"The factory itself is the product. This is the machine that produces the machine, and it is the latest version of the machine that produces the machine. At the opening ceremony of Tesla's Texas factory, Musk introduced the brand new factory.
The Texas plant, which began construction in July 2020, has the capacity to produce 500,000 Model Ys per year. New cars such as the Tesla Cyberruck, Semi and Roadster will also be produced here in 2023.
Compared with the Fremont, California and Shanghai plants, the Texas plant has made great progress in terms of construction concept and capacity scale.
Official information shows that the Fremont factory in California is mainly composed of six parts, namely stamping, die casting, welding, plastics, spraying, and final assembly workshop, which are independent of each other and are not subordinate to each other.
The disadvantage of such a design is obvious, that is, there is a large amount of material movement between the workshops, resulting in huge logistics costs.
In addition, because the Fremont plant does not have the capacity to produce batteries, powertrains and plastic parts, it also needs to be procured from the Nevada plant and external suppliers.
The progress of the Texas plant is based on innovations in construction concepts and production technologies.
"The factory should be a chip, an integrated circuit, and all the elements packed together." Musk expressed his understanding of the factory. "Now, that's the result."
Compared with the Fremont and Shanghai plants, the length and height of the Texas plant have been increased. It is about 1166 meters long, 337 meters taller than the Burj Khalifa and about 24 meters high, equivalent to the height of three Pentagons.
While it is not reasonable to compare the length and height of the factory to the Burj Khalifa and the Pentagon, it is enough to illustrate the huge size of the Texas factory.
In fact, the Texas factory is the largest factory building in the world. "This building can hold 194 billion hamsters." Musk describes the sheer size of the Texas factory outline in a more vivid way.
The huge volume enables stamping, die casting, welding, coating, powertrain, plastic, battery, assembly and other production lines to be integrated, which greatly shortens logistics costs and improves production efficiency.
In addition, because model Y uses one-piece die casting technology, the Texas plant was able to reduce the footprint of the stamping workshop and increase the footprint of the die casting workshop.
At the same time, because Tesla has mastered the 4680 battery technology, the factory has the ability to produce power batteries.
Self-built battery production lines reduce investment costs. Official information shows that due to the self-built battery production line, the investment cost of Tesla's unit GWH has been reduced by 34%.
"We're making our own battery cells, and the Texas factory has the most advanced batteries in the world. We think that over time, this could become the world's largest battery factory. Musk said.
In addition, the Texas plant has added powertrain and plastic parts production lines instead of relying on external supply, thereby reducing logistics costs, improving production efficiency and supply chain stability.
Thanks to innovations in construction concepts and production technologies, the Texas plant surpassed the Fremont and Shanghai plants to become a "one-stop" plant. Musk describes it as "a machine that produces machines."
In this "machine of production machines", raw materials such as steel, alloys, nickel and so on are transported from the corner, processed and transferred through various production lines, and finally launched from the assembly line to a complete ModelY.
"Here's an example where raw materials come in from one side and they're molded into a single cell. Then we die-cast the front and rear bodies. Then what spits out is the finished car. Raw materials come in from one side and the car goes out from the other side. ”
For the Texas factory, Musk was full of praise. "This building is the most advanced car factory ever built on Earth, and that's exactly what alien technology is."
The Berlin plant, which uses the same construction concept, is a testament to the advanced nature of the Texas plant. Tesla claims that it takes only 10 hours for a Model Y to be produced at its Berlin factory, while Volkswagen takes three times as long to produce an ID.3.
Tesla's leaps and bounds sparked a catch-up by Volkswagen. Just after production began at the Berlin plant, Volkswagen's €2 billion ev plant plan was about to be finalized.
"If we can reduce the production time to 10 hours, it will be a big achievement." Christian Vollmer, head of brand production at Volkswagen, said in an interview.
Just when traditional car companies are locking Tesla into competitors and imitation objects, Musk is brewing new and bigger moves.
On March 17, Musk tweeted that he was working on a third chapter of Tesla's Master Plan Part 3.
At the opening ceremony, Musk did not reveal more about Master Plan Part 3, he just pretended to be mysterious: "We will go to a really large scale, a scale that no company in history has reached." ”