IDRA Group has announced on LinkedIn today that Tesla’s 9,000 ton Cybertruck Giga Press is ‘packed and ready to go’ from their facility in Italy. The announcement comes after reports earlier this month that the massive casting machine had already arrived in the US.
As part of their announcement IDRA shared a photo of a large plywood box stamped with their logo, adding hashtags like #gigapress and #9000t, confirming this particular piece of equipment is heading to Tesla.
This one box does not represent the entire casting machine however as we can still see some of the parts laying to the right of the box. To get an understanding of how massive the Cybertruck Giga Press is, IDRA shared another photo showing five people standing inside just one piece of the machine a few days ago.
What makes this announcement interesting is that just a few weeks ago it was reported that the Giga Press had already arrived in the US.
Shipping manifests uncovered by Canadian Tesla enthusiast Alex (@ajtourville) showed IDRA had shipped 54 separate pieces weighing in at 77,562 kg, with the recipient labeled as Tesla.
This could mean IDRA shipped something other than the Giga Press to Tesla, or it could be the case that was just an initial shipment and IDRA is now sending the larger pieces to the US.
Another scenario could be that this is a second Cybertruck Giga Press for Tesla, although this seems unlikely at this point given production isn’t slated to start until mid-2023, meaning a significant ramp won’t happen until well into 2024.
However, Tesla is very clearly taking significant steps as we get closer to the official start of production.
Two Cybertruck bodies have been spotted at Giga Texas recently, and the automaker announced in its Q3 2022 shareholder deck that the electric truck has moved from ‘in development’ to ‘tooling’ at Giga Texas.
IDRA finishes testing and ships the Cybertruck Giga Press to Texas