Tesla - S Elon Musk Follows Henry Ford - S Obsession With Manufacturing

10/14/2020 Tesla's Elon Musk Follows Henry Ford's Obsession With Manufacturing
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Tesla's Elon Musk Follows Henry Ford's Obsession With Manufacturing
https://insideevs.com/news/442526/teslas-elon-musk-follows-henry-ford-manufacturing/ 1/7
Sep 04, 2020 at 8:39am ET
By: EVANNEX
Tesla’s manufacturing expertise continues to undergo a process of gradual

improvement.
This article comes to us courtesy of EVANNEX, which makes and sells aftermarket Tesla accessories. The opinions expressed therein
are not necessarily our own at InsideEVs, nor have we been paid by EVANNEX to publish these articles. We nd the company's
perspective as an aftermarket supplier of Tesla accessories interesting and are willing to share its content free of charge. Enjoy!
Posted on EVANNEX on September 04, 2020 by Charles Morris
Tesla’s mission has always been to build not just the best electric cars, but the best cars, and most auto reviewers and industry
pundits would agree that the company has gotten pretty darn close to that goal. Of course, many would probably qualify that
statement by saying that it took Tesla quite a few years to get to this point. Early model rollouts endured t-and- nish issues and a
few other problems, but by all accounts, the company’s build quality has become much more consistent.
Above: Elon Musk and Henry Ford (Image: Inverse)
Tesla’s manufacturing expertise, “the machine that makes the machine,” has gone through a similar process of gradual
improvement. In contrast to the endless delays delivering Model X, and the Production Hell of Model 3, the Model Y launch took
place ahead of schedule, and with no major snags (except for some brief delays caused by a certain pesky virus).
Lately, Elon Musk has been talking about manufacturing a lot. In fact, he recently described it as nothing less than an obsession.
“We love manufacturing...It’s awesome,” he said on Tesla’s most recent earnings call.
Of course, a healthy xation on the manufacturing process is nothing new in the auto trade—giants such as Toyota and VW are
famous for their focus on manufacturing. In fact, every student of the industry learns that the pioneering Henry Ford’s success is
attributed as much to his innovations in mass production as to the actual vehicles he built. A recent article in Axios by Joann Muller
highlights some of the uncanny similarities between Tesla and the early Ford Motor Company.
One thing the two automakers have in common is vertical integration. When Ford was building the Model T, it had no choice but to
do things “in-house,” as we would say today. Many of the components it needed to build automobiles simply didn’t exist. Tesla,
however, came of age in a world of robust global supply chains—the ability to buy all the components it needed to build the
Roadster from suppliers was a key part of the initial business plan. Since then, the company has increased its level of vertical
integration—a radical departure from the way typical automakers do things.
Tesla makes its own batteries (in partnership with Panasonic), computer chips and many other components—it’s believed to be the
only automaker that makes its own seats—and is increasingly moving to take control of its supply chains for raw materials. In a
2017 Wired article, Greg Reichow, who was Tesla’s VP of Production during the transition from low-volume Roadster production to
the highly automated assembly of Models S and X, described Tesla as “more vertically integrated than any car company since the
heyday of the Ford Rouge plant in the late 1920s.”
As Tesla developed its new models, it needed technologies that were not readily available, and it needed to move at Silicon Valley
speed, which seemed like madness to most automotive suppliers. Reichow noted that building its own core components allowed
Tesla to make choices quickly, and allowed for faster cycles of learning and improvement.
The speed at which the company is able to improve and re ne its products continues to amaze many industry insiders. In 2018,
when teardown specialist Sandy Munro took apart an early Model 3, he criticized the new EV’s build quality and body design. “The
strategy for the body is about as bad as could be,” he said. (On the other hand, Munro was full of praise for Model 3’s electronics
and battery technology.)
Above: Back in 2015, Bloomberg looked at the parallels between Tesla's growth forecast and the original Ford Model T
(YouTube: Bloomberg QuickTake Originals)
More recently, after tearing down Model Y, Munro was amazed by the level of improvement over the previous model. “The body
build is 1,000% better,” Sandy told Charged. “There are still issues, but they’re minor in comparison to what I have seen in the past.”
The things Munro identi ed as the most signi cant design improvements are Model Y’s new energy-saving heat pump, the related
Octovalve, and the rear underbody, where Tesla replaced about 70 parts with two enormous aluminum castings. All three of these
innovations are in-house creations, developed and built by Tesla.
Elon Musk’s interest in vertical integration has often led him to use imagery that’s reminiscent of Henry Ford’s glory days.
The Ford River Rouge Complex is often cited as the epitome of vertical integration. When it was completed in 1928, it had its own
docks on the Rouge River, its own electricity plant, and its own integrated steel mill. Henry Ford “bought all the di erent elements
so that the raw materials would go into one side of the Rouge and 28 hours later come out as a nished automobile,” said Ford
Motor corporate historian Ted Ryan.
When Musk rst raised the idea of a Tesla Gigafactory in 2013, he spoke of an integrated plant that would take in raw materials at
one end and crank out complete battery packs at the other. The vision for the Gigafactory encompasses every step of battery cell
and pack fabrication, from the manufacture of electrodes, separators and electrolyte to the assembly of new packs, and the
recycling of old ones.
Later, Musk described the factory of the future as an “alien dreadnought,” featuring an assembly line that could disgorge
automobiles as fast as a human can walk, or battery cells “faster than bullets from a machine gun.” This week, at the site of Tesla's
Berlin Gigafactory, Musk promised "a radical redesign of the core technology of building a car."
The parallels between Ford and Musk don’t end there. When Musk announced his abortive plan to take Tesla private in 2018, he
was in a sense following in the footsteps of Henry Ford, who did something similar a century earlier. In 1919, in response to a
dispute with a couple of major shareholders, Ford and some of his family members bought up the stock that they did not already
own. The Ford family remains rmly in control of the company to this day, despite the fact that it returned to public ownership in
1956.
We know that Elon Musk has cited Henry Ford as an in uence. But is his growing obsession with manufacturing a conscious e ort
to emulate the famous auto industry innovator, or is it merely a case of great minds thinking alike? Only Elon could answer that
one.
===
Written by: Charles Morris; Source: Axios
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10/14/2020 Tesla's Elon Musk Follows Henry Ford's Obsession With Manufacturing

Tesla's Elon Musk Follows Henry Ford's Obsession With Manufacturing

Sep 04, 2020 at 8:39am ET

Tesla’s manufacturing expertise continues to undergo a process of gradual

Above: Elon Musk and Henry Ford (Image: Inverse)

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