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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.
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.
Automotive factory spinup is HARD. Your typical car takes over 3-4 years to spin up to full production and they don't make major changes to any model for around 5 years to maximize the CapEX spending this requires. Telsa is new to the game but many of the people they've hired aren't. They did try to do to much automation but otherwise they are experiencing the same growing pains every automotive manufacturer does. Vehicles are hard to build, they have thousands of parts with tight tolerances.
For example, every time Toyota or GM changes a car model they'll design that change 3-4 years before it goes into production and they'll spend a year or two on a test production line refining the production and making part changes to accommodate the best work flows before the new production line is rolled out to a full production facility. Tesla as a new automaker doesn't have this option (they don't even have a test factory), they are doing the testing while building production cars and it's a painful and expensive process that will have fits and starts. Just like the model S they will change that cars subtly as time goes on and they refine production making part changes and swap outs to improve production flow and errors.