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green1
Active Member
I'm always shocked by this in every factory video I see. they tout how highly automated they are, but if this is "highly" automated, the competition must be chiselling stone tablets or something...
I find it especially surprising how much of the easily automated stuff isn't. For example that video shows manual installation of the battery pack. Tesla themselves have demonstrated that that can easily be automated (battery swap anyone?)
I understand there are some finicky things that are best left to humans for now, but there's just such a huge amount of needless human intervention shown in that video.
Hugh Mannity
Mediocre Member
The factory is more automated now, in this vid it shows a person installing seats, but more modern vids show a robot installing seats. I suspect it becomes more automated as time goes on. It explains hiw throughput can be increased
was proud to see the video was made in Canada (maybe even Quebec given all the French names in the credits).
"How it's made" has always been a Quebec production and exists in a "Comment c'est fait" version sur ZTélé. . However, there seems to be a long delay before the Discovery channel broadcast in English and the native version. A segment with AddEnergy and a Spark EV was filmed in Quebec City in September, 2013, broadcast in English in July, 2014, but hasn't yet appeared in Quebec as far as I know.
Particularly surprising was the manual installation of a front seat since there's a WIRED video where it's done by a robot. Gilbert Passin even talks about it.
Though outdated, this was almost as good as going for the factory tour, actually probably better than some of the recent tours I've heard commentaries on in other threads. Anyway as close as I'll get for now.
Trev Page
Member
I've seen a lot of Tesla videos and quite a few clips in that segment have been out there for some time already. I'm sure Tesla gave them lots of footage to use and limited their access to certain areas (battery assembly for sure).
The motor winding segment was released by Tesla recently after the D announcement. I am surprised however at the amount of manual labour involved in making the motor.
BMW's i3 manufacturing videos on Youtube show a hell of a lot more automation than Tesla seems to employ:
BMW i3 Production - Part 2 - YouTube
I was a bit disappointed to only see windows machines in the factory. Later in the video there's the dyno machine that is running a later windows version. I would have expected a forward looking company like Tesla would run Linux.
@zwede, Tesla doesn't make the machines and robots they use to make their cars and motors, they buy them from other companies. The companies that make the machines you refer to apparently chose to use the Windows OS. Not Tesla's choice, other companies choice.
HankLloydRight
No Roads
AmpedUP
EV Nut
Two things stood out to me...first, the techs attaching the doors did not appear to have any gap gauges available to them at all...same with those attaching the hood. Also, when they assembled the drive unit, there didn't appear to be any lubrication applied to the gearing. Some of the robotics employed was amazing !