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With 8 Giga Presses, Tesla Giga Berlin’s 500k annual estimate looks conservative

F-22Raptor

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Tesla’s Gigafactory Berlin facility is widely believed to be capable of producing 500,000 vehicles per year in its first phase, which is expected to start operations later this year. Considering that there are eight Giga Presses that are getting set up in the Phase 1 area, however, it would seem that Tesla may be underpromising with regards to Giga Berlin’s potential annual output.

Produced by IDRA, the Giga Press is a house-sized machine capable of producing the megacasts necessary to build the Model Y’s front and rear underbody. The machines themselves are daunting, with each Giga Press taking up to 24 flatbed trucks to transport its components. As per the Giga Press’ specifications, each machine has a cycle time of ~80-90 seconds, allowing an output rate of 40-45 completed castings per hour. This translates to about ~1,000 castings per day, for each Giga Press.


If one were to assume that Tesla uses three megacasts per Model Y and a 20% downtime for each Giga Press, the Germany-based plant may very well be on track to produce significantly more than the 500,000 vehicles that the EV maker has declared in its filings. Rough estimates from the Tesla community have mentioned numbers beyond 1 million vehicles annually from Giga Berlin’s Phase 1 alone. While optimistic, this figure does not seem implausible considering that there will be eight Giga Presses deployed on the site.

Tesla currently has two Giga Press machines in the Fremont Factory that are producing the rear megacast for the Model Y’s underbody. Drone flyovers in the area suggest that Tesla’s Fremont-based Giga Presses have a cycle time of about 170 seconds per casting, likely due to the machines not being fully optimized yet. Considering that IDRA estimates each Giga Press to have a cycle time of ~80-90 seconds, Tesla’s Fremont machines still have a lot of space to optimize their operations.


Interestingly enough, a report from Germany last July hinted that Tesla is actually planning on producing 2 million vehicles per year in the Giga Berlin complex, allowing the EV maker to command about 16% of the expected electric car market share in Europe. If Phase 1 alone could produce more than 500,000 vehicles per year with its eight Giga Presses, a 2-million annual output for the entire Germany-based Tesla plant may very well be realistic.

This is especially notable considering that Tesla will not only be building the Model Y in Giga Berlin. While the company will launch the site with the production of the all-electric crossover, Tesla has also hinted at the Model 3 sedan being manufactured at the Germany-based facility. Elon Musk has noted that Tesla intends to produce a yet-to-be-announced vehicle on the site as well, and it would be one specifically tailored for the European market. Each of these vehicles—the Model Y, the Model 3, and a potential compact car—will likely drive a lot of demand for Tesla’s vehicles, requiring Giga Berlin to produce far more vehicles annually than initially expected.

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-giga-berlin-giga-press-output-sandbagged/amp/
 
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mega this, giga that, and it's just... purchased from some other company off the shelf. so much for 'intellectual property'. Not even made in the US.
 
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mega this, giga that, and it's just... purchased from some other company off the shelf. so much for 'intellectual property'. Not even made in the US.

No, you missed the point. Tesla is the first consumer automobile company using casting machines to build cars. Eventually (in the future) no welding robots will be needed as the entire car frame will be one HUGE cast which can be done in less than 2 minutes.

 
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No, you missed the point. Tesla is the first consumer automobile company using casting machines to build cars. Eventually (in the future) no welding robots will be needed as the entire car frame will be one HUGE cast which can be done in less than 2 minutes.

casting in general is more expensive, takes longer due to cast cooling time and produces mechanically weak micropores in the material. the advantages of die casting such as high dimensional accuracy are hardly relevant for a large piece like auto frames.

in addition, casting as one piece requires homogenous materials for the frame instead of allowing you to pick and choose the best load bearing material for the part. yet another disadvantage for automotive applications is that the interior of a car has complex parts such as the dash, seats, etc. which are hard to insert into a one piece frame but trivially easy to insert with a disassembled frame.

traditional manufacturing with stamped parts welded or fastened together make much more sense, particularly for highly automated processes where you just shift the parts down the assembly line in each unit operation.
 
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casting in general is more expensive, takes longer due to cast cooling time and produces mechanically weak micropores in the material. the advantages of die casting such as high dimensional accuracy are hardly relevant for a large piece like auto frames.

in addition, casting as one piece requires homogenous materials for the frame instead of allowing you to pick and choose the best load bearing material for the part. yet another disadvantage for automotive applications is that the interior of a car has complex parts such as the dash, seats, etc. which are hard to insert into a one piece frame but trivially easy to insert with a disassembled frame.

traditional manufacturing with stamped parts welded or fastened together make much more sense, particularly for highly automated processes where you just shift the parts down the assembly line in each unit operation.

Partial body frames that are cast are already in Tesla cars. The technology has already been proven.
 
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Partial body frames that are cast are already in Tesla cars. The technology has already been proven.

oh, I see.



 
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oh, I see.




Don't worry you'll be joining a chorus of Chinese members suddenly singing about how great casting is soon since NIO is now moving to casting. I'm sure you'll also say that Chinese Auto companies have secretly been researching this technology way way way before Tesla. :rolleyes1:

 
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Don't worry you'll be joining a chorus of Chinese members suddenly singing about how great casting is soon since NIO is now moving to casting. I'm sure you'll also say that Chinese Auto companies have secretly been researching this technology way way way before Tesla. :rolleyes1:


Nope they're making a mistake by deviation from proven Toyota style production.

It is a form of muda.
 
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Nope they're making a mistake by deviation from proven Toyota style production.

It is a form of muda.

What? I believe Toyota has been around long enough to have cycled through Ladder Frame, Backbone, Unibody, Monocoque, and Tubular (rare).

What's so big about a change to casted frame? If anything it is a simplified Unibody.
 
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What? I believe Toyota has been around long enough to have cycled through Ladder Frame, Backbone, Unibody, Monocoque, and Tubular (rare).

What's so big about a change to casted frame? If anything it is a simplified Unibody.

Current method for unibody is stamped metal + welding. This means that each component can be inspected and interchanged. If a part is defective it typically is easy to see due to stamping being a purely mechanical deformation process. Only 1 defective part will be discarded.

Casting means possiblity of weaker internal structures which cannot be visually inspected and defect means discard of the entire body.
 
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Current method for unibody is stamped metal + welding. This means that each component can be inspected and interchanged. If a part is defective it typically is easy to see due to stamping being a purely mechanical deformation process. Only 1 defective part will be discarded.

You weigh the part and if it comes up short you throw it back in the cauldron.
There's no other place for the metal to go. It's either in the finished part or not.

Maybe you can whack one end with a hammer and listen for the vibration frequency. :-)

Casting means possiblity of weaker internal structures which cannot be visually inspected and defect means discard of the entire body.

I think we can assume that before it goes into Production they have given it adequate stress tests.
 
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You weigh the part and if it comes up short you throw it back in the cauldron.
There's no other place for the metal to go. It's either in the finished part or not.

Maybe you can whack one end with a hammer and listen for the vibration frequency. :-)



I think we can assume that before it goes into Production they have given it adequate stress tests.

You can't measure porosity with just weighing. What if the weight is within tolerance but there's micro voids that could cause fracture during high limit loading?

Musk is not well known for stress testing his processes. "Fail hard and fail often"
 
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You can't measure porosity with just weighing. What if the weight is within tolerance but there's micro voids that could cause fracture during high limit loading?

Musk is not well known for stress testing his processes. "Fail hard and fail often"

You are completely misinterpreting his quote. It means you should be constantly trying to improve on things by trying something new...instead of waiting for a competitor to do it..and thus likely put you out of business. Taking a risk by seeing if some new way of doing something works better than the accepted old way is not considered a negative to him. If you find out it was a complete waste of time then that is ok...as the next one could succeed and the payoff could be enormous.

Just like attempting to land a rocket, or attempting to catch a rocket, or trying to make cars with castings.

Steve Jobs was asked why would he risk destroying his successful ipod market by coming out with a phone that has the same features. He said "If I don't do it someone else will".
 
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the advantages of die casting such as high dimensional accuracy are hardly relevant for a large piece like auto frames.

in addition, casting as one piece requires homogenous materials for the frame instead of allowing you to pick and choose the best load bearing material for the part. yet another disadvantage for automotive applications is that the interior of a car has complex parts such as the dash, seats, etc. which are hard to insert into a one piece frame but trivially easy to insert with a disassembled frame.

traditional manufacturing with stamped parts welded or fastened together make much more sense, particularly for highly automated processes where you just shift the parts down the assembly line in each unit operation.

Looks like some Chinese EV companies are switching to the Tesla strategy you were very quick to write off as bunk...


As usual Chinese pessimism and the fear of failure mindset has to be allayed by the success of a Western innovator/trailblazer.

Nope they're making a mistake by deviation from proven Toyota style production.

It is a form of muda.

Maybe deviation is what it takes to make a company go from a nobody to a somebody...and non-deviation is what it takes for a comfortable nobody to stay a comfortable nobody.
 
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No, you missed the point. Tesla is the first consumer automobile company using casting machines to build cars. Eventually (in the future) no welding robots will be needed as the entire car frame will be one HUGE cast which can be done in less than 2 minutes.

And body panels will be super glued onto the frame?
 
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