This article is provided by EVANNEX, a company that manufactures and sells aftermarket Tesla accessories.The views expressed therein are not necessarily our own at InsideEVs, nor do we receive compensation from EVANNEX to publish these articles.We found the company’s perspective as an aftermarket supplier of Tesla accessories interesting and were happy to share its content for free.enjoy!
Tesla’s giant casting technology represents a huge innovation in car manufacturing.Using a giant casting machine to make a large number of castings into the body greatly reduces the complexity of the body assembly process, saves costs and improves efficiency.
At the Gigafactory in Texas, Tesla is using a giant Giga Press to cast a rear body part for the Model Y that replaces 70 different parts.The Giga Presses Tesla uses in Texas are made by an Italian company called IDRA.In 2019, Tesla commissioned what it called the world’s largest casting machine from Chinese manufacturer LK Group, which it believes will soon be operational at the Shanghai Gigafactory.
LK Group founder Liu Songsong recently told The New York Times that his company worked with Tesla for more than a year to build the massive new machine.LK will also supply similar large casting presses to six Chinese companies by early 2022.
The adoption of Tesla’s giant casting process by other automakers is just one striking example of the mutually beneficial relationship between Tesla and China’s burgeoning electric vehicle industry.The Chinese government rolled out the red carpet for Tesla, giving it unprecedented access to the world’s largest auto market and streamlining the regulatory approval process to build the Shanghai Gigafactory in record time.
Above: The new casting method already adopted by Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory (YouTube: T-Study, via Tesla’s China Weibo account)
Tesla, in turn, is helping Chinese companies become more competitive, partnering with local suppliers to make increasingly complex components, allowing them to challenge American, European and Japanese auto giants.
Gigafactory Shanghai is very friendly to Chinese component suppliers.In the fourth quarter of 2020, about 86 percent of the outsourced Model 3 and Model Y components used by Shanghai Gig came from within China, Tesla said.(For Fremont-built vehicles, 73 percent of outsourced parts come from China.)
The Times speculates that Tesla can do for Chinese EV makers what Apple has done for the Chinese smartphone industry.As iPhone technology spread to local companies, they started making better and better phones, some of which have become major players in the global market.
LK hopes to sell its massive casting machines to more Chinese companies, but Mr Liu told The New York Times that local automakers lack the talented car designers Tesla has.”Many Chinese automakers are talking to us about making machines, but most of them are still in the design process. We have a bottleneck in terms of designers in China.”
This article originally appeared in Charged.Author: Charles Morris.Source: The New York Times, Electrek
Post time: Apr-28-2022