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I‘ve often heard that Tesla had to built much of their automation machinery themselves because there were no suppliers that could build „the machine that builds

• jaarse 5y ago
  The only thing different between Tesla’s and GM/Toyota/Volkswagens manufacturing processes is the marketing. They all use the same equipment. Most manufacturing lines (robots, presses, equipment) etc are built by dedicated machine builders (not unlike ASML for chip fabs). This is a very mature industry. GM, Volkswagen, Toyota, etc, would build 8M vehicles a year, across dozens of products lines, and refresh their vehicles ever 3-4 years. Tesla just approached 1M last year. Tesla is not a major customer in this space yet, so in some cases they just bought a small machine builder to make there lines for them. (Although granted equipment manufacturers do love to list’s them as a customer for the “cool” factor). An electric car is way simpler to manufacture. Think of how many moving parts are in an engine and transmission alone. So many in fact that engine plants and transmission plants are there own separate 3M+ sq ft facilities. I would think the decreased manufacturing time would come down to this, because from what I have seen Tesla plants run way less efficient than any of the established auto manufacturers.