Sandy Munro Shares His Thoughts About Tesla’s Giga Berlin
Sandy Munro and Cory Steuben, President of Munro & Associates, recently sat down on Munro Live to share their thoughts about Tesla’s recent event at the newly opened Giga Berlin. Sandy noted that he had quite a few predictions and most of those came true. The video, below, is well worth a watch. I’ll just share some quick highlights.
While analyzing the giga press, Cory noted that you can see some of the paths for the flow of material and added that there are minute changes compared with what they call a “mega casting,” which was a giga casting they received.
“This just shows that Tesla’s continually improving and refining. And some of the first mega castings that came out were two pieces or three pieces and now they’re one.”
Volkswagen’s Production & Software Weaknesses
Cory also brought up a statement by Volkswagen that they read just before filming the video. Volkswagen was essentially bewildered that Tesla is able to manufacture a car in 10 hours, compared to the 30 hours for their own cars. Sandy also said that he gets a lot of emails and one of the consistent themes from the emails is that ID.4 owners are not happy. The car itself is fine, Sandy emphasized. The issue is that there are no software updates. One German customer wrote Sandy and told him that he plans to scrap his ID.4 and buy a Tesla, but will be shamed for it. After all, he’s German and is buying a Tesla. This saddened me yet it shows that Americans aren’t the only ones who struggle with materialism and brand loyalty. He should be able to buy what he wants without the shame and ridicule. He told Sandy that he wants to see that things are going to be changing. When he sends emails to Volkswagen, though, he gets nothing back.
“If you want to live in this world — in the new EV world — you’re going to have to listen to what the customers have to say and you’re going to have to keep up not only on the hard technology but also the software technology.”
Giga Berlin Production Speed & Capacity
Sandy then Giga Berlin is built for half a million products per year.
“This thing is built for half a million products per year — easy — and I’ve heard different things about what their maximum line speed’s going to be. […] Every 45 seconds, you’re going to see a car come off the line, and they’re talking about three shifts. So, this is a half a million cars easy per year. And Elon wants to get to, I think it’s one-tenth of the car population. So that’s, like, 20 million.”
Structural 4680 Battery Cells
Cory and Sandy looked at an image of the 4860 cells on the slide. Cory explained that when looking at the battery, Tesla was clearly showing how the floor pan of the body is now part of the battery.
“It was essentially redundant material. You had a cover on the battery and then you had a floor of the body. Now they’re integrating that structure into the top of the pack.”
There’s a lot more detail in the video. You can watch the full video here.
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