2023-07-15 15:23:36
July 15, 2023 Today at 5:22 PM
Tesla’s Model Y is the best-selling car in the world. The Tesla car factory near Berlin is gradually reaching cruising speed. An efficiency that gives a lesson to the competition in the country of the automobile that is Germany.
It’s a Monday morning. The traffic jams never end on the Berlin ring road, Highway 10; and this same period of summer holidays. Hundreds of trucks are in line, having been forced to stop from Saturday to Sunday evening. In addition to dozens of light blue trucks from Amazon’s fulfillment center a little further away, these are mainly brand-new model transporters of Tesla’s smallest SUV, the Model Y. Until recently, most of these models came from China. Since a few weeks, Grünheide responds to much of the growing European demand.
In our country, the Model Y is on the way to dethrone the Volvo XC40 of Ghent. Since its opening 17 months ago, the plant has already proven to be more productive than the approximately 3,700 cars that come out of our largest car factory, Volvo Cars in Ghent, on average every week. The Tesla factory operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Elon Musk’s paw
Although production is already underway, the factory is still under construction. There are construction cranes everywhere and enough space to grow more.
Tesla bought a plot of three million m2 in Grünheide: one and a half times the area of Monaco. Only a small part of the site is currently occupied. Factory expansion work is already underway. A second plant as large as the current one is planned. It will eventually produce 10,000 cars per week, or 500,000 per year.
3
million of m2
Tesla bought a plot of three million m2 in Grünheide: one and a half times the area of Monaco.
From the outside, the Tesla factory looks like a classic car factory: a giant no-frills rectangular box. The current perimeter is 2.5 kilometers, or half an hour’s walk.
Nevertheless, the paw of Elon Musk, the CEO of the group, shows through here and there. Some truck unloading docks are covered in colorful graffiti. “It is the work of our own employees. And we use a house sprayer”, can we read.
Silence radio
This is the first time that Tesla has allowed foreign journalists to enter the Grünheide factory: the company does not like prying eyes. No one is authorized to be quoted or wishes to be. Even Grünheide’s production manager, André Thierig, doesn’t want quotes in the newspapers.
He had two decades of Ford experience when he joined Tesla three years ago. At the time, he only found a construction site in Grünheide.
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A limited choice
Once inside, the factory still smells new. “We have the advantage of starting from scratch. Both for the premises and for the production system. I fully understand that it is difficult for classic car manufacturers to carry out a transformation and obtain the ‘membership of everyone’, explains an employee.
“We have the advantage of starting from scratch. Both for the premises and for the production system. I fully understand that it is difficult for classic car manufacturers to carry out a transformation and obtain the ‘membership of everyone’
Simplicity is cheap and complexity is expensive. This principle seems to apply to the entire Tesla factory. Only one Model Y is thus manufactured there with a limited number of variants.
For example, customers can only choose between five colors. The other options are limited to a different set of rims, a different interior color and a drawbar or not. Any other customization of the car must go through preparers and the online store.
A strategy that contrasts with that of the major German manufacturers of high-end cars. In its heyday, the options list for an Audi A6 was so long that the model was available in nearly two million variants. With the Y, the choice is limited to sixty variants. This has a significant impact on the production process.
Parts saving
One of the main savings that Tesla has managed to achieve in production is the pressing of large parts of body and chassis in one piece. For example, the rear of a normal car’s chassis consists of approximately 70 pieces welded in various stages.
Together with Italian machine builder Idra, Tesla has developed a huge press able to manufacture the rear of the chassis in one piece. Next to the machine, the operators look like dwarfs. However, this implies that the body of a Model Y has only 17 parts.
This production method is being considered by other car manufacturers. Volvo Cars announced last year the forthcoming installation of a similar molding plant on its Swedish site.
Home made
A little further, 500 robots weld all the parts; another wish of Musk to see production fully automated. However, when production of the Model 3 sedan was launched in California, this project turned out to be too ambitious and too complex. Since then, the CEO has therefore limited his ambitions to the body shop.
Despite all these robots, around 11,000 people work for Tesla in Grünheide. This is mainly because Tesla manufactures its parts itself: from the batteries and motors to the interiors.
“In this way, we retain much better control of quality than if we entrust it to suppliers,” the statement reads.
In the assembly hall, for example, dozens of people are busy assembling the driver and passenger seats. Here too, it is once more a question of standard seats in Model Y and Model 3.
Better than Toyota
It was originally planned to also set up a battery factory on the site, but the project was suspended. US President Joe Biden’s “green” offensive led Tesla to maintain all its plans for new battery factories in the United States.
The site of Grünheid’s second production hall, under development a little further, should help achieve Musk’s goal: to sell 20 million cars per year by 2030, twice as much as Toyota, the world’s largest automaker.
Every 45 seconds
In the first six months of the year, Tesla delivered three times as many new cars to Belgium as a year earlier. Certainly, lower prices have helped.
70-90
seconds
If most of the German factories of Volkswagen, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz leave the assembly line a car every 70 to 90 seconds, the Tesla factory in Berlin has managed to reduce this timing to 45 seconds.
Despite the increasing supply from other manufacturers, Tesla’s dominance in the electric car market in our country continues to grow.
Hence the need to keep up the pace. If most of the German factories of Volkswagen, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz leave the assembly line a car every 70 to 90 seconds, the Tesla factory in Berlin has managed to reduce this timing to 45 seconds. Enough to make the classic end-of-visit photo session difficult or to speed up the pose!
Tesla’s Cybertruck is out of the box
Tesla announced this Saturday that the first copy of its Cybertruck electric pickup rolled off the production line at its mega-factory in Texas.
In April, the manufacturer had pointed out that the production of this pickup was “on track” to begin, as planned, during the year in its new factory in Texas.
The machine with its futuristic silhouette, a kind of metal carapace with rather unusual angular lines, had been unveiled in November 2019.
His presentation had caused a sensation when a collaborator, wanting to boast of the unfailing solidity of the machine, had broken in an armored window to the mass. Two days later, Tesla reported receiving nearly 150,000 pre-orders.
In May, Elon Musk had indicated that the objective was to manufacture 250,000 per year, stressing that this figure might double because its price makes it accessible.
When it was launched, the Cybertruck – which can go from 0 to 100 km / h in less than three seconds, according to the Tesla site – was to be available in three models. Prices range from $39,900 (400 km range) to $69,900 (800 km range) for the top model.
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