High Speed Assembly
A new video showing the production lines at GigaShanghai has been posted by Chinese media, and aside from showing off some very clean factory setups - this video has Tesla employees discussing the blistering pace of assembly.
The 26 minute video posted by state media outlet Xinhua has us viewers follow along with a tour of the Model Y assembly areas in Tesla’s Shanghai facility.
We get a great look at the production lines, which are all at least assisted by robots - if not fully run by them. But it’s the procedures that the tour guides discussed that were the most interesting.
Specifically, when asked about assembly times, the tour guide estimates that from the first build station to the last, it takes roughly 2.5 hours to fully assemble a Model Y at the GigaShanghai facility.
Which is, just insanely fast. But as the tour progresses through the facility, you can definitely see how it’s accomplished.
The average vehicle production line can usually complete a car every 18 hours or so. But with the level of automation in a Tesla factory, things can get done simultaneously.
For instance, we get a good shot of production lines that aren’t directly part of the assembly stations - like the door fabrication line - that seem to be operating alongside the other work.
And that seems to be the overall philosophy of work in that factory. In the background we can see robots manoeuvring vehicles in various states of completion through the area, and in the welding stations we can see that material is passed from vertical areas, down to the stations, and back up to the higher lines for transport to the next station.
With all the fresh talk about Tesla’s production procedures brought on by the Investors Day event on March 1st, it’s easy to see where the company has been getting their new ideas from. Chief Designer Franz Von Holzhausen talked about the development of this process in his presentation at that event - and while it seems like Shanghai hasn’t started operating in the way Franz was discussing - you can definitely see the roots of it in the Xinhua piece.
Regardless, the high level of automation present in Shanghai is very cool to watch, and definitely shows why that facility is Tesla’s best performing factory.
The tour guide mentions that GigaShanghai is likely at the peak of its capacity currently - but if it manages to get updated to operate in the way Tesla detailed in their Investor Day presentation, they could possibly get even more value out of their already hyper-efficient space.