> Tesla were early adopters by making use of them, but not innovators.

There are two versions of the Gigapress history going around. In one version the idea came to the Idra CEO in a dream, while in the other version Elon gave multiple die casting manufacturers a call and got a hard no from everyone, expect for Idra who gave him a ‘maybe’.

Whichever it it is not that important in my view. What is undisputed is that Tesla put their money where their mouth is and took a real money bet on this new unproven technology early on. That is as much innovation as actually coming up with the machine and idea yourself.

Edit: to add to my point about innovation, from what I understand, no car company has ever used die casted parts in structural components due to concerns about internal stresses resulting from the die cast process. Normally this requires expensive post treatments but Tesla developed a custom alloy that makes this post treatment unnecessary. I am a bit light on details; someone with a metallurgy or structural engineering background pls chime in.

As I understand it Idra already had the idea for large presses and understood their potential. The demands Tesla had may still have been difficult to realize. Consequently the stories are in some sense reconcilable.

Structural die-casting has been a trend in the automotive industry, having started before the Gigapress. One article on this, from 2018, is https://www.spotlightmetal.com/opportunities-for-die-casting... and in that you see an analysis of the economic benefits, even though it's an article for public consumption.

The article itself, back in 2018, mentions cars already using structural die-casting and basically forecasts structural die-casting becoming a more typical manufacturing method.

Tesla specifically came to them and asked them to developed a machine to their specifications, financed and developed the product and they are getting virtually all the machines the company can produce.

Also its a part of company from China operating in Italy.

These machines are also continuously improved in prosecution at Tesla and that knowlage is flowing back to the company. The machines deployed in Texas are already an improvement over those in California. There is a lot around the core machine that needs to be improved as well.

It's an Italian company that was very recently bought by a Chinese company.

My understanding is that they saw the usefulness of these machines quite early and were developing them in this direction and that they had already produced 4000 tonne presses of this general type. Now it's at 6000 and 8000 tonnes.

Customers are needed to make use of good ideas-- you can't take them otherwise, but the innovation is the work the Italians did.

Yeah that company had no other costumers that were considering 6000+ machines. Tesla put down the money and the internal engineering to prove out that using huge casting as a structural member for the car was viable and then worked with a supplier to design the exact machines they needed.

Machines that like still wouldn't exist today had Tesla not done the necessary investment.

There is the machine and then the application of the machine to an actual production process.

Tesla may also be unique in having a strong need for machines of this kind, which in a way, attempt to avoid assembling of complex metal parts. If the other manufacturers have that down, then their need for very large components of this kind is lower.

It's like Germany and its heavy presses, during WWII. Lack of manpower, or in this case, something else that is wrong, leads to an player going for the most complete realization of that is easier and has major advantages.

> Tesla may also be unique in having a strong need for machines of this kind

All other car companies?

> If the other manufacturers have that down, then their need for very large components of this kind is lower.

This is not how this works. Tesla also 'has it down' with the Model 3 manufacturing line.

Its still lower CAPX and lower OPEX to use gigapress.

This is a large part why even the former CEO of VW said they were behind in some ways.

>This is not how this works. Tesla also 'has it down' with the Model 3 manufacturing line.

Yes, but at the time when they went after these presses as the thing for the future, they didn't quite have it down.

>Its still lower CAPX and lower OPEX to use gigapress.

Now, probably, yes.