ve ever made on a single installation. The control system was designed by the onsite engineers and passed flawlessly. But they had a lot to do to get the equipment usable.
There’s absolutely a reason to not engineer something you’re not required to. It’s called capitalism. Tesla cut every corner they could.
Luigi: lol same