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While carmakers resembling Mercedes-Benz have mentioned automation has limitations, Musk has pressed on with plans to create a hyper-automated manufacturing unit, which he refers to because the “alien dreadnought”, or “the machine that builds the machine”.
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Tesla’s elevated reliance on giant-scale aluminium elements may deliver new manufacturing challenges
Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk warned on Tuesday concerning the difficulties of dashing up manufacturing as an knowledgeable cautioned the carmaker’s elevated reliance on giant-scale aluminium elements may deliver new manufacturing challenges. While carmakers resembling Mercedes-Benz have mentioned automation has limitations, Musk has pressed on with plans to create a hyper-automated manufacturing unit, which he refers to because the “alien dreadnought”, or “the machine that builds the machine”.
“The extreme difficulty of scaling production of new technology is not well understood. It’s 1,000% to 10,000% harder than making a few prototypes. The machine that makes the machine is vastly harder than the machine itself,” Musk mentioned on Twitter.
Musk’s warning comes forward of a “battery day” afterward Tuesday, when Tesla is anticipated to unveil steps to spice up battery manufacturing.
For its new Model Y, Tesla plans to interchange 70 elements glued and riveted into the automotive’s rear underbody with a single module made utilizing the world’s greatest aluminium casting machine in its new manufacturing unit in Brandenburg, close to Berlin.
Car our bodies have historically been made by assembling a number of stamped steel panels, a way which has helped create crumple zones to soak up power throughout a crash, however Musk is charting a brand new course on the Brandenburg plant.
While casting may scale back the variety of meeting steps, bigger aluminium elements are extra vulnerable to deformation, in accordance with Professor Martin Fehlbier at Kassel University in Germany.
“On paper it looks easy,” mentioned Fehlbier, a former head of foundry expertise at Volkswagen Group, which pioneered aluminium development methods at its Audi model. “The small details can cause you to burn through a lot of cash.”
The bigger the half, the extra consideration must be paid to heating the shape, since molten aluminium must fill out the solid, Fehlbier mentioned, including the thinner the half being made, the extra possible the steel will cool earlier than filling out the shape.
By distinction, the warmer the shape, the longer the part has to chill earlier than the subsequent manufacturing step, which may restrict the general pace of manufacturing, Fehlbier mentioned.
Cooling aluminium too rapidly can lead a part to deform, and altering the consistency of the steel has large implications for the price of every part in addition to on potential crash take a look at behaviour, he added.
“The Audi A8 has started to use more steel parts because a new side crash test in the United States cannot be passed using just aluminium,” Fehlbier mentioned.
It’s not the primary time Tesla has confronted challenges with new manufacturing methods. The electrical carmaker was pressured to fly in a brand new manufacturing line from Germany to Nevada in 2018 to repair a producing line after robots did not coordinate seamlessly.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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