This kind of snark seems uncalled for. He announced up front that he works for GM to let readers assess possible bias, and then he made an earnest on-topic comment. Working for GM doesn’t a priori turn someone into a PR flack.
I don't think anyone has mentioned Tesla in any company meetings that I've been to.
To be perfectly clear: Tesla and Elon have done many amazing things, and I like their approach in many areas: Marketing EVs as luxury vehicles is genius, remote updates are amazing, etc.
Elon has a daring attitude that is very refreshing to see, launching or running many companies simultaneously, making big bets on things like the Gigafactory, etc.
But they also do some silly stuff too, like the falcon wing doors on the X, and some of their vehicle assembly systems, while cool looking may be a bit too cutting edge. There's some stuff that you just don't try to prove on the production line while it is making your bread and butter.
Anyway, while my original comment may not have been nuanced, I do have a nuanced view of Tesla.
the falcon wing doors were a little wonky and the source of delays.... but the factory automation... i'm curious what you think.... because i think that is where they are really innovating. they say general assembly will be completely automated and no workers will touch these cars within a year or two.
Anything can be automated if it is designed for automation. The corollary is that if it cannot be automated, you don't do it (this will probably be an expensive lesson).
The question is: Will the automation pay off?
A machine that replaces 1 worker may cost $100,000 to $500,000 (factoring robotics, machine vision, and error proofing). The design for the part and design for automated assembly may be comparable. Now you've spent $1,000,000 to automate your carpet install. Congratulations. You could have installed carpet for 10 years manually at that price.
The big question to me is: Can Telsa learn Design for Automation in a scalable way? Other companies have tried it before and has never really payed off. iPhones are still largely hand-assembled for instance. I think the approach may pay off in the next 10-20 years, especially in light of how cheap small components have become due to the rise of smartphones; and the rise of Machine Learning.
To be clear,these are just my impressions from observations.
This is not accurate. Their early models often suffer from issues, but not long term.