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Transportation Technology

New 'Tent' Assembly Line Is 'Way Better' Than Conventional Factory, Says Tesla CEO (arstechnica.com) 289

A few days ago, Elon Musk announced a "new general assembly line" made with "minimal resources." As Ars Technica reports, this new tented facility "is seemingly the first phase of an entirely new building, dubbed 'Factory 2.0.'" From the report: The tent is easily visible from the nearby Warm Springs BART station platform. When Ars visited on Monday afternoon, there appeared to be cranes and forklifts moving around the site. We could not easily see inside the long white temporary structure, but there did not appear to be any newly completed vehicles rolling off the lines in the adjacent parking lot. Still, one automotive expert that Ars spoke with said that a new temporary manufacturing facility on the same site as conventional automotive factories was unprecedented in the industry. Dave Sullivan, an analyst with Auto Pacific, told Ars that he wondered what was wrong with Tesla's existing facilities, if Musk decided the company needed more capacity. "It's almost a sign of desperation," he said. "It's a sprint to be profitable in the third quarter." Ars notes that "each tent is 53-feet-high by 150-feet-long -- there seem to be several connected in a long line, mounted with aluminum framing." In a tweet, Musk said: "It's actually way better than the factory building. More comfortable & a great view of the mountains."
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New 'Tent' Assembly Line Is 'Way Better' Than Conventional Factory, Says Tesla CEO

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  • by Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @08:22PM (#56813102)

    Didn't they say they tried to automate too much? If so all this room is probably needed to allow more manpower to work in parallel.

    Whatever works.

    • by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @09:02PM (#56813266) Homepage Journal

      Didn't they say they tried to automate too much?

      I think the real problem is they did it too quickly. Too much means that some things can never be automated. Too fast just means they have to take longer to get it right. Some lines that were made manual are now automated again, as they got the process working.

      The main point of manual labor is that you can speed up by hiring more people. With automation, you have to make the machine actually work before you can scale up by buying more machines.

    • Welcome to the news by Twitter. We are now left to trying to distill the underlying meaning and rebuild the absent press release all out of a 280 character message.

      Musk said he automated too much. What does that mean? Who knows. Maybe too many robots for the number of people too look after them. Maybe too many design decisions for robotic assembly caused problems in car assembly. Maybe he automated things he shouldn't have.

      The world of production problems is far more complicated than a 280 character limit c

      • by Rei ( 128717 ) on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @03:45AM (#56814588) Homepage

        Musk said he automated too much. What does that mean? Who knows.

        Um, everyone who listens to the conference calls and the investor meeting knows? Just because you don't know something doesn't mean that nobody does :)

        You want an example? Flufferbot. There's a loose fluff used in the battery packs, and they made a robot to place it. Now, if you're trying to come up with something that would be difficult for computer vision systems to process, and for robotic arms to handle, you couldn't do much better than "fluff". The robot spent most of its time finding new and creative ways to fail to pick up the fluff, as well as to put it in inventive new locations. So you had these expensive robotics technicians both bailing it out of its mistakes and trying to adjust its programming to prevent them, on and on for months on end. When you could just have simply paid people to place the fluff.

        Flufferbot is gone, by the way ;)

        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward

          You want an example? Flufferbot.

          That is not a job I would trust to robots just yet. At least not until the Westworld bugs get worked out.

        • by whoda ( 569082 )

          Flufferbot went away when they stopped putting fluff in the battery packs.

  • by Scareduck ( 177470 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @08:23PM (#56813106) Homepage Journal

    We already know who the clown is, now we've got tents for this circus. Very good, Elon.

  • Hey, it worked for circuses for years. Why not car production?

    • Hey, it worked for circuses for years. Why not car production?

      And, if he gets a better tax offer from another state - easier to roll up, load onto a train, and move (again, like the circus).

      • by Rei ( 128717 )

        Huh, that part never occurred to me. That's ingenious.

        Since these buildings are standardized and designed for assembly and disassembly, with stockpiled components for them, you don't even have to use the same building. Just wait until your new building is ready then disassemble the old one.

        Just have to make sure that the line is easy to take down and set back up. Wonder if the sizes of components on their next line will be based on what fits into a shipping container? ;)

    • FWIW, back in the 1980s one of the PC makers -- can't recall the name -- had an assembly line in a circus tent next to Interstate 5 in Carlsbad, CA. Apparently, it worked out OK as the tent was there, and apparently in use, for several years.

    • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      Hey, it worked for circuses for years. Why not car production?

      I don't know about circuses, but the whole thing sounds like a comedy routine. I figure this is how it went down:

      Minion: We're at maximum capacity.
      Musk: Well, we have to double our production in the next three months.
      Minion: Are you nuts? Ramping up that fast would be intense.
      Musk: Sounds good. Start building them.
      Minion: Building what?
      Musk: Tents.
      Minion: Brilliant!

  • by reanjr ( 588767 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @08:27PM (#56813122) Homepage

    Not surprising. Tesla has been shifting to humans over automation. They probably had some difficulty working around the existing layout and instead of reworking much of their factory floor I'm guessing they decided to move people outside. Heat from bodies may also make the factory uncomfortable if it wasn't designed for it.

  • by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @08:34PM (#56813154) Homepage Journal

    So, Elon Musk and his company just built in 5 weeks, literally from the ground up, what GM might spend 10 years architecting and designing, getting the EIR, hiring the right unions and negotiating their contracts, contracting for an acquiring equipment, actually assembling it, staffing it, and starting it running.

    This race for profitability is actually viewed with contempt by a commentator of the conventional auto industry.

    There is a lot to be said for agility, as any manager or investor in a start-up will tell you. This is simply another difference between Silicon Valley business and the conventional auto business. The same sort of difference that allowed Tesla to make electric cars that could actually compete with gasoline cars on their own turf.

    I hear Ferrari is just starting to introduce one that might compete, after Tesla has had theirs on the market since 2007, with three new models since. But that's it so far. Ferrari is pretty agile as auto manufacturers go, but at the cost of low manufacturing volume. Ferrari won't be selling its cars at even 5000/month. Tesla is trying to get both the volume and the innovation.

  • I see (Score:3, Funny)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @08:34PM (#56813156) Journal
    Who's the shift foreman, Sheriff Joe?
  • Where's the paint shop?

    I don't see any issue assembling parts and, since it's an electric car, you don't have to worry about carbon monoxide when the engines are running (driving off the line).

    But I can't see how you could implement a paint shop in a structure like this in short order.

    Can anybody comment?

    • Automated paint shops aren't Tesla specific, they might already be perfectly able to run at the originally intended rate.

    • by aaarrrgggh ( 9205 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @10:37PM (#56813526)

      Tent in tent, repeat as required. Been in several aerospace composites factories that are little more than tents-- a Butler Building really isn't all that different. Usually the floor slab does a lot to moderate temperatures, but you can easily set up a modular clean room inside if you need to.

    • by c6gunner ( 950153 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @11:09PM (#56813680) Homepage

      The paint shop would most likely be in the existing structure, not the tents. But there's really no reason why you couldn't put it in a tent; all you need is a positive pressure system. Mobile chemical warfare decontamination units use tents; you just plug some air pumps with filters into them and make sure the pressure inside is higher than the pressure outside. Air will keep leaking out, but that stops any contamination from leaking in.

    • by Rei ( 128717 )

      This isn't a paint shop. It's GA4 (General Assembly #4). Just one portion of assembling a vehicle.

  • this makes me wonder about working conditions. e.g. heat & cold. Also safety. I'd also wonder about environmental concerns. There's a lot you can get away with fume wise in an open air design. I've read somewhere (ars?) that they've got a 10 month limit on the structure's use.
    • DIA/Denver International Airport is basically a tent. It was cheaper than normal buildings to put up and has been MUCH cheaper to operate than normal buildings. For example, the tent is white and reflects the sun. At the same time, it allows a lot more heat out than a normal building would. As such, it is cheaper to HVAC. [wikipedia.org]

      When we built DIA, our temps used to run from -35 to 40C, and still the tent works fine.
  • by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @11:33PM (#56813776) Journal
    Since most of the robotics come from Germany, I am guessing that the next factory will be in Europe, possibly Germany or France. It should be easy to set up a quick and inexpensive tent, followed by robotic lines.
    • Yeah, Elon recently tweeted this:
      'Germany is a leading choice for Europe. Perhaps on the German-French border makes sense, near the Benelux countries'

    • That could be fun given the differing attitudes of Elon Musk and Western Europe toward trade unions...
      • I wish that ppl would stop pushing this BS. It is as bad as when ppl claim that he is getting rid of the robots.
        Elon Musk has NO issue with unions. He has told the employees that if they want a union, go ahead and create one, though he points out that they will lose their stock.
        Where he DOES have an issue, is with UAW and other corrupt organizations. The UAW, like many large blue collar unions, are ran by ppl that are as corrupt as the businesses that they work for. Mafia has been in teamsters over an
  • It's a Sprung Structure, manufactured by Sprung Instant Structures, LTD:

    http://www.sprung.com/structur... [sprung.com]

    They refer to it as a prefab building.

    Sam

  • This only confirms my theory that the new product out of Tesla is going to be a pop-up camper trailer.

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