A Look Inside the Paint Shop of Tesla Gigafactory in Shanghai

Date: 04/11/2021

Tesla Shanghai has released a rare video that shows its completely automated paint shop and reveals Tesla’s focus on paint, which has increased since talk about Giga Berlin’s advanced paint shop started.

Tesla released a short video which shows the step-by-step automated painting process that all Made in China Tesla vehicles go through at the company’s Gigafactory in Shanghai.

The clip shows that most of the painting process is automated. The car body undergoes a rotational dip process, through which an anti-corrosive primer is applied by dipping the car body in an electrically conductive bath. The topcoat is then applied with fully automated robots that feature rotary atomizers with electrostatic technology.

The paint shop features advanced process technologies, including an exhaust gas centralized combustion system. The paints employed are VOC free. All this ensures that the coating process is highly efficient, energy-saving and environmentally friendly.

The footage also reveals some of the different colour options available to Tesla customers, including Tesla China’s Deep Sea Blue, China Red, Pearl White, Cold Light Silver and Pure Black colour options.

This video comes after a Tesla app update, which teased new colour options available for cars produced at Giga Berlin, similar to the ones seen in the Tesla China video. Moreover, in the months following Tesla’s announcement of the Gigafactory in Germany, Elon Musk teased about Giga Berlin’s advanced paint shop, stating that “Giga Berlin will have world’s most advanced paint shop, with more layers of stunning colours that subtly change with curvature”.

To build Giga Berlin’s paint shop, Tesla partnered with Geico Taikisha and it appears that the company plans to retrofit Giga Shanghai with Geico Taikisha machines once the technology has been tested at Giga Berlin.