Buy Teslas early or late to avoid quality issues: Elon Musk’s stunning admission

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has admitted there were quality and production issues with the volume-selling Model 3 until late 2020 – which likely won’t come as happy news to the car’s many owners around the world.

In a frank 49-minute interview conducted at SpaceX’s facilities in Boca Chica Texas with automotive engineer Sandy Munro, Musk admitted to some of the flaws with the Model 3 that have proved a challenge as the EV brand grows.

Munro, by the way, is a well-known automotive engineer and podcast host in the USA, who specialises in tearing-down and assessing the build quality of vehicles, including Teslas.

“It took us a while to kinda iron out the production process,” said Musk early in the wide-ranging interview that focused on production, technology and the engineering nuances of Teslas.

Musk said would-be Tesla owners should buy very early in the production ramp-up or once volume production had settled in if they wanted a car with fewer potential issues.

“If you really want, like, things to be dialled [in], it’s actually the very early cars or once the production has levelled off,” Musk told Munro on his Munro Live YouTube channel.

Key to poor fit and finish that has long plagued Teslas were issues with painting them, according to Musk.

“The paint wasn’t necessarily drying enough,” said Musk on why there were often discrepancies on different parts of the same car.

And he says it wasn’t until late in 2020 that Tesla finally began building Model 3s consistently with superior quality, which is more than a year after the car went on sale in Australia, in that time racking up about 6000 sales locally.

“We actually did improve gap and paint quality quite a bit towards the end of last year,” he said.

That suggests the updated Tesla Model 3 on sale now should be better put together than earlier cars.

Many Australian Tesla owners have previously said they are unfazed by Tesla quality issues, although anecdotal evidence and online forums suggest plenty of buyers and would-be buyers are concerned by sub-par quality.

Musk reinforced his previous comments on the challenges of manufacturing cars in big volumes, something Tesla has only achieved in the last couple of years (in 2020 Tesla manufactured half a million cars for the first time).

“Reaching volume production with a reliable part at an affordable price is excruciatingly difficult,” said Musk. “Production is hell.”

Musk also touched on Autopilot when quizzed on the importance of clear and accurate lane markings as cars increasingly take over the driving duties in the rush towards autonomy.

While he admitted “it would certainly be helpful to have roads with accurate markings”, Musk was also adamant driverless cars must be able to avoid a crash in any situation, not many how wild.

“For self-driving, even if the road is completely wrong and a UFO lands in the middle of the road the car still cannot crash and still needs to do the right thing. A prime directive for Autopilot is ‘don’t crash’.”

Currently Tesla charges about $14,000 for future “full self-driving” software, which it cannot say when it will be available on cars.

Musk also gives some clues to some of the additional changes coming for the new Tesla Model S and Tesla Model X, each of which is not scheduled to arrive in Australia until 2022.

As well as better performance, no gear selector and an aircraft-inspired steering wheel ‘yoke’, he says each will use a lithium-ion 12V battery for accessories and ancillaries – as used by some manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz, especially for plug-in hybrid models.

“It’s got way more capacity and the counter and cycle life match that of the main [battery] pack,” said Musk, adding that cars should move to 48V electrical system to be able to run thinner, ligther wires and have power and data running along the same wires.

Lithium-ion batteries can have issues with charge and longevity in extreme cold situations and are also expensive to replace, often costing $700-800.

However, they should last many years longer than the lead-acid batteries currently used in most cars.

Oh, and one final comment from Musk on some of the early Tesla Model S models:

“The early Model S’s had I think probably the worst seat of any car I ever sat in! I called it the stone toadstool.”

Well, that’s honesty!