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> And that company that builds that iPhone of yours? Uses a LOT of very fleshy robots. And Tesla, which just built a single factory designed to produce 500,000
by TheRealDunkirk 9y ago
> And that company that builds that iPhone of yours? Uses a LOT of very fleshy robots.
And Tesla, which just built a single factory designed to produce 500,000 vehicles a year with ONLY robots? People are watching. If this succeeds (and I suspect it will), there's going to be a LOT more attempts at such a thing.
- rgbrenner 9y agoThat factory is already out of space, with production far below 500k. In fact, it's less efficient and employs more people than it did before Tesla bought it. Tesla uses far more workers than NUMMI employed to build far fewer cars. In 1985, its first full year of production, NUMMI had 2,470 employees and produced 64,764 vehicles — about 26 vehicles per worker per year. By 1997, it had 4,844 workers and produced 357,809 vehicles — about 74 vehicles per worker per year. Tesla, on the other hand, had between 6,000 and 10,000 workers in 2016 and manufactured 83,922 vehicles. That puts its vehicle-per-worker number between 8 and 14, about one-seventh the efficiency of NUMMI at its peak. http://www.autonews.com/article/20170611/OEM01/170619951/teslas-real-capacity-problem%3A-too-many-people http://www.autonews.com/article/20170611/OEM01/170619951/tes... I like Tesla, but Elon often talks about the future like it exists today. One day they'll be able to completely automate that factory, but first they need to become as efficient as the other auto manufacturers that already exist today. Automation of production is something that all of auto manufacturers have pushed... and Tesla is far behind on that metric. I would not assume they get to full automation before Ford, GM, Toyota, etc.