How soon can the car move itself?I have no idea what Tesla's plans are, but this is my first principles impression about the topic. First, the status quo:
Based on this it's IMO pretty obvious what the "Dreadnought" design should be, roughly:
- The fastest automotive production lines on the planet are over a kilometer long and consist of hundreds of stations, with most of the stations specialized to a single, very small task. Each station has a carefully calibrated time window to perform the step they handle, without slowing down the rest of the production line. They create a new car every 60 seconds or so.
- This design can perform very well when designed well and executed conservatively, but has a number of disadvantages:
- The maximum production capacity of a factory is pretty much set on the design table, years in advance. Each station has a capacity and to improve the throughput of hundreds of stations all stations have to be made faster or more substations have to be added, on a usually cramped production floor.
- As a result the lead time of capacity expansions is 3-5 years, the time to build a new car factory from scratch. This slows down the design cycle to snail's pace: the previous models are to a large extent cast into stone, and the next model has 3-5 years of lead time, sometimes more. This is why advances in the automotive industry are happening so slowly, and this is why there's so much resistance against change.
- But there's production disadvantages as well: the whole production line is exposed to failure of a single critical station. If a station goes down unexpectedly then it immediately stops production in the pipeline up to the next and previous 'overflow line' that can buffer half assembled cars. If the outage is so long that later buffer lines drained or previous ones overflow then the production stoppage avalanches forward and backward and stops the entire production, idling the workforce and stopping a billion dollar capital from earning its investment cost. I.e. losses of millions of dollars per hour are possible.
- In software terms the automotive industry's production method is very monolithic. This design choice originates from the original Ford integrated assembly lines 100 years ago, from around 1913:
- Technological innovations like industrial robots were basically shoehorned into a 1913 factory design. This is similar to the mistake that early steam engine driven factories committed when they converted to electricity: they reused the cramped, high density steam machine factory design which had to be dense due to the physics of the mechanical belt power distribution method, instead of using electricity properly and spreading out their factories. It took about 100 years after the electrification of industry for electricity to be used properly in factory design: big, sprawling buildings with enough space to expand physically, and electricity transported via power lines.
- Anyway, Ford's 1913 design was IMO never seriously changed as new technologies become available - I believe in part due to the long lead times, slow iteration frequency and general technological risk avoidance in the automotive industry. If we take the average iteration duration as 5 years, then the automotive industry is only on it's 20th version of its factory design, with evolutionary and not revolution steps along the way. While the comparison is not apples to apples and thus not fair, there's certainly agile software projects that do 20 revolutionary iterations in a single year.
Pretty much the only drawback that I can see is that this cannot be installed at Fremont where space is at a premium, but requires a large greenfield factory from scratch. The 'carts', the 'conveyor system' and the preemptively less dense installation of modules needs more factory space than is probably available at Fremont. They might still prototype it at Fremont though, as the design will work on smaller and larger scale just as well.
- Multi-purpose modular work stations: the fundamental unit is a "generic industrial station", made by Tesla Grohmann. This is basically a generalized industrial robot that is designed to change its role flexibly AFTER it has been installed on the factory floor. I'll talk more about this later.
- Utilizing the third dimension: beyond stamping machines that require strong, deep reinforced concrete foundations weighing thousands of tons, most of the stations in a car factory don't have to be on ground level. Why not have 3-4 stories instead of a single story? This not only allows better real estate utilization, but also allows flexible expansion of production via the use of elevators and multiple floors.
- Utilizing two dimensions (horizontal space) more effectively: instead of creating a row of machines that have a set ordering at the design table, I'd create a less dense two dimensional layout initially as well, allowing for future growth.
- Utilizing FSD "EV carts" to move units between flexible work stations: I'd use self-driving EV "carts" that carry the partially assembled cars from station to station autonomously. They'd recharge themselves autonomously as well, whenever their battery levels get too low. Note that self-driving carts could also replace elevator systems (which are single points of failure), instead ramps could be used where the EVs carrying the partially assembled cars could move between floors - like in a multi-story parking garage.
- Automated conveyor system that feeds parts to sub-assemblies and the main assembly line.
- Much more parallelism: instead of having a single fundamental major assembly line flow that sub-assemblies feed into, I'd define multi-station 'clusters' of production that receive units in parallel. Any already installed generalized "Grohmann industrial station" could be retooled within a few hours to serve a completely different role: instead of installing a wire harness they could be applying screws or could be fitting windows. This means that if there's an imbalance in the capacity of factory during ramp-up, it doesn't have to be physically modified (or only to a minimal fashion), production capacity could be set aside to improve another workflow. No rails have to be modified and no serial production line gets upset: self-driving EV carts could just re-route their flow utilize the slightly different factory layout.
- Much less manual labor utilized: the Grohmann industrial station is 100% robotic. The main advantage of manual assembly labor is its flexibility - but if this flexibility can be offered at the industrial robot station level, it's a game changer.
- Flexible, gradual ramp-up that has good capital utilization during the ramp-up phase already: because each modular work station is flexible, a new factory with 10,000 units/week final capacity can be ramped up and can already make 1,000 units/week with just around 10% of the capital spent for the full production. The only 'extra overhead' is the large building built - but as we've seen it in Shanghai, large buildings can be built very, very quickly. Also note that even at the 100 units/week stage the factory can already be capital efficient and can expand "itself" without interruption of production equipment: because each station can be programmed to assemble 10% of a car, or just 1% of it, the role of each station can become smaller and more specialized as time goes on and capacity goes up. I.e. you don't have to spend capital, specify, order and wait for hundreds of stations to be built by first parties first, you can literally bootstrap a new factory with a large building and a dozen of work stations to produce ten cars per day or so. The factory will probably be earning money at that early ramp-up stage already! New stations can be installed without disrupting existing production flows - this is inherent in the less dense and autonomously routed and flexibly reconfigurable workflow.
- New stations can also be 'tested' without risking the existing production flow: a couple of units are handled at half speed or a quarter of speed, and the result in QA'd carefully. Note how this spreads out R&D as well: new optimizations can be applied anytime on existing stations as well, there's no pressure to "finalize" the design and put "pens down" at an arbitrary date when hundreds of millions of dollars worth of tooling is ordered. Instead it can all be done gradually and organically, optimizing it as they go.
Gigafactory 1 and starting the production of the Tesla Semi on this platform, with low initial capital investment, would be an excellent approach IMHO.
Note that the tight labor market in Reno is not a problem if indeed their new factory design is almost entirely automated: Gigafactory 1 will be the dream job for industrial robot and production engineers, and I expect Tesla to do a super job attracting talent via luxury amenities. It won't really show up in CoGs as the factory scales up it won't have to hire all that much bigger of a workforce.
Basically I expect Tesla's Dreadnought to eliminate "production hell" entirely, by turning the ramp-up of a factory into a largely software space problem. (They might even be able to simulate a full factory, based on the known capabilities of the generalized work stations.)
There's much more to this topic, but this comment is way too long already ...
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable
- Thread starter AudubonB
- Start date
Loved, loved, loved that post, although I almost gave you a disagree when you said it was too long
My favorite posts, like I’m sure many others, are very informed speculation that we can get here, like nowhere else!
I think we need to find a way to streamline the publication of the best posts/insights/speculations out there, out of TMC.
CleanTechnica + socials are a nice way to do it. We know that Elon follows it so a simple retweet could do wonders in terms of visibility.
Maybe @ZachShahan can chime in.
I am very well-aware of the margin requirements for selling puts. I'm just using my 50+ years of experience in the market (25 years as a broker/Money manager) in an effort to help those, unfamiliar with options, avoid financial pain.
I added some words above. In my experience that's when the wheel really falls off.
Butt (approx. 475-500 litres | ~302-350 LPA): Butts are the most commonly used type of cask in the sherry industry, and thus, apart from those having previously held bourbon, the type of cask most commonly utilised for maturing Scotch whisky. They are traditionally made from Spanish oak, although a significant amount of butts are also made from American white oak.
Casks (barrels, hogsheads, butts) | WhiskyInvestDirect
Don't forget what Tesla's goal is, and what flexibility exists in license agreements. What if Tesla said to, say, Ford: "We'll sell you the machines at cost but you're only allowed to produce EVs with them."?
Thanks. I should have been more explicit.
ZachShahan
Active Member
Have you tried emailing Tesla? Should be a Tesla Energy email/contact who can help you.
ZachShahan
Active Member
ZachShahan
Active Member
This is really a horrible piece. If anyone wants to submit another good critique, I'd be happy to publish it.
ZachShahan
Active Member
Haha, believe me, I was thinking about exactly this in the past month — but didn't want to be pushy and I am, of course, also particular about which ones I like and find useful versus what other people might like.
Every time I think I will keep a close eye on here on a daily basis, though, I just can't keep up with it + other work. [Edit: And part of the problem is that spending a few hours on here stimulates several story ideas. And I already have a list of ~100 I should get to.
]I would love to have someone or some group who could pull out some highlights from here on a regular basis and turn them into articles.
Of course, as anyone who reads us much has seen, we try to give full & blatant credit even if your username is "DudeWithCRAZYEyes," so have no problem with that.
If someone is eager to jump into this effort and think you could represent the community well, send me a DM. (I know, I have a handful of messages there — hopefully nothing urgent that I'm late on.)
All of the "gas company branded" gas station chains are just licensing the names (franchises) -- the gas stations are almost universally independently owned. In most cases they also buy from the brand's refineries, but that isn't even always the case. The chains like Sheetz often actually do own their own stations.
I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla or Musk himself becomes one of the first targets of this sort of Deep Fake technology. I don't find it too hard to imagine a scenario where a video emerges of Musk doing/saying something outrageous that feeds the narrative that he's going crazy. Even if it costs a couple of million to make the video (it doesn't), that's pocket change compared to the sort of money that can be made if you know in advance that a stock is about to tank.
ZachShahan
Active Member
Here in Poland, the two major gas station chains have started installing free charging stations across the country. More so than in the US, these gas stations can also be nice little places to eat/work — they routinely have nice little cafes. Some have the cafes more as afterthoughts (like in US), but others are more like a Starbucks.
For a couple years now, I've thought (because I'm sure I stole the idea from someone else) that leaders in this industry everywhere would make the cafes much nicer, add more "hey, this is a nice place to visit" features, and target EV drivers who have plenty of time to spend money. Still, I was surprised to see these Polish chains jump into this so quickly. I'm curious to see how they evolve and if they do what I think is most sensible — make themselves more and more attractive and lucrative for people staying a while.
(Of course, Tesla can ruin their business if Elon puts too many video games in the cars.
)
Last edited:
This is fabulous information, I have just informed my 13 year old daughter to freely use the term "butt load" in class at school, any time she is referring to anything about 500 litres.
RobStark
Well-Known Member
BEV powertrain is not at cost parity with ICE powertrain yet.
Leased batteries is BS shifting of cost.
You don't buy an ICE glyder and lease an engine/transmission.
Tesla is having problems selling a profitable vehicle under $40k.
It is partly a problem of technology and partly a problem of economies of scale.
VW Group which includes Audi seems to be the only legacy automaker committing to an economies of scale sufficient to get EV powertrains cost down to parity with ICE powertrains. Somebody will get there in 5 years or so. Doesn't mean everybody will.
RobStark
Well-Known Member
I have no idea what Tesla's plans are, but this is my first principles impression about the topic. First, the status quo:
Based on this it's IMO pretty obvious what the "Dreadnought" design should be, roughly:
- The fastest automotive production lines on the planet are over a kilometer long and consist of hundreds of stations, with most of the stations specialized to a single, very small task. Each station has a carefully calibrated time window to perform the step they handle, without slowing down the rest of the production line. They create a new car every 60 seconds or so.
- This design can perform very well when designed well and executed conservatively, but has a number of disadvantages:
- The maximum production capacity of a factory is pretty much set on the design table, years in advance. Each station has a capacity and to improve the throughput of hundreds of stations all stations have to be made faster or more substations have to be added, on a usually cramped production floor.
- As a result the lead time of capacity expansions is 3-5 years, the time to build a new car factory from scratch. This slows down the design cycle to snail's pace: the previous models are to a large extent cast into stone, and the next model has 3-5 years of lead time, sometimes more. This is why advances in the automotive industry are happening so slowly, and this is why there's so much resistance against change.
- But there's production disadvantages as well: the whole production line is exposed to failure of a single critical station. If a station goes down unexpectedly then it immediately stops production in the pipeline up to the next and previous 'overflow line' that can buffer half assembled cars. If the outage is so long that later buffer lines drained or previous ones overflow then the production stoppage avalanches forward and backward and stops the entire production, idling the workforce and stopping a billion dollar capital from earning its investment cost. I.e. losses of millions of dollars per hour are possible.
- In software terms the automotive industry's production method is very monolithic. This design choice originates from the original Ford integrated assembly lines 100 years ago, from around 1913:
- Technological innovations like industrial robots were basically shoehorned into a 1913 factory design. This is similar to the mistake that early steam engine driven factories committed when they converted to electricity: they reused the cramped, high density steam machine factory design which had to be dense due to the physics of the mechanical belt power distribution method, instead of using electricity properly and spreading out their factories. It took about 100 years after the electrification of industry for electricity to be used properly in factory design: big, sprawling buildings with enough space to expand physically, and electricity transported via power lines.
- Anyway, Ford's 1913 design was IMO never seriously changed as new technologies become available - I believe in part due to the long lead times, slow iteration frequency and general technological risk avoidance in the automotive industry. If we take the average iteration duration as 5 years, then the automotive industry is only on it's 20th version of its factory design, with evolutionary and not revolution steps along the way. While the comparison is not apples to apples and thus not fair, there's certainly agile software projects that do 20 revolutionary iterations in a single year.
Pretty much the only drawback that I can see is that this cannot be installed at Fremont where space is at a premium, but requires a large greenfield factory from scratch. The 'carts', the 'conveyor system' and the preemptively less dense installation of modules needs more factory space than is probably available at Fremont. They might still prototype it at Fremont though, as the design will work on smaller and larger scale just as well.
- Multi-purpose modular work stations: the fundamental unit is a "generic industrial station", made by Tesla Grohmann. This is basically a generalized industrial robot that is designed to change its role flexibly AFTER it has been installed on the factory floor. I'll talk more about this later.
- Utilizing the third dimension: beyond stamping machines that require strong, deep reinforced concrete foundations weighing thousands of tons, most of the stations in a car factory don't have to be on ground level. Why not have 3-4 stories instead of a single story? This not only allows better real estate utilization, but also allows flexible expansion of production via the use of elevators and multiple floors.
- Utilizing two dimensions (horizontal space) more effectively: instead of creating a row of machines that have a set ordering at the design table, I'd create a less dense two dimensional layout initially as well, allowing for future growth.
- Utilizing FSD "EV carts" to move units between flexible work stations: I'd use self-driving EV "carts" that carry the partially assembled cars from station to station autonomously. They'd recharge themselves autonomously as well, whenever their battery levels get too low. Note that self-driving carts could also replace elevator systems (which are single points of failure), instead ramps could be used where the EVs carrying the partially assembled cars could move between floors - like in a multi-story parking garage.
- Automated conveyor system that feeds parts to sub-assemblies and the main assembly line.
- Much more parallelism: instead of having a single fundamental major assembly line flow that sub-assemblies feed into, I'd define multi-station 'clusters' of production that receive units in parallel. Any already installed generalized "Grohmann industrial station" could be retooled within a few hours to serve a completely different role: instead of installing a wire harness they could be applying screws or could be fitting windows. This means that if there's an imbalance in the capacity of factory during ramp-up, it doesn't have to be physically modified (or only to a minimal fashion), production capacity could be set aside to improve another workflow. No rails have to be modified and no serial production line gets upset: self-driving EV carts could just re-route their flow utilize the slightly different factory layout.
- Much less manual labor utilized: the Grohmann industrial station is 100% robotic. The main advantage of manual assembly labor is its flexibility - but if this flexibility can be offered at the industrial robot station level, it's a game changer.
- Flexible, gradual ramp-up that has good capital utilization during the ramp-up phase already: because each modular work station is flexible, a new factory with 10,000 units/week final capacity can be ramped up and can already make 1,000 units/week with just around 10% of the capital spent for the full production. The only 'extra overhead' is the large building built - but as we've seen it in Shanghai, large buildings can be built very, very quickly. Also note that even at the 100 units/week stage the factory can already be capital efficient and can expand "itself" without interruption of production equipment: because each station can be programmed to assemble 10% of a car, or just 1% of it, the role of each station can become smaller and more specialized as time goes on and capacity goes up. I.e. you don't have to spend capital, specify, order and wait for hundreds of stations to be built by first parties first, you can literally bootstrap a new factory with a large building and a dozen of work stations to produce ten cars per day or so. The factory will probably be earning money at that early ramp-up stage already! New stations can be installed without disrupting existing production flows - this is inherent in the less dense and autonomously routed and flexibly reconfigurable workflow.
- New stations can also be 'tested' without risking the existing production flow: a couple of units are handled at half speed or a quarter of speed, and the result in QA'd carefully. Note how this spreads out R&D as well: new optimizations can be applied anytime on existing stations as well, there's no pressure to "finalize" the design and put "pens down" at an arbitrary date when hundreds of millions of dollars worth of tooling is ordered. Instead it can all be done gradually and organically, optimizing it as they go.
Gigafactory 1 and starting the production of the Tesla Semi on this platform, with low initial capital investment, would be an excellent approach IMHO.
Note that the tight labor market in Reno is not a problem if indeed their new factory design is almost entirely automated: Gigafactory 1 will be the dream job for industrial robot and production engineers, and I expect Tesla to do a super job attracting talent via luxury amenities. It won't really show up in CoGs as the factory scales up it won't have to hire all that much bigger of a workforce.
Basically I expect Tesla's Dreadnought to eliminate "production hell" entirely, by turning the ramp-up of a factory into a largely software space problem. (They might even be able to simulate a full factory, based on the known capabilities of the generalized work stations.)
There's much more to this topic, but this comment is way too long already ...
Can I get the Cliffs Notes for this post?
i recommend 2x speed as better listening.
Step one: Use a utility Knife to strip insulation on both orange cables
Step two: Grab both cables with bare hands
Pain over.
Similar threads
- Locked
- Locked
- Locked
