Tesla has achieved its goal of producing 5,000 Model Y vehicles in a week at Gigafactory Texas, which was the original goal for volume production at the plant.
The automaker has been simultaneously ramping up two major factories, Gigafactory Berlin and Gigafactory Texas, to volume production. It created a friendly competition between the two.
When ramping up a new vehicle to volume production at a new factory, Tesla generally considers 5,000 units per week to be the goal.
In March, Gigafactory Berlin achieved that goal with 5,000 Model Y vehicles produced per week. Gigafactory Texas was trailing a bit behind and was at 4,000 Model Y vehicles per week in early April.
Today, Tesla announced that Gigafactory Texas has also reached the milestone of producing 5,000 Model Y SUVs in a single week:
While Giga Texas achieved the milestone a bit behind Giga Berlin, the team had a good excuse.
Gigafactory Texas is facing different challenges than Gigafactory Berlin. The primary difference is that some of the vehicles produced at Gigafactory Texas are equipped with Tesla’s 4680 battery cells, which enable the new “structural battery pack” chassis design.
It’s a new way of manufacturing vehicles and brings some complexity.
Now we know that Tesla can produce 5,000 Model Y units per week at the plant, but it’s not clear how many are being produced with 2170 cells and how many with Tesla’s new 4680 cells and the structural battery pack.
Electrek’s Take
That’s great news for Tesla. Giga Berlin and Texas were a drain on the automaker’s performance when the production lines weren’t used at capacity.
Now I am sure there are still more optimizations to be done, but 5,000 units per week is the goal that Tesla set out to achieve for mass production, and now it is done at both factories.
It should help Tesla improve gross margins on Model Y, which has been under pressure from significant price cuts this year.
Author: Fred Lambert
Source: Electrek
