Electrical automobiles consist of recent applied sciences to handle energy and transfer. However they’ve additionally opened the door to a promising manufacturing course of that helps obtain larger targets in weight financial savings and value discount.
Meet the giga press.
Automakers have had little to say concerning the new manufacturing facility course of to this point — presumably for aggressive causes. Tesla is now believed to be utilizing giga presses. So is Mercedes-Benz, and so will Volvo. Others will doubtless comply with.
The idea permits a producer to solid a single aluminum half that’s massive sufficient to switch 60 or extra separate elements, which beforehand needed to be individually solid and subassembled into the specified physique subsystem.
By utilizing the giga press, a producer saves about 40 % of its tooling funding, consumes about 30 % much less vitality and generates a completed half that’s 30 % lighter than an all-steel answer and about 10 % lighter than one that features a number of elements in aluminum.
The innovation is basically because of Riccardo Ferrario, COO of Idra, a small Italian die casting specialist. Ferrario coined the time period “giga press” in Might 2019 for the manufacturing method that Tesla was believed to be the primary to make use of and which Volvo plans to start out using by mid-decade.
Mercedes-Benz used the one-part casting methodology to kind the rear of the EQXX idea that it debuted at this 12 months’s CES in Las Vegas, and Chinese language automaker Nio can be within the expertise.
Ferrario wouldn’t verify whether or not Tesla is a buyer, however there may be detailed info on-line describing how the U.S. electrical automobile maker transformed a parking zone at its manufacturing facility in Fremont, Calif., to accommodate its first giga press in August 2020 to create the Mannequin Y’s rear underbody, in response to media reviews.
Ferrario revealed that Idra spent three years and slightly below $2 million to develop the giga press. However like many rule-breaking innovations, the primary giga press Idra introduced publicly, at an industrial commerce honest in Germany in 2019, was greeted with ridicule.
“All potential clients laughed on the concept, saying we might by no means make it work,” Ferrario mentioned in a videoconference with Automotive Information Europe from his workplace in Travagliato, Italy, east of Milan.
Undaunted, Idra’s 2019 product catalog included an merchandise generally known as OL 5500 CS, its first giga press. The quantity 5500 corresponds to the clamping drive of the press in metric tons. A 12 months later, manufacturing began on Idra’s first deliverable giga press.
Idra has now offered 22 giga presses. Seven are in operation, 5 are being put in at clients’ crops, and 10 others are in line for supply.
It is largely a distinction of scale.
Earlier than the introduction of the method, die casts utilizing as much as 4,000 tons of clamping drive have been in a position to create structural castings with a most of two cavities, usually known as shock towers.
By growing the clamping drive to six,100 tons, Idra created a press able to a multicavity casting, with as much as 4 shock towers in a single injection. In observe, the giga press can produce a rear underbody body in a single piece.
In November 2021, two years after the idea was laughed at, Idra held an open home in Travagliato that attracted 200 friends from world wide.
“After that day, we generated 21 nondisclosure agreements with potential clients, together with a number of automakers,” Ferrario mentioned.
Though Ferrario declined to talk of Tesla, trade insiders have mentioned that Tesla’s newly opened plant close to Berlin will use a number of Idra giga presses to create the entrance and rear underbody platform for the Mannequin Y crossover.
Ferrario mentioned {that a} one-shot casting of a entrance or rear platform from a giga press replaces myriad items and reduces weigh by 10 to 30 %, relying on the combination of metal and alloys utilized in a historically constructed platform.
Indra estimates {that a} giga press saves a buyer about 40 % in prices over conventional casting operations as a result of it will possibly change a collection of instruments and as much as 650 toes of robotized welding traces usually wanted to place collectively the person elements of a whole entrance or rear platform.
Trade insiders consider this might remove as much as 300 robots, which additionally helps an automaker scale back its vitality consumption. Manufacturing time is slashed as a result of it’s quicker to create a single casting than to supply the identical half by welding collectively as much as 60 items.
Idra estimates the brand new manufacturing method can ship three automobiles within the time it takes for one to be made utilizing right this moment’s typical processes.
“The entire above is transferring us towards a extra sustainable automobile manufacturing course of,” Ferrario mentioned.
In concept, Ferrario mentioned, the central platform is the subsequent piece that might come out of a giga press.
“However we don’t design automobiles,” he mentioned. “We design die casting gear for what the automakers require.”
He foresees the giga press getting used to make massive battery instances for full-electric automobiles. A subsequent step can be to incorporate the battery case within the central platform, making it a structural a part of the car.
A giga press might additionally solid a whole platform for a small battery-electric automobile.
“In China, we see a rising curiosity for minicars, concerning the dimension of the unique Good ForTwo,” he mentioned, “the place a 2.2-meter single-piece platform solid by a giga press might work effectively.”