[sri_tesla]

Elon Musk just announced that Tesla's 4th Gigafactory will be built in Berlin, Germany. Tesla will build electric vehicles starting with Model Y, power trains and batteries at the Berlin Gigafactory. They will also create an engineering and design center there. In the recent earnings report, Tesla said the European Gigafactory will be operational by 2021. This will be the 4th Gigafactory for Tesla.

Tesla Giga factory list:
Giga factory 1: Located in Nevada and builds batteries, sub assembly of vehicles.
Giga factory 2: Buffalo, Newyork and builds solar pv cells.
Giga factory 3: Shaghai, China which is just recently started trial production after starting the construction in January, 2019.
Giga factory 4: Berlin area, Germany to build batteries, power trains and vehicles.

In addition to these, Tesla has EV plant at Fremont, California where they build all of their EVs till now. They also have a small assembly plant in Netherlands.



Source:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1194364798407852032

https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/12/el...e-gigafactory/

[wheelguy]

Tesla's first "Gigafactory" was constructed in the US state of Nevada, and its vehicles are built mostly at a factory in Northern California.

San Francisco -A new Tesla Auto factory to serve the European market will be based in Germany, chief executive Elon Musk said Tuesday.

Musk said during a ceremony at Germany's Golden Steering Wheel awards that the new "Gigafactory" would be "in the Berlin area."

He said the company planned the facility "near the new airport" in Berlin and that Tesla would also set up a design center in the area.

"Everyone knows that German engineering is outstanding and that's part of the reason we are locating our Gigafactory Europe in Germany," he said on stage.

"We are also going to create an engineering and design center in Berlin because I think Berlin has some of the best art in the world."

The news highlights a further global expansion for the electric car maker, which last month said its factory in China had started production.

Musk offered few details, but reports have said the company hopes to begin European production by 2021.

"Giga Berlin," Musk tweeted, bookending the words with heart emojis.

"Will build batteries, powertrains & vehicles, starting with Model Y," he added in another tweet.

Musk's announcement is good news for the German auto industry, according to professor Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer of the Center for Automotive Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

Tesla producing electric cars in Germany could wave a checkered flag at the local competition, such as Volkswagen, BMW, and Daimler, speeding up innovation in the sector there, Dudenhoeffer said.

Tesla said it is producing vehicles "on a trial basis" at its recently opened "Gigafactory" in Shanghai, which will help boost global production and sales.

Musk was optimistic that the Shanghai factory could begin cranking out Model Y vehicles by the middle of next year, and believed the new model has the potential to be a huge seller.

Musk expected the Shanghai factory to hit "volume production" in a few months, and that it could be possible to significantly ramp up Tesla production. He noted that a battery plant was also being built on the Chinese site.

Source: ET Auto

[GTO]

Wow, talk about punching a knife straight in the heart! This is Musk hitting the German luxury car makers in their backyard. The war is well and truly on. Just read earlier today of how BMW is the most affected by the Model 3 (source).

[Jeroen]

There are some other interesting noticeable effects happening already. Resale value of the likes such as Audi, BMW, MB is dropping in the USA.

Saw this coming by the other day:

A recent article posted on the Capital One auto financing website suggests that skyrocketing sales of the Tesla Model 3 – which currently outsells all other electric cars combined – is adversely affecting the resale values of European-brand luxury cars. The trend has been dubbed the “Tesla Effect.”

That’s good news if you’re in the market for a pre-owned Audi, BMW, or Mercedes-Benz, but it’s a definite disadvantage to those trading one in or planning to lease a new model.

The issue here, according to the post, is that a larger-than-average percentage of the brand’s buyers are swapping European luxury cars for Teslas. An estimated 22.2 percent of Tesla customers are trading in European-branded cars versus the industry average of 10.9 percent.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimgorz.../#4ec3279624e8

[Harshal.Bhosale]

It's going to be interesting to see how long this GF4 takes to build - they have the sky-high expectations set by their Chinese counterparts in GF3 to meet (from muddy foundation to churning out cars in less than 1 year)!

Also interesting to note that Elon didn't mention the Model 3 for GF4 yet, it's just Model Y - I guess Fremont is churning out sufficient numbers of the Model 3 to meet demand in the US + Europe for now.

This is in variance with the Q3 Update by Tesla, where they mentioned both Model 3 and Model Y for GF4 (link).

[im_srini]

The Tesla Model 3 was able to beat the BMW 3 Series and the Audi A4 as Germany’s Midsize Car of the Year at the Golden Steering Wheel Awards.

Joking about the vehicle’s Golden Steering Wheel Award, Musk stated that it may only be a matter of time before a winner of the award ends up having no steering wheel at all.
The suggestion was met with much lighthearted laughter from the awards’ audience.

I don't think Elon's joking !

[alpha1]

Why this name Gigafactory?

[vb-saan]

This could be the beginning of the end of German diesels? They long-resisted the EV wave and I guess the big Germans don’t have much options other than to compete.

[sri_tesla]

Originally Posted by alpha1

Why this name Gigafactory?

Gigafactory name relates to battery production capacity. As you know EV battery capacity is measured in kWh. Tesla Model 3 base variant has 54 kWh battery capacity. Gigafactory will have multiples of GWh battery capacity production per annum. 1 GWh factory can produce ~18,518 base model 3 cars. (1,000,000,000 / 54,000 = ~18,518). Gigafactory 1, Nevada expected to have 150 GWh per year capacity when its fully completed which can equate to 2.7 million base Model 3s or 1.5 million Model S P100Ds per year. Tesla batteries are also being used for storage by many electricity companies at large scale. So not all capacity goes to EVs.

Having said this, its more of a marketing term to represent something big. In fact, Gigafactory 1 when its fully completed, expected to have largest footprint in the world.

[srini1785]

Originally Posted by sri_tesla

Tesla will build electric vehicles starting with Model Y, power trains and batteries at the Berlin Gigafactory. They will also create an engineering and design center there. In the recent earnings report, Tesla said the European Gigafactory will be operational by 2021. This will be the 4th Gigafactory for Tesla.

Tesla Giga factory list:
Giga factory 1: Located in Nevada and builds batteries, sub assembly of vehicles.
Giga factory 2: Buffalo, Newyork and builds solar pv cells.
Giga factory 3: Shaghai, China which is just recently started trial production after starting the construction in January, 2019.
Giga factory 4: Berlin area, Germany to build batteries, power trains and vehicles.

In addition to these, Tesla has EV plant at Fremont, California where they build all of their EVs till now. They also have a small assembly plant in Netherlands.

What model does an EV car production plant use?. In conventional car plants it goes broadly like

Press Shop -> Weld shop -> Paint Shop -> Assembly Line -> Test -> Delivery.

While sub assemblies would be delivered by ancillary units located in and around the OEM Plant in JIT principle. I am not sure if Press shop applies to EV in principle especially if they are made of carbon composites as opposed to automotive steel.

[Harshal.Bhosale]

Originally Posted by srini1785

What model does an EV car production plant use?. In conventional car plants it goes broadly like

Press Shop -> Weld shop -> Paint Shop -> Assembly Line -> Test -> Delivery.

While sub assemblies would be delivered by ancillary units located in and around the OEM Plant in JIT principle. I am not sure if Press shop applies to EV in principle especially if they are made of carbon composites as opposed to automotive steel.

An EV plant would follow pretty much the same format as a normal IC engine car plant. I'm not sure why you thought mass-market EVs use or will use carbon composites (perhaps the BMW i3 was a factor in your thoughts), but I don't imagine the vast majority of mass-market EVs will have anything other than automotive grade high strength steel and aluminium stampings (maybe some other methods may come up like hydroforming or some very advanced form of unibody casting like what Tesla has recently patented for Model Y). In general however, I think that metalwork is not going to go away in EV body-in-whites - composites are just too expensive to justify on a car intended for the average buyer. Also, from the economics standpoint, BMW only ever intended to produce the i3 in the thousands - not the millions - no manufacturer wanting to produce more than a million units of a car will go for composites in the body structure, stamped steel parts still rule for economies of scale. See this link for more information on why and how BMW worked on carbon fiber composites for the i3. Once again, carbon composites are only ever going to be the realm of niche manufacturers and small-volume hyper sports cars, be it EV or IC engine powertrain setup.

The only part where an EV production setup varies is in the powertrain - you've got the battery (cell to module to pack level production), the power electronics, and the motor. All of these once brought to the GA line, it is just a matter of mounting on to the monococque / BIW. Pretty much the same thing that happens as during a traditional engine-BIW "marriage" in a normal car. Thus you'd have pretty much the same setup - Press --> Robotic Welds --> Paint Shop --> GA --> Inspection --> Delivery.

See the video below from Porsche's YouTube channel about the Taycan's production line - around the 24:48 mark you can see the integrated battery plus powertrain-suspension wheel assembly being rolled on a skate robot to its next destination, and around 25:20 you can see the "marriage" taking place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNow...ture=emb_title

[charanreddy]

Why Berlin.. most of the automotive giants are located in West Germany near Frankfurt. Berlin is on the far East and is more a cultural and political capital than an economic one. Also the German economy has prospered in no small measure thanks to the rich automotive presence.. there are some growing concerns however that with decline of ICE powered vehicles, this sector will see a slowdown. With Tesla setting shop, there is a ray of hope for the electric vehicles industry growing..

[TheHelix0202]

So does that mean Tesla cars were being shipped there initially?

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by TheHelix0202

So does that mean Tesla cars were being shipped there initially?

We drove them across the border from our Dutch Tesla assembly plant.

Jeroen

[TheHelix0202]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

We drove them across the border from our Dutch Tesla assembly plant.

Jeroen

I'm sorry for being ignorant, but "we"? Do you work for Tesla by any chance?