Tesla Vet says that “real products review” – not models – is the key to staying innovative

GM’s EVS has been on a roll recently. After the sale of Chevy Bolt for years, a wave of new models – which now reaches 17 completely electric vehicles – pushed the car industry to the second place in the United States, behind Tesla.

How did you get there? With a little help from the old warrior in Tesla.

General Motors John McKenil was a head of Tesla during the development and introduction of Form 3, a decisive period in the company’s growth. One of the things they attributed to the success of Tesla is how Elon Musk performed the product meetings.

“There were no slices that are the first rule,” McKenil told the audience earlier this month at TC All Stage in Boston. “You have to review a real product.”

Every week, the Supreme Command was sitting with product leaders to review their progress. McNeel said this practice was inspired by a confrontation with Steve Jobs.

“There was this belief that I believed it was true: Steve Jobs had no much time or patience for Eileon in the first days. In the early days, Elon was trying to chase Steve in events and parties in the Silicon Valley to get advice. Steve did not like Elon, and so he turned his back to him often when he approached him.

“But one night, Elon became lucky and said:” Steve, if you have one advice to me as a young businessman. ” – He just did Paypal and was joining the team in Tesla -” What would that be? Steve said, “Illon, you are now in the work of the devices, but the work of the devices is very similar to software work.

McNeel said that Musk took this to the heart, and the perfect product concept became essential to developing products in Tesla.

“The thing we were looking for first and foremost was a surprise and pleasure. Like, do we do something that will make someone walking, laughing or enjoying?

“A crazy example of this is the” Fric “button,” in reference to the program “Specify Emotations” that simulates swelling through the loudspeakers in the car.

The company also represents its simplicity, which means by the program to maintain jobs in access to less than two lapses on the screen.

“It should be a kind of not thinking about the average user. Then we’ll double the designer – the main designer was always in the room – then we say, well, Franz, we make it beautiful now.”

McNeel said that the meetings are like those, as the actual product was reviewed, not the typical models, helped maintain Tesla culture as it grows. He said: “You can imagine the culture that is connected when people bring a game A to the CEO every week. Because you will not attend your game B to the CEO – especially the CEO, because he will shoot you.”

“This keeps that company for one week of innovation. Every week they are making progress due to product reviews.”

McNeel Tesla left in early 2018. In 2022, he was added to the Council at General Motors.

“One of the things I am proud of is Mary Barra, CEO, and Mark Rice, the president (who oversees) 275,000 people and 200 billion dollars, a revenue company, operates the product reviews every week where there are slides. You must see that, you feel the product (whether it’s).

“These things are very strong. It leads to the introduction of GMS for 17 EVS, and now the second best -selling EVS in the country. Because it is just a product, every week.”