Musk has said that humanity does not yet have a clear understanding of the difficulty of mass production of new technologies, which is 1000% more difficult than simply producing a small number of prototypes.
"The machine that makes the machine is more complex than the machine itself."
This statement makes us begin to realize that the opportunities for change in automobile production are not only more attractive than the product itself, but even can be catalyzed and multiplied by the power of the latter.
Since then, we've seen the Fremongt plant top the North American capacity list, Giga Shanghai complete with a revolutionary structure, and Giga Taxas's "curve overtaking" in terms of build speed.
But in the current month of April 2022, none of this is as much a matter of tuging at our heartstrings as the giga Berlin that has just gone into production.
Everyone is wondering how a series of new technological revolutions will land here, and what kind of comments it will provoke in the traditional automotive industry in the heart of Germany.
Handelsblatt, Germany's largest circulation business and economic newspaper, recently got the opportunity to observe and interview employees at Giga Berlin, and on April 2 they published an exclusive article titled "Inside the Gigafactory in Glenhead: Tesla Builds a Car Every 45 Seconds," which is now translated in its entirety below:
The world's most modern car factory has been launched in Glenhead, where cars are coming off assembly lines at record speeds and German competitors have a lot to learn.
A ghostly voice often wanders through the halls of Glenhead's factory. It was the whistle of the press shop, a huge machine as tall as a three-story building with a white look and a red frame — yes, the press was in Tesla's corporate colors.
It was built with German expertise from suppliers such as Wifa, Schuler and Hirschvogel. The 50-ton press die produces a body part every 20 seconds at a pressure of 2,500 tons.
Similar presses can be found in other car factories, but Tesla wants to use them to make a component that other manufacturers don't use in this way. In addition to components such as doors or tailgates, the press shop will soon produce battery boxes – containers for the new 4680 lithium batteries.
The battery box and battery module produced by the press shop are glued together to form the model Y's chassis. This reduces weight, improves driving characteristics and increases endurance." I've been working on this since the company was founded," Tesla CEO Elon Musk said a few months ago.
With new production processes, a high degree of automation and the future of battery production, Tesla is setting the standard in its newly opened Glenhead plant.
Peter Nagel, founder of the consultancy ANP Management Consulting, says: "This is an interesting benchmark for the German automotive industry". **
Tesla is building cars at record speeds
Glenhead is the most modern car factory in the world — and it's important to Tesla. Analysts expect Tesla to reach production capacity of 2 million electric vehicles per year by the end of the year, a quarter of which will come from Germany.
To achieve this, "Giga Berlin" will have one car rolling off the production line every 45 seconds before the end of this year, which will be its peak capacity.
Heiko Weber, a partner at industrial consultancy Berylls, said: "The usual high-volume production cycles in the automotive industry, such as those of the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, are one car every 70 to 90 seconds.
Tesla is keeping a low profile on how to manage and achieve these, and even suppliers are being ordered to remain silent. But The Commercial Daily was allowed to tour factory lobbies and talk to employees.
These, combined with our interviews with experts and evaluations of license applications, Internet forums and a compilation of information from other sources, paint a complete picture of a factory that sets a new industry benchmark.
Last but not least, Tesla CEO Elon Musk himself is a good source of information, and he likes to tweet about the production process or talk in detail about the production process.
The idea for Giga Press came from Italy
The aluminum ingots on the pallets lined up in the foundry workshop, which were feed for Tesla's two other die-casting machines. The huge die casting machine just makes nine aluminium ingots into a model Y tail integrated casting – the whole process is done in one go, and each part weighs 81 kg.
So far, Tesla has been casting and pressing the rear of the Model Y in this way at Glenhead, a process that is controversial among experts. In a normal car factory, such body parts are still welded from many individual parts.
It wasn't Tesla who came up with the idea, but IDRA, an Italian mechanical engineering company. According to manager Ricardo Ferrario, when italians presented "Giga Press" at a trade fair in Berlin in 2019, they ran into a lot of skepticism. One potential customer just smiled and said , "It's never going to work out."
But Tesla saw the advantage: The one-piece casting process eliminated 70 production steps. Musk was drawn to the idea that the proposal was closest to his idea of "the machine that makes the machine." Together with Tesla engineers and IDRA, he developed the OL 6100 CS, which now stands at the Glenhead plant and operates under pressure of 6,100 tons.
This is just the beginning. Tesla will install six more Giga Presses in its factories this year, bringing the total to eight. These capabilities are needed because the Model Y will not only be the rear part, but even the front part will be made of a casting in the future.
In this way, the Model Y crossover SUV becomes a production kit with few parts. Musk came up with the idea while looking at the toy cars produced by matchboxes.
In the future, Tesla's body will be mainly composed of three parts: two one-piece die-cast parts at the front and rear and a battery box connected to it, which eliminates a total of 370 production steps. Musk said: "The rear alone saves us 300 robots."
However, this mode of production also has drawbacks: if a customer has an accident and deforms the casting, it must be completely replaced – which makes repairs more expensive. Still, various manufacturers, such as Volvo or Chinese startups, are now announcing that they are going to use the Giga Press, and Volkswagen is also considering it.
According to an analysis by investment bank Bernstein, by 2030, one in every two electric vehicles will be produced using this process.
The Tesla Fremont Fremont is already in full production
Tesla aims to produce 500,000 cars a year at Glenhead, or less than 10,000 cars a week.
According to automotive expert ANP, the plant is still under construction and currently has a capacity of between 500 and 1,000 units per week. "The factory will be a success," says AP's Nagel, "Tesla is incredibly fast, innovative and flexible in every way."
German automakers were shocked. Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess has been warning for years about how terrible Tesla's superior productivity is.
It takes Volkswagen a total of 30 hours to build a car, while Tesla can do it in just 10 hours. That's one of the reasons why Volkswagen is now building a brand new electric car factory in Wolfsburg. "Without this, we don't have a chance in the competition," Dees said a few days ago.
The Volkswagen boss maintains a close relationship with Musk and admires the entrepreneur and his factory.
Tesla's capabilities are already evident at its first factory in California. Tesla currently produces 8,550 cars per week in the remodeled former GM lobby. According to a financial information service Bloomberg analysis of 70 U.S. auto plants, that number tops the list. Toyota's flagship plant in Kentucky ranked second with 8,427 units, followed by BMW's 8,343 units at its South Carolina plant.
The battery still comes from China
On the highway you will find the exit to the Glenhead Tesla factory on a hill.
It was visually dramatic, with the factory slowly peeking out and growing in front of the windshield. The factory hall is 24 meters high, 311 meters wide and 700 meters long, and the factory building has a total of 227,000 square meters, which is a large area, but it is tightly organized into a place.
Expert Nagel says that even from the outside, you can see this from the 179 tightly spaced logistics truck connection areas: "It requires complex logistics".
Parts, batteries or other goods delivered cannot stay in tight spaces for long periods of time and must be put into production quickly. 750 employees handle 2 million auto parts per day.
Model Y's batteries are still shipping from China. But Tesla is currently building a battery factory next to the factory, which could be up and running by the end of the year.
4680 battery debut
Glenhead will be the first place for the famous 4680 battery cells to enter mass production.
Musk showcased the battery at Battery Day 2020, and since then, analysts and experts have been waiting for the market to kick off. They were developed in the United States and will likely be used for the first time in Glenhead.
The 4680 cylindrical cell is more than double the diameter of the previous (Note: refers to the 2170 battery), five times more energy, and the endurance of electric vehicles is increased by 16%. Almost more importantly, these large battery cells blend in with the bodywork.
Until now, Musk said, batteries would lie uselessly in the car like "a bag of potatoes," while padding and insulation would make the vehicle heavier.
Now, the 4680 battery will be bonded together with foam adhesive while being fireproofed before becoming part of the body.
"It's a very good idea," says Christoph Neef, project manager at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation, "and both the complexity and cost of the vehicle will go down."
Take the simplicity, change the speed
One reason tesla produces fast is the simplicity of its model range.
Glenhead produced only the Model Y, a model that mixed sedans and SUVs. Up to 70% of the parts are the same as those of the Model 3, and the Model 3 can also be produced in Glenhead without major problems.
While other manufacturers have dozens of models on the market, Tesla is currently trying to establish its position in the market: with only a handful of models, a very limited choice of colors also promotes the efficiency of production.
In fact, Tesla currently only produces a black Model Y Performance in Glenhead. Anyone who ordered white, red, blue or midnight silver will have to wait. As Henry Ford once said, "You can have a Ford of any color, as long as it's black." (Note: It means that Model T only produced black models for more than a decade of ramp-up capacity)"
Tesla even has a record drying speed of paint
The paint shop, which is only allowed to be viewed from the outside, requires 70% less energy than competitor factories and consumes an exemplary 0.58 cubic meters of water per vehicle.
Painting, drying and curing takes only five hours. In one study, industry consultancy ANP pointed out this fact with three exclamation points.
The colors are applied in 7 layers, alternating between varnish and color. For special colors, there should be up to 13 layers. According to Musk, this creates a "flip effect": the effect of the paint varies depending on the angle of observation – a 3D effect is created, which needs to be achieved by special pigments.
Musk is smart at advertising in colors like "very special red" and "liquid silver." These particular colors subtly obscure the fact that Tesla offers few options compared to other manufacturers.
"We have to be careful with the number of colors," Musk himself said at a production launch at Greenheath. Tesla's highest rule also applies to color selection: production is as simple, fast and automatic as possible.
Musk himself gave the reason. Tesla hopes to sell 20 million cars a year over a decade – far more than twice the current sales volume of the entire Volkswagen group.
For the Berlin plant, this would mean that the region has so far used only a quarter of it, and when the car factory and battery factory are fully built, Giga Berlin will be able to produce 2 million cars a year.
"I think it's challenging, but it's not impossible," Musk said of his plans to employees and fans at Glenhead's opening ceremony. The Tesla owner is known for his bold predictions, but those predictions don't always come to fruition. But the new plant, with its productivity and ability to innovate, underscores the fact that Musk must be taken seriously.