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Originally Posted by ldjessee00
Even if Tesla's cost for materials and spreading the cost over a million cars (which they have not made yet) it comes to a $1000 each, that still does not account for all the TIME taken to let the paint dry/bake... and then again for the clear... That time has to be a huge delay when if you could skip it and with no other savings, the savings would be getting cars out faster.
Tesla does not have cars sitting in dealer lots (where most other cars are just picked from what is available). Tesla customers predominantly get their cars to order, so delays in manufacturing means delay in getting paid for all the material just spent to build that car.
Is that delay waiting for paint offset the additional cost for the stainless steel outerbody/frame? We will see in a couple of years.
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Skipping paint doesn't save any time. Cars are built in a continuous process. The body-in-white starts at one end of the line and a finished vehicle comes off the other end every few minutes. Once the line is full the number of stations doesn't change the build rate. An assembly line without paint would just be a little bit shorter.
It varies from plant to plant but you are looking at about 2-4 hours to build a car from when it starts the line at one end to when rolls off as a finished product on the other end. A car has about 30 man hours in the vehicle (Body in white, paint, and final assembly combined.)
Here is a pretty good video of the process. This is the Mercedes plant in Bremen, Germany. 400,000 vehicle per year, 12,500 employees, 11 different models. (All based on the MRA platform that underpins the C, E, GLC, and GLE.)