ValueAnalyst
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I believe there is some confusion here on this board about the battery pack assembly line and I would like to add to that discussion hoping not to step on anybody feeds.
There are two fundamental manufacturing approached that needs to be kept separated:
1. The semi-automated production they have been installed after realizing that what they attempted before did not work and is now based on humans helping machines to do a decent job. That has been fine tuned to increase efficiency and output over the course of the last months. Based on the written statement after the confusion in the last ER call it ought to be the production to 2500 U/W once in full swing. In parallel to that approach that I tend to call a work around they gave Grohman the priority 1 order to build a fully automated production in Germany.
2. The fully automated line from Grohman tested and confirmed to be working a while ago is able to produce 2500 /week without any human support and was told to be working and shipped in March to be installed. Unless EM did a claim without asking the German Engineers for approval, which may be a negative scenario, we can be certain that this line worked fine in Pruem (HQ) and after shipped and assembled from the same German Engineering team will definitely work as it did in Germany as physics as far as I know are the same in CA and DE. Risks are at the interfaces say material supply and logistics as well as space. All of that is easy to assess prior of shipping and its in the rule book from every engineer ever as basic #1 for Engineers. IOW I have absolutely zero doubt that the line works once implemented. Once its installed and running you have without ramp and without fine tuning a production rate of 2500/units. Without in that context means 1-3 weeks ramp to 100% once implemented depending on not anticipated challenges e.g. humidity, temperature changes, ground material ... you name it.
To make a long story short, the current ramp we see is either the old semi automated line working towards almost 80% capacity or the new fully automated Groman line but only if new Bottlenecks appeared somewhere in the production and hindered them to get to 2500 U/W. A mix of both would result in a much larger output than 2500 u/w that they potentially could store somewhere but I would be surprised if they want that. I am actually not certain if they intend to double the Groman line or keep both but the later sounds more likely to me in the short term.
What I am trying to say is that once the Groman line is implemented we should see as a step increase the full capacity and the 2500 U/W. Still we can have a smaller output of cars.
To assume given the slow ramp we have seen in Q1 that it will continue like that would mean that the Groman line does not work at all, will not be implemented or other severe bottlenecks appeared that they cannot get rid of in the weeks and months to come.
Sounds optimistic (coming from ValueAnalyst), but interesting take nonetheless, especially coming from Germany. Thank you for sharing.
