Published on May 26th, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen May 26th, 2018 by Maarten Vinkhuyzen Elon Musk confirmed on Twitter last night that 6 planeloads of equipment that Tesla just flew from Germany to California are indeed robots from Grohmann. Don’t envision Westworld-like robots occupying all the seats in a jumbo jet, enjoying the latest movie. These are automated assembly systems for the Gigafactory to solve the last problems with battery module assembly. For over half a year, it is known that the biggest hurdle to ramping the Model 3 production is unexpected limitations of the battery assembly line. Complacent with their expertise in their core competency — making the best automotive battery packs in the world — Tesla failed to notice that the state 4 station was FUBAR. You can blame the sub-sub-contractor who built it. But the principal responsibility for discovering this in time is Tesla’s and nobody else’s. Tesla did miss a lot of revenue by not being able to produce the Model 3 in the volumes it needed. The company would have had delays form other parts of the assembly line, but none were reportedly as blocking as this issue. In some comments in the media about flights of equipment from Germany to the US, it was suggested that money was not an issue for Tesla. Nothing is further from the truth. As is normal in industrial blocking issues, money is the primary driver for the speed with which the problem is solved. And if an airlift for an assembly line saves weeks in ramping production, the cost of the airlift disappears compared to the lost revenue from not producing cars. It makes clear that Cash is King for the bean counters, planners, and managers at Tesla. This explains why the shutdown of the assembly line in Fremont, California, is happening now and not last week or next week. The date was set based on the time this robot army for Sparks, Nevada, was ready to airlift. There will now be teams of engineers all over the line for small and big improvements to the speed of the line and the quality of the cars. The unusual openness of Tesla in their handling of these production problems gives us a glimpse into the inner workings of the planning and logistics of a large production organization that is very rare. And that Tesla chose to airlift these robots signals that they think this can unlock production capacity to the 4,000/week to 6,000/week regions for the Model 3. If something else was holding up production, they could have given these robots marching orders to go by road and ship and take the 3 to 6 week scenic route from Germany to Nevada, as their preceding party that solved other battery production line issues did. And as usual, the rumors of Tesla’s demise are grossly exaggerated. Follow CleanTechnica on Google News. It will make you happy & help you live in peace for the rest of your life. Tags: Grohmann, Pravduh, Tesla, Tesla batteries, Tesla factories, Tesla Gigafactory, Tesla manufacturing, Tesla Model 3 production, Tesla production Maarten Vinkhuyzen Grumpy old man. The best thing I did with my life was raising two kids. Only finished primary education, but when you don’t go to school, you have lots of time to read. I switched from accounting to software development and ended my career as system integrator and architect. My 2007 boss got two electric Lotus Elise cars to show policymakers the future direction of energy and transportation. And I have been looking to replace my diesel cars with electric vehicles ever since. And putting my money where my mouth is, I have bought Tesla shares. Intend to keep them until I can trade them for a Tesla car.
Tesla has airlifted six planeloads of automated assembly equipment from Germany to its Gigafactory in California to try to solve the problems with battery assembly which have hampered production of its Model 3 vehicle. Industry commentators suggest the reason for the airlift was to boost production to the 4,000-6,000 vehicles per week planned by Tesla as quickly as possible.