Production of the Tesla Model 3 was crippled by issues during its early months, but the electric sedan is now rolling out of Tesla’s Californian factory in consistent numbers.
As the Model 3 is Tesla’s first mass-production model, the company had to figure out how to build vehicles in huge numbers while simultaneously trying to fulfill hundreds of thousands of orders. This led to a number of mistakes, none more so than Tesla becoming over-reliant on robots as it tried to increase automation and speed up production.
With 2019 now upon us, it appears as though Tesla has solved all major issues and created a very efficient production line. The 48-second video below shows a red Model 3 passing through the production line and it certainly seems like quite a seamless setup.
Tesla still has its work cut out for it to meet demand for the Model 3.
The video doesn’t show every detail of the production process and misses out on elements including the paint shop. Instead, it focuses on the actual assembly of the vehicle and it does reveal some rather cool processes. What we found most interesting from the clip is a special robot arm that Tesla has developed with a seat on the end, allowing workers to sit down and move around the vehicle’s interior while doing important things such as running electrical cables.
The dashboard is put together early on during the assembly, and much to our surprise, comes pre-fitted with that massive central touchscreen. We would have imagined Tesla fitting the central screen later on, in order to avoid it getting damaged.
If you have a spare 48-seconds (let’s be honest, who doesn’t?), be sure to check out the clip.