Tesla Car Manufacturing
Tesla, an American electric vehicles manufacturer established in 2003 in California is working with a mission to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy“. It has developed a complete ecosystem to accomplish its mission. Apart from manufacturing electric cars, Tesla is involved in manufacturing solar panels, and manufacturing and recycling Li-ion batteries and Superchargers to achieve sustainable production and easy adoption of electric vehicles. In 2021, the global fleet of Tesla vehicles, energy storage, and solar panels enabled its customers to avoid emitting 8.4 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent, 8.4 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent to over 20 billion miles of driving.
Currently, Tesla is selling four Electric Cars Model Y ($50,490), Model 3 ($40,240), Model S ($74,990), and Model X ($79,990). By 2030 Tesla is aiming to sell 20 million electric vehicles per year (compared to 0.94 million in 2021) and deploy 1,500 GWh of energy storage per year (compared to 4 GWh in 2021). Tesla holds 1,27,855 employees and has its manufacturing plant located in
- California, USA (Tesla’s first factory—produces Model S, Model 3, Model X, and Model Y), Nevada, USA (One of the world’s highest volume plants for electric motors, batteries, and powertrains), New York, USA (Builds Solar Roof, solar panels and electrical components for Superchargers), and Texas, USA (Tesla’s new global headquarters produces Model Y and is the future home of Cybertruck)
- Berlin, Germany (Tesla’s first European factory—produces Model Y and will produce batteries and more)
- Shanghai, China (Tesla’s first factory abroad—produces Model 3 and Model Y)Germany (Tesla’s first European factory—produces Model Y and will produce batteries and more). Let’s dive into Tesla car manufacturing
Tesla’s Unique Car Manufacturing Process
Tesla can manufacture a car every 30 seconds at the Shanghai plant. Tesla uses advanced hybrid (human and robots) techniques to build its cars. Tesla car is always under motion during its manufacturing time either on a conveyor or with robots to meet the production speed. Tesla is able to reduce the cost to build a single vehicle by almost 50% since 2018 -with the introduction of Model 3 and Model Y as well as the deployment of new, more efficient factories. Tesla also aims to reduce that cost by another 50% with the introduction of our next generation platform.
1. Giga Press
Tesla uses Giga Press made by IDRA which is an Italian company. It is a monolithic die-casting machine that has replaced nearly 300 robotic arms to cast Model Y rear and front quarter into a single piece.
Giga Press features all in one, it has a melting oven to liquefy aluminum alloy at 1500℉ then this molten liquid is purified to remove any particle bigger than 25 micrometers, and a vacuum is created to remove any air presence. The molten alloy is pumped into the casting chamber by a high-speed plunger. Then at 6000 tons of clamping pressure, the molten alloy is cast into two half the mold rear and front. For the upcoming Tesla Cyber Truck, this pressure required is 9000 tons. At its Shanghai plant, Tesla uses Giga Press made by L.K Machinery. Because of this, Tesla was able to produce and deliver over 1.3 million EVs globally in 2022.
2. Robotic Arm
Model Y manufacturing requires more than a thousand robotic arms to catch the production speed. Tesla uses the Kuka robots in all its production lines. Kuka’s robots are cost-effective and technically efficient, semi-automated to fully automated. Tesla uses these robots in Body in white production and in Paint Shop (where color is coated on the mold vehicle body) to achieve the faster production of cars.
3. Parallel Assembling
Unlike conventional ways of assembling different components sequentially, Tesla opted for parallel assembling to speed up production. In Model Y, the chassis is attached to the battery. Seats and other interior components are also attached to the battery and then this is directly lifted inside the vehicle structure. In this way, Tesla is able to assemble components 10% faster than the conventional sequential assembly.
Conclusion
Tesla is planning to further expand its market by setting up more manufacturing plants in countries like India, and Turkey. In order to sell 20 million vehicles per year by 2030, Tesla has to make its plant more advanced and fast. Tesla is going to use more artificial intelligence (AI) robots in its gigafactory. Tesla is expected to launch electric cars in the lower price segment ($25,000) to catch the market. Tesla Giga factory really aims towards sustainable manufacturing, as the recycling of waste materials is an integral part of these plants. Only 7% of waste is generated from Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory. Tesla has installed 32,400 kW of solar at its factories to achieve its mission “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy“.