The engineers don't give a damn about a Munro PR video about a competitor, period. It's a complete non-issue for them, and the same goes for their managers who are the ones who decide to work with Munro. They want to know every detail about how all the sausage is made (or what the sausage actually is). They don't care if the car is well made or poorly made; they're focused on the how; after all, even a car with severe quality control issues can offer useful insights. Besides, every peculiar (or even dumb) design or manufacturing decision they've made was previously laid bare by companies like Munro. Think of the process as something more like peer review or a morbidity and mortality conference for doctors. It's not a public process, despite something like this video.
Basically, the people who would care if Munro upset the company by speaking favorably about Tesla are the people who have no involvement in whether their company works with Munro in the first place. If someone from Ford marketing told Ford engineering to quit working with Munro because of a video, they'd be laughed at and promptly ignored.
I can see there being a Model 3 recall over that kind of stuff. What's the point of over the air software updates if your hardware is unsafe.
https://www.nfpa.org/Training-and-Events/By-topic/Alternativ...
The battery disconnect procedures there, using the high voltage service disconnects, start with lowering the back seat or jacking up the rear of the car.
Tesla provides the location of the little access panel on the quick response sheet here:
https://www.tesla.com/firstresponders
Requiring 12 volts to pop the hood is not great but it doesn't seem to be that much of a departure either.
The car could be upside down or on a very steep hill. It all seems pretty frightening stuff. You're basically just praying you don't have a serious crash which is back to the 60s.
I don't think that emergency procedures should be matched to other electric vehicles they should be matched to existing ICE cars.
That’s not a difficult procedure: open the hood (forcefully if need be, latch is in the front), cut the wire in the place marked in bright orange and labeled accordingly - and immediately visible and accessible upon opening the hood.
"I'm calling this out about your car. You got quality problems. We can help."
In reality, I think this has almost no impact on his business other than a little bit of publicity. Well run companies on the scale of GM are going to be just as interested in the data on a competitor whether their competitor is better or worse. There is always something to be learned. Ford is going to learn different things from Hyundai and from Mercedes...but they are going to learn.
> Plus, the engineers told me, the cost models are proven. Some manufactures, they said, actually hand their own parts to Munro asking them to use their model to see how close they can get to the actual cost of manufacture. Munro says their numbers always come very close, and that they’ve even been accused of having insider information. Munro isn’t just there to help engineers learn about how the competition designs and assembles its cars, it’s also there to help automakers—who really should be called “auto assemblers”—figure out if they’re getting ripped off by their parts suppliers. Knowing exactly how much it costs to build a wheel bearing, for example, can act as leverage for negotiation against a supplier of that part. At the same time, suppliers also go to Munro to learn. If, for example, one of their competitors is selling a part for what seems like impossibly too little, the supplier might ask Munro to tear it down and figure out how the competitor is saving cost.
To be fair though, Tesla's manufacturing quality does indeed falling behind their targeted segment majorly. Like Munro said, even Kia makes better assembly these days (without uneven gaps etc.) But yes, have a paid contract for product promotion doesn't hurt