Elon Musk, CEO of electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, claims that the Model Y casting machine is one of the largest casting machines in the world, so that the equipment itself is similar in size to the house. More importantly, this giant casting machine called "Giga Press" is likely to be the decisive factor in helping Tesla achieve its goal of producing 1 million new cars per year.
Tesla Model Y may be built on the basis of the Model 3 platform, but this model is full of improvements and innovations from beginning to end. Sandy Munro, a professional car disassembler and manufacturing consultant, pointed out during the large-scale disassembly of this car that Model Y uses many of the largest aluminum castings he has seen in cars of the same size. Among them, the most representative is the two-piece aluminum body casting of Model Y. Musk expects that it may eventually be further reduced to only one piece.
At the center of all this is Giga Press, which can actually produce the largest aluminum castings required by Tesla. Giga Press is provided by IDRA Group, the Italian leader in pressure casting equipment, established in 1946. So far, Tesla is the first customer of the company's giant casting machine OL6100 CS, and has made many customized requirements to meet the casting needs of this electric vehicle manufacturer.
As Musk described, the machine itself is about the size of a house, measuring 19.5 meters long, 5.3 meters high, and weighing 410 tons. Interestingly, Tesla plans to install Giga Press in several key locations, such as the Fremont plant and the Shanghai plant.
Laurie Harbor, president of Harbour Consulting, a manufacturing consulting firm, said using Giga Press to produce Model Y is certainly a new attempt, but it makes sense. This is particularly noteworthy, because both Tesla and Musk pressure the company’s engineers to be creative. This means that anything can be done to improve efficiency, such as the use of a large number of castings, which can help make Model Y production better.
Haber said: "Even if the upgrade cycle is very long, you can save all the procedures for assembling parts and sub-components. You save the automation unit and save manpower. Few people spend money on this, but think about multiple supply You can save about 20% of the labor cost by stamping. The reduction in footprint is the main one. My guess is that this is a net efficiency increase."
Tesla estimates that using a one-piece casting design will reduce Model Y's body shop size by 30%. If successful, the company can also introduce these improvements to other models in the Tesla lineup. For Monroe, these strategies may currently be costly due to the initial investment involved, but they are of great benefit to increasing Tesla's production capacity. This should help the company produce more cars than ever before, and may even achieve Musk's vision of producing about 1 million cars every year.