Tesla is focused on Model three production challenges at launch, TechCrunch
Tesla is focused on Model three production challenges at launch
Tesla exposed more about its brand-new Model three than it ever has before just in time for the very first deliveries to customers. We know the details of pricing and available options, as well as a bit about how Tesla plans to scale to an annual run rate of 500,000 vehicles produced per year, hopefully by the end of 2018.
“The major challenge we faced with the Model three is not indeed the product,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk noted in a pre-event briefing to press, qualifying that they nonetheless spent a lot of time getting design right. “We’re going to go through six months of production hell. it’s going to be pretty superb but it’s going to be fairly a challenge to produce this car.”
Musk stressed the production challenges repeatedly in his initial comments regarding the car, in fact, noting that the manufacturing process for something as sophisticated as this vehicle is roped to occur on an S-curve, and that there are “10,000 unique components in the car,” with production speed ultimately trussed to stir only “as quick as the slowest one.”
To help make the production ramp lighter, Tesla made some specific decisions about the vehicle, including the interior of the car, which is something the automaker hasn’t discussed much prior to today.
“We’ve intentionally gone for a very elementary interior with a single screen,” Musk explained, demonstrating off a cabin that was intentionally designed to maximize available interior volume while still keeping the outside of the vehicle as petite as possible.
There is no header behind the second-row seats, for example, something lead designer Franz von Holzhausen explained is designed to open up the available space for passengers.
“There’s nothing behind your head, so it just feels like a nice, big, open rear seat,” he said. “Interior volume is significant to us – it’s a part of function.”
This is partly because the Model three was designed with the long view of autonomy in mind. Musk explained that its production includes the same sensor hardware as the Model S and Model X, despite other features and design elements being pared back considerably to help increase manufacturing efficiencies. Enlargened automation is one factor that’s helping, but there’s a lot more to improving the process going on.
Musk said that Tesla can make around 250,000 Model three vehicles in the same space as it takes to make 50,000 Model S cars presently, with a fivefold increase in manufacturing capability achieved through process simplification. This includes sticking with a single-motor rear drive design primarily, as well as using much more steel. About fifty percent of the vehicle is steel, while the other half is aluminum. The Model S, by comparison, is almost all aluminum, which is firmer to use in production.
Still, Musk continually returned to the challenges represented by manufacturing and ramping the production process.
“The fattest challenge we face is S-curve manufacturing,” he said. “That S-curve portion is us going through hell basically.”
That hell, he said, was the worst on the Tesla Roadster, despite using a Lotus chassis for the vehicle. It was marginally better on the Model S, he said, but still “hell,” and on the Model X, it was harshly as difficult as it was on the Model S, which it shouldn’t have been given that it managed to re-use a lot of the components from the X.
Ultimately, that S-curve is something Tesla is certain it can achieve, Musk said, but it’s very difficult to predict what form it’ll take, given factors, including ‘force majeure’ risks from a supply chain that includes up to thirty percent of components coming from outside North America.
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Still, Musk did seem relatively certain in that end-of-2018 date for hitting 500,000 vehicles per year, which would go a long way to addressing pent-up request. And regarding request, Musk said that while the number of reservations is a false indicator when it comes to measuring true request (since Tesla does “everything we can to unsell the car”), it’s presently sitting at over half a million advance reservations in place.
“If we did anything to even not put the brake on request, it would go bananas,” Musk said. “But we don’t have to do that yet.”