OEMs – Page 4946 – I wish I had more to offer

Austria triumphs in Mazda’s European technician contest

Austria’s Thomas Hochleitner, Martin Stoiber and Stefan Bunderla were crowned champions in Mazda’s 2018 technician tournament, the European MazTech Contest, in the Italian capital yesterday. As Mazda’s winning team from the European region, the trio who hail from dealerships in Kammern and Linz, will represent Mazda Motor Europe at the MazTech World Finals in Japan… Continue reading Austria triumphs in Mazda’s European technician contest

Tesla Pushes To Improve Service Center Coverage Density As Model 3 Deliveries Climb #ElonTweets

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Published on October 17th, 2018 |

by Kyle Field

Tesla Pushes To Improve Service Center Coverage Density As Model 3 Deliveries Climb #ElonTweets

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October 17th, 2018 by Kyle Field

Tesla CEO @ElonMusk took to Twitter to admit that Tesla had found some gaps in its global service center coverage and is now hard at work to improve its coverage over the next 3–6 months.

Specifically, Elon shared that Tesla would push to ensure full coverage of North America with its service centers over the next 3–6 months. Looking ahead, he shared that Tesla would be working to ensure similar levels of coverage in all countries where Tesla has operations by the end of 2019.

The news comes on the heels of Tesla’s successful ramp up of production and deliveries of the Model 3 which saw tens of thousands of Teslas sent out into geographies that hadn’t seen much action in the past. The latest wave of woes for Tesla started when its Model 3 went into production in June of 2017 and was followed by a full year of production hell.

Tesla and Elon pulled out all the stops to reach the target production rate of 5,000 Model 3s per week — and they did. The herculean effort required flying in new production lines from Germany, building a new general assembly line in a “tent” in the back lot of Tesla’s Fremont factory, and calling all hands on deck to put the hurt on the production lines and force them to comply with the will of Elon.

Emerging from the darkness, Tesla’s production troubles quickly morphed into birthing pains as Tesla’s delivery teams across the US choked on the 3× increase in deliveries. Deliveries of the Model 3 are spread across a distributed network of stores spanning the United States, making it difficult to quickly deploy improvements and standards.

Just the same, Tesla calmed the storm over the course of a couple of weeks as minor production issues and the overblown panel gap issues were tuned out on the production lines. In parallel, delivery teams improved their pre-delivery check processes and squeezed out most of the delivery issues.

The look at service centers is a look at the inevitable flow of Tesla’s vehicles that will either be forced in for service after an accident or require service for something that’s just not quite right in the car. That can be something as small as replacing a door handle all the way on up to the replacement of a full drive unit.

The flow of Model 3s out into the wild will result in a similar spike in requests for service at Tesla’s service centers, though the tail of requests will lag behind deliveries, as accidents and some other service requests don’t happen on a schedule.

Elon Musk and the team at Tesla started working on service center service times a few weeks back, as soon as Model 3 customers started voicing complaints of lengthy service times, with waits of several months for repairs being the norm. As part of the push, Tesla brought body shop work in-house at a few key locations in an attempt to streamline the repair process for its vehicles.

Early reports on the new service were positive, with some customers getting their repaired vehicles back in just a few hours. Same day turnaround is still far from the norm, but it showed that Tesla was working towards solutions and had some results to show for its early efforts.

Today’s tweets from Elon confirm that there is still work to do just to achieve the critical mass of service centers that would be required to get Tesla’s cars serviced. Beyond the base coverage, there is still work to do to ensure that all of its service center personnel are sufficiently trained and that the centers have the parts needed to get its vehicles repaired in a reasonable amount of time.

Tesla has pushed the envelope in just about every piece of its business, and service is no exception, as it has historically utilized its service teams to come pick up vehicles for service, leaving a loaner vehicle with the owner. Doing this drastically reduces the amount of effort required from the owner and from personal experience, it makes service all but a non-issue.

That wasn’t good enough so Tesla kept on innovating, deploying a roaming network of repair personnel, which it calls Rangers, that were trained and equipped to fix just about any issue on a Tesla that didn’t require a lift. That was estimated to be around 80% of all repairs and Tesla delivered in spades.

I utilized Tesla’s Ranger service to have the door handles on our Model S replaced. The service went off without a hitch and was actually a great experience. Tesla had already committed to doubling its mobile service fleet by the end of this year and the renewed focus on service center coverage is surely a part of its efforts to ensure timely and efficient service for all of its customers.

With every new day, there comes a new challenge. Today, it’s service center coverage; tomorrow, the moon!! Okay, so maybe Mars is the target, but the moon sounded better.

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Kyle Field I'm a tech geek passionately in search of actionable ways to reduce the negative impact my life has on the planet, save money and reduce stress. Live intentionally, make conscious decisions, love more, act responsibly, play. The more you know, the less you need. TSLA investor.

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Breaking News — Tesla Seals The Deal For Gigafactory 3 In China

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Published on October 17th, 2018 |

by Steve Hanley

Breaking News — Tesla Seals The Deal For Gigafactory 3 In China

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October 17th, 2018 by Steve Hanley

It’s official. Tesla has acquired just under 1300 acres of land in the Shanghai Lingang Equipment Industrial Zone for its Gigafactory 3. The factory is expected to cover about 1200 of those acres. The official signing ceremony for the transfer of land to Tesla took place in China on October 17, today.

Tesla is pushing hard to get the Gigafactory 3 project moving forward. Thanks to the tit for tat trade war initiated by the current US president and his crack team of economic advisers, Tesla cars manufactured in America now must pay an import tariff of 40%, making it hard for them to compete against locally produced automobiles. Cars built in the new factory outside Shanghai will be exempt from that tariff.

Tesla plans to be a major force in the Chinese new car market, especially as China institutes its latest EV policy starting January 1, 2019. After that date, every manufacturer building cars in the country will be required to produce a certain percentage of electric cars, known locally as new energy vehicles. Battery electric cars will get the most credits under the system. Plug-in hybrids will get a smaller credits.

Companies who wish to continue building cars with gasoline or diesel engines will be required to buy credits in order to do so. That will raise the selling price of those cars, making new energy vehicles more competitive in the marketplace.

Last month, Tesla began advertising numerous jobs for construction workers to help build the new factory, which is expected to have a capacity of 500,000 vehicles a year. Tesla expects the factory to begin producing cars in fewer than 2 years time — an incredibly short ramp up from breaking ground on the factory to getting cars rolling off the assembly line and into the hands of customers. But when have short timelines ever been a problem for Tesla?

It reportedly has increased the funding committed to the Gigafactory 3 project to $681 million. And as Vincent indicates on Twitter, local banks in the Shanghai area are actively engaged in lining up the additional funding needed to build GF3.

With the biggest new car market in the world, China is an important market for Tesla. Just how important is indicated by the fact that it is moving forward aggressively with plans for a Chinese factory before committing to a factory in Europe. Check out this video from the World Economic Forum on the rosy prospects for electric cars in China:

Check out more Tesla China news if this isn’t enough for you.

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Steve Hanley Steve writes about the interface between technology and sustainability from his home in Rhode Island and anywhere else the Singularity may take him. His muse is Charles Kuralt — “I see the road ahead is turning. I wonder what's around the bend?”

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More than 2,000 Volkswagen Group in Spain employees will benefit from SEAT’s health services

SEAT is extending its Health, Safety, Emergencies and Corporate Wellness services to all Volkswagen Group in Spain companies. From now on, more than 2,000 workers at Volkswagen Group Retail España, Volkswagen Group Services and MAN Energy Solutions España y Canarias will benefit from the health services that SEAT provides to its own 15,000 employees. For… Continue reading More than 2,000 Volkswagen Group in Spain employees will benefit from SEAT’s health services

European Dealer Council: Audi and European sales partners shape the retailing of the future

AUDI AG and the European Dealer Council exchange views on the future business model and discussed growth areas at the conference of the European Dealer Council today (Wednesday). When the new contracts take effect on April 1, 2020, the new AUDI sales strategy will begin, fundamentally changing the sales model and making it fitter for… Continue reading European Dealer Council: Audi and European sales partners shape the retailing of the future

Ax at the car

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Fixing Salvaged Teslas, The Ingineer Way

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Published on October 16th, 2018 |

by Guest Contributor

Fixing Salvaged Teslas, The Ingineer Way

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October 16th, 2018 by Guest Contributor

Originally published on EVANNEX.
By Charles Morris

All automobiles are supported by an ecosystem of services, which traditionally includes dealerships, repair shops, and fueling stations. One of the ways Tesla has redefined the auto industry is by vertically integrating these services. You can buy a vehicle directly from Tesla, have it serviced at a Tesla service center, and charge it at a Tesla Supercharger. On the whole, most customers seem to be happy with this arrangement, but some believe that there is an unmet need for independent repair shops, and a community of DIY Tesla repair techs has developed. Because Tesla doesn’t support their activities, there’s an underground, hacker vibe to the scene.

A totaled Tesla Model 3 that Phil Sadow plans to repair (Image: InsideEVs via Ingineerix)

A recent Motherboard documentary told the story of Rich Benoit, aka the Dr. Frankenstein of Teslas, who salvages Tesla parts and uses them to repair cars damaged in crashes, fires, and floods.

Another guerrilla repairman is Phil Sadow, aka Ingineer, an electrical engineer who has been rebuilding and selling salvaged Teslas for three years. A recent article in Fast Company tells us how Sadow also teaches fellow enthusiasts to develop their repair skills. The intrepid Ingineer says he’s participated in almost 400 Tesla refurbishment projects.

According to Sadow, Tesla really doesn’t want cars that have been in serious accidents back on the road, and the company has taken steps to make it almost impossible to repair them. “When a car is totaled,” he says, “they deny parts, [and] they don’t in any way give service information, the service tools like all the electronics and computer stuff needed to work on the cars … except where they’re required to by law. And even then they don’t do that.”

Sadow understands the reason for this policy: given the media hunger for anti-Tesla articles, any incident involving a repaired Tesla would surely be blown out of proportion by the press. “Tesla’s trying to protect their stock price and their mission by eliminating some of this,” he says. “If I buy a salvage car and fix it improperly and it kills someone or burns a house down … it’s not going to be ‘Man fixes Tesla improperly and hurts someone.’ It’s going to be ‘Tesla kills someone.’”

A look at the Tesla Model 3 drive unit (YouTube: Ingineerix)

Sadow is obviously a big fan of Tesla’s mission, but he fears that making it difficult to repair damaged vehicles is a short-sighted policy, because the lack of a market for salvaged Teslas will eventually lead to expensive insurance premiums.

Normally, when a vehicle is totaled, it’s sold at an insurance auction to a shop that either repairs it and puts it back on the road, or sells it for parts. This healthy secondary market allows insurance companies to recoup a substantial part of what they have to pay to replace a “totaled” vehicle. However, because of Tesla’s policies, Sadow says, the market for salvaged vehicles is thin, so auto insurers tend to lose a lot of money on totaled Teslas. “The insurance underwriters figured it out,” he says. “‘Oh, it’s a Tesla, we’re going to eat our lunch on these.’ So they start raising premiums. A lot of insurers consider the Model S and the Model X exotics, like a Ferrari. For that reason, they’re losing their shirt on even relatively minor accidents.”

In the US, only Massachusetts has a “right to repair” law, which requires auto dealerships to make parts and service manuals available to independent repair shops. According to Sadow, even in Massachusetts, Tesla has so far refused to release service information for Model 3. (Tesla told Fast Company the same thing they told Motherboard: owners are free to do whatever they want to their cars, and the company will inspect salvaged vehicles for a fee to assess what repairs are needed.)

A look at the Tesla Model 3 battery pack (YouTube: Ingineerix)

Sadow’s EV-recycling career began in 2015 when he bought a Model S that had been through the Houston flood. He and his girlfriend took the car apart, repaired the damaged electronics, gave it a thorough cleaning and got it back on the road. Soon he partnered with a body shop owner in Minneapolis and the two began regularly buying, repairing, and reselling salvaged Teslas.

Nowadays, Sadow spends more time teaching others to resurrect Teslas than fixing them himself. As more Model 3s hit the roads, more damaged vehicles will be showing up at insurance auctions. “There will be people that want to know how to work on them,” he says, “and that’s basically my full-time job now — helping other people work on these cars.”

Sadow has created his own answer to Tesla’s mobile app, which offers his car-fixing customers access to information such as battery voltages and diagnostic codes. Getting into Tesla’s software required gaining root access — something like jailbreaking a phone. It took Sadow about four months to figure out how to reverse-engineer Model S’s systems, but it took him only three weeks to get the same access to Model 3, as many of the new car’s systems were based on the older model. Tesla hasn’t tried to stop him, but it does employ some software counter-measures to limit what owners of damaged cars can do. When Tesla becomes aware that a particular vehicle has been in a catastrophic accident, it “blacklists” it, meaning that it will refuse to sell the owner any parts.

A look at the Tesla Model 3 cooling system (YouTube: Ingineerix)

That’s not a problem for Sadow and his fellow renegade rebuilders, because salvaged parts are plentiful and cheap. Sadow is proud of the fact that his revenant Teslas have been problem-free, and hopes that, as long as that remains the case, the company will leave him alone and let him get on with his business. “As long as it keeps them out of the news,” he says, “and as long as they don’t see one of the cars I helped repair burn down or burn down someone’s house or neighborhood, then they’re completely don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Sources: Fast Company, Ingineerix

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Guest Contributor is many, many people. We publish a number of guest posts from experts in a large variety of fields. This is our contributor account for those special people. 😀

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Statement: Weld

October 16, 2018 , Auburn Hills, Mich. – FCA US LLC is voluntarily recalling an estimated 18,055 vehicles in the U.S. to perform a weld inspection, and repair as needed. Responding to a small number of complaints, FCA US launched an investigation that discovered certain vehicles built between early May and late August of this year… Continue reading Statement: Weld

Munich II public prosecutor concludes regulatory offences proceedings by issuing administrative order imposing a fine (Bußgeldbescheid) / AUDI AG accepts the fine and, by doing so, admits its responsibility

The Munich II public prosecutor today issued an administrative order against AUDI AG in its capacity as affected party (Betroffene) pursuant to sections 30 para. 1, 130 para. 1 of the German Act on Regulatory Offences (Ordnungswidrigkeitengesetz – OWiG) in the context of deviations from regulatory requirements in certain V6 and V8 diesel aggregates and… Continue reading Munich II public prosecutor concludes regulatory offences proceedings by issuing administrative order imposing a fine (Bußgeldbescheid) / AUDI AG accepts the fine and, by doing so, admits its responsibility

Munich II public prosecutor concludes regulatory offences proceedings against AUDI AG by issuing administrative order imposing a fine (Bußgeldbescheid) / AUDI AG accepts the fine and, by doing so, admits its responsibility

The Munich II public prosecutor today issued an administrative order against AUDI AG in its capacity as affected party (Betroffene) pursuant to sections 30 para. 1, 130 para. 1 of the German Act on Regulatory Offences (Ordnungswidrigkeitengesetz – OWiG) in the context of deviations from regulatory requirements in certain V6 and V8 diesel aggregates and… Continue reading Munich II public prosecutor concludes regulatory offences proceedings against AUDI AG by issuing administrative order imposing a fine (Bußgeldbescheid) / AUDI AG accepts the fine and, by doing so, admits its responsibility