Found this on Twitter, no idea of its authenticity, but if it’s true, holy hell…
Supposedly,
If nothing else, it’s definitely good entertainment.
Thaks, that was a good read, if you liked that you’ll probably like this:
I’m still reading through the thread, but that does look like a good read.
Mid-read update: apparently Tesla did sell airgapped cars without the SIM installed.
I don´t see how that is a bad thing. Car production takes longer than an hour, so might aswell use the time.
The alternative someone mentioned was pre-flashing the chips before soldering them on the board.
Also, there was a mention of needing to re-attempt the installation dozens of times in some cases.
I recommend not taking this information as fact.
Un sourced anons on private chat rooms can post all kinds of nonsense.
Keep a massive pile of salt around. 
Kinda off topic but if tesla sold a vehicle without all the stupid gadgetry I would legitimately be interested it them. All of the performance and none of the unneeded nonsense. Sure its cool tech but fuck all of that noise. Just maybe a bluetooth capable stereo and a speedo + charge level + odo.
Soldering programmed chips is not the best idea. Might lead to data loss/corruption resulting in unnecessary cost of repair.
Sockets aren´t possible either (think of GPUs).
That is standard. Nothing to see here.
Usually you’d flash the flash chips after soldering as part of the board qa process for a particular board. It makes sense to do ahead of time.
I’m not surprised things some things are held together with duct tape, I’d be more surprised if that wasn’t the case.