Comments by "ke6gwf - Ben Blackburn" (@ke6gwf) on "Nikola Series - Ep. 3: Coolidge Facility - Assembly Tour" video.

It was interesting how Sandy spends half his time marketing himself and talking about his achievements, and the other half comparing everything to Tesla... lol I am guessing that Nikola figured that even with the bad comparisons, his presence would make them look like a real true operating company, even if they didn't stack up well to Tesla, and it seems like he accepted their theater.
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@Mrbfgray I didn't say replace bolts with anything, I said design it so not as many are required. Most of those bolts are to attach brackets to the frame, and if you have worked on semis you know that the frame manufacturer will design the frame with structural cross members, and then the suspension company will design suspension cross members, and then the drive train team will design transmission and carrier bearing cross members, and then the air team will design brackets to mount the air tanks, and other brackets to support the air hoses, and other brackets to support the brake valve, and the suspension leveling valve, and then the electrical team will add a bunch of brackets to support random wire harnesses or connectors or magic boxes, and there is very little dual purpose designs, each department is seperate. If you want to reduce bolts and steps, you combine these functions into well integrated complex shapes, now fully possible with cnc metal forming and bending, and you can cut the number of bolts way down, by reducing the number of seperate parts that have to be attached to the frame.
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@Mrbfgray you can design things more efficiently where they don't require as many bolts however, even heavy truck frames.
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Sandy is always trying to market his services, that's the whole point behind his videos from the beginning, so yes, he's doing it to them, and in the video as well.
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@Mrbfgray I can tell by the sheer number of bolts that reduction is possible. And look at how Sandy pointed out the HV cable bracket and how it could be eliminated, and Mark agreed that there was a lot that could be reduced on the truck. Right now they have basically a stock frame, and so have to bolt everything to it individually, but if they do a Tesla on it, and start engineering parts out, a lot will reduce. Now, I am pretty sure at this point that you are going to take the opposite position to anything I say, and are letting your ego at being contradicted control you, so I am going to say that the earth is round and the moon landing was amazing! GO!
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@Mrbfgray and we all know that engineers do a lot of stupid things, and that a degree doesn't make someone smart, but you seem to be offended that you are being questioned, which prevents you from being able to learn new things. Kinda sad really.
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I am sure that they had to review and approve all the footage to keep any proprietary information, or embarrassing details, from showing, so while it sucks, it's not surprising, and probably not Sandy's fault.
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The elephant was hard to see in such a vast and empty facility, so Sandy was carefully steered away from it... Lol
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@cengeb my point is that I am sure that Sandy would have loved to show and tell on all the things he sees, with close ups and such, like he does when he tears a car down, but they limited his access to the facility and what he could show. I see enough in here to show me how far behind they really are, and even his positive comments are pretty cutting. Put it this way, I would rather him play nice so he can get access to show us the inside, than have him give his unvarnished opinion on everything and be escorted out and his footage confiscated! He can share his real opinions later lol
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@togowack if a manufacturer is planning on high volume production, Lean Manufacturing would have them set up for the goal, not the the minimum. If you set up small for a temporary period, that's the opposite of Lean, because you have to get rid of the small stuff and duplicate the work. And it's not parts and materials that we think it's empty of, but rather the machinery needed to manufacture trucks.
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@togowack you either can't do math or don't understand reality. You think that they can build over 1,300 semi trucks PER DAY with the equipment we saw in this video? Half a million per year is about 1 rolling out the doors every minute. Are you seriously claiming that what you see here can get that kind of production? You can't fit enough people in that building to build that many trucks, and other than the little carts, I don't see a robot in sight.
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@togowack wow, you are so much smarter than every factory owner and truck manufacturer out there, because they are finding amazing savings and increases in efficiency by using robots for the very repetitive tasks. But I guess you know more than they do! And unless the factory process changes, robots don't get outdated, any more than humans do, they get reprogrammed. The assembly plant we see in this video is not able to produce whatever they put on paper, that's what they claim they can do long in the future, but this assembly plant we see in the video can probably only produce a few trucks per month, which is why I say it's way too empty, because it needs more machines, more tracks or robot carts, more people, etc etc.
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@togowack Elon said he underestimated the value of humans when he tried to do too many things with robots on the model 3, so he added a few more humans until he could get the robotics figured out. Have you seen any of the videos from inside Tesla factories? It's fully automated with robots doing as much as possible. Some of the stuff that still needs humans, like putting the dashboard in etc, the humans actually sit strapped into cockpit chairs on robot arms that swings them in through the car door and positions them correctly to install the parts, and then swings them back out. And it's all these robotics that allows them to produce so many cars with only 2 factories, and a 30 percent profit margin. Maybe the robots that YOU work with have those problems, and ancient software, but that's why Tesla purchased a leading German factory automation company so that they can make everything custom to their needs, and they have strong software engineering talent so they can write new software from the ground up. So when done properly, automation is amazing and extremely efficient, because it's perfectly repeatable at high speed, and doesn't tire out. Also, they use a lot of computer vision etc to give the robots eyes so they can be even faster and more accurate. This is the same company developing leading AI and computer vision on cars, and they can apply the same talent to the factory. So maybe you should go work for Tesla and enjoy your job a lot better working with much nicer automation! As far as the Nikola plant seen in this video, it looks nothing like the Iveco factories, which are full of equipment, and yes, robots. So if this is based on the European factory design, it currently looks nothing like it. It's almost like you didn't watch this video, or have never seen what an actual factory looks like inside. This looks like hand building prototypes inside a warehouse, and you say it can produce one truck per minute. That's what confuses me.
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@togowack Tesla is replacing 1000 STEPS by casting a single piece instead of welding together hundreds of small parts. The goal is to simplify the manufacturing process, not simply eliminate robots. And the Giga press is, of course, handled by a robot to remove the castings. Elon's goal would be to have an entirely robotic factory, the machine that builds the machine, which is one reason he's starting work on the humanoid robot, because right now there are some jobs that still work best with a human. And yes, robots create new problems, but problems are meant to be solved through engineering, and so they are gradually working to redesign the car to optimize it for robotic assembly, solving those problems one step at a time. Anyway, your philosophy is the opposite of Elon's, so I guess you won't fit in at Tesla! They only attract the best engineers. And if Nikola produced 1 truck per DAY their stock would go up! But they can't even do that yet... Lol But you were the one who said that this facility that we saw could produce half a million trucks per year, which is about 1 truck per minute run rate.
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@togowack Umm, the Gigapress is built by Idra, who is based in Italy. Tesla is purchasing them from Idra. Tesla purchased the German automation company so those engineers are not unemployed, they went from working for many manufacturers to focusing on Tesla alone. Elon is all about removing parts and steps, so if he gets rid of a robot it's because he got rid of the part or step the robot did, not that he's just replacing it with a human. Elon wants to eliminate humans from the factory as much as possible, and is only limited by the operations that they haven't figured out how to do with a robot yet, but they are working on it.
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@togowack yes, Elon is about solving problems, and one problem is that humans are expensive, slow, and high maintenance, while robots can work 24/7 with no breaks, are predictable, and can work faster and more accurately and repeatablly than a human. So finding all the jobs that can be sped up and made cheaper with a robot is a problem they are working to solve. And yes, I believe the access to talent was one big reason why they put a factory in Germany instead of some cheaper location. Same reason Tesla is in the Bay Area, and SpaceX is in Hawthorne.
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@togowack crashing is a human issue from bad programming or process design. Journals can be line bored and repaired, and if the castings are wearing out that means that you need to redesign the robot so that the journals are sleeved or otherwise repairable. Worn castings is ALWAYS a result of either bad design or poor maintenance, and is not something that should be allowed. And you probably don't have the authority to redesign the robot, but that's a pretty basic concept that Tesla can surely solve. And again, they are using machine vision or other means to give many robots eyes to compensate for misaligned parts. You are repeating the same drivel that the old auto manufacturers and Tslaq have been saying for years, that Tesla doesn't have manufacturering abilities, that there is no way they can manufacture better than Ford and GM and VW and Toyota, but now Ford and VW and many others are realizing that Tesla is doing BETTER at manufacturing than they are, so you may think that they are lacking in MEs, but they seem to be doing pretty well with what they have. It helps that they can share the best ones between SpaceX and Tesla, and it's one of the reasons why they have purchased several companies dealing with factory automation, battery cell production, etc, to get their engineers. So whatever you say about what they are lacking, the proof is in how fast they are able to build factories and get them up to speed, and how rapidly they are able to redesign the cars and constantly improve them.
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@togowack the factory to build the Cybertruck is currently under construction, did you expect them to build it in a barn? It also needs the 4680 cells that are still ramping production, so it's not quite ready to start. VW says that it takes them 40 hours to build their EV, while it takes Tesla 10 hours. That's mostly thanks to the automation in the factory. And that's how far ahead Tesla is from the top German manufacturers. Ford just decided to double their planned EV production, and their target for 2024 is about half what Tesla will do next year. And Toyota is having to partner with a Chinese EV company to build EVs for them. The old Ford plants would have to be fully rebuilt in order to start car production again, including the installation of thousands of robots, because that's how auto manufacturers do things now, so it will take years for such construction and then the ramp up. It's not like in the movies where someone walks into a dusty old factory and flips a big switch and the factory roars to life, because technology has changed so much that nothing in that old factory would still be usable, the layout would need to be entirely different, and remodeling an old building is usually more difficult and expensive than designing a new building optimized for your needs. So this idea that the other manufacturers are going to be able to magically make as many cars as they want faster than Tesla can is just funny. And look at how easy it is to make mistakes. Like GM having to recall every Bolt made to replace the battery, and now the rumors are coming that Porsche may have to do the same thing. And maybe Nikola will do all the manufacturing by hand no robots, but if they do, they will not be able to compete on price against Tesla with a truck designed for efficient construction using as much automation as possible. And the Cybertruck is also designed for maximum automation.
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