Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The Gigapress is a machine that ischanging the automotive industry forever. Tesla was
the first company that leveraged gigascale diecasting to hack the manufacturing process, and
this has allowed them to not onlybuild more cars for less money, but
it's also enabled radical new vehicle designsthat we've only just begun to realize.
The competition is catching on, though. The Gigapress is about to go mainstream,
(00:23):
and Tesla will have to push thetechnology further than ever before to maintain
their lead. The stakes are higherthan ever for the Gigapress. In twenty
twenty four, in a recent interviewwith Monroe Live, Tesla engineers revealed something
very important about how the company usestheir gigapress machines. Lars Moravi is the
vice president of Vehicle Engineering at Tesla. He's been with the company for over
(00:46):
thirteen years, so you're looking atone of the most knowledgeable people on the
planet when it comes to building electriccars, and Lars pointed out a secret
behind the gigacasting that even Tesla's competitionhasn't realized yet. It's all about the
flow. If we look at thiscybertruck front casting the first thing you'll notice
is that it is really big.But more specifically, we want to take
(01:10):
a look at these long, sweepingmetal ridges. What does that pattern and
shape remind you of. This isa river delta, a naturally occurring geological
pattern that is created by flowing water. This same pattern is repeated all over
the world. This is what itlooks like when water follows the path of
least resistance. And now back toour cybertruck casting, this is what it
(01:36):
looks like when flowing liquid metal isgiven the most efficient path to move through
a die casting mold. What Larspoints out is that if you put a
trained engineer alone in a room andhave them design an automotive casting they are
going to create a lot of trianglesand trusses in mathematically correct shapes, and
in theory that design will render avery strong and sound component. But in
(01:57):
the actual practice of die casting,those rigid shapes create bottlenecks that prevent the
liquid metal from achieving the most optimizedflow through the mold. This is why
Tesla uses first principles thinking. Youhave to throw out everything that you know
about automotive design and approach this problemfrom the ground up. If we are
(02:19):
trying to cast a very large componentvery quickly using liquid metal, then we
need to create the most optimal pathfor that liquid to follow. The answer
is not in an engineering textbook.The answer is in nature. It's the
river delta. Lars says that thislevel of innovation is only possible because Tesla
designs and manufactures their own dime moldsin house. So the company literally has
(02:45):
the people who design the castings workingin the same room as the people designing
the molds, and the two teamscan work together to ensure that the entire
giga caste system is working at maximumefficiency. This new design approach is what
finally made the cyber truck possible,and it's going to allow Tesla to continue
making larger and more complex castings thanany other company would even dream to be
(03:09):
possible. Over the past three years, Tesla has gradually been scaling up to
capabilities of their gigapress machines. Insimple terms, a gigapress is just a
really big injection molding device. Youstart with a hot liquid material, which
in this case is molten aluminum,and then a plunger is used to push
that material into a hollow mold.This is your die. The process of
(03:31):
forcing viscous liquid metal into a restrictivemold is going to create a lot of
internal pressure, and this requires tremendousclamping force to hold the two halves of
the die together as it fills withmetal. The further the liquid metal has
to travel through the mold, themore clamping force is required to hold everything
together. This all happens within afraction of a second. The speed allows
(03:55):
molten aluminum to fill every void inthe dye before before the cooling process can
begin. With the casting process completed, the material is given a few seconds
to solidify before the clamps pull openthe die and the finished part is removed.
When Tesla first started giga casting,they were able to forge the entire
rear end frame of a Model Yusing a casting machine with six thousand tons
(04:18):
of clamping force, the biggest andstrongest casting machine in the world at the
time, the first gigapress. Thischange alone was able to replace hundreds of
factory robots and individual components with onemachine making one part. With practice,
Tesla was then able to cast theeven larger front frame section of the Model
(04:40):
Y using the same machine and witheven more practice, Tesla has gone bigger
once again with the cyber truck frontend. This is still done using the
same six thousand ton press from theModel Y. This is proof that there's
more to the giga casting process thanjust raw power. You also need design,
efficiency, work smarter, not harder. For this gigantic rear casting that
(05:04):
supports the bed of the cyber truck, Tesla did eventually need more power.
This came in the form of anupgraded nine thousand ton Gigapress machine. Even
with fluid dynamics on your side,trying to flow metal across this grade of
a distance is going to require alot of power to accomplish. The cyber
truck has been another powerful learning experiencefor Tesla, the fluid dynamics lesson that
(05:27):
we talked about earlier being just oneexample of that, and all signs are
pointing towards another upgrade to the gigacastingprocess still to come, the Gigapress version
two point zero. Tesla is currentlyin the process of designing a brand new
vehicle. In many ways, thiswill be their most revolutionary platform to date,
but at the same time it willbe the cheapest car they have ever
(05:48):
sold. So how does that work? Well, we know that the next
generation vehicle is being built around amanufacturing process. So in the past Tesla
wid does a car like the Modelthree, and then they would figure out
how to build it. This didnot work out so well. The next
gen approach is to design a manufacturingprocess that can produce a vehicle for half
(06:11):
the cost of a Model three anddo it in half the time, and
then let the end product be determinedby the most efficient path through that new
production line. One approach that Teslais said to be considering here is a
full body casting process. So inthis method, the entire frame of the
vehicle from front to back would beforged by one mighty gigapress machine, supposedly
(06:35):
requiring up to sixteen thousand tons ofclamping force to hold it all together under
the extreme pressure. In practice,this would replace a small army of robot
arms stamping and casting machines with onemonolithic gigapress. This is getting closer to
Elon Musk's mantra of the machine thatbuilds the machine. This is a patent
(06:59):
application that Tesla filed back in twentyeighteen. It's Elon's concept for a singular
car building machine titled Multidirectional unibody castingMachine for a vehicle frame and associated methods.
The basic idea here is that rawmaterials go in and a full vehicle
frame comes out. Obviously, thedrawing is an oversimplification. You're not going
(07:21):
to get wheels and tires and windowsfrom a casting machine. But this is
the essence of the Giga Press twopoint zero. The concept is not so
different from how Apple makes their laptops. If you've ever held a MacBook Pro,
you know that it doesn't feel likeany other laptop on the market.
Even blindfolded, you would know instantlythat you're holding an Apple computer. And
(07:44):
that's because the company manufactures every MacBookframe from a single slab of aluminum.
This actually saves the company on assemblycost and makes a superior quality product.
Running entirely contrary to the idea offull body cap testing is Tesla's unboxed manufacturing
process. This information comes directly fromTesla themselves, and it distinctly shows the
(08:07):
vehicle being broken up into three mainchunks, the front and rear castings,
plus the structural battery pack. Thisalso looks like a very efficient way to
build cars, So which one isthe real manufacturing process for the next generation
Tesla? Well, the unboxed presentationwas a while back in March twenty twenty
(08:28):
three at Tesla's Investor Day, whichwas one of the company's less successful events.
It was informative, but not veryexciting. It presented some cool ideas
but gave no specific details. Itwasn't particularly well received by investors, so
it's possible that the unboxed process wasjust one of many ideas that Tesla had
(08:50):
in mind at the beginning of twentytwenty three. Obviously, you're not going
to put all your cards on thetable in a public presentation, and we
know that plans are still changing forthe man manufacturing of the next gen vehicle.
First it was going to be builtin Mexico, now it's being built
in Texas. In an interview atthe cyber Truck launch event, Elon Musk
said that he is still reviewing newideas for the next generation production process on
(09:15):
a daily basis. It's also entirelypossible that Tesla still didn't believe full body
casting was possible until they had masteredthe cyber Truck Giga cast, which could
have come after the unboxed concept waspitched. What we do know for sure
is that Tesla is still very securelyleading the way in automotive die casting,
but the competition is beginning to maketheir move, or is it. Of
(09:39):
all the major international brands, we'veseen Toyota make the biggest move towards giga
casting, but they still don't havemuch to show for it. In June
twenty twenty three, Toyota released thisvideo to showcase what they call their own
giga casting, and it kind oflooks like a Tesla casting, but at
the same time, it's not evenclose. Here are the new Toyota front
(10:01):
and rear castings, and here arethe equivalent Tesla Model y castings. The
Toyota components are obviously a bit smaller, but they also seem to lack all
of the structure that Tesla has builtinto their casting. The Toyota parts look
thinner, they're much smoother, theylook flimsy in my opinion. With that
being said, Toyota does have adecades long reputation for making some of the
(10:24):
most reliable cars in the world,So I'm not gonna sit here and throw
any more shade at them. Wewill just have to see what they eventually
come up with. The first gigacast Toyota vehicle is supposed to be out
in twenty twenty six, so that'splenty of time. We've also seen reports
that Hyundai and Ford have reportedly beentesting out their own giga press machines,
made by the same company who suppliedTesla, the Italian Idra group. Idra
(10:48):
has reportedly signed a contract that woulddeliver two of their largest nine thousand ton
giga press machines to Volvo for anew manufacturing plant in Eastern Europe. Volkswagen
is also known to be using asmaller four thousand tons press for underbody sections
of their new Trinity EV platform thatwill be coming in twenty twenty six.
(11:09):
This is just more proof that Teslais easily maintaining their position as the leader
and disruptor of the automotive industry.There is so much more to come.
The Gigapress is a machine that ischanging the automotive industry forever. Tesla was
the first company that leveraged gigascale diecasting to hack the manufacturing process, and
this has allowed them to not onlybuild more cars for less money, but
it's also enabled radical new vehicle designsthat we've only just begun to realize.
The competition is catching on, though. The Gigapress is about to go mainstream,
(00:23):
and Tesla will have to push thetechnology further than ever before to maintain
their lead. The stakes are higherthan ever for the Gigapress. In twenty
twenty four, in a recent interviewwith Monroe Live, Tesla engineers revealed something
very important about how the company usestheir gigapress machines. Lars Moravi is the
vice president of Vehicle Engineering at Tesla. He's been with the company for over
(00:46):
thirteen years, so you're looking atone of the most knowledgeable people on the
planet when it comes to building electriccars, and Lars pointed out a secret
behind the gigacasting that even Tesla's competitionhasn't realized yet. It's all about the
flow. If we look at thiscybertruck front casting the first thing you'll notice
is that it is really big.But more specifically, we want to take
(01:10):
a look at these long, sweepingmetal ridges. What does that pattern and
shape remind you of. This isa river delta, a naturally occurring geological
pattern that is created by flowing water. This same pattern is repeated all over
the world. This is what itlooks like when water follows the path of
least resistance. And now back toour cybertruck casting, this is what it
(01:36):
looks like when flowing liquid metal isgiven the most efficient path to move through
a die casting mold. What Larspoints out is that if you put a
trained engineer alone in a room andhave them design an automotive casting they are
going to create a lot of trianglesand trusses in mathematically correct shapes, and
in theory that design will render avery strong and sound component. But in
(01:57):
the actual practice of die casting,those rigid shapes create bottlenecks that prevent the
liquid metal from achieving the most optimizedflow through the mold. This is why
Tesla uses first principles thinking. Youhave to throw out everything that you know
about automotive design and approach this problemfrom the ground up. If we are
(02:19):
trying to cast a very large componentvery quickly using liquid metal, then we
need to create the most optimal pathfor that liquid to follow. The answer
is not in an engineering textbook.The answer is in nature. It's the
river delta. Lars says that thislevel of innovation is only possible because Tesla
designs and manufactures their own dime moldsin house. So the company literally has
(02:45):
the people who design the castings workingin the same room as the people designing
the molds, and the two teamscan work together to ensure that the entire
giga caste system is working at maximumefficiency. This new design approach is what
finally made the cyber truck possible,and it's going to allow Tesla to continue
making larger and more complex castings thanany other company would even dream to be
(03:09):
possible. Over the past three years, Tesla has gradually been scaling up to
capabilities of their gigapress machines. Insimple terms, a gigapress is just a
really big injection molding device. Youstart with a hot liquid material, which
in this case is molten aluminum,and then a plunger is used to push
that material into a hollow mold.This is your die. The process of
(03:31):
forcing viscous liquid metal into a restrictivemold is going to create a lot of
internal pressure, and this requires tremendousclamping force to hold the two halves of
the die together as it fills withmetal. The further the liquid metal has
to travel through the mold, themore clamping force is required to hold everything
together. This all happens within afraction of a second. The speed allows
(03:55):
molten aluminum to fill every void inthe dye before before the cooling process can
begin. With the casting process completed, the material is given a few seconds
to solidify before the clamps pull openthe die and the finished part is removed.
When Tesla first started giga casting,they were able to forge the entire
rear end frame of a Model Yusing a casting machine with six thousand tons
(04:18):
of clamping force, the biggest andstrongest casting machine in the world at the
time, the first gigapress. Thischange alone was able to replace hundreds of
factory robots and individual components with onemachine making one part. With practice,
Tesla was then able to cast theeven larger front frame section of the Model
(04:40):
Y using the same machine and witheven more practice, Tesla has gone bigger
once again with the cyber truck frontend. This is still done using the
same six thousand ton press from theModel Y. This is proof that there's
more to the giga casting process thanjust raw power. You also need design,
efficiency, work smarter, not harder. For this gigantic rear casting that
(05:04):
supports the bed of the cyber truck, Tesla did eventually need more power.
This came in the form of anupgraded nine thousand ton Gigapress machine. Even
with fluid dynamics on your side,trying to flow metal across this grade of
a distance is going to require alot of power to accomplish. The cyber
truck has been another powerful learning experiencefor Tesla, the fluid dynamics lesson that
(05:27):
we talked about earlier being just oneexample of that, and all signs are
pointing towards another upgrade to the gigacastingprocess still to come, the Gigapress version
two point zero. Tesla is currentlyin the process of designing a brand new
vehicle. In many ways, thiswill be their most revolutionary platform to date,
but at the same time it willbe the cheapest car they have ever
(05:48):
sold. So how does that work? Well, we know that the next
generation vehicle is being built around amanufacturing process. So in the past Tesla
wid does a car like the Modelthree, and then they would figure out
how to build it. This didnot work out so well. The next
gen approach is to design a manufacturingprocess that can produce a vehicle for half
(06:11):
the cost of a Model three anddo it in half the time, and
then let the end product be determinedby the most efficient path through that new
production line. One approach that Teslais said to be considering here is a
full body casting process. So inthis method, the entire frame of the
vehicle from front to back would beforged by one mighty gigapress machine, supposedly
(06:35):
requiring up to sixteen thousand tons ofclamping force to hold it all together under
the extreme pressure. In practice,this would replace a small army of robot
arms stamping and casting machines with onemonolithic gigapress. This is getting closer to
Elon Musk's mantra of the machine thatbuilds the machine. This is a patent
(06:59):
application that Tesla filed back in twentyeighteen. It's Elon's concept for a singular
car building machine titled Multidirectional unibody castingMachine for a vehicle frame and associated methods.
The basic idea here is that rawmaterials go in and a full vehicle
frame comes out. Obviously, thedrawing is an oversimplification. You're not going
(07:21):
to get wheels and tires and windowsfrom a casting machine. But this is
the essence of the Giga Press twopoint zero. The concept is not so
different from how Apple makes their laptops. If you've ever held a MacBook Pro,
you know that it doesn't feel likeany other laptop on the market.
Even blindfolded, you would know instantlythat you're holding an Apple computer. And
(07:44):
that's because the company manufactures every MacBookframe from a single slab of aluminum.
This actually saves the company on assemblycost and makes a superior quality product.
Running entirely contrary to the idea offull body cap testing is Tesla's unboxed manufacturing
process. This information comes directly fromTesla themselves, and it distinctly shows the
(08:07):
vehicle being broken up into three mainchunks, the front and rear castings,
plus the structural battery pack. Thisalso looks like a very efficient way to
build cars, So which one isthe real manufacturing process for the next generation
Tesla? Well, the unboxed presentationwas a while back in March twenty twenty
(08:28):
three at Tesla's Investor Day, whichwas one of the company's less successful events.
It was informative, but not veryexciting. It presented some cool ideas
but gave no specific details. Itwasn't particularly well received by investors, so
it's possible that the unboxed process wasjust one of many ideas that Tesla had
(08:50):
in mind at the beginning of twentytwenty three. Obviously, you're not going
to put all your cards on thetable in a public presentation, and we
know that plans are still changing forthe man manufacturing of the next gen vehicle.
First it was going to be builtin Mexico, now it's being built
in Texas. In an interview atthe cyber Truck launch event, Elon Musk
said that he is still reviewing newideas for the next generation production process on
(09:15):
a daily basis. It's also entirelypossible that Tesla still didn't believe full body
casting was possible until they had masteredthe cyber Truck Giga cast, which could
have come after the unboxed concept waspitched. What we do know for sure
is that Tesla is still very securelyleading the way in automotive die casting,
but the competition is beginning to maketheir move, or is it. Of
(09:39):
all the major international brands, we'veseen Toyota make the biggest move towards giga
casting, but they still don't havemuch to show for it. In June
twenty twenty three, Toyota released thisvideo to showcase what they call their own
giga casting, and it kind oflooks like a Tesla casting, but at
the same time, it's not evenclose. Here are the new Toyota front
(10:01):
and rear castings, and here arethe equivalent Tesla Model y castings. The
Toyota components are obviously a bit smaller, but they also seem to lack all
of the structure that Tesla has builtinto their casting. The Toyota parts look
thinner, they're much smoother, theylook flimsy in my opinion. With that
being said, Toyota does have adecades long reputation for making some of the
(10:24):
most reliable cars in the world,So I'm not gonna sit here and throw
any more shade at them. Wewill just have to see what they eventually
come up with. The first gigacast Toyota vehicle is supposed to be out
in twenty twenty six, so that'splenty of time. We've also seen reports
that Hyundai and Ford have reportedly beentesting out their own giga press machines,
made by the same company who suppliedTesla, the Italian Idra group. Idra
(10:48):
has reportedly signed a contract that woulddeliver two of their largest nine thousand ton
giga press machines to Volvo for anew manufacturing plant in Eastern Europe. Volkswagen
is also known to be using asmaller four thousand tons press for underbody sections
of their new Trinity EV platform thatwill be coming in twenty twenty six.
(11:09):
This is just more proof that Teslais easily maintaining their position as the leader
and disruptor of the automotive industry.There is so much more to come.
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