Cleantech & EV'sNews

Elon Musk: Tesla to unveil core structural design change for how cars are made

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is teasing some important structural changes in the way they make cars — some of which are going to be unveiled at Battery Day later this month and implemented at Tesla Gigafactory Berlin.

Over the past few months, Musk has been teasing some important manufacturing improvements to be introduced at Tesla Gigafactory Berlin, which is currently under construction.

He talked about Tesla building “the most-advanced paint shop” at Gigafactory Berlin in order to release new multi-layered paint options for Model Y.

The CEO also teased a “revolution in automotive body engineering” with the Model Y produced in Germany.

Now Musk is in Berlin visiting the factory under construction and again teased the fact that it will be a more advanced factory than what Tesla currently has in the US.

This time, he made more specific comments about a “radical change” to how cars are made:

“There’s a bunch of innovative stuff that we will be doing here that we will tell you about in the future. It’s not just a copy of Model Y. It’s actually a radical redesign of the core technology of building a car.”

At Battery Day, they are going to unveil “some of what they are going to be doing in Berlin” in relation to those changes.

The CEO added:

“It is going to be the first time that there will be a transformation of the core structural design of the vehicle. It’s quite a big thing.”

Musk didn’t elaborate further on those transformative structural design changes.

Lately, Tesla has been focusing more on bigger casting parts to build Model Y bodies with giant pieces with minimum welding required.

They recently took delivery of the world’s biggest casting machine at the Fremont factory and Gigafactory Berlin is expected to have several of the machines.

Battery Day is going to be held on September 22 at a Tesla facility in Fremont, California, and broadcasted on the internet.

Electrek’s Take

Based on Elon’s previous comment about a “revolution in automotive body engineering” at Gigafactory Berlin, I would think that he is talking about the body of the vehicle again here.

Maybe we are going to see the first version of this giant vehicle body making machine that Tesla patented last summer:

I think that would indeed count as a revolution in vehicle body manufacturing.

The other thing I was thinking about since he was talking about making the announcement on Battery Day was a module-less battery pack — going from cell to pack directly.

That would be a significant change and it would make more sense for Battery Day, but I somehow still think this has more to do with the body.

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.


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Author: Fred Lambert
Source: Electrek

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