Tesla hosted its annual Investor Day immediately, spelling out the corporate’s prerogatives and initiatives to a gathered in-person and live-streamed crowd. During the presentation, firm executives, together with CEO Elon Musk, spelled out their ideas on eliminating fossil fuels and utilizing a brand new electrical automobile platform, and gave insights into coming fashions.
Here’s eight of essentially the most attention-grabbing issues introduced on the occasion.
Tesla has a plan to remove fossil fuels.
“My personal opinion is, as we improve the energy density of batteries, you’ll see all transportation go fully electric, with the exception of rockets,” Musk advised the assembled in-person and stay stream viewers.
The plan requires repowering the present energy grid with renewables, at a complete value of $10 trillion USD. The firm tasks that it will trigger a 35 p.c discount in fossil gas use.
Switching to electrical autos, Tesla says, will scale back fossil fuels an extra 21 p.c. This automobile switchover, Tesla estimates, wants $7.0 trillion of the $10.0 trillion to happen.
“All cars will go to fully autonomous and electric,” Musk predicts, likening driving in a gas-powered non-autonomous automobile to, “be analogous to riding a horse and using a flip phone.”
Tesla can be advocating for switching to warmth pumps for houses and companies to avoid wasting on fossil gas use. While a lot of the southern United States already makes use of this expertise, most within the United States’ snow belt nonetheless use furnaces that run on pure fuel, heating oil or propane.
Tesla
High temperature warmth supply, hydrogen use and sustainably fueling planes and boats had been a part of the final a part of the plan with the proposition that hydrogen use is ready to take the place in coal in a lot of contemporary manufacturing purposes.
“It is my personal opinion that hydrogen will not be used meaningfully in transport… and shouldn’t be. If you’re going to use a chemical fuel, use CH4 [methane], not H2 [hydrogen],” Musk mentioned.
Toyota, BMW and Hyundai Motor Group are already invested in making hydrogen-powered autos, together with tractor trailers.
Tesla is planning two extra fashions to make up its international electrical automobile fleet.
In addition to the Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck and Semi proven on stage in the course of the presentation, Tesla confirmed off two future fashions beneath digital silks. One regarded like a chunky SUV akin to a Jeep Wrangler or Ford Bronco. The different seemed to be a small automobile, sized to suit under the Model 3 within the firm’s lineup.
Tesla, Inc.
Tesla claims a Model 3 is extra environment friendly than a Toyota Corolla.
The firm says that its small automobile is 4 instances extra environment friendly from “oil well to wheel” than Toyota’s small automobile. Much of this, the corporate says, comes from how the power is transferred to the Model 3, and saved, when in comparison with the engine within the Corolla.
Model 3 can, “drive one mile on the energy it takes to boil a pot of water for pasta,” Tesla’s senior vp of powertrain and power engineering Drew Baglino claims, “and another mile on the energy it takes to cook the pasta.”
Cybertruck is coming this 12 months.
Though the date of the manufacturing of Tesla’s Cybertruck has been pushed again a number of instances, firm officers confirmed their plans to carry the automobile to market in 2023.
Tesla desires to remake the manufacturing course of.
Traditionally (and customarily) a mass manufacturing automobile is constructed by first stamping the metallic, then gathering all of the components for the physique, then portray it, then going by way of a remaining meeting course of.
“What’s interesting is that these shops are dictated by the organizational structures that exist, and they’re dictated by the boundaries that exist in the factories that are laid out. If something goes wrong in Final Assembly, you have to stop the whole line and you end up with buffering in between,” Lars Moravy, Tesla’s vp of car engineering, mentioned on stage.
“Henry Ford first invented this assembly line in 1922. It’s been a hundred years and it’s really hard to make a change after a hundred years.”
The firm is ready on “rethinking manufacturing again” with their next-generation automobile. That plan sees extra people, or robots, engaged on a automobile without delay, lowering down time. Tesla estimates that this new methodology can be a 30 p.c enchancment in house time effectivity.
In the longer term, Tesla plans to have parallel tracts for stamping and portray, and casting. This signifies that all sides of the automobile can be constructed independently, solely portray what is required, then the outside and inside bits are put collectively in place earlier than lastly being joined collectively when the powertrain, glass, and many others.
Tesla plans to scale back its manufacturing footprint by greater than 40 p.c with the subsequent technology of autos, and reduce the price of creating the mannequin by 50 p.c.
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Tesla has opened its Supercharger websites to different autos.
The firm’s charging head, Rebecca Tinucci confirmed in the course of the confidence that yesterday the corporate opened its first 10 charging websites to different cars. This is a component of a bigger promise the corporate has made to make their heralded charging community extra accessible.
Currently over 50 p.c of the corporate’s European Superchargers are open to autos from different manufactures.
In the final six months, Tesla’s service division has gotten higher.
There has been an 11 p.c drop within the time it takes to service a automobile and 16 p.c lower in early service within the final half-year. It additionally now takes 9 p.c much less time to get a service appointment.
New battery cell and automobile manufacturing services bulletins are coming.
As Tesla appears to introduce new autos and enhance output, the corporate plans to open new manufacturing services. Their places, dimension and output can be introduced at a later date.