Tesla brings in giant casting machines for Model Y

One of the new giant casting machines has arrived at Tesla’s main factory in Fremont, California. The machine is designed to cast the rear frame of Model Y in a single piece possibly before the end of the year. In Germany, changes are afoot at the Giga Berlin construction site.

Tesla boss Elon Musk has already commented on the new casting machine via Twitter: “Will be amazing to see it in operation! Biggest casting machine ever made. Will make the rear body in a single piece, including crash rails.”

The new approach should speed up the production of Model Y and make it cheaper at the same time. The die-casting machine, for which Tesla received a patent this summer, uses aluminium instead of steel. The innovative part is that it produces few large body components instead of many smaller pieces. Instead of 70 parts, the body of the Model Y will be made from only four elements in the future, and should eventually be made entirely from one casting. Musk already revealed these plans in a podcast interview in June.

In Germany, the Giga Berlin factory in Brandenburg near Berlin will make do with significantly fewer concrete piles in the groundwater than previously planned. Instead of the initially up to 15,000 piles, the concept considers 500 to 550 columns as sufficient, a Tesla spokesperson revealed at the inauguration of the road leading up to the site now officially signposted as Tesla Straße. The smaller number of piles mean that only the pressing plant would be founded on piles, but no longer the foundry.

The Model Y for Europe is to be built in Grünheide and it was recently revealed that Tesla would also manufacture battery cells at the site. In all probability, these will be the Roadrunner cells that Tesla is independently developing.

electrek.co, tesmanian.com (both Fremont), tesmanian.com, teslarati.com (Giga Berlin)