6 Planes Fly In New Line To Up Tesla Model 3 Production To 6,000 / Week
10 H BY ERIC LOVEDAY 52
Six planes flew in from Europe. On board those planes are the final pieces in the Tesla Model 3 production bottleneck puzzle.
Yesterday, via an exchange on Twitter, it was discovered that six planes carrying Grohmann automation components and robots were in route to the Tesla factory from Europe.
We should note that seldom is air transport used by automakers, as it’s incredibly costly. Cargo ship is the preferred method, but Musk and Tesla are obviously rushing this shipment, so air was chosen.
Tesla Model 3 Production News
Those planes have now landed and their cargo contains parts for a new production line for battery module zone 4 at the Gigafactory. Zone 4 is the last in need of an overhaul. Once complete, production of the Tesla Model 3 could theoretically reach 6,000 units per week, according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
This is the new production line for battery module Zone 4. Will play a key role in getting from 3000/week to 6000/week for Model 3.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 25, 2018
It’s believed that the parts will arrive at the Gigfactory later this week, indicating that trucks will be loaded up soon and hit the road from California to the battery factory outside of Reno, Nevada.
Earlier, Musk had stated that two of the Gigafactory’s four battery module zones had some serious issues. One of those two was fixed previously. These inbound parts will fix the fourth and final zone, which means soon Model 3 production should be able to reach capacity.
It’s believed that zone 4 will be fixed sometime after next month, as Musk is/was confident Model 3 production could hit 5,000 units per week in June, even without the fourth zone issues corrected.
Categories: Tesla
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52 Comments on "6 Planes Fly In New Line To Up Tesla Model 3 Production To 6,000 / Week"
Too bad the Falcon heavy couldn’t be used to transport this equipment, lol
That would burn more fuel and likely create more emissions… And probably lose the cargo on landing, just like the center stage last time.
Good idea Rey.
If the Falcon heavy can send a Roadster car to Mars, why not bringing machines to the site.
Perhaps it may transport Model-3’s to far away places as well bypassing air traffic, gravity, ship/truck transport etc and land straight close to storage site.
Its just a matter of time. A rocket will vertical landing was unbelievable until few years ago, now the satellites are going in it and soon will other things.
I wonder if, since this article indicates that battery modules were the bottleneck, Tesla has several thousand TM3 ‘gliders’ awaiting their batteries before completion?
Good Point!
Doubtful as they would have to be removed from the production line and stockpiled up somewhere and then put back on the line for a battery or have the battery installed remotely both of which are highly in efficient and both options leads to reduced quality…
If they do 6000 a week they will blow Seeking Alpha claims, fun, Fun, FUN.
Yes, yes, yes.
seeking alpha is the notorious company which keeps writing bad about Tesla every day. This will be crude oil in their face.
Wow, 600,000 gallons of Jet A burned (nearly 100 Semi Tanker loads) to expedite the delivery of that equipment delivery by 2-3 weeks, hope it was worth it, because mother earth is crying this AM.
“mother earth is crying this AM.”
That’s nothing compared to the tears being shed by shorters.
Considering how notoriously dirty cargo ships are, the difference in environmental impact probably isn’t nearly as much as you think.
haha! A cargo ship is on a regularly scheduled route between Germany and CA, the 6 plane loads, about 12 to 18 containers is WAY less then 1% what is on the cargo ship, so in fuel burn (emissions) it is almost an incalculable small number on the ship.
And with heavy cargo jets, they are not sitting there in Germany waiting to pick up the load, they have to be repositioned to Germany, then make the flight from Germany to CA, with 2 fuel stops, as these are not light weight passenger jets, and then after unloading they have to be re-positioned back to their base…. Its a huge fuel cost, and massive Co2, and NOX emissions, as these jets are old and dirty… All because of Tesla’s poor planning, if they would have been on top of things management wise, this would never have been required. Lets be honest, this is not a normal process for any heavy manufacturer because it is insanely expensive compared to sea shipping…
Clearly you are ship disturber /
those ships run on bunker fuel.
I do not care if the ship is running on coal, it is already scheduled to take the route, and adding 300 tons of gear is hardly even noticeable, like taping a feather on top of your car in the morning. Not going to impact your fuel economy in much of a measurable way!
Yeah the ships are gross polluters on the local level, but Dave is right: Tesla paid a huge cost in dollars and in CO2 emissions to expedite delivery. The jet’s CO2 emissions are way, way higher than the share of cargo ship emissions for a dozen containers.
Ultimately, though, the CO2 emissions associated with this delivery are negligible in the big picture. If expediting the delivery in any meaningful, if tiny, way increases the chance that Tesla succeeds in the long run, then the net CO2 impact becomes debatable.
Sure it would have been better if they had the process and parts finished and shipped a month ago, or sooner, but things being as they are, if Tesla is waiting on this upgrade to be able to consistently hit 5k/week, the sale of a few thousand extra Model 3s built over a 3 week differential transit time, will help offset the pollution from the jet.
Lets be honest: I do not know of any other company with such an orderbook at/before the launch of a single model.
So nothing to compare here.
747 cargo planes can easily make the 10 hour flight from Germany to California without stopping. The cost is around $700K/ plane.
The difference is pretty huge. Ships vs. planes makes a big difference.
But… for this single time delivery the total difference is minimal in absolute numbers and worth it.
You are such a hypocritical “concern” troll.
Did Mother Earth cry when you supposedly flew to NY to see the Jaguar I-Pace so you could add another foreign car to your collection that BTW has to be shipped across the ocean to get to you?
Does Mother Earth cry every time your supposed business fires up and drives its Kenworth semis?
If you are so concerned about Tesla’s emissions, (that will lead to far, far less emissions when the Model 3 is delivered in the hundreds of thousands as the first mass market EV–something you want to deny), will you order Tesla semis to stop all your Kenworth’s emissions???
How cute. Suddenly, the truck driver and ev troll cares about pollution. You are beyond pathetic!
And brw, the only one crying this morning is you! Love it!
EV troll? Mark, do you have trouble with reading comprehension? I am all about EV’s, Solar, etc… I am just not a huge fan of Tesla, for many reasons. I think their cars lack quality / refinement, and their management is incompetent. I think Tesla’s cars look cool (other then the X) and are super quick, but not for me… I am picky and like quality, well built things. I am not a Beta tester in anything I buy, just ask Cummins, I have sworn at them a few times about the emissions systems problems on our trucks.
I am certainly not crying this morning, and especially not over anything Tesla related. I have no skin the the game so to speak.
Oh, you are for pv and solar and all green goods?! I’m sorry, your post from earlier this week confused me but now that you clarified it’s all good….lol.
Here is what you said:
“Never Mind about the coal or natural gas burning… Or fish killed in hydroelectric dams, birds killed in wind turbines, those do not fit the narrative of this story so we just ignore that…”
Guess which finger I’m showing you?
Bingo, you hit it on the head!
“Dave” the troll (almost certainly not his real name BTW), is a FOS and serial anti-Tesla troll who despite his lamentations that he has “no skin in the game” still sees fit to constantly Carpet-bomb the Tesla threads with double-digit postings that rival GM sleazy stealership employee MadBro’s copious postings against Tesla.
As pointed out, “Dave” has posted tirades against RE too so his latest claim to want to go solar definitely clashes with his ravings against RE. Probably felt it would help his case here in deceiving and trolling if he also claimed to care about the environment so he is going to now put solar on his fake house he is going to build.
I know that Nix thinks “Dave” is another former troll whose other fake usernames were banned and I’m beginning to think the same.
I think “Dave” is just a newly constructed, fake West Coast persona of Smeagol, I mean Spiegel as in Mark Spiegel who apparently is still bitter of the millions he has lost in shorting Tesla.
What do you think Nix?
Not that much, Even 747-8 (the biggest cargo carrier) would use about 40k gallons one way, and it could be any one of many smaller aircraft. I wonder, why did they fly to CA since Reno has a perfectly good airport?
Antonov is Ukrainian plane, not Russian.
Sorry, my mistake, I still have the soviet/russian connection firmly implanted in my head.
No where near accurate estimation of fuel burn. Let’s assume these were chartered FedEx 777Fs with a fuel burn of 13000 pounds per hour, call it 2000 gallons per hour.
Eleven hour flight, add another hour for takeoff, climb and taxi fuel, so 24000 gallons.
24000 gallons times 6 planes equals 145000 gallons. Even if they fly back empty, which is doubtful, there is still an error of over 300,000 gallons.
And we are assuming it took 6 777’s to do it. Which might not be correct.
OK ,JM, I love it when someone wants to talk airplanes with me…. Fed Ex 777F’s do not haul heavy industrial shipping containers… They have no way to get them inside… They haul boxes from Amazon in lightweight roll on pallets, and you are stoned to high heck on your fuel burn numbers. A 777F at takeoff is burns 40K lbs per hour , cruise is just under 20K lbs per hour. It carries 47K gallons of fuel and has a max range of 4970nmi Everyone who knows anything about flight knows you nearly always burn more fuel and fly slower Westbound … Duh…. Now that we have shown you know nothing about airplanes or the 777, which BTW is the most efficient large cargo jet.
Tesla used Russian Antonov 124’s Look up the specs on those bad boys. My 600K gallons estimate is most likely light, and only includes the heavy leg of the mission.
I’d love to compare resumes, Dave. 7000+ hours as a P121 airline pilot with a Master’s in Aeronautical Science. Retired USAF with 21 years’ service. What kind of professional knowledge do you bring to the table? What exactly are YOUR credentials since you seem so eager to call everyone else out?
Just because you can recite facts and figures you get from googling doesn’t make you an expert. Except maybe in your own mind.
I’d like to help them with renewable jet fuel for just this case.
haha! Funny you should mention that, because the reason I know the 777F fuel burn so well, is because BA just finished Biofuel test flights with a plane borrowed from Fed Ex to use as an eco-demonstrator May 5th. The fuel they were using was something special, but I am not exactly sure what it was.
6k/week?!
Tnat is an unbelievable number for an ev!
A fact that escapes “super troll” Dave!
Hit the number, then do the gloating, You Tesla fan boys aways talk first, then delay, delay, delay… I will join in the cheering when Tesla hits 6K an week consistently. but until then, I am going to point out all of their management mis-steps. Talk is cheap… Its time to back up all the BS…
Tesla was cranking out 3-4,000 Model 3 per week before the shutdown. That is EV mass production like the world has never seen, IINM, though maybe LEAFs have been made at that rate, or a Chinese product. Every one will be snatched up as soon as it hits the market. Pretty impressive performance already, Tesla ain’t just talk.
The upgrades should build on that. We’ll see in a month or two. It will take a while to actually build 5k in a week, I doubt they accomplish that in June. Then it will take much longer get the entire line tweaked for 6k, and who knows how long before they can string off consecutive weeks at 5k then 6k.
I like that – “super troll.” If he knows as little about EVs as he does about aircraft, then the description is rather apt.
Lots of pieces to that puzzle: Creating the engines (Battery packs) & creating the cars. Good luck Elon!
Just curious as to why they flew the gear to California instead of straight to Nevada. Reno’s airport is home to an Air National Guard airlift wing and an 11,000 foot runway, so it should have no problem handling large cargo aircraft.
They may not have had the ability to unload the planes there.
Weren’t these the machines that were supposed to arrive in March? Also, if these are needed to get to 6k/week then I assume that won’t happen until the end of Q3 since it takes time, and calibration to install them and get them working properly.
I am huge Tesla fan, but the continued proclamation of goals and missing the timeline stated in the goal by many months is getting annoying.
I am not the Dave from above btw. Not trolling, just annoyed. I will continue to hold my Tesla stock and my Model 3 Standard reservation.
Change you user a bit please so it’s more unique. You don’t want to be confused with that guy.
Yes, they are those machines… Better late then never…
Elon hypes up their position, so you have to take all his prospective statements with a grain of salt.
Am I the only one that noticed the contradictions in this article.
First it was stated that:
“[…]Tesla are obviously rushing this shipment”
Indicating that they are pushing to set machines/robots up during the downtime here at the end of May.
But then the article ended like this:
“It’s believed that zone 4 will be fixed sometime after next month, as Musk is/was confident Model 3 production could hit 5,000 units per week in June, even without the fourth zone issues corrected.”
That just doesn’t fit into the article, as the machines/robots were rushed to California. It seems like the writer might have forgotten the first statement.
My two cents: I don’t think Tesla will wait to install these new machines/robots till Q3, if they rushed their delivery by air, especially not just to prove they can do 5000/week without it.
What is the max production of that Fremont factory when it assembled Pontiac Vibe and Toyota Matrix.
If the factory’s capacity is 200,000 units, then will it be able to produce 300,000 electric vehicles, since the production of EV is much simpler and needs fewer parts.