Re:Repairing My Tesla Model S Has Been a Nightmare
by maxander on Wednesday March 08, 2017 @02:44PM
(#13823077)
It would be interesting to know how spare parts work for a company like Tesla. Their sales, in terms of car counts, are huge for a company of their age but tiny relative to the greater auto industry, and many of their parts are niche things that may require special manufacturers.
What I would guess happened with these cases is that there's only one shop that manufactures some vital fob, and it has a lead time of N months when Tesla orders a batch of X bars- where N is potentially very large, because meanwhile the same shop might be in the middle of creating X*100 different fobs for GM and would need to re-tool their assembly line afterwards. Maintaining a reservoir of spare parts in that kind of environment would a guessing game, trading off the chance of this kind of fiasco versus the extra cars that could be made out of otherwise reserved parts.
What I would guess happened with these cases is that there's only one shop that manufactures some vital fob, and it has a lead time of N months when Tesla orders a batch of X bars- where N is potentially very large, because meanwhile the same shop might be in the middle of creating X*100 different fobs for GM and would need to re-tool their assembly line afterwards. Maintaining a reservoir of spare parts in that kind of environment would a guessing game, trading off the chance of this kind of fiasco versus the extra cars that could be made out of otherwise reserved parts.