Bloomberg's Inside Look At Tesla's Model 3 Factory (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from an exclusive inside look at Tesla's Model 3 factory in Fremont, California: On the Model 3 body line on a Tuesday afternoon in early June, everything is still. Tesla is just coming off a week of downtime during which workers added a new production line, improved ventilation after a fire in the paint shop, and overhauled machines across the factory. But even after the changes, there are kinks to work out. Suddenly, dozens of robots snap into frenzied action, picking up door panels, welding window pillars, taking measurements, and on and on. This robotic dance is a visceral representation of what Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has dubbed "Alien Dreadnought," a code name for the factory that evokes an early 20th century warship, but with extraterrestrials.

The stakes couldn't be higher for Tesla, which is sprinting to produce the Model 3 in quantities great enough to turn a profit. But so far, the plant's choreography has been choppy. The flow at the factory in Fremont, California, is constantly interrupted while robots and humans are trained, retrained, or swapped out. If Tesla can't make this dance work, it will be remembered as a lesson in the dangers of irrational exuberance for automation. Success, on the other hand, could transform the car industry.

Comments

Re:Bloomberg? Why?

[Rei]

You're confused. The "pulling people off shifts" was first off due to planned S/X downtime, but more importantly, that was not this quarter. That was at the end of last quarter, and to achieve 2020 vehicles per week, not 3500. And more to the point, they not only maintained that rate for several weeks after the other lines went back up (all the way up until the Model 3 lines' next scheduled downtime), but increased it.