Quote:
Originally Posted by upsidedownfunnel
Why did you feel like you had to edit out the words "and spartan interior" from my quote? That made my point make far more sense. You make it seem like I'm blaming the build quality issues alone on battery cost. I was more referring to the quality of the materials and the spartan interior. I also believe the actual build quality suffers because they have to cut costs wherever possible to get the car affordable after the battery costs.
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I did that because there are two different points being made and should be understood separately. The spartan interior was a product planning/business case decision which may have actually been a consequence of the total variable cost of each vehicle, impacted by the battery cost. For that analysis, I agree with you and had no further point to make.
"Quality" is usually defined as the absence of defects and/or conformance to requirements. If a low cost, spartan material is used, it can be high quality if it fits well, does not tear, wear prematurely, etc. A totally spartan interior can be of very high quality. Poor build quality is used to describe the manner and results of the actual assembly, e.g., do parts fit, are the parts correctly produced? The interior of the Model 3 started with poor build quality with examples of headliners wrinkling and poorly trimmed seats.
The poor assembly quality of the entire vehicle (body panel fits were a major issue) is not a result of variable cost management as much as it is inexperience, lack of development/testing, and hubris. Poor advance manufacturing planning and use of robotics negatively affected the plant's throughput and first time through capability. Whether the car they were launching was a traditional ICE vehicle or had a disproportionate cost in the powertrain's battery, they simply didn't have the knowledge or experience to get this plant rolling at volume levels. The decisions they made sometimes utilized higher-cost processes than others which may have resulted in better first time through quality.