The future of Tesla, the US-based electric car company, hinges on a huge new tent set up outside its Fremont, Calif., Facility where cars will be assembled to reach higher production rates and deliver on delivery promises. with customers.
Tesla has for months been looking for new systems and solutions to produce more Model 3, its first electric car model for the mass market. Tesla CEO Elon Musk had promised to produce thousands of them every week, but things have turned out differently and so far only 750 cars a week have come out of the Fremont plant on average. Delays in deliveries and difficulties at assembly lines are costing large amounts of money to Tesla, which faces numerous speculations on its stock market in parallel.
The new external assembly line was first announced in mid-June directly from Musk, with a tweet in which he explained that a Tesla team had set up the entire facility in just three weeks of work.
Amazing work by Tesla team. Built entire new general assembly line in 3 weeks w minimal resources. Love u guys so much! Pic of 1st Model 3 dual motor performance coming off the line… pic.twitter.com/Xr55P3fmGd
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 16, 2018
The tent is clearly visible outside the main factory in Fremont: it is a huge tensile structure, made up of several tents put together, each of which is 45 meters long and reaches a maximum height of 16 meters. The individual structures are connected to each other, forming a single long tent under which the stations to build the Model 3s were created.
The technology site Ars Technica has obtained some information from the city of Fremont about the permits required by Tesla for the new facility. For now, the local administration has granted a temporary permit of only six months, which can be extended for another six. It is unclear whether the tent will become permanent in the future, also because Tesla had applied earlier this year to be able to build a new large warehouse to expand the space and number of assembly lines for its cars. On the other hand, it is certain that Musk is enthusiastic about the new tensile structure, which made it possible to set up a new production line in a short time and, according to him, reusing and converting various materials that had already been purchased by Tesla.
Timelapse of the GA4 tent construction at @ Tesla's Fremont factory via @planetlabs satellite imagery. @elonmusk wasn't kidding when he said it went up fast… pic.twitter.com/dsS64fOHUp
– Michael Baylor (@nextspaceflight) June 23, 2018
It's actually way better than the factory building. More comfortable & a great view of the mountains.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 19, 2018
Also on Twitter, Musk said the new facility is even better than the indoor setups of the factory, where Tesla's have been assembled so far. He also added that he is no longer so sure he needs to build a real new building, given how promising the new solution is.
The increase in Model 3 production rates is proving to be the most difficult and expensive undertaking Tesla has attempted to date. When it was announced two years ago, Musk said it would be Tesla's first “mass” car, at a much lower price than previous models, built in a few units and with prices that could only be approached by quite wealthy people. The idea was (and remains) to greatly extend production in order to reduce costs and encourage the spread of electric cars. At the time Musk said that Tesla could have produced 100-200 thousand Tesla by the second half of 2017. The estimate was extremely optimistic and very “Musk-like”, known for setting very ambitious goals and in very tight deadlines, but things went differently with a few thousand Model 3s produced so far and with a considerable delay.
It is not yet clear whether the new assembly line is already fully active because the structure has been made unapproachable: after the photos and videos made by many onlookers, Tesla has tried to hide what is happening inside the structure, by placing some large trucks. along the perimeter of the tent, which obstruct the view.
Meanwhile, analysts await early July, when Tesla will present data on its second quarter, including information on the number of Model 3s produced and delivered. The data will also be eagerly awaited by the hundreds of thousands of people who booked a Model 3 two years ago, anticipating $ 1,000. Many of them are waiting confidently and do not seem willing to ask for a refund, although in recent months there have been reports of some customers who have given up asking to have the advance paid two years earlier back.
Building cars is very complicated, and Tesla is experiencing hardships associated with delays from suppliers, challenges posed by assembly systems, problems with personnel and various other technical and organizational contingencies. Tesla engineers in recent months have had to review the operation of the assembly line several times: they had started with great ambitions to make the system almost completely automatic with robots, but their presence has slowed down production rates, making human interventions necessary to speed up. the activities. The new line under the awning was built with these difficulties in mind, and should therefore be more geared towards a traditional, manual assembly system with real-life workers.
The management, at least apparently chaotic, of the situation inside Tesla and Musk's tweets, which certainly do not help to put the company's communication in order, have led to a growing mistrust on the part of analysts and investors, reflecting in a significant decline in returns. of Tesla shares on the stock exchange. The decline was exacerbated by various speculations and by a very suspicious case of an internal boycott of the company, conducted by an employee (later fired) who, according to Musk, would have worked to favor a speculation scheme against Tesla's stock on the stock exchange.
Musk has a few weeks ahead of him to prove that Tesla can recover and reach the production rates announced months ago, reducing the huge losses that are eroding his capital, which is why the Fremont tent is so important.
