The electric vehicle era brings with it an unpredictable variety of demands. With the popularization of EVs and diversified consumers’ tastes, automakers are facing the need for high-mix, flexible-volume production instead of low-mix, high-volume production. One of the ways that automakers have responded is with smart factories that utilize new manufacturing platforms modeled after the Tesla giga casting process.
Traditionally, most automotive companies relied on flow production line systems operated by conveyors. In the past few decades, automakers tried to produce as many vehicles as possible while. Therefore, a production and assembly strategy which can produce one or two products in a line has been very common.
A giga press can modularize and simplify body components to dramatically improve vehicle production speed. By replacing 60 or more welded components with a single module, gigantic aluminum die casting machines are helping automakers to simplify manufacturing and cut costs by up to 40% in some areas.
The mega-castings in use at Tesla’s Gigafactory Texas from IDRA are about 19.5 m long, 7.3 m wide, and 5.3 m high. Tesla’s plan all along has been to use two huge single castings for the front and rear underbody and to connect them with a battery pack that is acting as part of the body structure. The rear underbody casting is the integration of 70 different parts, and a new 3-section assembly strategy will reduce the total number of parts of this structure by 370.