A race is heating up to innovate production methods among global automakers as price becomes a key competitive factor amid slowing growth in the electric vehicle market.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently visited the company’s plant in Germany and declared that the company will build 25,000-euro electric vehicles, according to industry sources on Nov. 8. The average retail price of an electric car in Europe in the first half of this year is around 65,000 euros. Musk’s new electric car model, if released, will be about 60 percent lower than the average price.
The industry is paying much attention to die casting as the key to realizing Musk’s plan. Die casting is a process that involves melting metal into a metal mold to create a part under high pressure. It has been used to produce automobile parts and electronic devices among others.
Tesla is utilizing a “Gigacasting” method to make not only simple parts but the entire front and rear structures of its vehicles using a very large press with a pressure of 6,000 to 9,000 tons. The Model Y is being produced at the company’s California factory in the United States and Shanghai factory in China. The global EV giant claims to have reduced the production cost of its electric vehicles by 40 percent and weight by 30 percent with the Gigacasting method.
Other automakers, including Hyundai, Toyota, and Volvo, are also taking note of Tesla’s Gigacasting process.
Hyundai is preparing a similar technology called “Hypercasting.” It plans to apply the technology to volume production of electric vehicles starting from 2026. To do so, it plans to build a casting, machining, and assembly production plant in Korea.
Japan-based Toyota is also using this method for its EVs starting from 2026. Toyota plans to use Gigacasting for the front and rear chassis and aims to boost productivity by 20 percent compared to other companies. In the case of the rear chassis, workers put 86 separate parts together in 33 steps. But Gigacasting unifies them into a single part. Lexus, Toyota’s luxury car brand, also announced that its next-generation electric car scheduled for release in 2026, the LF-ZC, will be built through the Gigacasting method.
Volvo utilizes this process under the name “Megacasting.” By 2025, it will introduce the process at its Torslanda plant in Sweden where rear chassis components will be made using this method.