Tesla re-thinks 100-year-old automaking model, aiming to halve costs

New Atlas ^ | March 03, 2023 | By Loz Blain

[Red Badger]

Tesla told investors it can reduce costs by 50%, by expanding on the modular, parallel manufacturing innovations it developed for the Model Y. Tesla's next-gen vehicles will be built and tested in chunks that won't come together until the final line.

At the company's 2023 Investor Day presentation, Tesla VP of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy described how the company's organizational structure is designed to ensure full accountability and a collaborative approach that makes sure manufacturing and automation considerations are part of every engineering and design decision.

"The places I used to work and the top manufacturing companies in the world, they don't sit together," said Moravy. "They're not one team. All of those teams, engineering, manufacturing, design, automation, they're all in one org. They all report to one person. We can't point fingers at each other, we have to solve [problems] together, which is the best way to innovate."

Thus allegedly united, the Tesla team is attempting the kind of ground-up, first-principles re-think that CEO Elon Musk is so fond of, targeted at a part of serial automobile production Moravy says has been around since the days of the Model T – and heavily focused on current and future automation via manufacturing robots.

"The traditional way of making a vehicle is this," he said. "You stamp it, you do build of body in white. You paint it, and you do final assembly. What's fascinating is, these shops are dictated by the organizational structures that exist. They're dictated by the boundaries that exist in the factory's layout. If something goes wrong in final assembly, you block the whole line, and you end up with buffering in between. This [system] is at the tail end of its manufacturing optimization;

[Svartalfiar]

You can get that easily. How long do you see outdoor paints on buildings and gas stations last?

Course, these cost 100s to 1000s per gallon