Tesla is caught in the "reduction in configuration" scandal: speed is the key to success and speed is also the key to failure!

Perhaps it is due to the founder's personality, or perhaps it is to quickly seize the market, but Tesla's product iteration and technological updates have been described as lightning-fast since its inception.

The benefits of working hard to cope with the market are obvious. First of all, Tesla has an absolute advantage over its competitors in the core parameters of electric vehicles. In addition, as of the end of 2019, Tesla's cumulative sales of 800,000 units have made it the world's largest electric vehicle manufacturer.

However, excessive speed does not necessarily bring absolute advantages - just like a high-speed train is speeding, passengers may only feel the speed of the train, but if we observe the train from an objective perspective, we seem to be able to find that there is a considerable crisis hidden under the high speed.

"Reduction of configuration" under high efficiency

At the beginning of 2020, on the first anniversary of the construction of Tesla's Shanghai Super Factory, the long-awaited car owners finally got the long-pre-ordered domestically produced Model 3. This was supposed to be a happy moment, but a revelation from an owner who had just received the domestically produced Tesla Model 3 caused Tesla to be caught in the "reduction in configuration gate."

Simply put, according to the "Electric Vehicle Environmental Information List" released by Tesla, the domestically produced Model 3 should have been equipped with a vehicle controller code-named 1462554 (chip HW3.0), but when the owner checked his newly picked up new car, he found that it was equipped with a vehicle controller code-named 1483112 (chip HW2.5).

Although it is only a difference in chip versions, HW3.0 is crucial to improving the autonomous driving experience. According to Tesla CEO Musk in April 2019, the performance of HW3.0 is 21 times that of HW2.5.

Later, Tesla issued a statement saying that the problem occurred because of "supply chain conditions" and that eligible car owners could upgrade to HW3.0 chips for free. If Tesla's attitude towards the problem is annoying enough, then the last sentence of the statement, "Our original intention is to provide products to everyone as soon as possible while meeting consumer safety and usage needs," is even more intriguing.

According to common sense, the cost of HW2.5 should be lower than that of HW3.0, so Tesla's approach is in line with the logic of traditional commercial companies. But in fact, according to Tesla's previous announcement, since HW3.0 is self-developed by Tesla and HW2.5 is NVIDIA's technology, the cost of HW2.5 is about 20% more expensive than HW3.0.

On the one hand, the cost is higher, and on the other hand, it does not please consumers. The logic behind Tesla's doing this is obvious - that is efficiency.

First of all, although Tesla's Shanghai Super Factory started production only one year after construction, its initial production capacity was only 3,000 vehicles per week. In addition, the sudden outbreak of the new coronavirus pandemic in early 2020 dealt a cold blow to Tesla's hot Shanghai Super Factory. In order to quickly complete the original delivery task, Tesla must step up production.

Correspondingly, when HW3.0 hardware is insufficient, it is only natural for Tesla to use the more expensive and less popular HW2.5 in order to achieve the delivery purpose. Of course, from this perspective, it seems to explain why Musk inexplicably called the "Chinese incomprehensible" on Twitter regarding this matter.

Although Tesla has every reason to mix HW2.5/3.0 in pursuit of high speed, from the perspective of consumers, commercial standards cannot be violated. Moreover, the mixing of HW2.5/3.0 does harm the interests of consumers. Therefore, Tesla should sincerely apologize to consumers for its inappropriate pursuit of high efficiency.

Not all flaws can be forgiven

If Tesla can restore consumers' reputation through apologies and recalls due to the "reduction in configuration" scandal, then if we look at the high-speed cost at the software level from the same standard, it seems that Tesla will fall into an irreversible situation.

As early as the 2010s, with the development of technology, technology giants have begun to deploy in the field of autonomous driving. However, due to the vague boundary between autonomous driving and human-machine driving, and the ever-changing road obstacles, some companies only conduct closed tests in their own yards and do not allow consumers to participate.

In order to attract attention to its products and quickly iterate its own autonomous driving technology, Tesla opened the first version of its Autopilot autonomous driving technology to commercial use as early as October 2015. It should be noted that even in 2019, Tesla's Autopilot only met the L2 autonomous driving level under the authoritative standards. It is conceivable that Autopilot was in its infancy in October 2015.

It is almost foreseeable that such simple autonomous driving technology will inevitably lead to accidents. On June 30, 2016, a Tesla Model S with Autopilot mode turned on collided with a truck, killing the driver. According to foreign media statistics, 21 people died in Tesla Autopilot accidents in the United States in 2018, and the number was 50 in 2019, an increase of 138%.

If Tesla's autonomous driving technology can represent the world's top level, we seem to be more tolerant of these accidents from the perspective of technological evolution. However, according to a global autonomous driving competitiveness ranking data released by Navigant in early 2019, Google's brother companies Waymo, Cruise and other companies that have not actively commercialized autonomous driving technology have occupied the first echelon, while Tesla is only ranked last. This seems to increase the internal logic of Tesla using "human lives" as a test to promote the construction of autonomous driving.

Lessons from traditional car companies for Tesla

Although Tesla's advantage is that it has no historical ambitions and can develop products at a rapid pace, it can be seen from the above that there are actually huge hidden dangers under Tesla's rapid mode. If these hidden dangers are not thoroughly recognized and eliminated, they may become the fuse of Tesla's demise in the future.

In fact, in the automotive industry, although Tesla has been diss traditional car companies, the internal logic of traditional car companies in balancing speed and products is worth learning from Tesla.

Take Audi as an example. Although it only launched its first electric car in 2018, Audi started developing electric cars as early as the end of the last century. Therefore, in just two years, we can see that Audi's e-tron S series has surpassed Tesla's products.

Although Audi has not fully opened its autonomous driving technology yet, it has been quietly promoting the construction of related businesses. According to Audi's plan, it will achieve L3 level autonomous driving on highways and urban roads in 2023, and launch its first L4 AV in 2025.

Judging from the fact that Audi has already taken the lead in launching mass-produced L3 autonomous driving cars but has not yet been put into large-scale commercial use, although Audi's advancement of autonomous driving technology is not as radical as Tesla's, it still maintains a steady and orderly iteration. This is an order of magnitude higher than Tesla's use of consumers as testers, both morally and technically.

If we look at Tesla from the opposite perspective at this point, we seem to be able to discover that although it is extremely topical in the current electric vehicle industry, this is an exaggerated performance created on the basis of the absence of major invasions by traditional car companies and its own rapid development.

As Tesla pays more and more attention to production capacity, the risks of its rapid development seem to be getting more serious - after all, annual production of 76,000 cars and annual production of 360,000 cars are not the same in terms of products or supply chain. Therefore, the biggest hidden danger of Tesla at present is that its capabilities are not in line with its growing ambitions, which may very well lead to a situation where "Tesla plants trees while traditional car companies enjoy the shade."

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.