Inside the Tesla Factory

As part of the Swiss-US Energy Innovation Days held in San Francisco, the Swiss delegation paid a visit to the Headquarter of Tesla Motors in Palo Alto, California. Visiting the production site of this pioneer within the electric car industry was a highlight for many participants.
We entered the gigantic production site under rigorous security measures – any form of recording is strictly prohibited. 1000 manufacturing and transport robots assist the production process in this factory. From here, cars are being shipped all over the world, making the site one huge duty-free area. The body parts are fully made of aluminium and are produced in-house – some of them on the nation’s largest molding press weighing thousands of tons. Motors and batteries are neatly lined up, waiting to be mounted either onto the current Models S or X, both on the same assembly line. Production bottlenecks are resolved through a dynamic process, gradually freeing up the capacity needed for the production of the new Model 3.
The visit to this cutting-edge factory was a truly impressive program – part of the Swiss-US Energy Innovation Days. And it happened to coincide with Tesla announcing their next big thing: using new, more powerful batteries now opens the doors to extend the reach of the Model S P100D to 613 km and to achieve an impressive 2.5 sec acceleration to 100 km/h, making it the quickest production car in the world. Energy innovation at its best, straight from California.

Dr Felix Moesner, CEO at swissnex Boston and Dr. Benjamin Franta, Research Associate, Harvard University