The Real Reason Tesla Developed The Giga Press!

Let's talk about the Gigapress. This is essentially Tesla's current secret weapon for electric vehicle manufacturing superiority. There is an entirely new way to make the core structure of an automobile. It's a technology that didn't even exist until the year 2020, and so far it has been exclusively wielded by Tesla in their quest to refine the manufacturing process of their best-selling vehicle, the Model Y. At its heart, the Gigapress is a die-casting machine, which is not a new or unique process. Casting has been a staple in automotive manufacturing throughout the entire history of the industry. The casting process is used to form critical components like the engine block and the transmission casings, but casting has never been implemented for a large structural section of the vehicle frame. Luckily, some very smart people at an Italian die-casting machine producer called Idra made the connection that engine blocks and cylinder heads would no longer be required vehicle components in 10 years from now when electric motors and batteries will dominate. So, if the company was to stay relevant and remain on the cutting edge of their industry, then they would need to push the technology further than ever before. They had to go bigger, to take casting to the giga scale. And that is where the very smart people at Idra linked up with the very smart people at Tesla, and the Gigapress was born. And here is why that's such a big deal. One of the coolest things about the Gigapress is the collaboration between two very cool companies who are relentlessly committed to innovation. The Idra Group was founded in Italy in 1946 and has basically set the standard for die-casting technology in Europe. In 2008, the company was strategically acquired by LK Technology in Hong Kong, but Idra still operates, designs, and manufactures their product out of Italy. There's a bit of conflicting stories around how the Gigapress idea came to be. Elon Musk says that he called the six largest casting machine manufacturers in the world and asked them if they could build a machine large enough to allow Tesla to cast their vehicle frames in one single shot. According to Elon, five of those companies said no and one said maybe. According to Riccardo Ferrario, the general manager of the Idra Group, the idea came to him in a dream, and he woke up with the mission to create the world's largest casting machine. Both are pretty good stories. There's always some selective memory going on with these kinds of things, and the two leaders are actually very similar. Riccardo is a boss. He takes his mission statement from the legendary Italian Formula One driver, Mario Andretti, who said, if everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough. The Gigapress was his opportunity to step on the accelerator. Riccardo is a proper Italian, so he wanted his product to be the most powerful, the most efficient, the most sustainable casting machine ever built, but he also wanted it to look beautiful. And that's why Idra goes to the extra length to color the giant components of the Gigapress and add those pops of bright red to give it that unique stylized look. Riccardo said he wanted to make the Ferrari of casting machines, something that would be instantly recognizable and iconic. And I'd say he's done it. The reason it's so hard to scale up a technique like casting is because it's a very finely balanced thermodynamic process that is done under very high levels of pressure. Molten aluminum is pressed into a die mold at high speed, and that liquid metal has to fill the mold perfectly and evenly before cooling into a singular strong component. The larger and more complex the mold, the further the metal has to travel and the greater the chance that something will go wrong. If they press too fast, there will be bubbles in the metal, and the structure will be ruined. If they press too slowly, then the metal will cool before the die is filled, and the part will be incomplete and uneven. This is all contained in one giant machine that is basically the size of a small house. There is a melting oven where solid aluminum is liquefied at a temperature of 850 degrees Celsius or 1600 Fahrenheit. Then the mixture is purified by removing the slag or aluminum oxide from the top. The molten aluminum is then held in a warming oven at 750 degrees Celsius, where it's treated with argon gas to remove impurities and moved through a silicon carbide filter to remove any particles larger than 25 micrometers. The die mold is prepared with a thin coating of soybean oil, just like greasing your baking pan, and then a vacuum is used to remove air from inside the mold. The metal is pumped in and the casting is formed. The clamp releases the two halves of the mold, and a robot picks up the casted section, which has now cooled to 400 degrees Celsius or 750 Fahrenheit. Then the part goes into a water bath to bring down to a reasonable temperature. Finally, the excess material is trimmed from the casting and it is x-ray checked for quality. The energy required to push all of the hot metal through the mold then creates a large amount of pressure to build up inside, and that pressure will try to push the two halves of the mold apart as it is filling up. So one of the primary functions of the casting machine is to hold the die mold together under those extreme pressures. That's how we measure the strength of a casting machine. By the amount of clamping force it can exert on the die to keep it in one piece. If that die were to break apart during the casting, then molten aluminum would probably squirt everywhere. It would be a disaster. The largest amount of clamping force from a traditional casting machine is 4,000 metric tons of pressure. IDRA have produced machines of this caliber for a while, and we can actually see the full spec sheet on one of those, which has some interesting details. So the clamping force is rated at 4,000 metric tons, and the other interesting numbers are the maximum injection stroke. That's the distance the plunger travels as it injects the hot metal into the die. In this case, it's 1,272 millimeters or 54 inches, and the maximum injection force, which is 241 metric tons. So the force of the plunger that injects the metal is nowhere near as strong as the clamping force that holds the two halves of the die together. I think a lot of people get this wrong. I definitely have gotten it wrong in the past. So a 6,000 ton casting machine does not use 6,000 tons of force to push the metal into the mold. The 6,000 tons of force is what contains the metal inside the mold as it's being injected. And that is the level that the first IDRA Gigapress was able to reach. 6,000 tons of clamping force, a 50% increase over their previous best. This allowed Tesla to cast the entire front and rear sections of their Model Y frame. So basically the entire frame from the driver's feet forward is one single casting and the entire frame from the backseat passenger's feet backward is one single casting. In between is a new battery pack that is designed to act as its own structural component, thanks to much bigger and stronger battery cells. IDRA has since ramped their Gigapress to as much as 8,000 and 9,000 metric tons of clamping force. The 9,000 ton Gigapress will be making its way to Tesla's Gigafactory in Austin, Texas, where it will cast the rear underbody frame for the Cybertruck. So why would anyone want to go through all of the trouble of using a gigantic super-powered casting machine to build their vehicle frame? There are many reasons, but they can all be summed up by just saying efficiency. There is no substitute in manufacturing for the efficiency of casting. Your typical vehicle frame will be made up of stamped components. Stamping is much more simple than casting, it's basically just what it sounds like. They take a flat sheet of metal, and they stamp down on it with a very specifically shaped tool, and that forms the metal into a part. Then you take a few dozen of those stamped parts, and you start welding and riveting and even gluing them together to create the frame. It's quite a production. So the Gigapress cuts that all down to one giant machine using one high-powered action to create the same end product, except better and more consistent. Because every time you bond two pieces together, you create a potential point of failure, and a potential for a mistake. Elon Musk said in an interview that replacing the rear underbody assembly on the Model Y with a single casting allowed Tesla to go from making 70 small parts to one giant part, eliminating 300 robots and reducing the required body shop space by 30%. And by implementing the front casting, that saved another 300 robots and another 30% of the space in the body shop. So when Tesla built out their new production lines at the latest Gigafactories in Austin, Texas and Berlin, Germany, they saved installing 600 robots by instead using 4 Gigapresses, and that allowed them to operate the entire production line in a significantly reduced footprint. This means faster production times and lower costs, and we can see this reflected in the company's financial results. Tesla's gross margin per vehicle in Q1 2022 was a staggering 32.9%. For any vehicle product, this is outstanding, but for an electric vehicle, this is just flat out insane. Earlier this year, Ford Motors admitted that they don't make any money from selling the electric Mustang Mach-E. In fact, they probably take a loss on most sales. Tesla's net profit for the fiscal year 2021 was up to 3.3 billion US dollars. That's just slightly behind Toyota, who made 3.93 billion dollars. Toyota sold nearly 10 million cars in 2021. Tesla sold just under 1 million. We can also look at a metric called cash conversion cycle. This is essentially the time that it takes the company to turn cash into a vehicle and then convert it back into cash. So, from expense to product to profit. Tesla's cash conversion cycle for 2021 was negative 15 days, which basically means that inventory is sold before you even need to pay for it. By comparison, Toyota had a cash conversion cycle in 2021 of 31 days, and a competitor like Volkswagen was back at 74 days. So, point being that Tesla do things differently, and they profit massively. That's probably not an accident. And, game changer innovations like the Gigapress is what keeps them at the top of their league. Hopefully you learned something today about Tesla, Idra, or the Gigapress. Let us know in the comments section below what you think Tesla might try and cast next. Will they ever do an entire vehicle in one shot? Don't forget to give this video a thumbs up today if you liked it, that is so important for getting our content out to more people. If you enjoy the content, then you'd probably also enjoy our weekly newsletter, so sign up with the link down below at theteslaspace.com. A huge thank you to all of our Patreon supporters who are listed on the screen now, you help us make the best content we can and we really appreciate it. Thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next one.