Why didn’t the traditional automakers come up with the"Giga Press" process years ago? Conservatism? Not willing to take risks? Technical challenges only solved recently?
My guess would be a mixture of all of those combined with the cost of retrofitting entire production lines vs retooling existing processes for updated models. Tesla built their factory from the ground up, so they had a massive capital investment regardless of whether they used traditional methods or “Giga Press” technology ™
Why didn’t the traditional automakers come up with the"Giga Press" process years ago? Conservatism? Not willing to take risks? Technical challenges only solved recently?
My guess would be a mixture of all of those combined with the cost of retrofitting entire production lines vs retooling existing processes for updated models. Tesla built their factory from the ground up, so they had a massive capital investment regardless of whether they used traditional methods or “Giga Press” technology ™
Probably technical challenges, technology development hadn’t made it possible yet, and very high cost of equipment.
Automakers only started using aluminum in the past few years.