Tesla Model Y will look very different under the skin in German Gigafactory, says Musk

You may not know it, but while Tesla’s Model Y crossover shares a ton of its styling and components with the Model 3 sedan, it’s actually built in a very different way.

Look, part of Tesla’s teeth problems with bring Model 3 High-speed production was the fact that it was a complicated and somewhat oversized vehicle, which means it was difficult and expensive to manufacture at scale.

On the other hand, the Model Y was designed from the start to be much simpler to build, and this can be seen in several areas, but most notably in its massive cast aluminum rear frame and body section. It is a very good component, and we have covered Tesla’s plans to make it even simpler by switching it to a single mass launch, but the Big T has plans that go far beyond that.

According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, on Wednesday Second quarter earnings called, Tesla has planned German Gigafactory Outside Berlin he will build a very different Model Y from the one currently being built in Fremont. While it will look the same on the outside, according to Musk, under the skin, it will be much more efficient to build.

Meanwhile, however, Tesla is living up to that one-piece casting idea at Fremont. Musk confirmed that the equipment needed to make it is currently being installed at the Fremont factory, but also that it would end up being the world’s largest foundry press. How big is that exactly? I don’t know, but I bet I’d like to see him at work.

A good chunk of Tesla’s profit call was devoted to the manufacturing problem. The company is investing a large amount of money not only in building factories and production lines, but also in making them better, faster, cheaper, and more efficient, and then upgrading older lines to do the same.

As you can probably imagine, doing this requires a lot of engineering talent, and Musk made a call (during the call) to find more. He and the other executives encouraged engineers interested in pushing manufacturing technology to work for Tesla, including saying that the people who design the manufacturing equipment have something to say about the end product it produces, which is pretty good. .