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$TSLA chose to cut corners in order to grow their deliveries amid a chip shortage. It will bite them in the future.
When watching a video by Cheddar on how Tesla navigated through the chip shortage, one thing that stood out was how $TSLA was willing to cut corners and deliver cars that weren't fully finished and at the same time, rewrote the code of the microchips they had to make their cars as functional as possible.

Meanwhile, $F $GM and other legacy automakers chose to not cut corners because
  1. they don't have a team of coders that can rewrite the code on the microchips and
  2. they weren't willing to deliver unfinished vehicles to customers

in the short term, Tesla has benefited significantly by being able to record high delivery numbers. But in the long run, it's going to lead to massive problems. By cutting a steering component, there's a concern about the safety of driving the car on the road. Tesla's engineers might think that the component isn't important. Only time will tell if it's truly important.
CNBC
Tesla cut a steering component from some cars to deal with chip shortage, sources say
Tesla omitted one of two electronic control units in the cars' electrical power assisted steering systems. Tens of thousands of cars are affected, sources say.

Sachiv's avatar
Actually there’s a paragraph on what $GM did in the cnbc article you’re referring to: “For example, in March 2021, General Motors said it was building some of its 2021 light-duty pickup trucks without a fuel management module, a move that hurt those trucks’ fuel economy. It blamed the chip shortage for the move.”
I’m surprised the NTSA or other country safety boards haven’t picked up on the $TSLA issue yet. But most mainstream press also push down harder on $TESLA than they do on legacy automakers…so I’m not surprised if the articles you link to are a written with a little exaggeration.
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