Tesla has reportedly decided to stick with its single front and rear castings for its more affordable cars coming next year, moving away from the company’s initial plans for its gigacasting project.
The gigacasting process, which involves casting large sections of a vehicle’s underbody in single pieces, was set to revolutionize Tesla’s production line by simplifying assembly and reducing costs by producing the entire underbody of the car in a single casting.
This method promised not only to enhance production efficiency but also to significantly lower production costs, potentially setting new standards in the auto industry.
However, with a change in strategic direction to move ahead production of more affordable vehicles not based on the next-generation platform, often referred to as the unboxed process, Tesla has put these gigacasting plans on hold, according to a report from Reuters, citing sources familiar with the plans.
While the Reuters report makes it sound like Tesla is giving up on the gigacasting project, they have not. Despite earlier claims that the next-generation vehicle had been cancelled, which Elon Musk later denied as being true, Tesla has simply put plans for this platform on hold due to higher than expected costs, according to information provided to Drive Tesla.
From this perspective the decision to stick with single piece front and rear castings for the more affordable vehicles make sense, not only from a financial point of view, but also because Tesla is aiming to start production of these more affordable vehicles as soon as later this year.
Currently Tesla only uses single piece front and rear castings on the Model Y and the Cybertruck, suggesting the first “more affordable” vehicle could be based on the Model Y, possibly the highly anticipated “Project Juniper” refresh.
