Abstract
This paper concerns the spatial structure of Tesla’s four ‘gigafactories’ (‘giga’ is gigawatt hour, GWh) which are located in Tesla’s first Gigafacility (1) at Sparks, near Reno, Nevada; the Solar City Gigafactory (2) at Buffalo, New York state; the 2019 Tesla plant at Shanghai, China Gigafactory (3); and the new Tesla gigafactory Europe Gigafactory (4), which is a manufacturing plant to be constructed in Grünheide, near Berlin, Germany. The newest campus is 20 miles southeast of central Berlin on the main railway line to Wrocław, Poland. Three main features of the ‘gigafactory’ phenomenon, apart from their scale, are in the industry organisation of production, which thus far reverses much current conventional wisdom regarding production geography. Thus, Tesla’s automotive facility in Fremont California reconcentrates manufacturing on site as in-house own brand componentry, especially heavy parts, or by requiring hitherto distant global suppliers to locate in proximity to the main manufacturing plant. Second, as an electric vehicle (EV) producer, the contributions of Tesla’s production infrastructure and logistics infrastructure are important in meeting greenhouse gas mitigation and the reduction of global warming. Finally, the deployment of Big Data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and ‘predictive management’ are important. This lies in gigafactory logistics contributing to production and distribution efficiency and effectiveness as a primer for all future industry and services in seeking to minimise time-management issues. This too potentially contributes significantly to the reduction of wasteful energy usage.
Highlights
While the US Electric Vehicle (EV) automotive company Tesla, founded in 2003 and re-established in 2010 by Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Elon Musk, has only recently opened its first major production plant in China, this is not the first time that the company has established a presence abroad
Tesla has not confirmed whether press account information about Gigafactory Berlin is accurate, and we have shown some Tesla public relations constitutes over-optimistic or ‘fake news’
German workforce skills and depth of high-quality production and design experience are iconic to the global automotive design and engineering communities. They are rather locked in to a petroleum paradigm that means diversified quality producers like BMW and Daimler Benz have been criticised for their dilatoriness towards EVs and have only very recently commissioned or pressed for, as an example, battery manufacturing installations (e.g., CATL; see below) in their home base
Summary
While the US Electric Vehicle (EV) automotive company Tesla, founded in 2003 and re-established in 2010 by Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Elon Musk, has only recently opened its first major production plant in China, this is not the first time that the company has established a presence abroad. The fourth ‘compartment’ involves an LED-lit tunnel for micro-inspection of quality of paint finish, wheel rims and interior imperfections Design of these factory elements is aimed to optimise simplicity, effectiveness and minimisation of effort. In this contribution, it is intended to determine how internal and external infrastructural logistics configurations are important for ‘gigafactories’. It is intended to determine how internal and external infrastructural logistics configurations are important for ‘gigafactories’ Do these apply to Tesla, in particular, or more widely as part of requisite ‘pattern recognition’ for advanced efficiency and effectiveness in consignment mobility (e.g., including Amazon’s ‘chaos storage’ at giga-scale ‘fulfilment centres’). The contribution is rounded off with conclusions, identifying critical and misleading insights as justification for the effort made and hinting at further ‘pattern recognition’ research for eco-claims, notoriously for example in many ‘greenwashing’ claims
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