Featured Porsche Taycan Electric Sports car assembly.

Below is a link to a youtube video of the assembly line for the Porsche Taycan AWD electric sports car. The video is about 28 minutes long. One version is around 670 hp and it's 0-60 time is 2.7 seconds. A little faster than our Prius but then you would have to dig considerably more change out from under the couch cushions to buy one of them.

I can detail some of what you see but I have been retired for 15 years so some of the process may have changed.

They don't show the stamping department that forms all the required panels with presses.

They begin in the weld department where automation is used to spot weld panels to the body. These are called white bodies at this point as they are unpainted. The parts and bodies can't sit more than a couple days before rusting begins. Next is inspection and the bodies are wiped down with tack rags before they are painted.

The first step is primer. The bodies are primered using an e-coat (electrically coated) dip tank. This is a water base paint. They use about 400 volts at 400 D.C. amps with one electrode connected to the car body and the second electrode connected to the tank. The paint migrates to any uncoated surface and is electrically bonded to the body. The current drops off as the surfaces are coated. E-coat is why cars don't rust as quickly as they used to and not everyone uses it. The bodies would go to an oven once it has left the dip tank.

Next stop in the paint shop. The paint booths have to be maintained at 75 degrees and 75% relative humidity so it is balmy in them. First is the color coat. Most of the paint shop robot guns are electrostatic where a 80kv static charge is built up between the gun and the car body so there is little paint overspray. The color coat is also water based. Once it has been color coated it has to go to an oven to dry that paint. It is usually an infared oven that they attempt to get the body to reach 200 degrees. Any higher and the waterborne paint would boil. Then the body is off to a clear coat booth.

Clear coat is or used to be solvent based because they couldn't get enough gloss from water based paints. Once the clear coat is applied, the body goes into another oven to dry. This oven is a tunnel, think car wash, heated to about 350 degrees. It is about 1/4 mile long. It us usually U shaped so that both the entrance and exit face the same way so that a draft will not push air through the tunnel. The fumes are drawn off the solvent based clear coat paint as if flashes off into an incinerator that actually provides most of the heat for that oven once the line is started. The bodies move slowly through and the paint is cured. Paint is the #1 complaint of new cars.

The bodies then go to inspection. The video then switches to the electric motor assembly and finally to body assembly.

Once the car is completed, it goes onto the dyno and then final inspection. Quite a factory and not very many workers.

One version is around 670 hp and it's 0-60 time is 2.7 seconds. A little faster than our Prius but then you would have to dig considerably more change out from under the couch cushions to buy one of them.

 

I spent years installing equipment in automobile plants and I posted this video because it is typical of how any car whether a Yaris or a Taycan goes from sheet steel to an automobile. I thought that there may be an interest in seeing how that is accomplished. I can't afford a Taycan but I can appreciate the engineering in that plant.

I guess that a blue collar guy who drives a 3/4 ton 4WD truck with a big V8 as a daily driver could be considered in the same category of destroying the planet and there are so many more of them why pick on the rich guy with an electric sports car.

Life is so short it would be nice if we got through it with as few regrets as possible.

 

Yes. I spent 8 months at Honda when they built a new plant. We designed, built, programmed and installed $42 million dollars worth of automation in the paint shop. At the peak of the job, we had mechanics installing equipment everywhere and 165 electricians running pipe, pulling wire and making terminations. It was like an anthill. During construction, it is a dirtier and more dangerous place because of the welding, burning, grinding etc.

As the job approaches completion, there are cleaners everywhere, staircases replace our ladders, handrails pop up everywhere and then everything you touch seems like it has just been painted five minutes earlier.

Of course the automation 15 years ago wasn't as sophisticated as what you see in the Porsche plant because of changing regulations and technological advances.

We built the paint shop and another company built the weld shop. The paint shop robots aren't as sophisticated as those in the weld shop as you could see from that video. In the paint shop, robots are non contact. They follow profiles above the body whereas the weld robots have to place each component precisely and then weld it in place. Spot welding all those pieces to make a car body is something else.

Every 3 years or so, there is a new model changeover. For a couple months before the introduction of the new model, we would arrive on Friday night, install any mechanical changes required for the new body style and backup the current PLC program and download the revised programs and test to make sure the new hardware/software works. Then on Sunday evening, we would change back to the original hardware and dump the original program back in so they could continue with the current model build on Monday morning. On the weekend prior to the new model, we changed everything over so that on "day one", the new model build begins without a hitch. We are still on site for a few weeks after new model to make small adjustments.

After spending months putting one of these lines together, watching them operate is "like poetry in motion".

 

As far as the paint department, there were two main paint lines referred to as Topcoat 1 and Topcoat 2. Once the cars came out of the ovens for those lines there were inspections. If any paint flaws were discovered there were several repair booths and ovens where they could be sanded and then repainted before being sent forward to assembly.

I saw 50 completed Accords behind the stamping department one day. I asked the engineer that was escorting me why they were there. The process is when they find a problem with a car, they quarantine 25 cars ahead of and 25 cars behind the problem vehicle and they keep a close watch for that problem for the rest of the run. He walked up to one at the beginning of the line and there was documentation with it.

The documentation stated that there was a twist in the right door pillar. A twist is when you form (stamp) a piece of metal and it is stretched or bent to the point that the surface becomes rough possibly on the verge of tearing. Their dies and the sheet metal their supplier provided were tested together and worked fine so this was probably a flaw in a section of a single coil of steel. The problem should have been caught in stamping department inspection but it somehow was missed. There would be feedback to stamping about this flaw so they can improve their inspection procedures.

After the car was completed, the final inspection caught this because it is more visible once the car has been painted and the metal is glossy.

Mike pointed out the rough texture of the metal in the top corner near the windshield to me. I could barely see the flaw and asked "you're going to quarantine 50 cars for that". He said the company that sold us that coil of steel will be buying those cars. He said every vendor that sells us components is responsible for their quality.

The four departments stamping, weld, paint, assembly rely on the previous department to provide a quality component. Each of those four departments had signs over their doors "Who is my customer". Weld is stampings customer etc.