Tesla Gigafactory in Austin, Texas. Bild: Shutterstock.com
E-cars: culture shock for European competitors? Tesla tries out “unboxed” production system; innovation in competition with China.
Tesla is not only breaking new ground with its vehicles, it is also trying to break with established industry traditions when it comes to their production.
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The Unboxed production process currently being tested in Austin, Texas, is taking on the assembly line, the more than 100-year-old principle in vehicle assembly in which the body is assembled first and then all the other components are added one after the other.
Henry Ford’s assembly line
In 1913, Ford in Detroit began using mobile assembly lines, where the body moves through stations one after the other. This enabled Ford to reduce the production time for the Model T from 12 hours to 93 minutes.
Just eight years later, over half of all cars in the world were Model Ts. At that time, Ford only offered one model variant, the Model T in black. This was another reason why Ford was far superior to its German competitors.
In the same year, Daimler offered 57 different model variants and was therefore unable to switch to Ford’s new production method. In addition, there was cultural rejection; everything American was suspect to the German car manufacturers.
It was only after the war that the Germans adopted Ford’s methods.
Hardly changed to this day
Henry Ford’s innovation has remained largely unchanged for over a hundred years and is the backbone of vehicle assembly. However, the process also has disadvantages. The entire body is assembled right at the beginning, and from then on the assembly line the “big box” is always moving, even though work is only carried out on it at specific points, which takes up a lot of space.
Also, only a few places can be worked on at a time. All components must be threaded through the openings in the bodywork in order to be mounted in their place.
Therefore, the doors are sometimes removed after painting to make it easier to work on the interior and then reinstalled at a later date.
Electric cars enable production innovations
Tesla is now questioning this principle. Instead of a large body box that moves along a linear conveyor belt, larger parts (front and rear sections, side panels, underbody) are initially left separate.
The result is several sub-production lines where large parts can be worked on simultaneously. A little over a year ago, Tesla’s Vice President of Vehicle Engineering, Lars Moravy, presented the new “unboxed” system for the first time at Tesla’s Investor Day.
Work is currently underway at the Tesla plant in Austin, Texas. However, the method is only new to the automotive industry. A similar method has been used in the aircraft industry for decades – simply because of the size of the aircraft.
The architecture of electric cars – a large battery in the underbody and far fewer components – enables not only the redesign of the vehicles themselves, but also their manufacturing process. The electric drive can thus facilitate product and production innovations if the electric cars are redesigned from scratch.
Tesla has already demonstrated this with Gigacasting. This involves the use of very large casting machines that can produce large parts of a vehicle body in a single piece.
The entire rear and front sections of the body are created in one operation, instead of being welded together from dozens of sheet metal parts as is traditional.
Tesla’s strategy
The background to the new production innovation lies in Tesla’s long-term strategy. So far, every model change at Tesla has been accompanied by scaling towards larger quantities and lower prices.
And with each new model, Tesla also subjects its production processes to a thorough revision. Every model change is accompanied by a comprehensive change in production methods. The next scaling stage is planned for 2026, the inexpensive entry-level Tesla for around 25,000 US dollars.
Contrary to Tesla’s image as a manufacturer of expensive electric cars, Tesla’s long-term goal has always been to produce inexpensive electric cars in large quantities. Tesla has informed its suppliers of plans to begin production of a new mass-market electric vehicle codenamed “Redwood.”
This vehicle will then use the next generation Tesla architecture, known internally as “NV9X”, in the unboxed process. In order to enable even larger quantities and lower prices, productivity improvements are necessary.
Car expert Bratzel, head of the Center of Automotive Management, believes this is crucial for the breakthrough of electric cars. It is important to “further reduce the costs of electric vehicles along the value chain and – if necessary through cooperation – to achieve economies of scale in the areas of battery cells, packaging, and the design and production of vehicles.”
Tesla’s competition is no longer the German and US industry, which is lagging behind in the electric sector, but rather the competition from China. In order to hold its own against this competition, Tesla is also pursuing a path of constant process innovations in its production process.
Through the unboxed process, Tesla hopes to achieve these rationalization effects – as it did with Gigacasting. The consulting company Caresoft from Detroit has calculated that such a factory would require up to 30 percent less space and 40 percent less personnel.
It remains to be seen whether Tesla will try again to automate the final assembly process to a greater extent and to get a highly automated factory up and running through unboxing in the second attempt. Tesla failed with the Model 3; it automated too much and couldn’t get production under control.
Why Tesla?
Why is Tesla so innovative, not only in terms of electric drives and digital functions, but also in terms of experimentation in every corner?
This is where Tesla benefits from its roots as a tech startup from Silicon Valley that doesn’t care about industry traditions and supplier networks.
At Tesla, there is no “we’ve always done it this way” but rather the “first principles”: the laws of physics apply, everything else is just recommendations.
In contrast, the venerable industry is characterised by technological conservatism and a fear of leaving tried and tested paths. Often, innovations that the established companies themselves have brought to product maturity in their research and development departments are then stifled by management.
Similar to other innovations, as was already foreseeable with Gigacasting, the established manufacturers will ultimately be forced to follow suit, as has already been the case with many other innovations.
With this new process innovation, Tesla is attempting to assert its technological leadership not only in vehicle technology but also in manufacturing. And thus to take on a similar role to that played by Ford a hundred years ago: leading the way in mass electric motorization.
