How much time do you think will be saved during production not needing to paint the Cybertrucks?

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Without needing to paint the cybertrucks will this save half a day of production?
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CyberGus

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Cleaning, priming, painting, and drying take a considerable amount of time and effort. Big picture, it allows for fewer man-hours per build, but likely won't impact the rate at which they are built.

So, no, your Cybertruck won't get here any faster :ROFLMAO:
 

firsttruck

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Without needing to paint the cybertrucks will this save half a day of production?
The speed up of the production line might actual be more of a cost savings than the paint itself.

The cost of the paint and cost of painting is only a small part of cost saving of eliminating painting / paint-shop.
The biggest issue is that painting is a huge speed (time) bottleneck of the production line.

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Tesla Cybertruck Can Reach 50% Margins - CLIP
Sep 9, 2022
Farzad Mesbahi

guest speaker Matt Smith - Good Soil Investment Management
Matt (@8:53): I think it's important to note like I'm just going back to the 50% margin thing though like how can they even do that like that the elimination of a paint job is a really really big deal in the cost of goods sold ( COGS ). So my brother actually works for the company that does like paint filtration to automotive suppliers and so he's like familiar with that and it one it's like almost always the limiting factor to your production rate in your factory.

So like a couple years ago on one of the earnings calls Elon was talking about how annoyed he was that like the production rate was so slow. He's like if you think about like how fast these cars are coming off the line it's like granny and her walker could actually go faster than we're getting out new cars. He's like we should really be pumping them out (so fast) where we need to take into account the wind resistance of the parts going through the assembly line that should be the limiting factor.

Which is like that sounds aggressive right but I think he's got a point so like if you're eliminating like not only a huge like cost of the painting and the huge limiting factor in your production rate but just like a massive footprint for the paint facilities so that's like a huge elimination of costs that I think it's hard to like because there's gonna be more raw materials like the weight of the Cybertruck can be a lot heavier so the cost is gonna have to be made up on non-material components.


 
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Ogre

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Without needing to paint the cybertrucks will this save half a day of production?
It would save a few hours of the body being hung on a rack to dry. Otherwise not a ton of active time on the assembly line. Maybe 10 minutes?

I think there will be some time invested in polishing/ buffing the steel to a consistent finish, otherwise it would probably look odd with markings from assembly.
 

Foxx

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The speed up of the production line might actual be more of a cost savings than the paint itself.

The cost of the paint and cost of painting is only a small part of cost saving of eliminating painting / paint-shop.
The biggest issue is that painting is a huge speed (time) bottleneck of the production line.

----------------

Tesla Cybertruck Can Reach 50% Margins - CLIP
Sep 9, 2022
Farzad Mesbahi

guest speaker Matt Smith - Good Soil Investment Management
Matt (@8:53): I think it's important to note like I'm just going back to the 50% margin thing though like how can they even do that like that the elimination of a paint job is a really really big deal in the cost of goods sold ( COGS ). So my brother actually works for the company that does like paint filtration to automotive suppliers and so he's like familiar with that and it one it's like almost always the limiting factor to your production rate in your factory.

So like a couple years ago on one of the earnings calls Elon was talking about how annoyed he was that like the production rate was so slow. He's like if you think about like how fast these cars are coming off the line it's like granny and her walker could actually go faster than we're getting out new cars. He's like we should really be pumping them out (so fast) where we need to take into account the wind resistance of the parts going through the assembly line that should be the limiting factor.

Which is like that sounds aggressive right but I think he's got a point so like if you're eliminating like not only a huge like cost of the painting and the huge limiting factor in your production rate but just like a massive footprint for the paint facilities so that's like a huge elimination of costs that I think it's hard to like because there's gonna be more raw materials like the weight of the Cybertruck can be a lot heavier so the cost is gonna have to be made up on non-material components.


Matt like, likes to say like, like a lot.
 


firsttruck

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It would save a few hours of the body being hung on a rack to dry. Otherwise not a ton of active time on the assembly line. Maybe 10 minutes?

I think there will be some time invested in polishing/ buffing the steel to a consistent finish, otherwise it would probably look odd with markings from assembly.
The hours can affect active time too.
Hours of drying means you need a huge amount of space for all these bodies to wait around in while drying.

More space, more inventory, more logistics moving stuff.

This is just like what Tesla is trying to do with 4680 production vs traditional battery fabrication. The want 4680 to have as Non-stop work flow as possible. Just like many processes in bottling, canning, newspaper printing industries.

-----------------------

Elon Musk Says Grandma With a Walker Faster Than Any Car Assembly Line
Danny Paez
February 8, 2018
https://news.yahoo.com/elon-musk-says-grandma-walker-210000322.html

.....
During Tesla 2017 fourth quarter earnings call, Elon Musk criticized a hallmark of the automobile industry, assembly line production for not advancing with technology. Henry Ford pioneered the method of building vehicles back in 1913, which completely revolutionized how quickly a car could be put together.

Musk believes that by today’s standards, this procedure is just too slow, slower than your nan (grandmother) taking a leisurely stroll in the park actually.

“Some of the fastest car factories produce a car maybe every 25 seconds,” said the CEO of Tesla. “That sounds fast. But if you think of a five-meter long car, including gap, and a 4.5 meter car with a half meter gap or something, that’s only 0.2 meters per second ( 0.72 km/h ).

“Like, grandma with a walker can exceed the speed of the fastest production line we’re in, so really not that fast.”

.....
Musk offered some potential solutions regarding how Tesla could increase its production numbers. But he made it a point to note that speed of manufacturing needs to improve across the automobile industry. “Why shouldn’t it at least be jogging speed?”

He asked rhetorically, “Companies should start caring about the aero drag in the factory, which that’s maybe around 20 miles or 30 miles an hour, or call it 30 kilometers an hour, 40 kilometers an hour … Stuff should be moving at that speed.”


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Without needing to paint the cybertrucks will this save half a day of production?
They say that a Model Y, depending on the factory, comes off the line every 90 seconds. But it takes on the order of 10 hours to make. Saving 5 hours by not performing all those tasks will increase the production rate, yes, but once they start rolling off the line we probably won’t notice so much. It may speed up the production ramp, and would surely reduce down time.
 

firsttruck

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.....
Musk believes that by today’s standards, this procedure is just too slow, slower than your nan (grandmother) taking a leisurely stroll in the park actually.

“Some of the fastest car factories produce a car maybe every 25 seconds,” said the CEO of Tesla. “That sounds fast. But if you think of a five-meter long car, including gap, and a 4.5 meter car with a half meter gap or something, that’s only 0.2 meters per second ( 0.72 km/h ).

.....
“Why shouldn’t it at least be jogging speed?”

He asked rhetorically, “Companies should start caring about the aero drag in the factory, which that’s maybe around 20 miles or 30 miles an hour, or call it 30 kilometers an hour, 40 kilometers an hour … Stuff should be moving at that speed.”
They say that a Model Y, depending on the factory, comes off the line every 90 seconds. But it takes on the order of 10 hours to make. Saving 5 hours by not performing all those tasks will increase the production rate, yes, but once they start rolling off the line we probably won’t notice so much. It may speed up the production ramp, and would surely reduce down time.
Elon says fastest auto assembly lines today produce a car about every 25 seconds (about 0.72 km/h ) and Elon thinks that based on first principles, 20 km/h to 30 km/h should be achievable.

Every 90 seconds is about 3 times slower than the current fastest auto assembly lines and over 20 times slower than the minimum speed Elon wants to achieve. 20 times faster line speed would significantly lower costs.

I think to reach the speeds Elon wants painting bodies has got to go.
Body panels made from carbon fiber or other plastic type that has the color as part of the material will have to be used to reach those speeds.
 

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Numbers are always difficult to understand. The rate a vehicle comes off the assembly line only shows the speed of the final assembly process. If I have a huge assembly plant that takes 100 hrs to actually build a vehicle but they come off the final assembly line every second, it still take 100 hrs to build the vehicle. The paint shop is costly and takes a lot of room that could be used for manufacturing. The actual paint isn't that cheap either. Neither are the robots. The paint shop uses people for final quality control, which means some cars have to be re-touched. If not painting the CT saves 50% of production time, the production cost has to go down and the space used for the paint shop could possibly be used for a second assembly line, or portion of assembly line, to reduce the final rate a vehicle comes out of assembly.

What part of the CT manufacturing/assembly takes the longest to do? Gigapress? Will the CT assembly line include multiple gigapresses merging into a single assembly line? How will the body panels be manufactured? Off-line then moved into the assembly line? I'm sure this is how most of the components will be manufactured. I see no reason why Tesla couldn't use two final assembly lines for the CTs, speeding up the rate of assembly.
 

TyPope

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Elon says fastest auto assembly lines today produce a car about every 25 seconds (about 0.72 km/h ) and Elon thinks that based on first principles, 20 km/h to 30 km/h should be achievable.

Every 90 seconds is about 3 times slower than the current fastest auto assembly lines and over 20 times slower than the minimum speed Elon wants to achieve. 20 times faster line speed would significantly lower costs.

I think to reach the speeds Elon wants painting bodies has got to go.
Body panels made from carbon fiber or other plastic type that has the color as part of the material will have to be used to reach those speeds.
The fastest production I saw was 54 seconds per vehicle (per line). Every single operation has to take place within the cycle time. In other words, everything from snapping the door panels into place to installing the glass roof to installing each wheel has to take less than the cycle time to complete. At GM, we had some double stations where we had 3 crews that spent double the cycle time with each vehicle installing, in one case, the cross-body wiring harness (there were 27 different harnesses of which each truck used one). Anyway, this double station gave the crew 108 seconds to finish their operation to keep up with the line that produced one vehicle every 54 seconds.

I find it hard to believe there is an automotive factory making one vehicle on each line every 25 seconds...

IF there was a factory running at a 25 second cycle rate, it would look like this:
8 hours x 60 minutes x 60 seconds = 28,800 cycle seconds available per shift.
28,800 cycle seconds / 25 seconds per cycle = 1,152 completed cycles per shift or 1,152 vehicles per day per shift...

Running only one shift, this hypothetical factory would produce:
1,152 vehicles per day x 5 days a week x 50 weeks per year = 288,000 vehicles per year
2 full shifts gets you to 576,000 vehicles per year.

More conservative for the CT -- I'll stick with 54 seconds per vehicle. There will still be people involved and the vehicles have to be moved off the line and parked somewhere...

We know Giga Texas has at least 3 production lines... MY, MY, CT. I'll add in Semi for a 4th line. It would make sense to double the CT line as well. So, 5 production lines at Giga Texas.

1 vehicle per 54 seconds would make 533 per shift. Running 2 shifts across 4 lines would make 533,333 per year for the MY and CT lines... The Semi will probably be a much lower production rate... I have no idea how many or how fast those will be made. It's POSSIBLE to make them at the same speed on the line but I doubt they will. Still, producing 600,000 a year is within reason.
 


CyberGus

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I would be very surprised, since any additional processing will slow production. If they treat any of the stainless, then they must treat all of it, and that's a big step.

To keep the original finish, they could protect the stainless with a plastic sheet on one side that is peeled off when assembly is complete. But that's still more handling (and waste).

For reference, the DeLorean was grained with a front-to-back direction, so this cannot be done until the body is fully assembled. It was initially done with a machine, but then the grain was too "perfect" to hide minor imperfections. They instead did it by hand, so that damage/imperfections could be blended in.

Tesla would use robots of course, which can be programmed to inject "randomness", but now we need a large area of the production line, multiple expensive robots, dust capture, etc.
 

JBee

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40x slower? So EM wants 1.4seconds?
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