Lucid in production hell, using parts ordered off of Amazon and Office Staff to complete cars

[kvenom]

https://jalopnik.com/lucid-using-non-plant-employees-amazon-parts-to-finish-1848829247

Insider says it spoke to 13 people, currently and formerly employed by the automaker, for the interview. One interviewee, a former supervisor, described it as, “We were running by the seat of our pants.” Because of the complexity of Lucid’s design, elements like the glass for the windshield and roof would arrive broken, and some parts just wouldn’t fit when they arrived, either. In some cases, a car designed with one part in mind would need a substitute to finish it or get it into production, and that substitute might not even work with all the systems already produced and installed on the vehicle.


Many cars were coming off the line only 80 percent finished. Parts were getting ordered from Amazon. Meanwhile, desk-set employees were being shipped from headquarters in California to Arizona to help make the vehicles themselves — many of Lucid’s employees putting in 100-hour weeks to keep up. It has been a production hell of its own.

Yowza...

Hopefully, Rivian is getting a discount on their amazon orders

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[Speedrye]

Making cars is hard...

 

[moosetags]

Ford and Chevrolet make it look easy, but it took them over 100 years to get there.

Brian

 

[shamoo]

Wonder how much of this is true and how much of it is clickbait.

All it takes is a random employee (who is probably not even involved in the manufacturing....maybe a software engineer or something) to overhear a part ordered from Amazon, for this to get all over EV news.

I work in the automotive industry (CyberSecurity) and I "hear" things all the time. When I actually dig in, it turns out to be nothing. Our legal/PR teams have to deal with this stuff all the time.

As Elon Musk said, production and scaling are hard. Prototypes are easy.

I commend Rivian and Lucid (and a host of others) for trying their best to get in the game. Competition is good for everyone. People are idiots if they think a brand new technology is going to happen perfectly and compare to something like Ford who's been manufacturing vehicles for 150 years. The early adopters are the ones who have to bear the worst of the issues. But that's what they signed up for.

 

[NY_Rob]

Someone needs to start sleeping on the factory floor.... just saying

People give Elon all kinds of $hit, but for better or worse he got past Production Hell and made vertical integration part of Tesla's business model while others are still just talking about it.

 

[manitou202]

Someone needs to start sleeping on the factory floor.... just saying

People give Elon all kinds of $hit, but for better or worse he got past Production Hell and made vertical integration part of Tesla's business model while others are still just talking about it.

Most automakers used to be vertically integrated. There are pros and cons of both.

When you are a smaller company, it's easy to remain vertically integrated. However as volumes and complexity increases, handing off design and manufacturing to third parties has a lot of benefits. Most of the time it doesn't make sense to be an expert in everything, when there are plenty of Tier 1 suppliers who can make certain components better than you.

As an example Tesla is currently buying more than 50% of their batteries (LFP) from a third party (CATL).

 

[Rob Stark]

Most automakers used to be vertically integrated. There are pros and cons of both.

When you are a smaller company, it's easy to remain vertically integrated. However as volumes and complexity increases, handing off design and manufacturing to third parties has a lot of benefits. Most of the time it doesn't make sense to be an expert in everything, when there are plenty of Tier 1 suppliers who can make certain components better than you.

As an example Tesla is currently buying more than 50% of their batteries (LFP) from a third party (CATL).

The reason the Detroit 3 outsourced and sold their autoparts divisions is the UAW. Tesla innovates and eliminates jobs at will and retrains workers to do something else. At a Union shop every job and job description is negotiated.

A supplier to the Detroit 3 can act much more like Tesla. Plus a supplier can pay workers much less vs a Detroit 3 UAW worker.

BTW Tesla said almost half their cars sold last quarter are LFP. In large part because of Cobalt/Nickel shortages/prices. LFP cars are standard range with less kWh per vehicle. This would make LFP kWh far less than half of Tesla vehicles sold. Chinese companies own patents for LFP automotive grade cells. Tesla/Panasonic/Korean cell manufactures would have to step on Chinese patents to produced LFP cells. Chinese owned companies have been stealing Western intellectual property for decades but any non-Chinese company stealing Chinese IP may find it hard to do business in China.

 

[Rob Stark]

Ford who's been manufacturing vehicles for 150 years.

They don't make cars like the 1872 Model T anymore.

 

[jjwolf120]

When you are a smaller company, it's easy to remain vertically integrated.

This is not true. As a smaller company, it is very hard to be vertically integrated. The main issue is that a smaller company doesn't have the economies of scale to make everything. GM used to be very vertically integrated, but as their market share dropped they no longer had the scale to produce everything in house. Also, being vertically integrated runs the risk of being less flexible. You use the items you produce regardless all other considerations.

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