Elon Musk during his visit to China’s Gigafactory said that “advanced manufacturing technologies will be released along the Model Y, which will also have advanced manufacturing technology that Tesla will reveal in the future . I think it will be exciting to show the type of manufacturing technology associated with the Model Y”.

These statements seem to confirm the revolutionary production methods that leaked some time ago. Thanks to them, the model Y will be much cheaper to manufacture than the Model 3 from which it is derived. One of the biggest novelties will be the replacement of much of the wiring with a flexible circuit (3 kilometers in the Model S and Model X; 1.5 kilometers in the Model 3; and just 100 meters in the Model Y.)

This rigid circuit will allow robots to handle components more easily. This will lead to a greater degree of automation during assembly. Apparently there will be a backbone wiring network to which subsystems will be connected that will encompass the control of various functions (for example, the subset of a door may have a controller that will handle the locking, lighting, audio systems …). This will result in a remarkable simplification, as well as a saving in materials.

The most surprising of these leaks, however, was the design of a large machine that would initially allow the Model Y monocoque to be built from a single piece of aluminun instead of having to use 70 different pieces of welded stamped steel each. This “unibody multidirectional” casting machine, consisting of a central hub and several die cutters, will reduce the amount of robots needed to manufacture a body and save time and money during the production of the model.