They Tried to Stop This Factory… Now It’s at 750k

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Hi everyone, welcome to Tesla Jigsaw.

[00:00:02]Before we dive into the latest mind-blowing advancements in Tesla safety, today we're celebrating a huge milestone. Gigab Berlin has now built 750,000 Model Y since production began, including mine. That's an incredible achievement in just a few years. This factory is a beast. They've transformed 130,000 tons of steel and aluminium into cars. 800 robots have carried out billions of welds and jobs, and nearly 11,000 workers across stamping, paint, cells, and assembly are powering one of Europe's biggest EV success stories.

[00:00:35]From battling far-left eco terrorists who even set fire to high voltage pylons and try to shut it down to proving the naysayers wrong about building a Tesla factory in the heart of German auto country. It's been a wild ride, but it's the people who make this factory truly special. In this clip, the actual team on the floor walks you through what it takes, the logistics, the precision, the scale, and the pride. And they're not stopping. Tesla is scaling production with another 20% new shifts and hiring more talent right now. Take a look inside Giga Berlin.

[00:01:08]750,000 Model Y, all built right here.

[00:01:12]But what does it actually take to get there?

[00:01:18]We are the casting pirates. We melted down 95,000 tons of aluminum to make a rear underbody for every single car.

[00:01:26]Right behind me, you can see our stamping shop and die air where we maintain 75 dice. Since we started, we produced over 10 million parts and consume 130,000 tons of steel and aluminium.

[00:01:40]750,000 cars built in Berlin. For us in body shop, that means 800 robots made over 2 billion wells.

[00:01:49]The most advanced paint job in the world. Up to seven layers over hundreds of robots applying the paint and checked by humans. Every drop of water recycled over 750,000 cars built in Giga Berlin.

[00:02:02]That requires over 1 million drive units >> and our own cells. Let's just say that we are building a lot more than drive units too.

[00:02:11]We are material handling and we deliver more than 10 million pallets, close to 1 billion parts since we started production of the best car in the world.

[00:02:26]This is the final check.

[00:02:29]Then it drives itself out already 150,000 kilometers on FSD right here on site.

[00:02:41]So 750,000 is not the real number.

[00:02:45]Nearly 11,000 is the number. Nearly 11,000 people showing up every day and delivering 750,000 cars. That was yesterday. We aren't stopping there. We go plus one every day and have a blast doing it. We're ramping 20% new shifts, new jobs. So, are you ready to get in the game?

[00:03:09]>> Did you catch the hint of what's to come from Ardian? When mentioning cells, he said, "Let's just say we'll be building more than just drive units soon." That's Tesla speak for Gigab Berlin ramping up in-house 4680 battery cell production.

[00:03:22]Right now, they're already assembling some packs with Tesla made 4680 cells shipped from Texas. But starting in 2027, the plan is to fire up aiming for up to 8 gatt hours of annual capacity.

[00:03:34]Tesla is pouring nearly another €100 million into it, bringing the total cell investment at the site close to€1 billion. So they can go full cell to car under one roof. That means cheaper, more efficient Model Y built entirely in Europe with deeper vertical integration, stronger supply chains, and even more pride for the team on the floor. How cool it must be dedicating your time on Earth working for a company that is making a huge impact on the world. Let alone be able to watch raw materials in at one end of the factory and self-driving robots on wheels leave the other end. What was it? 150,000 km of full self-driving data right there on site. But Tesla aren't just scaling hardware. They're pushing the edge on softwaredefined safety, too. Consider for a moment the fleet of Teslas around the world, over 9 million and growing fast. They are all about to or possibly have already received yet another over-the-air software update. This time improving on a safety feature that other German manufacturers could only dream of doing. Check this out.

[00:04:37]>> 70 milliseconds is like a blink of an eye. With the vision system, we're looking at up to 70 milliseconds earlier airbag deployment decisions. But that can be the difference between a serious injury and walking away from an incident.

[00:04:50]We've been able to utilize a new capability of Tesla vision supplementing our existing restraint system. So the way the system works is we've got cameras around the vehicle. So if we had a car accident where two vehicles are coming towards each other. The camera in the Tesla is watching that vehicle and can identify exactly when contact's going to be made and how severe the crash will be. That information is then passed through to the airbag controller.

[00:05:14]By passing that information across, we can rely on the impact sensors here, here, and here on this vehicle. We're still using impact sensors to detect crashes. We're just supplementing our decisions by using information from the vision system. This is going to roll out as a software update to existing vehicles. Tesla customers will wake up tomorrow morning, get a software update, and they'll have this new feature that makes their car significantly safer.

[00:05:39]This is something outside the bounds of the five-star safety ratings.

[00:05:43]milliseconds matter.

[00:05:45]>> Whilst other German manufacturers do have strong pre-crash occupant protection systems like Mercedes pre-safe or BMW's active protection and Audi preense using radar cameras and sensors to tighten seat belts, adjust seats and prepare the cabin seconds before impact. And they'll slowly expanding overtheair software updates.

[00:06:06]They haven't demonstrated this pure camera vision plus AI predictive airbag timing via overtheair at fleet scale like Tesla. Most cars on the road today offer nothing like this at all. It's a real Tesla advantage in softwaredefined safety. Going back to these dots, Wes Moral, the Cybertruck lead engineer and reliability test and analyst for Tesla vehicles posts, "Every one of these dots is an actual crash from the fleet. real world speeds, collisions, and people, not just the regulatory test cases. The richness of this data is what enabled the result. With simulation, we can replay the crashes and measure the forces on the human body model, then sweep through restraint deployment times to find that deploying earlier gives the time for the bag to inflate optimally and seat belt pre-tension before the occupant has moved out of position. But it takes time for crash accelerometers to be certain. That's the crash sensors built into the front. Lowering that time threshold risks unwanted deployments.

[00:07:06]Using vision gives the vehicle confidence to reduce that timing. The camera sees the impendent impact and together with the sensors tell the restraint controller to reduce the filter and act sooner. The yaxis shift in predicted injury severity is based on sensors in the human body models from rerunning the crash simulations with the faster detection threshold. Such a reduction in injury severity across the spectrum is unheard of, let alone doing this via an overtheair update. I'm extremely proud of the analysis team's work and dedication, going above and beyond to ask, "We have the safest cars on the road, but can we make it even safer?" And then working with the vision team to build the predictions needed to make it happen. Rigorously tested in simulation and then physical crash testing now deployed and improving lives. I watch the video on loop and just imagine each dot a person. Let's make this graph super easy to understand. Every single dot you see is a real crash that actually happened to a Tesla owner on the road. Real speeds, real impact, real people inside. Not lab tests, not simulations, just genuine fleet data. The gray dots show what the injury risk would be the old way. The car waits until its accelerometers physically feel the crash, then fires the airbags and tightens the seat belts.

[00:08:24]By then, your body has already started moving forward, so the protection isn't quite ready. The red dots show the new Tesla vision way. The cameras see the crash coming in earlier, so the car deploys everything sooner. That tiny bit of extra time lets the airbags fully inflate, and the seat belts get nice and tight before your body slams into them.

[00:08:43]It's the difference shown here with the head on the left hitting the steering wheel versus the one on the right hitting an airbag. That's why the whole group of red dots has shifted way down on the graph. Lower means much less severe forces on your head, chest, and the rest of your body. Tesla took all these real crashes, replayed them in detail computer models with human bodies inside, checked it in real crash labs, and now pushes the improvements to every car over the air. No new hardware, just smarter software, making already safe cars even safer. Tesla fans might remember this wild stunt, a Model 3 driven straight off a cliff with the surprise airbags deploying midair, just like in a recent Cybertruck rollover test. I was surprised to discover though that rollover activated side curtain airbags aren't new. They've been standard on many vehicles since around 2002. Since we're here, though, I suppose you'd like to see what happens when it lands.

[00:09:54]Well, the car gets completely destroyed on impact, but the battery didn't catch fire or explode as some people might expect. This is real EV safety in action. Tesla's structural design and battery protection doing exactly what they're engineered for, versus, of course, the Hollywood myth of all cars turning into giant fireballs. Those dramatic petrol tank explosions you see in the movies are almost pure fiction.

[00:10:18]But there is, of course, the issue of car fires. In reality, according to US data analyzed from the National Transportation Safety Board, internal combustion engine cars are dramatically more likely to catch fire after a crash.

[00:10:30]roughly 1,530 fires per 100,000 gasoline vehicles versus just 25 per 100,000 for EVs, making Teslas up to 60 times less likely to burn. These stunts simply prove what the data and over-the-air software updates already show. Teslas are built exceptionally tough from the ground up.

[00:10:52]From 750,000 Model Y's rolling out of Giga Berlin with real European pride and soon packed with locally made 4680 cells to a single over-the-air update that will literally save more lives on the road. This is what happens when one company obsesses over both the physical factory floor and the digital brain inside every vehicle. Tesla isn't just building cars. They're redefining what's possible in manufacturing, energy, and safety. And the best part, every owner is along for the ride, getting safer, smarter vehicles, hopefully soon delivered straight to their driveways.

[00:11:25]If you enjoy following Tesla's journey into the future as much as I do, chuck us a like, subscribe to the channel, and support me over at patreon.com/tesla jigsaw. It really helps me keep covering this stuff in depth. I also have a merch store with some cool new t-shirt designs like Tesla vision, hopium, and lighter.

[00:11:42]If you know, you know. Links in the description below. I'm Will. This is the Tesla Jigsaw. Thank you, Patreons.

[00:11:47]Thanks for watching. Bye for