Tesla CEO Elon Musk has attended the company's Q2 2022 earnings call yesterday and made some interesting comments regarding manufacturing improvements for future models.
In his opening remarks, Musk mentioned the new manufacturing improvements that are currently implemented at Tesla's new Berlin and Austin plants.
"We made a lot of advancements in manufacturing processes. As we now show in the Shareholder Deck, thanks to the large castings, we make the world's largest castings, we reduced body welding robot count by 70 percent per unit of capacity in Austin and Berlin."
As a result, Musk said the body shop is roughly three times smaller than it would normally be the case and the vehicle bodies are lighter, cheaper and have superior noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) ratings. "It's good on every level," he added.
The CEO also said that the simplification of manufacturing processes will take another step forward with the Tesla Cybertruck and other future production models.
Gallery: Tesla Cybertruck
"We'll bring a whole new level of simplicity and manufacturing improvements with Cybertruck and future products that we're not quite ready to talk about now, but I think will be very exciting to unveil in the future."
While Musk did not detail the manufacturing improvements that are in store for the Cybertruck and future models, it's good to hear that Tesla is working on that. He didn't go into details about the future models either.
It's somewhat surprising to hear Elon Musk talk about future products after he said in January that Tesla would not be developing any new products in 2022 and would push the start of production for the Cybertruck—and likely the Semi as well—to 2023. During the Q2 2022 earnings call, Musk said the Cybertruck would enter production in mid-2023 and might actually be Tesla's "best product ever."
When he talks about future products, he obviously means other models than the Cybertruck pickup and Semi Class 8 electric truck, which are yet to be released on the market. There has been plenty of talk about Tesla developing an entry-level model in China that would cost around $25,000, but Musk said in January that the automaker was not working on that car "at the moment" as it had "too much on its plate."
For more comments from Elon Musk and other Tesla executives, you can listen to the entire Q2 2022 earnings call in the recording embedded at the top of this page.
