Author: Winslow
704 words
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
The climbing speed of Tesla’s Berlin and Texas Gigafactories’ production capacity has surprised people with its slowness. Even half a year after the start of production, the total output of the two new factories in a seven-day week is less than that of Shanghai Gigafactory in 24 hours a day. This is not a metaphor, it is the literal meaning. That’s all.
However, what I want to analyze next is why these two new factories are like this and what may happen in the future. Trying to look at the problem with a dynamic perspective is an important mindset, especially in the technology industry.
The production capacity of a production line depends not on the fastest link, but mainly on the slowest one, which I believe most people have heard of. That is to say, as long as one of the thousands of manufacturing and assembly links in a production line cannot speed up, the speed of the entire production line cannot be increased.
Therefore, Tesla’s Berlin and Texas Gigafactories are currently in the critical stage of solving the speed of the manufacturing link. Elon Musk and the new factory team are rapidly solving one problem after another in a targeted manner. No matter how elegantly and efficiently these problems are solved, as long as there are other problems on the entire production line, the speed of the entire line still depends on the slowest link. Therefore, the production capacity has not been able to increase.
However, the key here is that the problems on the production line are always limited, and in the case where the Shanghai Gigafactory has already provided the experience of achieving high production capacity, once the last problem is solved, the production capacity of the two new factories is likely to quickly rise in a short period of time.
The development of Tesla is similar to the climbing of new factory production capacity. The earliest exploration and accumulation in various directions were accompanied by long-term loneliness and mediocrity of nearly ten years. However, all of these explorations and accumulations are for heading towards a direction, which is Model 3, Supercharging Network, and FSD autonomous driving technology. From then on, rapid growth, even exponential growth, began.
It can be said that only those who can endure loneliness and mediocrity can wait for a prosperous era. It can be seen that long-term loneliness and mediocrity may be the premise of exponential growth, and it is also a law of the development of things.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.