This person has taken the wrong lesson from the story. The actual moral of this story is that the auto industry is too conservative and being a little less conservative allows you to build one of the best cars in the world.
So a few touchscreens have yellow lines. The Tesla touchscreen is still clearly better than any other car's touchscreen and if they'd done it this guy's way they wouldn't have been able to ship it at all because the part simply wasn't available then.
Sorry, but if you're going to design a car that replaces not just the infotainment system, not just the climate controls, but the entire instrument console with a touchscreen, then it would seem to me one of the places you absolutely do not want to cut corners on is...the touchscreen.
"One of the best cars in the world" is obviously subjective, and there are some ways in which Tesla is absolutely leading. But all of the innovation on display in Teslas don't earn them a free pass on build quality issues.
Is it fair to say they “cut corners”? They bought the best screen available at the time at size they wanted, and then tested it in-house. It’s not like the screen has terrible specs, but it is not rated to operate at 130°C.
So they tried adding software to keep the cabin below 50°C even when the car is parked, but either it doesn’t work all the time or people turn the feature off, of someone is parked in the sun long enough to run the battery below 20%.
The trade off was a higher rate of warranty repairs in order to build the car they wanted to build.
I think in the case of the Model 3, partially how they solved it is through special glass they used above the front seats. I’ve been wondering why the glass is so unique above the front seats but not the same tint for the rest of the roof glass. It’s very interesting — water droplets on the glass above the front seats look almost blood red. Now I’m guessing it’s filtering to block IR or other solar gain which might otherwise burn out the screen.
According to the article the screen has good specs -- but it doesn't quite meet even the lowest-quality rating for automotive screens, and that sure seems like it's the proximate cause for the thermal failures they're experiencing.
I'm not sure whether it's fair to say they "cut corners," but I'm not sure it's not fair. The other alternatives could have been finding a supplier willing to work with them on an oversized screen that met at least Automotive Grade 4 standards, or being willing to redesign the instrument panel to take a smaller screen. (Or two smaller screens.)
> The trade off was a higher rate of warranty repairs in order to build the car they wanted to build.
Warranty repairs? Tesla has described these as a small number of "goodwill repairs" and summarily begun denying them even to new car owners as "cosmetic, won't fix".
So a few touchscreens have yellow lines. The Tesla touchscreen is still clearly better than any other car's touchscreen and if they'd done it this guy's way they wouldn't have been able to ship it at all because the part simply wasn't available then.