Tesla may have made a critical mistake in foregoing a traditional step in manufacturing that led to significant delivery delays for the Model 3.
During a call with investors in early March, Elon Musk indicated the Model 3 would skip a key step in pre-production that involves a quality assurance process known as soft tooling. Soft tooling allows assembly line issues to be threshed out prior to final production. This was skipped, ironically enough, to insure the Model 3 meets production deadlines.
As Tesla struggles though production hell, it is hard not to wonder if this key step will be brought back for the next high volume production model to avoid the delivery delays suffered by the model 3.
Image – By Steve Jurvetson – https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/35418225484/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61376691