According to CNBC Beijing January 26 reports, according to several Tesla employees - including employees who have left and are still serving - the battery of the company's "super factory" (the world's largest battery manufacturing plant) exists The severity of the production problem exceeds the company's publicly acknowledged level, which could result in further bounces and quality problems with Model 3.
The above Tesla employees disclosed that the problems with the production of super-factory batteries include the fact that some of the batteries need to be hand-made and the batteries are assembled manually by employees of one supplier.
The future of Tesla as a popular brand car maker depends on the automated production of Model 3. More than 400,000 customers subscribe to Model 3 and each pays a deposit of $ 1,000.
Tesla has postponed production plans on the basis of problems with the super-factory, and on November 1 last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk vowed to investors at a earnings conference call, The company is rapidly addressing manufacturing issues and completing Model 3 production plans.
According to Tesla employees working in the supermills in recent months, part of the manufacturing of the Model 3 batteries was completed by hand in more than a month and in the middle of December last year. They also revealed that Tesla had to Matsushita used a large number of employees to help with manual assembly tasks, and Panasonic is a partner in the Tesla Super Works project, supplying Tesla with lithium ion cells.
According to sources, Tesla from the mass production of low version of the Model 3 battery there is a considerable distance.
Tesla spokesman told CNBC that "some production will be done manually before it reaches the highest capacity," Musk and chief technology officer JB Strausel said at a third-quarter earnings analyst conference call This issue has been discussed in depth without any impact on the quality and safety of our batteries.
Mark B. Spiegel, an investment banker at Stanphyl Capital, told CNBC: 'While I do not doubt that Tesla will ultimately solve the problems facing Model 3 production, the low-plate production costs are at least about 4 Million US dollars Tesla will only be a symbolic delivery of some of the price of less than $ 43,900 models with the expected annual sales of more than 400,000, the sales will be quite disappointing.Even if only the sale of high-priced models, Tesi Pull the promise of a turnaround for profit in the foreseeable future.
It is historic that Tesla will not be able to complete its production plan, and it planned to deliver Model X in bulk in 2014, but it has been delaying until 2016.
Last year, Musk promised to deliver 1,600 Model 3s in the third quarter, but actually delivered only 220. In August last year, Musk said that by the end of 2017, Model 3 will reach 5,000 in three weeks and will change to last year in November March Model 3 weeks production can only reach 2,500 units in June to reach 5,000.
According to statistics, as of the end of 2017, Tesla delivered fewer than 2,000 Model 3 models, all of which are expensive models. As of mid-January of this year, Tesla had not delivered a model with a price of $ 35,000.
According to sources, super-factory problems could affect Tesla's ability to meet its shrinking targets, which will hit employee morale and serve as a patient test for consumers and as a handful of EV competitors such as Chevrolet, Nissan and BYD.
But some Tesla investors do not think the production problem is serious. "Ben Kallo, an analyst at RW Baird, an investment firm, said on Tuesday, 'We still believe Tesla will be able to increase Model 3 production as early as the front of the customer The assessment will further boost the demand acceleration and firmly believe that the potential market for Model 3 will be larger than expected.
Several former Tesla engineers agreed with this view that manufacturing and quality issues should be addressed. "Manufacturing has never been easy and it takes time to solve the problems that exist."
According to sources, Tesla will begin to "return" Panasonic employees once the machinery and equipment have produced batteries faster and faster than manual ones.
Currently, Tesla is a positive signal as much as possible in reducing the number of hand-assembled products in the super-factories.
But one engineer warned that the automated production line could run at full speed without any redundancies, so there was a problem and the entire production line had to be stopped. "What really worries us is the quality issue."
According to several Tesla employees who have left and are still on the job, Tesla's many quality control staffs are relatively inexperienced, sloppy and do not know the flaw, and they say many quality inspectors are temporary workers, There is no car experience, they are Tesla recruited through the agency.
Tesla acknowledged that some employees are relatively inexperienced, but said newly hired employees in battery production have been "heavily trained, including safety training."
Two in-service engineers said they are concerned that lithium-ion cells are too small to meet the minimum standards and warn that the "cells in contact with each other" can cause the battery to short-circuit and even catch fire.
The two engineers said they reflected the problem within the company, but management did not go back to that.
A Tesla spokesman dismissed these claims as 'purely fictitious' and firmly denied that the company had a problem with the battery it was shipping.
The spokesman wrote in an email to CNBC that "the testimony regarding Tesla's delivery of vehicles equipped with dangerous batteries is absolutely inaccurate and does not comply with all the evidence and facts."
The spokesman further explained that 'every battery in a Tesla vehicle contains thousands of cells, with the vast majority of adjacent cells at the same voltage. Assuming there are two cells in contact, due to the same voltage, absolute It does not cause any danger, it is safe, it is the same with the two metal without electricity.
Tesla said it tests the battery in a number of ways, including vibration and shock, high temperature and high humidity tests, to ensure that the cells do not touch each other.