It was an incredible contrast to tour the BMW factory in Munich in August, then the Tesla factory in Fremont in October. The BMW factory was highly automated, and the assembly line did so much for the humans -- positioning the cars in just the right ergonomic locations for humans to work on them. Meanwhile, over at Tesla, forklift drivers are crashing into things, dragging chunks of wood under their wheels, so much more manual labor, etc. I don't expect Tesla to be up the level of BMW; the volume isn't there to justify it. It's just really interesting.

I'm trying to think of when I would have seen BMW factory employees working overhead, and I just can't think of it. I wonder why Ford would even have tasks that require this rather than just rotate the assemblies being worked on.