Tesla refuses to manufacture the lower part of the car body using the gigacasting method
Tesla’s ambitious plans to produce the lower body of its cars in one piece – a process known as gigacasting – have been put on hold, The Verge reports. This is another sign that the company is trying to adapt to falling sales and shrinking profits.
Typically, automakers assemble a body from hundreds of individual parts. But Tesla has been a leader in using huge injection molding presses to produce large sections to eventually produce the entire body as a single unit. The goal was to simplify the process and at the same time reduce production costs.
But now the company is reportedly sticking with the production process it uses for its Model Y crossover and Cybertruck vehicles, in which the body is assembled in three parts: two gigacast front and rear sections, and a middle section made of aluminum and steel that holds the battery.
Elon Musk has previously warned of slowing sales amid competition in the US and China. Since then, the company has laid off more than 10 percent of its global workforce and lost several top executives.
Many hopes were pinned on the company’s upcoming affordable electric car, the so-called Model 2, which costs $25,000. But last month, Musk canceled the project, preferring to invest the company’s resources in a fully autonomous robotaxi.
In its first-quarter report, Tesla said that its next-generation models “will utilize aspects of the next-generation platform as well as aspects of our current platforms and will be able to be produced on the same production lines as our current line of vehicles.”
When Musk was asked about Tesla’s gigacasting innovations and how they relate to plans for more affordable electric vehicles, and whether he was worried that this process would be copied by his Chinese competitors, the businessman said that his company is not really focused on cars.
“We should be thought of as an AI robotics company,” Musk said. “If you value Tesla as just like an auto company… it’s just the wrong framework.”