Tesla's Fremont Team at Giga Shanghai Building Model Y Lines and Retooling Kuka Robots

Fremont Model Y assembly engineering team in China building new lines

Taylor Ogan, a longtime fan of Tesla who founded the high tech, green tech hedge fund Snow Capital reports that during the factory shutdown in gigafactory 3 last week, the team of Model Y assembly engineers from Fremont are building new lines.

In terms of MIC Model Y, the Fremont Model Y assembly engineering team has been at GF3 during the factory ‘shut down’ last week building NEW Model Y lines (not retooling existing Model 3 lines, as many thought).— Taylor Ogan (@TaylorOgan) October 1, 2020

In addition, they have a team of German engineers that programmed the Kuka robots at gigafactory 1 and 2 to program the new robots at the Model Y lines.

Also, retooling for the new Kuka robots has already begun at GF3. The same German engineering team that programmed the Kukas at Fremont (and GF1 & GF2) worked alongside the Tesla Model Y assembly engineering team from Fremont during last week’s factory shut down. pic.twitter.com/fOE9SeRGqJ— Taylor Ogan (@TaylorOgan) October 1, 2020

This is important since Telsa is expected by some top analysts like Troy Teslike to begin production of the Made In China Model Y in the 4th quarter of this year.

Hi, everybody. My final estimate for Tesla deliveries in Q3 2020 is 143,051 units. Here is the detailed table. pic.twitter.com/e45AbSPcoB— Troy Teslike (@TroyTeslike) September 30, 2020

You can see in Troy's most recent forecast, he has Model Y production in China beginning in the 4th quarter and even a few (3,200) deliveries in the quarter. Tesla will open up their design studio and announce pricing for the Made In China (MIC) Model Y soon, but they are being careful not to do that too soon. They want to maximize the impact of their recent price cut to the MIC Model 3. They don't want to "Osbourne" the newly announced MIC Model 3's with slightly longer range and Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) batteries.

Paul Fosse is a Software Engineer delivering financial data marts using massively parallel databases (Exadata and GreenPlum) for a major healthcare insurer and a lifelong lover of cars. From the time I saw the 1972 Volkswagen Dasher review in Consumer Reports, I knew the industry would convert to front-wheel drive. Now I am excited to have a front-row seat to the industry's biggest transition in generations, the transition from gas and diesel cars to electric vehicles. I ordered my first EV (Nissan Leaf) in 2010 and now own a 2018 Tesla Long Range Model 3 and have a Cybertruck and a Model Y on order. Contact me on Twitter at Paul Fosse with tips for new stories. Full disclosure, I'm a Tesla Shareholder.

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