Mind Officially “Blown” - My Visit to the New Tesla Gigafactory in Austin, TX
I have to admit… I’ve gotten to see a lot of spectacular things while doing various gigs around town—and around the world. However, the event I attended last Friday at Elon Musk’s Gigafactory was more extravagant than anything I have ever seen.
Here I am in front of a giant cowboy hat leftover from the night before.
Elon Musk is thought to be among the world’s richest, and strangest men. But thankfully, this eccentric invited the UT Austin, McCombs School of Business Dean’s Advisory Board members (which includes yours truly!) to tour his new Tesla production facility and corporate headquarters here in Austin.
Let me set the scene for you. We arrive on a gorgeous Friday morning in April. The sun was shining and the birds singing. Upon walking up, we immediately see a giant, shiny cowboy hat. I mean Chicago-bean sized big. Texas big.
It was apparently part of a massive 15-40 thousand person rave from the night before, aptly named the “Giga-Rodeo.” Our Tesla tour guides, ever efficient and talented at their jobs, quickly checked us in, and before starting the tour, apologized for being a little sluggish from the night before. But it made no difference to us, they were fantastic, and did a bang-up job at showing us the ropes.
But as the tour began, I couldn’t help but wonder... who throws a party for that many people, and where would they even put them? The best answer I could come up with is, well, this must not be Elon’s first rodeo (at least as far as parties go).
Here is my favorite sign from the tour.
It probably helps that, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Austin Gigafactory is the largest building in the world in terms of usable space, with over ten million square feet. This makes it five times larger than the Pentagon, and the largest manufacturing building in the world!
I could go on… and believe me I want to, but let me just give you a few more impressions.
The Future is Now
The idea of an environmentally friendly vehicle such as a Tesla is simply not the only thing that makes this car the picture of the future. The way Tesla manufacturers its product is also a key aspect here. These vehicles are designed and built in a completely different way than most cars. They are not an assemblage of parts in the traditional sense.
Most of the car is formed in a giant mold called the Giga Press. It currently stands as the heaviest press in the world (at least, for now) with a clamping force of over 6,000 tons of pressure. (The company itself is already hard at work developing a Giga Press with a clamping force of 8,000 tons of pressure, and 12,000, respectfully.)
The goal of this press? To cast the mold of a typical Tesla auto body in one piece.
Additionally, an injection of patented aluminum alloy makes the car itself incredibly strong, durable, and unusually light. So light, in fact, that one of my fellow tour-takers walked by the front frame of a Tesla and picked it up with one hand. I thought it was a party trick until he invited me to do the same, which I promptly did. Believe me, I am not that strong, but I definitely felt like Hercules at that moment.
Supposedly, Musk got the idea to die-cast his cars from watching his son play with a Matchbox toy car, which, I’ll have you know, is approximately one/seven-thousandth the size of Tesla cars.
Literally, anything could go wrong with this design, but he pulled it off. The cars we see being produced at the Gigafactory all use this same, completely radical production technique. And I mean, these are the same manufacturing techniques that were used to create the parts in the SpaceX rockets—so these cars are (in more ways than one), rocket ships!
The “exploded” version of a Tesla Model 3.
The Cars Themselves: Elegantly Simplistic
Surprisingly, there are very few parts that make up a Tesla. Take a look at this “exploded” version of a Tesla Model 3, and you will see that there are probably not more than 75 parts in the entire vehicle, and less than 40 “moving” parts. This makes the cost of a new Tesla seem all the more worth it since they are so easy to maintain.
Automation Galore
Lots of robots, as is to be expected.
As far as I can see, it just picks things up and sets them back down. Seeing movies like the Transformers, and The Terminator certainly did not prepare me for the chilling sight of this giant robotic arm. However, instead of setting out to destroy mankind, this Megatron is much more beneficial to our society in that it cuts production costs, increases production volume, and is extremely efficient—so I suppose I can live with it.
Where Everything’s Bigger
Here’s a picture I snapped of the Gigapress at the Austin Gigafactory.
Everything is bigger in Texas, right? So far, this one plant is set to produce 600,000 vehicles a year, and could possibly go up to 4 million vehicles a year in the future. It was not that long ago that Tesla was producing just 600,000 vehicles worldwide! This just goes to show just how incredibly scalable this whole endeavor is.
I was also amazed to see that most of the indoor manufacturing space is air-conditioned! I cannot even get the A/C in my own house to cool things off when it’s 100 degrees in the shade during a typical Texas summer. So, I wonder how the Gigafactory will cool, come August in Austin.
I guess that sign is right. These ARE big “f’ing” robots.
The Audacity
When Musk said he was going to be in production two years after the start of construction on what was then a cow pasture along the banks of the Colorado River, I thought this was yet another example of “Musk bluster.” This was, of course, impossible, and everybody knew it. Yet, here we are.
Then it was said that this one building would house 10,000 employees, all making more than the average wage in Austin. Where were they going to find all of these employees in a town which is now notorious for not having enough employees for the businesses which are already here, much less for a business new to town? Nonetheless, apparently hiring is going well, and the site could eventually employ up to 40,000 people.
A final bit of the audacity is that Musk chose to build his Gigafactory site in Texas—a state which does not even allow him to sell his cars directly to consumers. Yes, you read that right. The Legislature here in the Lone Star State has deemed it illegal so as to protect automobile dealerships that dominate Texas small towns; the very same small towns that tend to be home to many of the rural, conservative voters that the said Legislature depends on to stay in power.
With that being said, Tesla does not use dealerships to show their newest models. So, if you purchase a Tesla in the Austin Gigafactory, your actual car will be a different one, shipped from another state.
I don’t know who is crazier, Musk, or the State of Texas. I suspect the latter.
Keep Austin Weird
Our tour group as we end our tour. This doesn’t even begin to show the scope of the facilities.
All of this Giga stuff seems so improbable to me because Austin is the one city in Texas where everything is not necessarily “bigger”. We are proud of not being Houston or Dallas. We love nice, handcrafted, smallish local businesses. After all, that’s what “Keep Austin Weird” is all about. Not weirdness itself—but the locally brewed, owned and made businesses that we know and love.
Not that long ago, all Austin had going for it was beer, barbeque, and great music. It was all rather quaint.
Since Musk came to town, I suppose we have stepped up our game to be “Giga-weird”. Nothing wrong with that, just as long as it comes along with the aforementioned good beer, barbeque, and great music, then I’m down. From the stories I’ve heard about the Giga-rodeo the night before our visit, all of these things go together swimmingly, and we can expect a hell of a ride from Tesla going forward. Giddy up!