New Tesla breakthrough may totally reinvent car production: ‘It is an enabler on steroids’

Tesla is constantly looking for new ways to cut the production costs of its increasingly popular electric vehicles. The latest method the company is exploring involves “Giga Presses,” huge clamping devices that can die-cast the entire underbody of a car in one piece, Reuters reported.

The traditional way of manufacturing a car involves creating around 400 distinct pieces that fit together. Making basically the entire vehicle all in one go clearly simplifies the process — but it also comes with a lot of hazards and drawbacks that have made other automakers wary of the process.

“It is an enabler on steroids,” said Terry Woychowski, president of engineering company Caresoft Global, in the Reuters report. “It has a huge implication for the industry, but it’s a very challenging task. Castings are very hard to do, especially the bigger and the more complicated.”

To explain the complication, one car manufacturing consultant told Reuters that “fixing design flaws is much easier with a body made up of several small parts rather than a single module.”

Considering all of the design flaws that have plagued Tesla in the past, that is certainly cause for concern. One Tesla owner took to Reddit recently to point out the myriad assembly issues with his $140,000 Model S, which he said “looks like toddlers put this together during recess.”