New production capacity giant Tesla: Giga Texas 45 seconds a new car

Text | XEV Institute

On May 16, 2020, Tesla's new U.S. factory address was officially selected, and Austin, Texas, won.

In December 2021, Tesla officially moved its headquarters from Silicon Valley, California, to its Texas factory location.

On April 7, 2022, Tesla held a grand opening ceremony at the Texas Giga Texas Super Factory (hereinafter referred to as "Giga Texas"), and Musk invited many Tesla fans to the new factory to participate in the Cyber Rodeo celebration, on the one hand, to celebrate the completion of the new factory, on the other hand, to make a good profit for the new headquarters, the celebration site is full of Texas denim.

* Texas Cowboy Tesla

In two years, Tesla "produced" the world's largest automobile production plant to date.

There are not only the traditional punching, welding, painting and total four process workshops, but also the new 4680 battery and CTC battery chassis assembly production line. All the production processes are aggregated into one building, and the raw materials enter through one of the factory openings, and from the other mouth comes the complete Tesla model. This drastically reduces the production process and increases production efficiency.

Tesla has long referred to its gigafactory as "the machine that makes machines." The "Giga Texas" completed this time is currently Tesla's most advanced and efficient "machine", and it is the culmination of its manufacturing capabilities.

In terms of peak production efficiency, Giga Texas produces a Tesla car in just 45 seconds, compared to the production efficiency of the century-old Mercedes-Benz C-Class, a mature production line of the century-old Mercedes-Benz, which is 70 - 90 seconds per car.

45 seconds is the "American speed" created by Tesla.

According to the plan, Tesla will be the first to produce a Model Y model in Giga Texas. In fact, the first Texas-made Model Y with 4680 batteries and CTC (Direct Battery Mounted on chassis) technology was delivered at the celebration.

Next, the new factory will mass-produce the Long-awaited Sci-Fi electric pickup Truck Cybertruck in 2023, which has been booked for more than a million units.

*Giga Texas 产 Model Y 和 Cybertruck

In the future, there will be electric semi-trailer Tesla Semi, the second-generation supercar Roadster and the original machine of the humanoid robot Optimus here.

Tesla's ambitions are enormous, and the new factory will produce up to 1 million vehicles a year for Tesla, of which the planned capacity for the Model Y model is 500,000, after all, the car is still in the stage of selling globally.

Why is Giga Texas able to produce cars with such high efficiency and at the same time such a large capacity? It should be known that Tesla's global production capacity is only about 1 million units (Giga Berlin and Giga Texas have only started to climb capacity this year).

Let's take a look at the mystery inside Giga Texas.

01 - Giga Texas: The most advanced "machine for producing machines"

Tesla Giga Texas is located in the south-central United States, the biggest feature is large. The plant covers an area of more than 8 million square meters, which is nearly 10 times the size of Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory and more than twice that of Tesla's Berlin Gigafactory.

The factory building is a regular strip of polygons, and if the factory is erected, it is taller than the burj Khalifa (828 meters), the tallest building in the world. Musk jokes that there are a total of 194 billion hamsters in it.

With such a large area, California obviously has no place for Musk to "build".

In addition to the "big", giga Texas' core technological innovation is still the revolution in the vehicle production process, manufacturing process and production efficiency.

*Comparison of the production floor layout of Tesla's California factory and Texas factory

First, let's take a look at Giga Texas' innovations in the factory's production process, one of the major changes is that the layout of the major workshops on the site is more compact and intensive.

In the celebration speech, Musk released two factory workshop comparison maps, many production workshops in the California factory are scattered buildings, different raw materials and components at different stages need to be operated between different buildings, and battery cells and battery packs are also shipped from Tesla Nevada Super Factory, which undoubtedly slows down the efficiency of the entire production.

In Giga Texas, every step of vehicle manufacturing takes place in the same building, there is basically no thick "workshop wall", and Giga Texas is also equipped with a battery production workshop and a structural battery assembly workshop, and the batteries no longer need to be packaged into modules, but can be directly arranged on the vehicle chassis.

*The 4680 battery is placed directly on the chassis of the vehicle

Here, Tesla's new 4680 battery and CTC chassis can be directly entered from the production line to the next assembly link, which greatly saves the efficiency consumption of logistics.

Giga Texas' major production workshop layout is like the design of a chip, using an integrated compact layout, basically raw materials come in from one end of the plant, after a series of processing, the finished car will come out of the other end of the plant, which is a very efficient production closed loop.

In addition to the innovation of the workshop layout and production process, Tesla Giga Texas also pursues the ultimate efficiency in the manufacturing process.

"Integrated die casting" is Tesla's killer tool to innovate the manufacturing process.

To understand "integrated die casting", let's first understand "die casting". In automobile manufacturing, "die casting" is to inject molten metal into the mold and then finalize the mold release, while "integrated die casting" is a larger-scale single "die casting", which can die cast larger automotive structural parts at one time. In this way, multiple parts of the vehicle can be formed in one piece, and there is no need to manufacture different parts separately and then weld, such as Tesla's front and rear body can be integrated die-cast.

The introduction of "integrated die casting" is actually based on the traditional four major processes of automobile manufacturing, and the die casting link is added. Although the number of links has increased, the manufacturing and welding process of many parts has been reduced, and the pressure of supply chain management has been reduced, so overall there will be a significant increase in production efficiency.

At this stage, the rear plate assembly of Tesla's Model Y model has been applied on a large scale to the "integrated die-casting" process, which has reduced the total weight of Tesla's car body by 30% and reduced manufacturing costs by 40%.

In the future, 2-3 large die casting parts will completely replace Tesla's 370-parts car body, which will greatly reduce vehicle costs, improve production efficiency, and improve the performance of the vehicle.

On the other hand, the "integrated die casting" process also contributes to the reduction of robots in the production line. It is understood that Giga Texas' Model Y production line has only 300 robots, while other factories have as many as 1,000 model 3 production lines. This is another significant cost saving.

In order to achieve the expected effect of "integrated die casting", Tesla specifically sought out suppliers to customize the integrated die casting machine Giga Press, which is also the largest die casting machine in history. It is said that Tesla has found a number of suppliers around the world, and finally only one has made the die casting machine that Tesla wants, and this supplier is Italy's IDRA. Interestingly, the company was acquired by Hong Kong's LK Group in 2008, so it is also "Made in China" to some extent.

Through the layout of the production hall and the renewal of the production process, the battery cell production workshop is introduced into the chain of factory production and the CTC technology is introduced into the vehicle assembly process, while the large-scale adoption of "integrated die casting" technology makes Giga Texas' production efficiency and production capacity at the peak of the history of the automotive industry.

This will lay a solid foundation for Tesla's annual production increase of 50%, and will also lay the foundation for Tesla's goal of 20 million vehicle sales by 2030.

02 - From "Capacity Hell" to "Capacity Giant"

People familiar with Tesla will certainly not forget the "production hell" that Tesla experienced when it was mass-producing the Model 3. It is good that there is a huge demand for models, but it is also necessary to have the ability to build cars, which is a big lesson in Tesla's 10-year development process. So one of the core things Tesla has done in the past few years is to innovate production methods, improve production efficiency, and reduce production costs.

In terms of capacity layout, Tesla has established 6 factories around the world, of which 4 are used for vehicle or battery production, and Tesla does not allow any link to drop the chain in the most critical battery supply and manufacturing of electric vehicles.

These plants include:

The Fremont plant in California, which started operations in 2010, is primarily for the production of Model S3XY models;

The Nevada Gigafactory, which was put into operation in 2016, mainly produces battery cells (18650, 2170), battery packs, motors and powertrains;

The New York Gigafactory, which started operations in 2017, mainly produces solar-related products and supercharger piles;

The Shanghai Gigafactory, which started operations in 2018, mainly produces Model 3 and Model Y, is Tesla's first overseas factory;

The Berlin Gigafactory, which will be operational in 2022, mainly producing Model Y and 4680 batteries;

The Texas Gigafactory, which will be operational in 2022, will primarily produce model Y, Cybertruck and successor products.

The reason why Tesla has laid out production capacity in various parts of the world is to achieve local production, make good use of the local supply chain, reduce production costs, improve production efficiency, serve local consumers, and establish a global influence.

According to the currently released production capacity data, Tesla's four-seat super factory responsible for vehicle production, California Fremont and Shanghai super factory production capacity is close to 1 million units, while the newly commissioned Berlin plant and Giga Texas have a planned annual production capacity of 500,000 units and 1 million units, respectively. Of course, it is only recently put into production, and there is still a process of capacity climbing. Overall, the total capacity of these four plants should be close to 2.5 million units by the end of the year.

In 2021, Tesla delivered nearly 940,000 vehicles worldwide. According to Musk's 50% annual sales increase target, Tesla will sell more than 1.5 million units worldwide in 2022, so this production capacity is still relatively rich. After the "production capacity hell" of that year, Tesla can now be regarded as a "production giant".

Of course, the planned production capacity and the actual production capacity can not be compared, the current global automotive industry chips and other parts supply shortage, the epidemic black swan from time to time led to factory shutdown, these are the key factors affecting automobile production. Tesla is also looking for ways to reduce the negative impact of the supply chain, such as reducing the use of chips on Tesla vehicles through technical means to ensure the production and manufacture of vehicles.

03 There are no new models in 2022, giving way to scale

Since the beginning of this year, Tesla's two gigafactories in Berlin and Texas have been put into operation, which has become an important measure for Tesla to further expand its market share and achieve scale around the world.

Musk also made it clear on the recent earnings call that Tesla's key task in 2022 is to expand production and sales, so there are no new models and products launched, and everything must give way to scale.

On the one hand, it is necessary to continuously improve the production capacity of existing super factories to achieve planned capacity; on the other hand, it is necessary to continuously promote the capacity of the two new factories. In addition, it is necessary to smooth the supply chain at the supply level of components such as chips and batteries, so as not to be embarrassed by empty capacity and parts supply.

Because there are no new model products, at this celebration ceremony, Musk can only briefly review tesla's 10-year product road in three parts: past, present and future.

In the past, Tesla only had one Roadster, which was also the basis for Tesla's fortune;

Now, Tesla has four models of S3XY (3 and Y are explosive), as well as solar cell products, supercharge networks, etc.;

In the future, Tesla will have Cybertruck, Tesla Semi, Roadster 2, Tesla Bot (humanoid robot) Optimus, and of course, the Roboatxi fleet supported by FSD full self-driving.

So after a year of giving way to scale in 2022, 2023 will be a big year for Tesla's new product deliveries, and most of the new products will be produced at the Giga Texas factory, and there will definitely be new models.

Therefore, the official opening and commissioning of Tesla Giga Texas is a crucial step for Tesla in 2022 and 2023; even if Giga Texas is placed in Tesla's ambitious journey of "accelerating the world's transition to sustainable energy", it is also a significant stroke.