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Comment by Odenwaelder | Hacker News Reader

How do you decide on which brand of robots to use? I remember seeing videos from the Model S production line having only KUKA robots, but for the Model 3, I only see FANUC.

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I know how TESLA decides . . . .. they bought Grohmann Engineering, a German firm that specializes in automated manufacturing.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/8/13561146/tesla-acquisitio...

Grohmann doesn't build robots.

Does anyone know approx. how much one of these costs? https://www.fanucamerica.com/home/products-services/robots/f...

"List prices for FANUC’s most common robots vary from $25,000 for the simplest, least expensive M1iA, 4 axis “spider” robot with .5kg capacity to the M2000/1200 6 axis robot with 1200kg capacity topping out at over $400,000 list price."

Here's quite a funky one on ebay https://www.ebay.com/itm/Fanuc-R-2000iB-210F-Robotic-w-Servo...

The robots often are sold as a lease or payment plan, so typically the big robot vendors try to win big accounts where they will outfit many things and essentially they pay a monthly fee that includes access to have the robot vendor come out and tune things up for you.

> the big robot vendors

I feel that I have been embracing the future my whole life, yet I was not quite prepared for that phrase in regular use.

This isn't exactly new, Unimation was already selling a bunch of robots to the auto industry in the 1960s.

a fairly standard industrial welding cell like a Panasonic 750 is between $85 to 125 thousand dollars per unit, which includes robot arm, welding power supply, turntable, chassis that is it mounted to, and the transformer to power it. Requires 240V 3ph 60A service.

http://www.insrobotics.com/panasonic-robotic-parts-repair/Pa...

Source: I own two. They kick ass, and make more stuff that you would believe is possible in a day.

What does one do with just two manufacturing robots?

What do you make?

I guess whoever offers better pricing, support, timelines etc

Given how fast they were trying to ramp up production I wouldn't be surprised if they had to buy robots from multiple vendors becauase no single vendor was capable of building and installing the 2,000 robot arms he needed to hit that 5,000 car/week in 2 months target.

The bottleneck is not so much with robot manufacturers, but actually with the software implementation. There are software consultancies who will program the robot arms per Tesla specs.

With Tesla being focused on doing things in-house, shouldn't those be employees?

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