Musk called the novelty that Tesla is studying as a revolution in the structural design of its vehicles.
Two years ago, Elon Musk unexpectedly announced that Tesla would build a factory outside of Berlin, causing the audience at the awards ceremony to exclaim that the project is about to be realized, and the hype has never been more obvious.
An analyst recently compared the series of innovations Musk pursued at the factory with Henry Ford's revolutionary mobile assembly line.
Herbert Diess, CEO of Volkswagen Group, expressed concern this month that Tesla will be able to manufacture electric cars within a third of his company's time-a gap that would endanger employment.
Musk called the novelty that Tesla is studying as a revolution in the structural design of its vehicles. He wanted to use a large machine—as long as a semi-trailer and as high as two stories—to produce front and rear body parts from a single piece of metal. Eliminating this will save time and cost, reduce weight and increase mileage.
Those who followed the Model 3 release a few years ago are familiar with all these buzzing sounds.
Musk touted the effort to build a highly automated "alien dreadnought" manufacturing system, which made catastrophic errors and almost bankrupted Tesla. Today, the company has more resources to support its CEO’s desire to push the limits of how cars are manufactured.
Morgan Stanley's top automotive analyst Adam Jonas wrote in a report last month: "The big picture here is that Tesla has the opportunity to completely transform the car production and factory car manufacturing processes." Sla is building the car factory of the future."
Musk summarized Tesla's pursuit in a simple way at the beginning of this year. "With our giant casting machine, we are actually trying to make full-size cars in the same way as toy cars," he tweeted in January.
When the Tesla factory was opened to the public for one day last month, on the billboards placed around it, Tesla stated that it would inject aluminum into the world's largest die-casting machine, and then use 6,100 tons of pressure to clamp the metal—— The equivalent of 1,020 African elephants stand on tools to form parts.
The plant will house eight such machines, and Musk's goal is to finally eliminate the two largest parts of his Y-SUV-the front and rear chassis-each using only one piece of metal. In contrast, the current Model 3 contains 70 metal parts, which are only used for the underbody of the rear body.
On October 9, 2021, invited guests line up for the open day at the Tesla factory in Glenheide near Berlin.
Although Musk used a term for these machines-"Giga press"-which shows that Tesla called them internally, but that is not the case.
The company has been buying them from Idra Group, a privately held Italian company that has sold them to three customers on three continents and is in talks with other automakers and major suppliers.
The front and rear castings will be connected to the frame under Model Y, which will house the battery built into the vehicle's structure. This may also be a phased change-Tesla and other electric car manufacturers have to pack their batteries in metal sheets at this point, and then seal these covers to a separate floor.
Musk touted the consequences of simpler and more integrated battery and body manufacturing at Tesla’s “Battery Day” event last year. He claims that the company can reduce the investment per GWh of battery output by 55% and reduce the required factory floor space by 35%.
For all the benefits Musk described, he also admitted that Tesla will gamble in Glenheide, a small town about an hour east of Berlin. "Many new technologies will appear in Berlin, which means huge production risks," Musk tweeted in October last year.
He wrote at the time that Tesla's factories in Shanghai and Fremont, California will try the same transformation in about two years, when the new technology will be verified.
Five months after the post was published, a small fire broke out in a "Giga press" in Fremont. The machine can melt aluminum alloy at temperatures as high as 850 degrees Celsius (1,530 degrees Fahrenheit) before moving the metal into a slightly lower temperature holding furnace.
Jonas of Morgan Stanley wrote in his October 24 report that the manufacturing process is tricky, partly because the alloy must enter at a rate that ensures uniform cooling of the entire structure.
German automakers are paying close attention to Tesla's progress.
Volkswagen is considering building a new electric car factory near its huge Wolfsburg headquarters in a direct response to Musk's advance.
Earlier this month, Volkswagen's Diess tried to gather his employees to meet the challenge. He warned that Tesla might build an electric car in just 10 hours, while Volkswagen's factory in Zwickau would take more than 30 hours. Volkswagen’s new plant will produce 250,000 electric cars a year, and its goal is to catch up with Tesla in production time.
Morgan Stanley’s Jonas last month raised Tesla’s annual production forecast by the end of this decade by 2.35 million vehicles, on the grounds that he expects Tesla’s average production per plant to exceed 800,000 vehicles by 2030 .
This is much higher than the 500,000-unit production capacity of the Fremont plant that the company now claims.
"We haven't seen the'mobile assembly line moment' in the electric car industry," Jonas wrote, referring to Henry Ford's 1913 breakthrough. "We believe that that moment is coming. We believe that Tesla is in a unique position to push the boundaries at the center of the automotive manufacturing revolution."
Milan Nedlikovic, BMW’s production director, told reporters at an event last month that the automaker did not cooperate with large cast parts like Tesla, partly because this would reduce it on the same assembly line. The flexibility required to produce many different models.
Nonetheless, Tesla's new method aroused his interest. "If it works, maybe we will consider it," Nedeljkovic said.
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