Posted on 03/06/2023 12:51:12 PM PST by 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;
(Excerpt) Read more at newatlas.com ...
With today’s CAD technology and engineering doing this is a breeze compared to yesteryear’s technology.
JIT inventory and delivery on steroids basically.
Eventually the bodies will be made of a super plastic that has the colors built in so no painting needed at all...................
Makes the batteries as reusable as those booster rockets.
They could use legos and save 75%
” built and tested in chunks”
Sounds like Object-oriented programming.
Yep!......................
Or, they will be able to analyze the pixels so exactly and mix the paint so perfectly at the stations that no one will be able to distinguish the different shades from one facility to another.
Maybe they need to hire this guy?
Tesla should charge a battery reclaim tax on each auto sold because the batteries will have to be reclaimed and that is very expensive. Why should tax payers support Tesla in disposing of the used batteries?
I would like a car that does not have the paint deteriorate in just a few years.....
example - https://s3-media0.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/bp6Y7ZRiKGjfIYi8xE6Psw/348s.jpg
The whole automotive industry is a mess respective to the migration to systems with massive increases in software and the number of ECU’s in a car. Vehicle programs have a budget, the OEM tries to incrementally advance the vehicle features from the prior model year and re-use something developed on another vehicle. But often these ECU’s are created by different Tier-1’s with an imperfect (OEM) specification to begin with. The Tier-1’s also structure their teams around the vehicle program & budget. They want reuse but thin margins force ECU’s to, inevitably, be highly tailored to the last program - but they’ll try to hack something to meet the new spec.
All this results in diabolical design decisions and vehicle architectures that are a mess because they’ve completely outgrown their original design, trying to cobble together something across Tier-1’s as cheaply as possible.
Tesla is less tied to this model, they did a lot more in-house and started with clean designs that are scalable and reusable. Other OEM’s are trying to bring most of the software in-house but often don’t have the talent to do it all and also have to fight the Tier-1’s, at some point somebody has to actually make parts. The Tier-1’s will fight for their business model too.
The whole thing derives from breaking down the ability to make PHYSICAL parts as cheaply and interchangeable as possible, across many competing vendors. Trying to treat software and distributed electronic architectures like an assembly line doesn’t work. The software engineers have no space to be innovative and the constant deadlines mean they wouldn’t want to even if they had the time. Now they’re trying to consolidate the ECU’s, which brings its own set of headaches.
...and the moment the last program launches, you have a new program with all the same fires and problems - you’re behind schedule before you even begin.
The whole vertical structure of the industry needs to change.
I think the Tesla poobah is blowing baloney here. But a lot of these honchos have their jobs because they are good talkers. They talk some pie-in-the-sky theory and send people out to make this or that change.
But the production problems are typically obvious to workers at the lower levels.
Workers at lower levels get told “just do your job”, and “you aren’t being paid to think”. Funny huh? That sounds like very much what the authorities were telling people about Covid.
“Come and get injected with this new substance. It is for your own good.”
Didn’t Boeing try something similar w/ the 787?
” built and tested in chunks”
That’s pretty much how it’s done now. Been there, done that.
Billy Blaze
“I’m an ideas man Chuck.”
Feed mayonnaise to tuna...Call Starkist
You’re pretty cynical. Do you have any evidence that Tesla deserves your cynicism here?
Here is the Tesla police special that was built with the new design.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8hX2Ex58os
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