Tesla slammed a report Thursday which claimed a number of the electric carmaker’s employees said the company is facing high costs for the reworking of flawed parts coming off the Tesla assembly line as having “nothing to do with the quality of our cars.”
Early Thursday, CNBC reported that Tesla employees said the company is “manufacturing a high ratio of flawed parts and vehicles that need rework and repairs,” and that the situation is so severe that Tesla can’t fix all the mistakes at its massive plant in Fremont.
The CNBC report cited an unnamed Tesla engineer as estimating that “40 percent of the parts made or received at its Fremont factory require rework,” and that the reviews and re-working of parts coming off the assembly line, “has contributed to Model 3 delays.” The Model 3, and its base price of $35,000, is Tesla’s first stab at a mass-market electric vehicle, and has been the subject of several production delays.
When reached for comment by this news organization, a Tesla spokesperson said the CNBC report completely misses the “critical point” of the company’s commitment to producing high quality vehicles.
“Every Model S or Model X on the assembly line must pass through hundreds of inspection and test points,” said the Tesla spokesperson. “Towards the end of the line, every vehicle is then subjected to an additional quality control process involving more than 500 other inspections and tests. The majority of issues identified at the end of line inspection are extremely minor, and are resolved in a matter of minutes.”
Tesla also took to task how the CNBC report focused on the matter of remanufacturing of parts, saying that the process is so commonplace in the automotive industry that “literally every automaker on earth performs.”
“Like other automakers, Tesla remanufactures parts because doing so uses fewer materials and less energy than building a new part from scratch,” said the Tesla spokesperson, who added that at the end of the day, the company wants the perfect car to roll off its assembly line every time.
“In what world is the pursuit of perfection looked down on?” asked the Tesla spokesperson. “Not one we want to live in.”
