Insiders describe a world of chaos and waste at Panasonic's massive battery making operation for Tesla by lopezlinette
Current and former employees at Panasonic's battery making operation inside Tesla's Gigafactory say that it is a chaotic environment where standard operating procedures often go ignored and there's half a million pieces of scrap a day generated.
"I do not think that Tesla knows everything [that goes on on Panasonic's side]," said one former employee who left the company late last year."It's impossible to know everything. If Elon Musk was to know what was truly going on, he would flip his lid." "Panasonic produces the most advanced electric vehicle battery cells because we pay exceptional attention to quality," it said."Our quality-control protocols are industry standards and include cleanroom environments and laboratory-like working conditions. The battery cells go through several testing gates before they are released to Tesla, and Tesla separately tests the cells after delivery.
The shrapnel wouldn't have to be very big at all either — a millimeter or half a millimeter — and it could be thin, width of a human hair or less, Less said. Conceivably, if the piece was long enough to pierce the separator"Having pieces of metal in your mix could cause real performance issues not mention damage your equipment," Less said.
One current employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution told Business Insider they were concerned that Panasonic hadn't correctly pinpointed when the spill started.Mark Ellis, a senior associate at manufacturing consultancy Munro and Associates, said that an oil spill like this one would upset him"tremendously" because all the product would be an"automatic scrap.
A Tesla spokesperson said that it conducts multiple tests on battery cells once they're received from Panasonic, and that cells that don't make the cut are sent back to Panasonic.
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