Slashdot Mirror
New 'Tent' Assembly Line Is 'Way Better' Than Conventional Factory, Says Tesla CEO (arstechnica.com)
A few days ago, Elon Musk announced a "new general assembly line" made with "minimal resources." As Ars Technica reports, this new tented facility "is seemingly the first phase of an entirely new building, dubbed 'Factory 2.0.'" From the report: The tent is easily visible from the nearby Warm Springs BART station platform. When Ars visited on Monday afternoon, there appeared to be cranes and forklifts moving around the site. We could not easily see inside the long white temporary structure, but there did not appear to be any newly completed vehicles rolling off the lines in the adjacent parking lot. Still, one automotive expert that Ars spoke with said that a new temporary manufacturing facility on the same site as conventional automotive factories was unprecedented in the industry. Dave Sullivan, an analyst with Auto Pacific, told Ars that he wondered what was wrong with Tesla's existing facilities, if Musk decided the company needed more capacity. "It's almost a sign of desperation," he said. "It's a sprint to be profitable in the third quarter." Ars notes that "each tent is 53-feet-high by 150-feet-long -- there seem to be several connected in a long line, mounted with aluminum framing." In a tweet, Musk said: "It's actually way better than the factory building. More comfortable & a great view of the mountains."
Didn't they say they tried to automate too much? If so all this room is probably needed to allow more manpower to work in parallel.
Whatever works.
We already know who the clown is, now we've got tents for this circus. Very good, Elon.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Not surprising. Tesla has been shifting to humans over automation. They probably had some difficulty working around the existing layout and instead of reworking much of their factory floor I'm guessing they decided to move people outside. Heat from bodies may also make the factory uncomfortable if it wasn't designed for it.
So, Elon Musk and his company just built in 5 weeks, literally from the ground up, what GM might spend 10 years architecting and designing, getting the EIR, hiring the right unions and negotiating their contracts, contracting for an acquiring equipment, actually assembling it, staffing it, and starting it running.
This race for profitability is actually viewed with contempt by a commentator of the conventional auto industry.
There is a lot to be said for agility, as any manager or investor in a start-up will tell you. This is simply another difference between Silicon Valley business and the conventional auto business. The same sort of difference that allowed Tesla to make electric cars that could actually compete with gasoline cars on their own turf.
I hear Ferrari is just starting to introduce one that might compete, after Tesla has had theirs on the market since 2007, with three new models since. But that's it so far. Ferrari is pretty agile as auto manufacturers go, but at the cost of low manufacturing volume. Ferrari won't be selling its cars at even 5000/month. Tesla is trying to get both the volume and the innovation.
Bruce Perens.
Who's the shift foreman, Sheriff Joe?
Hey, it worked for circuses for years. Why not car production?
And, if he gets a better tax offer from another state - easier to roll up, load onto a train, and move (again, like the circus).
#DeleteChrome
Union or no, you don't increase productivity by having people keel over from heat prostration!
He knows that, he's just an asshole.
I've never been in a modern auto factory, but I've spent a lot of time in places where complex weapons systems were assembled. Temperature and humidity control wasn't an issue. In California, there wasn't any of either although the sheer mass of the facility tended to moderate temperature swings. In colder areas elsewhere there was some heating.
We're not talking a semiconductor fab facility here.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
I've been in lots of air-conditioned tents. However, any time it gets to 105 in Fremont, you can expect it to be front-page news.
Bruce Perens.
I saw that photo of eight blazing Core i9 CPUs, bathing in heat-sink grease and wet with cooling water, nestled in a motherboard carrying an entire 256 gigabytes of RAM. I'm still panting today!
Bruce Perens.
Since the highest temperature ever recorded was in 1913, but the degree wasn't removed from the Kelvin standard until 1968, I think you are shaky ground here.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Tent in tent, repeat as required. Been in several aerospace composites factories that are little more than tents-- a Butler Building really isn't all that different. Usually the floor slab does a lot to moderate temperatures, but you can easily set up a modular clean room inside if you need to.
Have you guys ever been in Denver International Airport main terminal? It's a tent. It gets as hot in Denver as it does in Fremont.
Snark all you want but just because something is a quote TENT unquote doesn't mean it isn't a robust and practical structure.
Brookhaven National Laboratory is on Earth. They achieved at least 4 trillion degrees Celsius.
The paint shop would most likely be in the existing structure, not the tents. But there's really no reason why you couldn't put it in a tent; all you need is a positive pressure system. Mobile chemical warfare decontamination units use tents; you just plug some air pumps with filters into them and make sure the pressure inside is higher than the pressure outside. Air will keep leaking out, but that stops any contamination from leaking in.
Its an assembly line for a product that will live in the open wind swept air, rain and mud, snow and salt, etc. Things that need to be sealed were likely sealed at the subassembly plant before delivery to Tesla. Plus they will still have a clean room for steps where there would be an issue, such as painting. For many stages, bolting in instrument panels, consoles and seats, bolting on doors, etc what is the issue? Is there an issue for welding frame components, given the material thrown into the air during welding I kind of doubt it?
What are the open air and humidity problems that you are referring to?
Since most of the robotics come from Germany, I am guessing that the next factory will be in Europe, possibly Germany or France. It should be easy to set up a quick and inexpensive tent, followed by robotic lines.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Being unable to satisfy all of your demand is literally the opposite of being the end of a business. It's an existential requirement for a business. If you satisfy all the demand, and therefore have no demand left, you go out of business because you're not generating any more revenues.
Apart from that, you were right on everything. Well done!
AC did you forget all the UK government holding company efforts of the 1970's? To try and save the UK car production lines?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Congratulations, you're the thousandth immature male to make that joke :P
Concerning the article, some of this is head-smackingly stupid. E.g.:
*facepalm*
There Is No More Space At Fremont. Something that has been discussed endlessly in the conference calls and at the investor meeting. Tesla applied for a permit long ago to build a new building, but it's still in progress, and meanwhile, they've been filling up Fremont at a rapid clip as they expand Model 3 production alongside the existing S and X lines. They could build a new line in a temporary building, get it up and debugged and running and turning out vehicles, or they could sit around waiting for months (or more) for a new building. Gee, I can't imagine what's the right choice here, hmm...
The current building (still being improved, but with the line in place inside) is permitted for six months, but given that they've been liking it, it may become permanent.
I was watching this thing on TV about some guy named Hitler. Someone should stop him!
Huh, that part never occurred to me. That's ingenious.
Since these buildings are standardized and designed for assembly and disassembly, with stockpiled components for them, you don't even have to use the same building. Just wait until your new building is ready then disassemble the old one.
Just have to make sure that the line is easy to take down and set back up. Wonder if the sizes of components on their next line will be based on what fits into a shipping container? ;)
I was watching this thing on TV about some guy named Hitler. Someone should stop him!
Meanwhile, if you actually hung out on Tesla forums and watched people take delivery and write about their cars, you'd know that this is a myth. Yes, as with any brand, the occasional vehicle has problems, and needs to be corrected by a service centre. But it's not at all like the shorts portray, in their endless glee sharing every last case that they can get their hands on.
Tesla has always had the highest consumer satisfaction rate in the auto industry. Back in the Roadster days when they were selling hundreds of vehicles, you all said, "Well, that's only because you have hardcore early adopters - once you get more mainstream, people will stop putting up with it and will hate Tesla!". Then Tesla started selling thousands of vehicles with the early Model Ss. And you all said the same thing. Then they were selling tens of thousands of vehicles. Then a hundred thousand per year. And are now moving into the hundreds of thousands per year. At what point is your "people are going to start hating Tesla" hypothesis going to come true? Did you ever stop and think that the reason people tend to rate them well is that they actually really like the cars after having owned them?
I was watching this thing on TV about some guy named Hitler. Someone should stop him!
Hundreds of casino's in the US use this same style tenting, none have rusting and ruined slot machines, nor do they have standing water by the craps table.
People in the business of making money love the tents.
I can't stand it, I know you planned it
I'mma set it straight, this Autogate
I can't stand driving' when I'm in here
'Cause your auto drive ain't so auto stear.
Which makes sense because individual components may (or may not) need careful climate control for manufacture, but if the assembly of the whole vehicle is so fussy that cleanish non-wet conditions can be a problem, then those components probably have no business in a car that must survive weather.