Introduction of Tesla's New Global Headquarters
This is Tesla's 6th super factory after California, Nevada, New York, Shanghai and Berlin, and is also the largest Tesla factory in the world, as well as the new Tesla global headquarters.
Located in Austin, the capital of Texas, the Texas Mega Plant covers 12,000 acres, 9.57 million cubic meters in volume and spans 15 city blocks long (1,166 meters). If it were erected, it would be higher than the Eiffel Tower in Paris and even taller than the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world's tallest building.
There are 5 main advantages of this new Gigafactory Texas, which are
- 4680 cells
- CTC structured battery pack
- Super unibody die-cast body
- Cybertruck
- Expanded production capacity
First up is the long-rumored 4680 batteries, which has finally begun official mass production at the Texas Giga, with some Tesla employees becoming the first Model Y owners to use the 4680 batteries.
The 4680 cell is shingle-spiral form design that is simpler to manufacture and comes in a package size of 46 mm in diameter and 80 mm in length.
Unlike the current Tesla Model 3&Y, which uses the 2170 battery, the new 4680 battery is hailed by Musk as "the most advanced battery in the world". Compared to the 2170 battery, it has 5 times more energy store, 16% more range, and 6 times more power. At the same time, the absence of the electrolyte of traditional batteries means that there is no liquid acid or gel, which is afraid of the cold. So, when the 4680 is combined with a heat pump system, the days of poor electric vehicle winter range will become a thing of the past.
Of course, the advantages of the 4680 battery pack go far beyond that. The Model Y using the 4680 battery ditches the battery pack design and combines the body structure and battery pack into one, making the body lighter while also reducing manufacturing time and material costs by 56%. With the 4680 battery's 3.5 million kilometer design life, the electric car will be no worse than the fuel car in terms of service life.
In addition to the integration of the battery pack into the body structure, the Texas Giga also introduced the largest automotive die-casting machine ever built. For this reason Musk shared an anecdote about the casting machine. At the beginning of the plant, Tesla went to six different casting machine companies to seek cooperation, five of which clearly said, your request is impossible to complete, only one said a "Maybe" (maybe). Tesla thought that this response, it sounded like an agreement. So the two sides began to cooperate, there will be the world's largest automotive die-casting machine.
With this die-casting machine, thousands of structural parts have been reduced to three, the front-end assembly, the body assembly (containing the battery pack) and the rear-end assembly, dramatically reducing the manufacturing process and weight while greatly improving the safety (crashworthiness) of the entire vehicle.
Musk claims that the Texas Giga is the most advanced car factory ever built on the planet. Take our previous super factory for comparison (see below), which had various buildings scattered all over the place and was not as efficient as it should have been.
Musk went on to say that now, at the Texas Giga, everything there is "under one roof".
Simply put, the raw materials come in from one side, make the structural battery pack, then cast the front and rear body parts, and then the finished product comes out the other side. It's that simple. What would have taken dozens of hours to complete can now be done in just a few hours, which will dramatically reduce the time it takes to build a vehicle. So, the Texas Giga is bound to be the most productive automotive plant in the United States.
Musk then said that the long-awaited Cybertruck pickup truck could be delivered here next year, followed by new products such as the Roadster2 sports car, Semi truck and Tesla robot.
Tesla is currently growing significantly, having delivered one million vehicles in the last 12 months. But in the global auto industry, Tesla's deliveries are only 1%. Tesla wants to try to reach 20 percent so they have enough scale to "move the hands of time" and accelerate the world's shift to sustainable energy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiwUE_2JhvY