In an interview with Bloomberg in 2011, Musk once said: "One thing surprised me. When comparing the prices of Model S suppliers, we found that Chinese parts are not cheaper, and are even cheaper than those produced locally in California. It’s even more expensive. I thought many parts of the Model S were produced in China, but in fact almost none of them came from China, which surprised me.”
When "Tefan" checked this interview, he was quite surprised. Surprised. Because of its different structure, Tesla has much fewer parts than traditional internal combustion locomotives, but the number has reached thousands. Its production areas include Germany, the United States, Brazil and Japan, but it is missing the manufacturing of our Yangyang Tianchao?
"Special Fan" discovered that Tesla's first Roadster is actually closely related to Chinese manufacturers. 25% of its parts are made in Taiwan, including the battery and motor.
When Tesla was preparing to produce the Roadster, it was still unknown. The entire company had less than 60 people. It had no scale, no funds, and it was not as famous as it is now. As a small, unknown, hand-crafted workshop, Big suppliers simply ignore them. J B Strubal, the co-founder of Tesla, also tried to visit many suppliers in Europe, America, Japan and South Korea, but in the end he failed.
In desperation, J B Strubal came to Taiwan to seek cooperation, but the big manufacturers in Taiwan had no interest in Tesla. In the end, J B Strubal had to turn his attention to some small factories in Taiwan, and Foton Company in Taichung was one of them.
One of the core components of Tesla Roadster - the motor - is produced by Foton Company. Foton Company is indeed a small factory with only 80 people, but it has considerable technical accumulation in motor manufacturing. In this way, Foton became Tesla's first Taiwanese supplier.
During the cooperation with Tesla, Foton has also greatly improved its motor manufacturing technology by leveraging Tesla's technical advantages - changing the material used to manufacture the motor rotor from aluminum to copper to make it conductive. The efficiency is increased by 40%, while the weight is reduced by 80%, which greatly improves the motor efficiency.
There is a reason why major manufacturers are unwilling to take orders from Tesla - at that time, Tesla's production was extremely limited and there was very little capital, so there was not much profit at all in cooperating with Tesla.
For example, BizLink produces battery cables for Tesla. BizLink started cooperating with Tesla as early as 2006. At that time, Tesla’s monthly orders were less than 20,000 US dollars, or even zero. , BizLink sometimes cannot even recoup the cost of investing in equipment.
But in 2009, Tesla closed its factory in Guishan, Taiwan, and began to evacuate from Taiwan. One of the reasons for this was to obtain a US$460 million loan from the US government, and Tesla moved its production lines to the United States. Domestic to create more jobs in the United States.
Another very important reason is that Tesla began to mass-produce Model S models. The previous Roadster produced a total of more than 2,400 vehicles, so some people say that the Roaster is a hand-made model. Large-scale production has led to a series of Changes occurred, and Taiwanese manufacturers did not have large-scale production capabilities, so Tesla left.
In addition to the above reasons, according to the analysis of "Special Fans", there are other more important factors:
Although the Roaster is the first electric car that can go on the highway, and its performance is not inferior to that of internal combustion cars, it is still Transformed on the basis of Lotus cars, many structures still have the imprint of internal combustion cars; and the Tesla Model S is the first model to be completely designed as an electric vehicle from the beginning, so its structure is very different from traditional internal combustion vehicles. As a result, many of its parts are unique and need to be continuously modified during the production process. Adjustment and design are also the reasons why Tesla decided to build a factory in California and improve the level of integrated production.
But many parts of Tesla Model S still need to be purchased or customized from around the world, so why are there no parts produced in China? Is it true, as Musk said, that parts produced in China are more expensive than those produced in California?
Musk later analyzed the reason and said that when Chinese parts are shipped to the United States, there will be tariffs and freight. All these factors added up, the price of Chinese parts is about 10% to 20% higher. It is not worth it at all if it is so expensive. The price is advantageous. Therefore, not a single part of the Model S comes from China, and the fault is not that it is made in China. It’s not necessarily that the quality of Chinese manufacturing is not good. In fact, China’s manufacturing quality is still poor. However, as labor costs have increased over the years, the price advantage has indeed become less obvious.
No wonder in 2014, Musk said that he would build a factory in China in the future to realize localized production of Tesla and bring down the price of Tesla. The day of "Tesla Made in China" may not be far away.
