Tesla held its annual Investor Day today, explaining the company’s prerogatives and initiatives to a crowd gathered in person and live. During the presentation, company executives, including CEO Elon Musk, explained their thoughts on ditching fossil fuels and using a new electric vehicle platform, and gave insight into upcoming models .
Here are eight of the most interesting things presented at the event.
Tesla has a plan to phase out fossil fuels.
“My personal opinion is that as we improve the energy density of batteries, you’ll see all transportation go fully electric, with the exception of rockets,” Musk told the audience gathered in person and live.
The plan calls for repowering the existing electricity grid with renewable energy, at a total cost of USD 10 trillion. The company predicts that this will lead to a 35 percent reduction in fossil fuel use.
The switch to electric vehicles, Tesla says, will reduce fossil fuels by another 21 percent. Tesla estimates that this vehicle change needs $7.0 trillion of the $10.0 trillion to occur.
“All cars will become fully autonomous and electric,” Musk predicts, comparing riding in a non-autonomous gasoline car to “being analogous to riding a horse and using a flip phone.”
Tesla also advocates switching to heat pumps for homes and businesses to save on fossil fuel use. Although much of the southern United States already uses this technology, most of the snow belt of the United States still uses furnaces that run on natural gas, diesel or propane.
High-temperature heat delivery, the use of hydrogen and the sustainable powering of aircraft and ships were part of the last part of the plan with the proposal that the use of hydrogen can take the place of coal in many modern manufacturing applications.
“It’s my personal opinion that hydrogen will not be used significantly in transportation…and it shouldn’t be. If you’re going to use a chemical fuel, use CH4. [methane]not H2 [hydrogen]Musk said.
Toyota, BMW and Hyundai Motor Group are already invested in making hydrogen-powered vehicles, including tractor trailers.
Tesla plans two more models to make up its global fleet of electric vehicles.
In addition to the Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck and Semi shown on stage during the presentation, Tesla showed two future models under digital screens. One looked like a chunky SUV similar to a Jeep Wrangler or Ford Bronco. The other appeared to be a small car, sized to fit below the Model 3 in the company’s lineup.
Tesla claims a Model 3 is more efficient than a Toyota Corolla.
The company says its small car is four times more efficient from “oil well to wheel” than Toyota’s small car. Much of that, the company says, comes from how the energy in the Model 3 is transferred and stored, compared to the Corolla’s engine.
The Model 3 can “drive one mile on the energy it takes to boil a pot of water for pasta,” says Tesla senior vice president of power and powertrain engineering Drew Baglino, “and another mile about the energy it takes to cook the pasta.”
Cybertruck is coming this year.
Although the manufacturing date of Tesla’s Cybertruck has been pushed forward several times, company officials confirmed their plans to bring the car to market in 2023.
Tesla wants to redo the manufacturing process.
Traditionally (and generally) a mass production vehicle is built by first stamping the metal, then assembling all the parts for the body, painting it, and then going through a final assembly process.
“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 a buffer in between,” Lars Moravy, Tesla’s vice president of vehicle engineering, said on stage.
“Henry Ford first invented this assembly line in 1922. It’s been a hundred years and it’s very difficult to make a change after a hundred years.”
The company is determined to “rethink manufacturing” with its next-generation vehicle. This plan sees more people or robots working on a vehicle at the same time, reducing downtime. Tesla estimates that this new method will result in a 30 percent improvement in space-time efficiency.
In the future, Tesla plans to have parallel plots for stamping, painting and casting. This means that all sides of the car will be built independently, only painting what is needed, then the exterior and interior parts are put into place before finally coming together when the drive train, glass etc. .
Tesla plans to reduce its manufacturing footprint by more than 40 percent with the next generation of vehicles and reduce the cost of building the model by 50 percent.
Tesla has opened its Supercharger sites to other vehicles.
The company’s head of charging, Rebecca Tinucci, confirmed during the briefing that yesterday the company opened its first 10 charging points to other cars. This is part of a larger promise the company has made to make its announced charging network more accessible.
Currently, more than 50 percent of the company’s European Superchargers are open to vehicles from other manufacturers.
In the last six months, Tesla’s service department has improved.
There has been an 11 percent drop in the time it takes to service a vehicle and a 16 percent decrease in early servicing over the past half-year. It also takes 9 percent less time to get a service appointment.
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New announcements of battery cells and vehicle manufacturing facilities are coming.
As Tesla looks to introduce new vehicles and ramp up production, the company plans to open new manufacturing facilities. Their locations, size and production will be announced at a later date.
