Alex Profile picture
Mar 31 3 tweets 1 min read
BMW CEO Zipse when asked about Tesla Giga Castings, Oct 2021

He would not call that “Giga casting.” These parts are made through “a normal casting process”

Zipse, “there is no economic reason to have very large integrated parts in these vehicles”

Category: famous last words
BMWs CEO Zipse continued talking about Giga Castings

“To a very large extent has substantial remedies, which we don’t want.”

BMW would be primarily concerned with repairability costs: BMW thinks they would get “too expensive.”

BMWs engineers make a huge technical mistake
CEO Zipse continued, “partially lower manufacturing cost is overcompensated by casting costs.”

Like always in mass production initial higher investments are compensated by each incremental part produced big time

That's basic production math Zipse seems not to understand

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More from @alex_avoigt

Mar 31
Vollmer, Head of VW production about the Trinity plant they intend to open 2026

"Our goal is clear: we want to set the standard with our production (...) If we can get to 10 hours, we have achieved something big"

Tesla has already a 10h production time/vehicle in Shanghai
A Tesla spokesperson said one of the reasons it can produce its Model Y vehicles in Germany within a 10-hour time frame is because it uses two giant casting presses, or giga presses, applying 6,000 tons of pressure to make the rear of the car
Tesla's Gruenheide press shop can produce 17 components in under six minutes. With six more giga presses on the way, Tesla will soon be making the front of the car with the giga press too

"That is why we are so fast," the spokesperson said
Read 10 tweets
Feb 9
🇩🇪Government coalition plans a reform of the regulation to speed to permit processes

Speaker of Federal SPD "There is a "great need for action which is why we as the coalition have set ourselves ambitious goals to significantly shorten the duration of administrative procedures"
Speaker Stein,
"In the coalition agreement, we have therefore provided that public participation procedures no longer have to be repeated in full following changes to plans in an ongoing approval procedure"
The changes the German Government agreed in their coalition agreement should be relevant for future 🇩🇪 Giga Berlin permits

"Instead, we are taking a more pragmatic approach by only requiring newly affected parties to participate and only allowing objections to plan amendments."
Read 5 tweets
Jan 20
VW unable to finance charging & batteries out of cash-flow

CEO Diess "...there will be a lot of growth in the area of EV charging and batteries, and I’m sure that we will find investors to participate, but we can’t finance all of the necessary investment out of our cash flow“
“... 50% EV by 2030 is extremely ambitious. If we own in Europe, about 20% market share for that 20% market share to maintain 50% EVs, we need 6 GFs. Those factories would have to be up & running by 2027, 2028 ... to deliver on our 2030 goal. It’s close to impossible to do that”
VW CEO Diess, “We are only 20% of the market, so 6 plants. Europe needs 30 of those plants. Each plant is 2 by 1 km. (...) Then to let’s say, get from 50% to 100% (EVs) it still will be a tremendous challenge. It’s not just saying “Let’s switch off ICE cars” It’s just impossible“
Read 7 tweets
Jan 9
The complete powertrain for the new Mercedes MMA and MB.EA electric architectures will be entirely built in-house from 2024

Schäfer "To do this, we are significantly increasing the depth of added value & are also switching from external sourcing to in-house production ..."
The Head of Mercedes R&D continued

" ... until now electric powertrains have come from external partners."

Mercedes seems to understand that more vertical integration and the BEV powertrain are critical elements you want to have in-house.

Not so long ago they spoke differently
Schäfer "We want to control the overall system of electric motor, battery and power electronics as well as possible similar to the way the combustion engine does"

I wonder how they will ramp the know-how in less than 2 years by 2024 with an average development cycle of 7
Read 4 tweets
Jan 9
BMW CEO Zipse about Tesla's large casting parts

“partially lower manufacturing cost is overcompensated by casting costs”

His statement makes me wonder what he really knows about mass production and its costs
Zipse said the company would be primarily concerned with reparability costs

I had that discussion with a Tesla Manager at my Giga Berlin tour and we both concluded that because of its rigidity the large casting would even in a bad accident not be damaged and if forces are too ..
... strong every other chassis would be a total fail anyway that can't be repaired.

In other words, the reparability for a Tesla Giga casting part remains where it is meaningful.

Repair costs will be lower and not higher - few understand that
Read 4 tweets
Jan 8
🇩🇪 Giga Berlin

Tesla received today another permit from the Environmental Ministry in Brandenburg to produce up to 2,000 vehicles for testing purposes

The permit includes the press shop, body shop, paint shop and final assembly
The permit limits, the paint shop to a maximum of 500 car bodies per week

This indicates that a final permit is expected within the next 4 weeks
The permit states that "The parts and/or car bodies manufactured or joined during the plant tests have a defective quality that deviates significantly from the plant specifications"

Many wonder why but that's totally normal for every auto factory at that stage of pre-production
Read 7 tweets

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