A person claiming insider’s knowledge as a lower level manager at Tesla’s Gigafactory has been working overtime documenting alleged incompetence all the way to the top for why Tesla has missed Model 3 production goals.

Tesla has been at work since 2014 on the battery factory collaboration with Panasonic located in Nevada, and needed is streamlined assembly of 2170-type batteries to go into the hundreds of thousands of Model 3s Tesla has promised to start churning out.

“The management is the problem so I’m not sure bringing their own incompetence to light directly to them is such a good idea,” wrote a poster anonymously called "EnDeep" yesterday under an article by Electrek. “I’m already in a lower level management position there and attend the daily production meetings. Bringing up the obvious issues has already painted me as not being a team player or cause for the current management to feel threatened. Poor quality mangers [sic] want people working under them that aren’t a threat to their own jobs. Which means you end up keeping poor quality employees and remove the ones who are better qualified for the position than the existing managers are.”

Whether the Gigafactory is indeed to blame for a "bottleneck" keeping Model 3 production to a slow crawl is not something explicitly stated by Tesla, but was speculatively "confirmed" by Panasonic's CEO, reports Electrek .

“Panasonic Corp Chief Executive Kazuhiro Tsuga said on Tuesday that output could soon be increased at Tesla Inc’s 'gigafactory' battery plant as the causes of production bottlenecks for Tesla’s Model 3 are now understood,” wrote Reuters . “This process (for battery packs) will be soon automated, and then the number of vehicles to be produced will rise sharply.”

That's the official report. Meanwhile, describing a situation that could not have been better done by a Soviet-era management team, EnDeep has written thousands of words posted under articles over the past month outlining specific allegations of incompetence leading all the way up to an insular Elon Musk surrounded by top management who’d punish anyone telling the truth.

As far as talking to Elon directly I don’t see him as being approachable in that way. When he does tour the plant it’s with an entourage of high level management who aren’t going to appreciate you pointing out their incompetence directly to him even if he was directly approachable. My best hope is that he somehow sees indirect comments like from me here.

I am to the point of frustration with it though that looking for a different job seems a more viable solution to my own mental health lol. It’s frustrating for me to see what could be getting done yet isn’t and knowing I can’t singlehandedly fix the problems. I take a lot of pride in my work and experience I’ve spent a lifetime achieving. It’s not that I’m not a team player, it’s that you need a good team to work with.
 


You may chalk it up to a disgruntled employee, and take it for what it’s worth, but the comments are being voted up and sticking to his/her guns, EnDeep adds details to a case of a complete keystone cops scenario between Panasonic’s Japanese and American employees.

More certain is Tesla is very much behind its self-imposed goals. The company has said by now it would be well on its way to producing 5,000 Model 3s per week and “exponential” growth, but sales so far number in the few hundreds.

Following are a few of the key issues chronicled:

Location terrible:





I work at the Gigafactory in Nevada, I can tell you exactly what’s causing the delays first hand. It starts with the location they chose to build the factory at.

1) That part of Nevada has people who have been casino workers for generations, there’s no production or technical skilled talent within 300 miles.
2) They built the factory in the middle of no where, 20 miles from the nearest city. Most employees are paid $13-$14 an hour. It’s not difficult math to determine your fuel and vehicle maintenance cost exceeds such a minimal income.
3) There’s only a single highway on that 20 mile distance to get there. This stretch of I80 is notorious for being closed down for hours due to weather, brush fires and accidents. It was just closed today for over 6 hours due to a semi truck accident. Employees can’t get to work means production gets cancelled at least once per week due to I80 road closures.
4) Despite Elon also owning Solar City, and the original plan to make the Gigafactory solar powered, that plan was permanently scrapped. Nevada Energy who supplies power to the factory has always been notorious for being extremely unreliable with major outages in the entire area constantly. Just a 3 second power failure, which happens there 2-3 times per week is an extremely major production killer to Panasonic who makes the battery cells inside the Gigafactory. The time it takes to get the equipment back up and running after even the slightest power bump is on average 6 hours. All battery cells produced for about 3-4 hours prior to the power bump also become worthless and must be disposed of. Millions of batteries end up unusable in the trash from just a 3 second power bump.

Power Outages

If the managers aren’t bad enough and causing the majority of the problems, or in the very least not preventing them from happening and not hiring truly technical capable people to keep things running instead of always doing more harm than good, then the beyond their control issues then pile up as well. This part of Northern Nevada gets their electricity from NV Energy. The one time plan to make the entire Gigafactory solar and off the grid was scrapped early on. Being only 5 miles away from the power plant for NV Energy you’d think even with NV Energy’s long standing track record at terrible dependability in supplying power wouldn’t be a problem but it is. The plant experiences power outages lasting from seconds to hours almost weekly. When just a 1/10th of a second long power outage takes place there it is absolute devastation to Panasonic’s production lines. It takes up to 6 hours on average to recover the equipment and get it back into production after even just a split second power bump. Not to mention 4 hours worth of production made before the power bump becomes ruined and has to be trashed. This happens a minimum of 1-2 times a week out there due to NV Energy’s unreliability.

Quality Control for Battery Cells Not In Place

The real delay to Tesla production is due to the battery cells not being manufactured to the true capacity they calculate being able to do on paper. This problem falls on Panasonic’s shoulders. When you factor in the initial problems I listed in my other post here you then have to factor in the Panasonic failures. Panasonic gave up attempting to produce the different cells used for the power walls, that’s why the Australian deal had to rely on Samsung not Elon’s own Panasonic cells being used.
1) I’d point out first that production is absolutely not being rushed or corners cut on quality just to meet promises. It’s the exact opposite. Panasonic takes the term “anal” to an entirely new level when it comes to product quality standards. I could write for days on the rigorous and extensive quality standards Panasonic lives by. If a single cell has even a microscopic scratch invisible to the human eye on the outside of the metal can the cell is rejected and sent to the trash. Production is then completely halted until the cause of that scratch is located and corrected. That’s just the cosmetic issues, I won’t even go into the measurement tolerances of every battery component that sends entire lots of components and almost fully finished cells into the trash daily.
2) Extremely poor quality management from the American side are a major problem with Panasonic as well. They don’t keep good talent and instead keep only warm bodies to fill seats that they deem easier to manage. These managers have no technical or production background and the first step Elon should demand is Panasonic dumps the management staff they currently have from production managers all the way down to the individual line leads.
3) The Japanese Technians Panasonic rotates in from their Japan plant are top notch and are at the heart of keeping any production going. The problem is these Technical Advisors (or TA’s as they’re referred to as within Panasonic) do not speak any English. Part of their role is to train the US based employees technical repair and maintenance of the production line equipment. This can’t happen because of the language barrier and the technical capabilities of the local people Panasonic has hired is non existent. This further goes back on the management for not weeding out the people who are technically incapable of ever performing true equipment troubleshooting or repairs. I’ve seen one of these incompetent “technicians” cause the production line to be down for days because he used a pair of channel locks to tighten a hex head bolt and completely rounded off the bolt head which then caused further equipment damage. Human caused problems like this from the Americans they hired as “technicians” are a daily problem with them doing more harm than good. Parts for any of the equipment they damage has to be shipped in from Japan to repair, nothing they use on that equipment is off the shelf or available anywhere in the US.
For Tesla to ever meet demands they’ll need to fix the limited access remote location problems. From Sparks, NV to the Gigafactory would be a prime location for one of Elon’s tunnels. It’s that or build affordable apartments close to the facility.
They’ll need to solve the unreliability of power supplied from Nevada Energy (even though the factory is only a few miles away from the power plant). That can be fixed by bringing back the idea of solar power and back up battery power supplies. Nevada Energy only progressively gets worse in unreliability, there’s no hope they’ll ever get better.
They’ll need to fire from the top down all the current American management at Panasonic, none of them are “keepers”. Bring in managers from the Midwest or other areas who have actual production experience.
Restructure Panasonic’s technical employees. There needs to be a top down management team from manager to technical lead devoted solely to technical issues and repairs. Get rid of the current people Panasonic’s incompetent managers have brought in as “technicians” that do more harm than good. Again the available pool of people in this area capable of performing actual technical skills is extremely limited so again they’re going to have to attract in people from outside the area to fill these positions.
I could make a longer more detailed list easily but I think you get the point.



Incompetence Between US and Japanese Panasonic employees






As someone working there for Panasonic I can tell you EXACTLY where the problems are. Great management and technicians there from the Japanese side of things, absolutely horrible management from the American side at Panasonic. From top level production managers all the way down to the line leads I’ve never seen a bigger cluster eff of horrible management at a single company. They have absolutely zero production management experience and it shows. The American hired technicians they’ve hired have even less production and technical experience than anything I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen production equipment down for days at Panasonic just because of complete technical incompetence from the American hired technicians. Things like losing parts or stripping off bolt heads by using channel locks instead of sockets on hex bolts. They damage everything they touch because of their complete technical incompetence then it takes weeks to get the replacement parts they break shipped in from Japan because nothing on the production line just uses standard off the shelf parts that can be purchased locally. Then there’s the managers for the production lines. I have no idea why they hired them, they have absolutely zero technical or production experience and there’s no hope that they ever will have useable working experience. We had 3 of the then only 4 running production lines down to less Han 40% of production capacity because a manager was told o-ri gs were needed for the electrolyte filling machines. 3 months went buy and he still had not ordered the o-rings, slowly machine after machine went down, unable to run without the simple 3 cent o-rings he manager totally dropped the ball on. The managements complete incompetence in production or technical experience has proven time after time there to be an absolute destructive force on the production rate Panasonic is fully capable of. I’ve seen the managers fire top quality workers just because they didn’t like them, yet keep people who should have never been hired in the first place. It’s just unbelievable how poorly managed hat place is on the American side of Panasonic, truly unbelievable.
 

Continued:

If the managers aren’t bad enough and causing the majority of the problems, or in the very least not preventing them from happening and not hiring truly technical capable people to keep things running instead of always doing more harm than good, then the beyond their control issues then pile up as well. This part of Northern Nevada gets their electricity from NV Energy. The one time plan to make the entire Gigafactory solar and off the grid was scrapped early on. Being only 5 miles away from the power plant for NV Energy you’d think even with NV Energy’s long standing track record at terrible dependability in supplying power wouldn’t be a problem but it is. The plant experiences power outages lasting from seconds to hours almost weekly. When just a 1/10th of a second long power outage takes place there it is absolute devastation to Panasonic’s production lines. It takes up to 6 hours on average to recover the equipment and get it back into production after even just a split second power bump. Not to mention 4 hours worth of production made before the power bump becomes ruined and has to be trashed. This happens a minimum of 1-2 times a week out there due to NV Energy’s unreliability.
Then there’s the location issues, located almost 20 miles outside of Reno there’s only a single highway, I80, available for employees to get there on. This section of highway is notorious for being closed 6-8 hours at a time due to everything from road accidents to brush fires, to snow and ice. It’s another regularly occurring problem where I80 can be locked up and closed for numerous hours at a time several times a week. This means no employees can get to work and production has to be shut down. Once hey are able to make it in then it’s up to 6 hours again to get the production equipment running again.
 

Proposed Solution: Clean House:





What Elon needs to do to solve these problems is start by firing from the very top down ALL of the American hired managers, from the very top manager all the way down to the production line leads. Replace them with people who have actual production management and technical experience.
Dig one of his high speed tunnels from Sparks Nevada to the Gigafactory to resolve the single road issue that’s a constant weekly problem.
Get back to the plan of powering the plant by off grid solar, or in the very least use his powerwalls out there to solve the NV Energy unreliability issue.

Start retrofitting the Panasonic production equipment with parts that can be easily and quickly purchased off the shelf locally.
Until ALL OF THESE THINGS ARE ACCOMPLISHED they will only continue to have production hell out there and will never meet their realistic and achievable goals.

You would think this to be the case, but I can assure you it isn’t by any means. Absolute quality down to the most microscopic cosmetic issue takes priority over everything. I’ve seen Panasonic trash can thousands upon thousands of completed battery cells because of a single microscopic scratch you couldn’t even see with the naked eye on the outside of the battery cans. They are fully more concerned with absolutely unbelievable quality standards above meeting any production goals or promises.
 
More details may be seen here .