Fit & Finish of the test drive event cars

[mikevbf]

Exactly. Especially as we are talking mainly about US customers at the moment.
And no offence, but when it comes to a lack in build quality, you Americans (ok, generalization, but from what I have experienced it at least seems to be true for many) seem to be far more...forgiving, shall we say, than customers in Europe (and possibly the rest of the world too). Here, build quality is of the essence. A car that has noticable flaws can ruin the image of a company. See Opel for example. They had cars with crappy fit and finish for some years, and now they are on the brink of going under - even though now their cars are finally up to par again. Tragic irony.

A snippet from Brianman's notes on something Elon said in the conference call today:

"Keep refining to make sure that the gaps and fit are as close to perfection as physics will allow.
Beefed up our interior trim engineering group."

2012/07/25 Q2 2012 QA Conf Call notes

Hopefully we will soon see the results of these efforts.

 

[MikeK]

Yes, that is good news indeed! I wish I could see the results of that effort on body panel fit before I have to lock in my color. I'm considering dark blue in part because it does a better job hiding issues with gap uniformity...

 

[malcolm]

Joe Public may not spot issues but you can bet your life that the autopress will. Tesla will be / is being judged against the current industry standards. So I don't have a problem with members of the board here at TMC listing concerns and pulling up comparisons with BMW, Audi, Porsche etc. Yes, on one level it is uninformed armchair criticism - none of us have tried to make a production EV from scratch - but it is important to feedback issues and voice concerns. Even if it is about cup holders :biggrin:.

 

[Robert.Boston]

"Keep refining to make sure that the gaps and fit are as close to perfection as physics will allow.
Beefed up our interior trim engineering group."

This section of the call was one that made me very happy -- and happy that my car is coming late this year. Inspired confidence that the little problems will go away before production really ramps up this autumn.

 

[kevincwelch]

Exactly. Especially as we are talking mainly about US customers at the moment.
And no offence, but when it comes to a lack in build quality, you Americans (ok, generalization, but from what I have experienced it at least seems to be true for many) seem to be far more...forgiving, shall we say, than customers in Europe (and possibly the rest of the world too). Here, build quality is of the essence. A car that has noticable flaws can ruin the image of a company. See Opel for example. They had cars with crappy fit and finish for some years, and now they are on the brink of going under - even though now their cars are finally up to par again. Tragic irony.

Mainly the reason why I have bought either Japanese or german cars in the past.

This will be the first American car. Hopefully the fit and finish doesn't live up to my prejudices of American cars.

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