Yes, we pretty much have a good idea of what Tesla's Giga Berlin capacity will be,
and its around 1/2m, which is great, as its about 50%
more cars than Tesla delivered for the entire last year, exciting!
This 500,000 Model Ys a year figure comes from Tesla. It was shown at Giga Berlin at
the festival displaying their Giga Berlin body line makes one new Model Y body every 45 seconds.
Elon goes on to validate this figure "It will hopefully achieve sustained cycle
time of 45 seconds. At 75% uptime over an average week, that’s ~10k/week if run 24/7."
Obviously 10,000 Model Ys a week, is about 500,000 a year. Therefore we are expecting
Giga Berlin to have a run rate of 1/2 million vehicles, and a capacity of about 700,000.
Similar to how
we were told that the Model Y Shanghai factory would have a capacity of 200,000. That's right,
we were told that capacity of Shanghai Model Y was only 200,000. And at the time that
pleased us as investors, its sounded good. Especially in addition to 250,000 Model 3s
from the other Shanghai factory. Tesla did actually update the Shanghai capacity to
over 200,000. Which is very vague and coy. FYI, Tesla actually went into all their old earnings
reports and have recently updated every single one of them, and changed them after the fact.
Shanghai capacity now says over 450,000 for both factories combined.
Tesla are officially acknowledging that Giga Shanghai does actually have a capacity higher
than they initially said. Which we could kind of see for ourselves, when Tesla produce over 1/4 of
a years capacity, within one month. That's just actual cars produced though, and unfortunately,
Tesla can't continually run at that rate due to supply shortages. But in the meantime,
they can sure test their production lines, to see just how fast it is capable of ramping.
We have giga Shanghai with run rates that we have seen go as fast as a new
vehicle every 33 seconds, which is the equivalent of 955,000 a year.
Now Giga Berlin has taken everything it learned from manufacturing from Giga Shanghai.
And Shanghai took everything it could learn from the Chinese in manufacturing,
including setting up their own laboratories with the best manufacturing minds on the planet.
Putting it all into action in the local factories and refining it at absolutely astounding speeds.
From what Tesla learned through all this manufacturing research and development
has now been implemented into these new factories. Therefore,
would it not be possibly too crazy to so much so even suggest the mere possibility that Giga
Berlin is perhaps able to hit a similar capacity as Giga Shanghai? Would that not be too extreme?
If Tesla produced around 40,000 Model
Y's in Shanghai alone in January. That is just about 500,000 a year. Which is the claimed Berlin
capacity. Therefore it is axiomatic to assume Tesla could hit the same rate as in Shanghai.
Except that the Shanghai Model Y factory is about 0.13 km sq, and Berlin
is about 0.2 km sq. Berlin is quite a bit larger than Model Y Shanghai, that
is over 50% the size. Berlin of course needs 300 less robots and processes, due to it using the
front die cast molds. Then shouldn't we expect potentially double the capacity of Shanghai?
But if Model Y Shanghai alone is potentially capable of a capacity of even a million,
then could that mean Berlin could potentially have a capacity of 2 million vehicles a year?
These new manufacturing techniques would only need to improve production by 30%
to have double capacity of Shanghai.
As 50% more capacity due to the larger space, and add if you add 33% efficiencies on to that,
it takes you to double. As you add the 33% on to the new capacity, not Shanghais.
Taking Berlin to a capacity of 2 million vehicles a year. Ok we may need to wind it down by 75%
for the run rate, which takes us to 1.5 million run rate. But that is still pretty exceptional.
Sound exciting? Well somewhat yes, but it wouldn't make much difference to Tesla's if
the factory had a capacity of 20 million a year either. If you are looking at factory
capacities to try and estimate Tesla's growth, then you are looking in the wrong
place. The biggest indicator on production will be the amount of batteries Tesla have,
and as far as Berlin is concerned, it will be the amount of 4680 batteries Tesla can ramp.
4680? Berlin is using 2170. Correct, but the 2170 is not going to ramp up particularly fast. They
are just being used temporarily, until Tesla completes their Berlin 4680 factory. Well if
batteries are so important, then why didn't Tesla build this factory earlier then? Good question.
4680 Well what if they couldn't
set up the 4680 production line in time? Perhaps 4680 lines requires a very specialized team,
of high, highly trained professional engineers who have to set this up.
Well this team would currently be working on setting up the Austin line.
I would get the impression, not anyone could do this, and most likely not anyone who works
for Ford. Once said team has set up Austin, then maybe they will move over to Berlin.
Oh wow, if this is true, then we likely have a timeline of when we think the 4680
production would be operational in Austin. Is it possible that Tesla have timed it all so well,
that by the time the Berlin battery factory is operational,
they can move over to sort out those lines? Otherwise you might have thought
the Berlin battery factory was more of a priority, if batteries are the bottleneck.
Judging by the progress on the battery factory, perhaps it will be complete within 3 to 6 months,
at least to a stage where Tesla can start setting up the battery line,
when they will be able to start manufacturing batteries I am unsure, there
will likely be more fun permits required first. If this is the case, then we should start to see
them testing that 4680 line surely within the next couple of months sometime.
4680 ramping is the bottleneck to Tesla's growth. There will be other bottlenecks
within the 4680 expansion. I am pretty sure that one of those bottlenecks will
be a shortage of qualified engineers to carry out this extremely advanced manufacturing task.
Possibly the most complex manufacturing line ever created. Which would make sense,
as it will also be the most valuable ever created too.
Oh an lets not forget the capacity of the 4680 battery line in Berlin, is rumored to be 250 GWh.
Enough batteries for about 3 and half million Model Ys if you were wondering,
a year of course. We know that Berlin is planning on expanding though,
and those batteries will likely be shared amongst all future factories on the site too. Most likely
a Model 3 factory starting next. Of course 250 GWh is not going to be the absolute limit either.
And no, none of those batteries are for energy storage. 4680 is designed for vehicles. But either
way, this would be more than an ample supply of batteries to meet our estimated capacity.
Elon was coy about capacities
on the latest earnings call, and he said that capacities can always be improved.
We know how fast we have seen some vehicles come off the line in Shanghai. However, we didn't
get to see the build quality of these cars. There could have been panel gap issues for all we know.
Perhaps thats what a lot of the build quality issues were a result of, Tesla ramping up and
testing production so fast. Elon even said it only really happens now when they are ramping up.
I think Tesla would do this. I think they would push the production line as fast as it can go,
until they see production quality start to suffer too much. From there
they most likely use all that data, to refine it again, and see what was causing the issues.
Continually testing, and pushing. I think Elon said something along the lines of,
if you aren't putting processes back in, you are not removing enough in the first place. Which
feels somewhat online here, of the level Tesla would be wanting to push these production lines.
Ok, so what if Tesla are sandbagging
the company. What's wrong with that. Just try and stay under the radar for as long as possible.
By this stage in case you didn't realize Elon could probably re-write the Art of War himself,
with a more improved version, like 4D Art of War. But either way Sun Tzu's line "Appear weak when
you are strong, and strong when you are weak" does feel highly apt to what we are saying here.
What advantage does Tesla have telling you the actual capacity? How does that help?
Will it boost the stock price? Possibly, maybe a little, or more people might just
mock and laugh at Elon, about crazy targets, and maybe he's had enough of that by now. If
it raised the stock price, then how does that benefit Tesla? The main benefit of a higher
stock price for the actual company is so they can float some more shares and raise capital.
Tesla doesn't need to do that. Therefore therefore there is no need to pump the stock.
But what if they actually believed Elon, if he started saying Tesla will deliver
5 million cars in 2025, just in the US? Do you think that would benefit Tesla?
Or do you think legacy industries will start giving blows further below the belt?
Stooping to lower level of ethics in order to survive or do what they can to slow down Tesla.
These are big industries, energy, transport, car dealers. We are talking trillions and
trillions. How likely are they just going to hand it over to Tesla on a silver platter?
Therefore, if Tesla was as successful, as I may be leading on. Then I would
also want Tesla to keep it quiet. By the time everyone catches on, it will simply be too late.