Why the future doesn’t look like the future.
This is due to a couple of reasons but the main one is part of the manufacturing process. Tooling! Tooling are the items of machinery that make the parts for whatever it is that you are manufacturing. These are very expensive and most of them now days our out of date and haven’t had any real technology developments or upgrades. We are still building cars the same way Henry Ford did over 100 years ago. A three story high machine press that stamps out car parts. Most cars are pretty much all the same under the skin. The BMW 3 series has a 15 year old chassis, the X1, X3, X5 all have the same chassis 10 years old. The C Class is pretty much the same car for the past 15 years, the list goes on.
The Audi Q7 has the same chassis as the two previous versions. The Volkswagen Touareg, Porsche Cayenne, Bentley Bentayga, Lamborghini Urus and Audi Q8 all have the same chassis as the Audi Q7 and all share similar parts.
Why is this! The short answer is if you want a completely newly designed car you have to basically build a whole new factory and have all new tooling which is very expensive. Especially if you don’t want to let down wall street with a couple of bad quarters due to you building new factory and ramping up production. You will have to close down your old factory and hopefully retrain your staff or have new staff all together. The same thing happened in Detroit with all the old abandoned car factories that were built in the 40’s and 50’s, they weren’t suited to making the new era of cars and had to be shut down.
So the current car manufacturers are basically making due with what they have, which isn’t ideal because if someone does start to aggressively start to modernises their factories and the way they build cars or build anything, then you are in a lot of trouble at being left behind. The is one company that is doing that.
Why do you think that SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is as wide as it is? Because that was the size of the wielding machine in the factory. Why do you think it is as long as you think it is ? because that is how long the factory is. You see the future isn’t looking like the future because of the limits imposed by tooling and factory size.
The current new rocket that SpaceX is building is called Starship, and they did not limit themselves by tooling or factory size. They basically built the rocket outside in the open and one only when they had the design to where they were happy. Then did they build the factory and tooling around the rocket not the other way round.
Tesla is the car company what is building cars in advanced and modern ways. They built their Mega factory in Huston that is 5 times the size of the pentagon in record time. The factory in China is even bigger. I would say they aren’t limited on factory size or space for new tooling for new products.
They also have a new injection casting technology, particularly its Giga Press, represents a significant advancement in automotive manufacturing. This technology utilizes high-pressure die casting to produce large, complex components of electric vehicles, primarily focusing on the underbody structures of models. The Giga Press injects molten aluminum into molds, allowing for the creation of large components in a single piece. This process can consolidate up to 70 individual parts into just two or three large castings. It is said that this one new machine removed 2000 robot arms off the assembly. They cost saving is amazing.
There are currently startups tackling this problem to modernise manufacturing, Roboforming is an innovative manufacturing technique that utilizes robotic systems to form sheet metal into complex shapes without the need for traditional hard tooling or molds. This method, also referred to as robotic sheet metal forming, leverages the flexibility and precision of robotic arms equipped with adaptive end-effectors to manipulate materials in a digitally controlled manner. To put it simply they can make a F35 frame in two days compared to the 2 year waiting time.
I believe that the future doesn’t look like the future because of tooling and the way we are currently manufacturing. Industry 4.0 is closer to us, we just need they current manufacturing industry to modernise and step up. We will see some legacy companies start to lose money or go under completely before this happens.
