First Tesla Model Y megacast made at Texas Gigafactory ahead of production run

Tesla has produced the first Model Y megacast at its Texas Gigafactory ahead of the start of production there. The megacast will accommodate the new structural battery pack technology that the carmaker unveiled at its Battery Day event last year. Electrek reported.

Casting expert Axel Turck shared an image of the first front-end megacast underbody of Model Y produced by Tesla on his LinkedIn account. In the image, casting engineers can be seen wearing hard caps with Tesla logo. He mentioned that the megacast was produced using a Idra casting machine. The piece, that weighs 130 kg, will be used in the production of the Model Y at the Texas Gigafcatory, which is expected to start by the end of the year, the report stated.

It also noted that Tesla is now producing megacast parts in such a way that it creates a new simple three-part vehicle platform. The giant casting parts are expected to eliminate the hassle of assembling small parts of vehicles and support Tesla's new battery technology. In the new battery architecture, the EV maker builds the entire battery pack as the structural platform of the vehicle while the battery cells helping solidify the platform as one big unit.

Using giant casting parts, it can then connect single-piece rear and front underbody to this structural battery pack. The new structure helps reduce the number of vehicle parts, the total mass of the battery pack, enabling Tesla to improve efficiency and also the range of its electric vehicles.

At its Texas Gigafactory, which is still under development, Tesla plans to primarily build the Model Y and Model 3 cars. It is also said to be one of the facilities where the EV manufacturer will build its Semi truck and the Cybertruck models in the future. Tesla's second facility in US after its California factory, should be up and running within a few months.