Tesla may encounter quality roadblocks as it rolls out its $35,000 Model 3. That’s the conclusion drawn from a conversation between Timothy B. Lee at Vox and industry analyst and Daily Kanban blogger Edward Niedermeyer.
A Los Angeles Times article from last October outlined some of the quality problems Tesla has been facing with its current $70,000-and-up models. However, purchasers of such high-end vehicles are focused not so much on quality as design and performance—think Ferrari and Lamborghini between the 1930s and the 1960s, suggests Niedermeyer. Of these cars’ owners, he writes, “If their Ferrari or Lamborghini breaks down, they have their chauffeur take them in a Mercedes or a Lexus.”
In contrast, customers looking for $35,000 cars tend to be very dependent on them and are very concerned about quality issues. And Silicon Valley companies today, he intimates, are equivalent to Detroit in the first half of the 20th century, before being forced to address quality issues by Japanese companies, especially Toyota.
Now in 1950, say, GM wasn’t a startup equivalent to Tesla, but both have demonstrated “arrogance,” says Niedermeyer, whereas what’s needed is an accumulated institutional knowledge and regimentation that can scale up to making a carmaker a mass-market player.
Niedermeyer contrasts Tesla with Google. Tesla is competing with traditional automakers, attempting to manufacture and sell one car to one consumer. Google, on the other hand, is focusing on its autonomous vehicle technology. Instead of proposing to manufacture its vehicles, Google is looking to leverage spare production capacity within traditional automakers to produce autonomous vehicles as shared mobility reduces overall demand for cars.
Read a transcript of the complete conversation between Lee and Niedermeyer here.
On a related note, Tesla responds to Niedermeyer’s claims about safety.
