How Tesla Builds Its Factories So Quickly

[Music] now the world's most valuable car maker tesla has dramatically shaken up the world of driving [Music] despite initial struggles the company now has record demand for its electric cars and is racing to scale production accordingly enhancing processes fine-tuning automation and building its gigafactories with astonishing speed [Music] tesla bought its first factory from general motors in 2010 and quickly transformed the facility into one of the world's most advanced automotive plants in the decades since the firm has quickly expanded in the u.s with large custom-built battery and solar panel plants or gigafactories in nevada and new york and a further facility now under construction in texas eyeing greater international expansion and aiming for a production facility on each inhabited continent tesla is now constructing gigafactories in berlin and shanghai at an incredible speed the shanghai factory went from a bare patch of land to making its first models in under a year and the progress now being seen at giga berlin could result in an even faster build time so how does tesla do this when most buildings let alone advanced factories take many months to design and then easily a year or more to construct [Music] unlike most one-off building projects tesla has developed a clear template for its gigafactories it knows what it needs and what will work best for its businesses and it isn't reinventing the wheel each time its design manual can be quickly and easily adapted whatever the local site context or constraints these pre-home designs are now being built using prefabricated construction techniques this is where a building's elements are pre-made in a factory before being transported to the building site for assembly saving time cutting costs and improving quality tesla knows which materials it wants to use it knows how its gigafactories break down into component parts and how those parts all go together its teams know the drill and are now creating a prototype each time they build during the final assembly on site each step is carefully sequenced with teams following each other and starting the next build activity before the previous one is completed where possible mindful of the need to potentially scale up capacity in the future the gigafactories are also designed to be easily expanded a feature clearly visible in nevada at gigaberlin thousands of roof and wall elements have been arriving by train before being quickly slotted into place it's thought that up to 1 200 tons of building material is being transported to the site by rail at a time whereas in shanghai only truck deliveries were possible while off-site construction is more commonly used for housing large-scale commercial and industrial applications have been on the rise a tweet from tesla's ceo elon musk in july 2020 confirmed the approach pointing out the impossible seeming speed of the build and positioning germany's construction sector as a leader in offsite in fact the country is one of the world's biggest adopters with around nine percent of construction projects now using off-site techniques but despite the factory emerging at an electrifying speed things haven't been entirely straightforward in berlin the original design called for some fifteen thousand concrete piles but environmentalists raised concerns about the impact on local nature and groundwater and the firm revisited the plan cutting the number to 500 and constructing just the press shop on a piled foundation tesla is also building at its own risk with only preliminary approvals granted and the crucial final permits yet to be signed though this issue looks likely to be resolved by the end of 2020 despite some arguably inevitable local hiccups tesla has found a formula for rapid factory building that it can repeat and perfect on future projects moving it closer to achieving its mission of terawatt hour levels of battery production the musk believes we bring about a fundamental shift in the world's energy usage the firm's approach is compelling for those already using off-site techniques on other repeatable building types like schools prisons hotels and homes and for those other car giants now racing for a slice of the electric market if you enjoyed this video and would like to get more from the definitive video channel for construction subscribe to the b1m [Music] you

Channel: The B1M

Views: 2,755,166

Keywords: B1M, TheB1M, Construction, architecture, engineering, The B1M, Fred Mills, building, tesla, audi, elon musk, electric cars, electric vehicles, gigafactories, offsite construction, germany, china, berlin, shanghai, giga berlin, giga shanghai, prefabricated construction, prefabricated buildings, prefabrication, nevada, new york, buffalo, fremont, california, energy, mmc, modern methods construction, factory build, rapid build, mega build

Id: ijXqKtxvm48

Length: 4min 59sec (299 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 30 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/azestyenterprise]

How they do it so quickly: prefabricated building parts.

[u/shaggy99]

Little bit of personal trivia. I'm approaching retirement age. My very first job, as a spotty youth, was with an early adopter of modular buildings. The company was about 4 years old at the time, and a quick bit of research tells me a similar company bought them out in 1980, but that company still exists, and is still in that market. Indeed, I would be hard pressed to tell their new buildings from ones I did the drawings for way back when.

My opinion is that nothing Tesla is doing with their factories a new idea. What impresses me, is the knowledge, flexibility, and effectiveness of whoever is doing the project planning. That, and Elon Musk's appetite for risk. I doubt that Tesla or Elon have nailed down specifics of upcoming factories, their willingness to adopt new ideas and techniques in building the cars or the batteries means flexibility at the planning and design stage is key. That, and being willing to make big bets on the future path of Tesla.

Edit: missed a phrase.

[u/LouBrown]

The B1M is a great youtube channel- it was a nice surprise seeing this video pop up in my feed this morning.

[u/DankestHokie]

Oh man! I love The B1M!

[u/jgfx67]

Elon has said multiple times that he is "building the machines to build the machines." To him I suspect the factory is the product and each factory is a major version increment. What I was most impressed with at Battery Day - and it hasn't got much talk - is the the arc they are on maximizes the amount of product can be generated per cubic meter of factory space. It isn't just energy density of the cell itself, or the assembly floor space with the massive castings. It is that each revision of factory generates more cars/m^3. I think there should be the equivalent of Moore's law for the time period for the doubling of energy (or car) production for the same unit volume. Elon's Law?