Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1717
Ideal Factory Changzhou Base is located in Wujin District, Changzhou City, Jiangsu Province. There is a lake in the center of Wujin District called “Gehu Lake”. Because it is adjacent to Taihu Lake in the east, the local people call it “West Taihu Lake”. Five kilometers to the east of “West Taihu Lake”, the production base of 400,000 ideal cars is located here.
In the field of automobile industry, Changzhou belongs to the largest automobile industry cluster in China – the Yangtze River Delta automobile cluster. Centered on SAIC, it has driven the development of a series of auto parts suppliers in the Yangtze River Delta. The surrounding cities of Shanghai also enjoy a complete automobile supporting industry chain, and the cost of manpower and land is lower than that of Shanghai, which attracts new energy OEMs to build factories in nearby cities. BYD and Ideal have built production bases in Changzhou, and battery factories Ningde Times, Honeycomb Energy, and Zhongxinhang also have factories in Changzhou.
When I came to Wujin District, on both sides of the road outside the gate on the back side of the ideal factory, I could see the trucks waiting to be loaded, parked at least three traffic light intersections. Each truck will be loaded with seven or eight ideal cars of different colors, and the trucks will be sent to all parts of the country to deliver the ideal cars to users. Entering June, about 150 fully loaded trucks leave the ideal factory every day, that is to say, at least 1,000 ideal cars roll off the factory every day.
“Later Auto” live shooting
Looking from the back door of the ideal factory, the first thing you see is the “parking lot” of this car company. Hundreds of ideal cars that have been tested are parked in the factory, waiting to be dispatched.
After the launch of the new platform of Ideal Auto, the production climbed rapidly. The three models of Ideal L7, L8, and L9 all delivered more than 10,000 in the first full delivery month. In addition to the factory production line, machinery and equipment, and worker proficiency involved in the ramp-up of the production capacity of new models, it is also necessary to adjust the rhythm with suppliers, climb up the ramp together, and make daily order planning. In the joint venture car factory, it will take about 4 months for the production of new models to climb to over 10,000.
From the outside, the ideal factory is the same as other automobile factories, divided into four workshops: stamping, welding, painting and final assembly. Ideal Factory covers a total area of 720,000 square meters, equivalent to the size of 100 standard football fields.
The outer body of the workshop is mainly white and gray. The assembly workshop is the largest, covering an area of 59,000 square meters, which is as large as 8.3 standard football fields.
Ideal CEO Li Xiang stated on his personal Weibo that the ideal factory currently has two production lines, one double shift and one single shift, with a peak production capacity of 7,500 units per week (6 days of production and 1 day of maintenance). Among them, the double-shift production line produces Ideal L9 and Ideal L8, and the single-shift production line produces L7 and Ideal L8. Ideal L8 can be balanced on the two production lines.
The ideal official said that the ideal factory can currently roll off a car in 80 seconds, and the fastest sprint can be 72 seconds. This means that the fastest speed in Changzhou is on the same level as the production efficiency of Model 3 in Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory.
Li Xiang also stated on Weibo that in the fourth quarter, both production lines will operate double shifts to achieve a weekly production of 10,000 units. By then, the ideal production takt will be even faster.
After revamping the production line in July last year, Tesla’s Shanghai Phase I plant’s Model 3 production line can reach a daily production capacity of 1,200 units, and the Phase II plant can produce 2,000 Model Y units per day, with a total annual production capacity of 1.1 million units. “Later Auto” learned that Tesla’s second-phase factory that produces Model Y has 5 total production lines, and it can currently take less than 40 seconds to roll off a car. This is the fastest production workshop in the world.
Except for Ideal’s first pure electric car “MEGA” at the end of the year, Ideal will no longer release new cars this year. With the L9, L8, and L7 three models of more than 300,000 cars, Ideal will sprint the sales of 30,000 units in June. Judging from the sales volume announced by Ideal, in the first 11 days of June, Ideal has sold 11,900 units. Combined with the factory Ideal can easily exceed this goal due to the production situation.
OEMs place orders with suppliers as they are needed, and only a few hours of parts inventory is stored in the factory. In the warehouse behind the ideal factory, trucks line up here to unload parts. Parts enter the production line, and it takes 25 hours in the ideal factory to complete a complete vehicle off the assembly line through the four major workshops of stamping, welding, painting, and final assembly.
The die-casting machine in the stamping shop works like a banknote printing machine, pressing steel and aluminum raw materials into the shell required for the body. Ideal has two press lines, one of which is developed in cooperation with Jinan No. 2 Machinery Factory, which can achieve 15 punches per minute.
The welding workshop has the highest automation rate, and the connection processes such as spot welding and self-piercing riveting can almost reach 100%. In the welding workshop, thousands of welding robots are flying their arms, and sparks are flying everywhere. On a single work station, 10 welding robots can work simultaneously to complete 94 welding points in 72 seconds.
The ideal assembly workshop is divided into the first area and the second area. The final assembly in the first area is the original Ideal ONE production line that is being refitted, and the new ideal L6 that will be released next year will be produced here. On the production line of the assembly workshop in the second area, three models of L7, L8, and L9 are being produced in full swing. After three processes of stamping, welding and painting, the car body comes to the final assembly workshop, where thousands of parts must be assembled into one car according to the quality and process requirements.
The machines that produce smart machines must also become smarter. Intelligence and digitization are another aspect of an ideal factory. Ideal self-developed a manufacturing data algorithm system – Lianshan platform. Hundreds of millions of manufacturing data are uploaded and analyzed every day, and real-time monitoring and intelligent early warning of key manufacturing processes and equipment such as body precision, solder joint quality, paint film thickness, and torque quality are carried out.
There are 564 workstations in the ideal assembly workshop, and each production workstation has a workstation integrated machine, which is the terminal kanban of Li-Mos, which can realize the visualization of data monitoring. The all-in-one workstation can simplify and clarify the work of production personnel. For example, there are 4 bolts that need to be tightened at the installation station of a fuel tank. If the system detects that any bolts are not qualified, the integrated machine of the station will display it immediately. If the production personnel do not deal with it in time, the production line will be forced to stop after 6 meters. Through the display screen, production personnel can also ask the production monitor for help in time. In the ramp-up of production capacity, the all-in-one workstation can realize precise assembly and automatic error-proofing and verification in the automobile manufacturing process, reduce human errors and improve productivity.
Li-Mos is an ideal factory management system that can run through the entire factory operation process. Managers can see everything from a tire entering the factory to an ideal car leaving the factory.
Ideal production line workers look young and in good spirits overall. A small number of women can also be seen on the production line of Ideal Factory. They are active in the inspection stations of final assembly and welding. According to “Later Auto”, the treatment of workers in the ideal factory is better than that of traditional OEMs, and it is second only to the Tesla factory in China.
In order to improve supply chain security, Ideal promotes more auto parts suppliers to build factories in Changzhou. Huixiang Factory has established a 600,000-capacity factory in Changzhou to produce five-in-one drive systems and three-in-one 800V high-voltage motors required for future pure electric vehicles.
Behind the rise of new energy is the decline of fuel vehicles. In May, the penetration rate of new energy passenger vehicles has reached 33.7%. A local car-hailing driver in Changzhou told “Later Auto” that he works in an engine manufacturing plant and his main customers are Volkswagen and Toyota. However, this year’s orders have been cut in half.
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