Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Tesla's new car assembly process reportedly caused an immediate sensation when it was released in March, sparking a debate among car manufacturing experts about whether Tesla CEO Elon Musk's so-called "unboxed process" was too radical.

Musk believes Tesla needs to fundamentally rethink the traditional way of producing cars in order to produce more low-cost electric vehicles while achieving higher profits.

Tesla is already the world's most valuable automaker. Investors have been waiting for the company to unveil electric cars priced under $30,000, which is considered the Holy Grail of Tesla's product line. Currently, Tesla's cheapest models start at more than $40,000. "Unpacking process" is to achieve this price target.

One expert described the new production process as "revolutionary" and potentially upending the automotive industry's traditional assembly line. But there are also doubts that if the process relies solely on previously tested technologies, such as modular assembly, it will not necessarily reduce production costs significantly.

Tesla announced the new process at an investor day event on March 1. Tesla executives said at the time that this would help Tesla's next-generation model "be simpler and cheaper."

They also say the unpacking process can cut production costs in half and reduce factory floor space by 40 percent. Tesla's ultimate goal is to "produce more cars at a lower cost."

Production lines based on the new technology won't be fully tested until late 2024 at Tesla's new plant in Monterrey, Mexico. The plant, with an investment of $5 billion, is where Tesla plans to produce a new generation of electric cars priced under $30,000.

Several big questions have emerged around this new process: What impact will Tesla's new process have on the entire automotive industry? Does this render the widely imitated Toyota production system useless? Given Tesla's multiple jumps and failures in trying to deploy new technology, can Musk make this new process work as expected? Tesla did not respond to these questions.

Consulting firm Berylls focuses on the rapid transformation of the automotive industry towards electrification and intelligence. Martin French, the company's managing director, is watching to see if Tesla's new process can replace Toyota's decades-old lean manufacturing methods. "When I saw Tesla on display, my feeling was that Toyota's production system manual had just been thrown into the air and was being machine-gunned down," he said. "

Jan-Philipp Büchler, a researcher at the Free University of Dortmund in Germany, called Tesla's new process "revolutionary." "It's not just modular production. The new process eliminates standard steps and creates new modes of operation, increasing speed and reducing complexity. "

Tesla is still testing various aspects of the new process, including front and rear modules based on single-piece base castings that will be connected to the central structure battery pack. The body panels are painted separately and then joined together at the end of the assembly process.

Some manufacturing experts believe that the unpacking process has the potential to reduce or eliminate processes currently common in car factories, including stamping, welding and painting unfinished bodies before sending them to long assembly lines where seats, engines and other accessories are installed.

If everything goes according to plan, the unpacking process could rewrite standard practices in the automotive industry. However, Tesla has not always achieved such ambitious goals in the past, such as the CyberTruck model has repeatedly jumped tickets, and the problem of FSD software has not been solved.

Lean experts like James Womack and Hide Oba have seen key differences between Toyota's production methods and Tesla's innovations.

A professor at MIT, Womack co-authored The World-Changing Machine in 1990, analyzing Toyota's lean production philosophy and approach. At the heart of Tesla's new approach, he said, is an "assembly process," while Toyota has developed a broader, more comprehensive "production management system" that helps automakers run assembly lines and other jobs more efficiently.

Oba, an independent lean production consultant, worked at Toyota's Production Systems Support Center, which helps Toyota suppliers and other companies implement Toyota's production systems. A big risk, he says, is that the open-box process could become rigid. Tesla's process, he argues,"will not work unless these large, complex out-of-the-box modules are produced in complete synchronization and all of them get to the final assembly line in time."

Another question is whether Tesla can produce multiple models of different size and bodies on the same production line using an out-of-the-box process. Oba said: "I guess it's almost impossible. "This is because Tesla has broken the car down into a few large modules in a very aggressive way, and the size of these modules is not very suitable for customized production.

"This could be a drag on the company's overall efficiency, as Tesla's product line could become more diverse and complex in the future," he said. "

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