Tesla: Gigafactory in Grünheide – That’s what Elon Musk expects

Berlin and Brandenburg are about jobs and tax revenue. There is more at stake for the German auto industry. In the middle of Germany, the automotive country, a plant is now starting that is intended to set standards. “A new car center is being built in Germany in Grünheide,” says industry veteran Peter Mertens, former Head of Development at Audi.

And Musk wouldn’t be Musk if he didn’t take advantage of the opening. Images are to be created that prove that Tesla has long since arrived in the league of large corporations. This is essential for a company that does not have its own marketing department. “When the first car rolls off the assembly line, it’s a public show,” says Heiko Weber, partner in the Berylls industry consultancy.

But the big test for Grünheide is still to come. In the coming weeks and months, Tesla will have to ramp up production. Only then can it be seen whether the machines run reliably under load, whether the movements of the employees are correct and whether the delivered parts are installed correctly.

Musk can only achieve the delivery target he set himself a few weeks ago this year with Grünheide: 1.4 million vehicles. The specifications for the factory are spectacular. A Model Y is to be produced every 45 seconds, according to Berylls consultant Weber, German manufacturers need 70 to 90 seconds. “For Elon Musk, it’s a mission to show how it’s done in the heartland of car manufacturing,” says Clemens Schmitz-Justen from industry consultancy CSJ Schmitz Justen.

Experts assume that it will take at least three, if not six, months before Grünheide can produce at full speed. “Murphy’s law applies when a factory is started up: At some point everything that can go wrong will go wrong,” says Schmitz-Justen, who used to be the head of production at BMW in the USA. “Nobody likes to talk about it, but I’ve seen it too often. You come into the office every morning and there is always a new disaster.”

And Tesla dared a lot for the production of the Model Y in Grünheide. Unlike in Shanghai, the Gigafactory should have a higher degree of automation. In the production of the body, too, Tesla relies on a technology that is so unusual in the automotive industry.

One-piece bodies

The aluminum bars are stacked on pallets in the factory building. Behind it are two machines as big as a house: They spit out castings at regular intervals. Aluminum at a temperature of 700 degrees is injected into the die-casting machines, which then form the metal with 6,100 tons of pressure.

The two giga presses from the Italian supplier Idra form the rear end and the underbody of the Model Y in this way. Weight: 100 kilograms. In the future, the front part of the Model Y will also be made in this way. Two more giga presses are under construction, with a total of eight to be built.

While other manufacturers weld the rear end out of 70 pieces of metal, Tesla stamps them out of one piece. The advantage: fewer seams, fewer work steps. The disadvantage: In the event of an accident, repairs are more expensive and the whole piece has to be replaced.

The gigapress is just one example of Tesla’s maxim: shorten and automate production as much as possible in order to achieve higher production speeds. “The high level of automation almost broke Tesla’s neck a few years ago,” says ex-Audi head of development Mertens. “Now it’s paying off, the start-up will go faster.”

This is also necessary: ​​Because the demand at Tesla is currently significantly higher than the capacity. Customers currently have to wait up to ten months for their Tesla. Two price increases of up to ten percent in the past few weeks do not seem to deter interested parties.

Even visually, the Gigafactory is out of the ordinary. The final assembly is completely white, from the steel truss ceilings to the concrete floor to the numerous pillars of the factory building. Just a few months ago there was nothing here, now 1,000 workers in final assembly are assembling the Model Y on seven production lines with a total of 300 stations.

In a row it’s the seats, then the controls. Professionals know how tricky assembly is. Because even if the machines are optimally adjusted and the employees are well trained, there are always small discrepancies at the beginning.

Every new mold has to go through five or six quality loops so that, for example, interior fittings can be injected down to the millimeter. “The inner door panels, the dashboard and the A-pillar panels are a Bermuda triangle of the car,” Schmitz-Justen recalls his many years of production experience.

The result is the same for many factories that start up: the first vehicles usually have quality problems. “Half kidding: If I had the choice, I would not buy a car that was produced in the first six months,” says Berylls consultant Weber.

Many areas in Tesla’s new Gigafactory are currently still empty. This is evidence of a two-line production strategy: Tesla currently only builds assembly lines with a capacity of up to 250,000 vehicles per year, known in technical jargon as the “ridge line”. There, production is perfected during ramp-up in order to then reflect what has been learned on a second line. Only then could the Gigafactory build the planned 500,000 cars per year.

A three-shift model is planned in Grünheide, despite the high night-time surcharges in Germany. But even increasing the occupancy rate to 88 or even 90 percent is considered a small feat. Every step has to be gone through and improved. “Production increases in a saturation curve,” says Schmitz-Justen. “The last cars are the hardest.”

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