Toyota gigacasting prototype cuts production from hours to minutes

It's not very surprising they are taking this route. It was reported earlier this year that they were having an epiphany after taking apart a Model Y which their engineer described as a work of art...

Toyota is all about efficiency and mass-production. Toyota makes close to 10 millions vehicules per year, that a new car every 3 seconds... There is probably no other alternative than following Tesla's steps to remain competitive in the EV world.

References: https://www.autonews.com/manufacturing/how-toyotas-new-ceo-k... https://www.carscoops.com/2023/03/toyota-rethinks-its-approa...

I think the most interesting part of the article is about the "self propelled manufacturing". It seems like once they have the chassis far enough along in production, they bolt on some wheels and have the car drive itself forward, instead of using a conveyor belt or other traditional method to move a vehicle along the production line!

I’m not sure of the details of this, but Tesla and Toyota were (maybe still are) “aligned”, which is a thing in Japanese culture. It wouldn’t surprise me that they have discussed this technology together at some level. The idea that Toyota suddenly “copied” Tesla with this gigacasting idea, complete with working prototypes, after a short news cycle is a ridiculous interpretation either way.

I don't really understand the hours argument. Every step takes at Max one cycle, once the line is running and all stations saturated, it's one car per cycle. Reduced complexity? Yes. Less flaws? Certainly. Less production costs. Absolutely. But time saved in a sequence of small tasks seems to be a bad metric.

Toyota new strategy "If Tesla is doing it, copy it".

Is it paywalled? I can only see what looks like part of the article only.