Rumor: 1st Tesla Cybertruck Owners Will Be Tesla Employees

[Sirfun]

Then it's settled. Well, I guess I'm going to work for Tesla...

So you're moving from San Diego to Austin, or are you going to work at the design studio in Hawthorne?

Sponsored

 

[TyPope]

Both, M3 and MY are conventional body designs and manufacturing assembly, Cybertruck on the other hand is a completely new beast, primarily from body manufacturing standpoint. There is no one in the world who has experience manufacturing a car exoskeleton, no quality control procedures for this type of body. On top of that: ALON windshield/windows, probably new wiring system, new battery, the amount of innovation inside the CT is unknown but Elon himself put a very high bar for the whole package, as he says it should "kick ass". Don't get me wrong, I am a TSLA investor with x5 CT reservations but the gap between the design of the CT and current manufacturing processes is immense, way beyond M3/MY

Oh, I know they are different. I'm sure that Tesla learned a lot while ramping up production of the M3 and MY. They are learning what works and does not work. The exoskeleton is different but all the other components are pretty similar to their existing vehicles... well, as far as production and assembly are concerned at least. The processes and quality concerns are maturing now and will move right over to the CT line. It'll benefit from Tesla's experience with the other cars while offering new challenges. I fully expect the first CT off the line will be better by far than the first M3 and even My off the line.

 

[Adrianlopez412]

Great perk for Tesla employees! The assembly line employees are making around $18-21 an hour. It must be management/engineering employees posting Tweets about purchasing a Cybertruck.

Or technicians which make that much to start, after 2 years or so definitely way higher than that.

 

[carpedatum]

If they live outside of Alameda County and have to drive to and from Fremont daily it probably should be 25%.

Tesla employees have not, historically, been offered discounts on new vehicles.

 

[carpedatum]

Giving Tesla employees first crack at new vehicles has, in the past, served an important function for the rest of us. Virtually every feature, large and small, on a Tesla is under computer control. In that sense Tesla vehicles resemble robots. The initial vehicle firmware will have bugs - virtually all software does. Employees who experience those bugs will have fast-track means of reporting them. The serious ones will get fixed before a single non-Tesla employee (board members and SpaceX people to some extent excepted) gets their hands on a new model.

When a new vehicle design goes to employees only, it will also be during the manufacturing ramp, before a significant number of consumers could get them anyway. This creates a window of opportunity to fix bugs and improve fit and finish, while basically using a big section of the employee pool as an extended quality assurance team. Employees who buy into the first production of a new vehicle will also be taking those cars to Tesla Service, which has the effect of training some of the Service team and helping them refine their practices.

In the past, purchasing a new Tesla model as an employee and re-selling that vehicle has been made impractical, in one way or another. I do not think we'll see widespread instances of that, so the number of Cybertrucks Tesla employees get before customers will most probably be on the order of thousands, not tens of thousands.

Other manufacturers generally won't sell a major new model or redesign to anyone before they put about a million miles on 'em internally. Relatively speaking, that really slows things down.

I like Tesla's approach and am happy that many members of the team will be shaking down my Cybertruck's firmware and design well before I get mine!

 

[Cyberman]

So you're moving from San Diego to Austin, or are you going to work at the design studio in Hawthorne?

I'm hoping to pull off being a consultant...

 

[Crissa]

I wouldn't mind kicking the beta models around. I don't live from Tesla, tho, and often see beta models in town.

Last year around this time I parked next to a Model Y at the garages next to the movie theater. It was pearl white.

-Crissa

Sponsored