TESLA’S first Investor Day was free of recent product reveals, as a substitute majoring on CEO Elon Musk’s imaginative and prescient for streamlined automobile manufacturing and sustainable vitality manufacturing, though the presentation did tease the corporate’s next-generation automotive platform and trace at two upcoming fashions together with what seems to be a van.
It was evident that Mr Musk plans on positioning Tesla as a driving drive within the widespread shift from fossil fuels to renewable vitality, as he outlined his formidable plan for the following few a long time. In fact, in true Musk style, particulars had been murky.
Tesla inventory fell by round 5 per cent throughout the occasion as buyers, analysts, media and prospects waited with bated breath for particulars of upcoming automobile launches; the occasion was a departure from the corporate’s notorious product reveal extravaganzas.
As an alternative, Mr Musk’s sturdy sustainability focus together with the presentation’s lack of particular automobile particulars and scant data on long-term monetary targets seems to have left buyers stumped.
“I actually wished at this time to be not nearly Tesla buyers who personal inventory, however actually anybody who’s an investor in Earth,” Mr Musk mentioned.
His ‘Grasp Plan 3’ (the third iteration of the Tesla enterprise roadmap), entails renewable grid energy, electrified transport, set up of warmth pumps in houses, hydrogen for industrial use, and lastly sustainable aviation and marine choices.
“There’s a clear path to sustainable vitality on Earth. It doesn’t require destroying pure habitats. It doesn’t require us to be austere and cease utilizing electrical energy and form of be within the chilly or something,” Musk mentioned.
Excessive on the agenda was showcasing a extra environment friendly automobile manufacturing technique and lowered manufacturing footprint, which Tesla has dubbed the ‘unboxed course of’.
“We knew we had to enhance the method additional, and with Cyber Truck we designed a automobile round a imaginative and prescient that truly began with the manufacturing course of,” mentioned Tesla design lead Franz Von Holzhausen.
“It truly created a really environment friendly finish course of and one of the vital dynamic designs ever, I consider.”
The modular course of entails constructing smaller sections of the automobile with out the necessity to later disassemble, in contrast with conventional meeting strains that contain a component of disassembly following paint.
“You are taking all these stamped panels, you set them collectively, you then put them in a framing station, you construct a physique that appears one thing like a automotive, you set the doorways on and you then paint them. When you get the color, you are taking the doorways off, and you then begin placing the inside within the automotive,” defined Tesla head engineer Lars Moravy.
“If we’re going to scale the way in which we wish to do, we’ve got to rethink manufacturing once more.”
Tesla’s modular unboxed course of allows extra folks to work on sections of the automotive on the identical time, resulting in a claimed 44 per cent operator density enchancment with “much less time doing nothing” and price financial savings of “as much as 50 per cent”.
“It means we’re doing extra work on the automotive extra of the time,” Mr Moravy mentioned.
“After we take all of those examined sub-assemblies and put them collectively, we lastly assemble the automotive just one time.”
The following-generation platform will probably be constructed out of a brand new ‘gigafactory’ located simply south of the Texas border in Monterrey, Mexico and round 622km from Tesla’s headquarters in Austin, Texas.
In addition to the brand new Mexican plant introduced at Tesla Investor Day, upgrades can even be made to the corporate’s current Gigafactories within the US, China, and Germany to enhance manufacturing capabilities.
Tesla can also be finalising a next-generation 48-volt electrical automobile platform that may debut on the Cyber Truck ute that’s slated to enter manufacturing towards the tip of this yr, whereas the corporate additionally plans to introduce an electrical drive motor that requires no uncommon earth parts.
Transferring to a 48-volt system reduces the present in comparison with 12V structure that grew to become the automotive business normal within the Nineteen Sixties by an element of 4, enabling using smaller, lighter wires, controllers and e-fuses (changing typical fuses and relays).
Tesla says it’ll additionally design 100 per cent of the brand new 48V controllers in-house to alleviate provide constraints.
A next-generation Tesla automobile platform will cowl a spread of auto segments, consistent with Mr Musk’s plan to affect all transportation varieties, and a graph confirmed throughout the presentation claimed considerably decrease working prices in comparison with the present platform.
Sadly, the corporate shared no particular particulars in regards to the rumoured low-cost ‘Mannequin 2’, though it did tease a possible entry-level small automotive mannequin within the presentation albeit veiled below a material.
“I might love to point out you what I imply, and unveil the next-generation automotive, however you are going to need to belief me on that till a later date,” mentioned Mr Von Holzhausen.
The opposite secret automobile, equally veiled, seems like a small business van or folks mover. Such a mannequin has been rumoured to be within the works and share the Cyber Truck’s underpinnings.
Manufacturing of the Cybertruck itself is confirmed tol kick off in 2023, whereas the Semi prime mover is already being delivered to prospects in the USA though is just too vast to be used in Australia below present laws.