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As you might imagine, this is already the case in places like Shenzhen - there's off the shelf “building blocks” for machines - not necessarily to any written standard, though. In this[1] Strange Parts video he mentions it. If you watch some of his other videos you'll start to notice that many of the machines actually look similar - I highly recommend watching them, they're great.

[1]: https://youtu.be/PZBQzLfCKpw?t=1019

⬐ blackrock

That video was incredible. The machines that makes the product, the lithium ion battery for your iPhone, is this super intricate process, that outputs the final product. And everything is made from the raw materials.

Now, this is what I call a true fabrication process.

⬐ 6nf

'Industrial lego' as some call it. Get all right bits and pieces, put them together and you have a production line. Every piece comes with detailed specifications, performance curves, maintenance instructions etc - which means an industrial part is more expensive than consumer grade stuff doing the same task. But when you're building a big machine you don't want unplanned downtime.

Battery supply was mentioned several times in the replies, but I have a hard time following the argument.

Building batteries seems to be a simple process, at least compared to building the rest of the car: https://youtu.be/PZBQzLfCKpw

As there is more demand, it seems straightforward to bring up Gigafactory-sized new assembly lines quickly.

⬐ koffiezet

You can build huge factories to build batteries, but getting the raw materials becomes tricky when one manufacturer secured the supplies for that way ahead of you, and you'll end up in second place.

⬐ w-m

I haven't heard about Tesla/Panasonic securing any raw materials years in advance. Would that even be economically sensible? There's lots of investment in R&D to try to reduce certain ingredients (cobalt), but for now it's probably a level playing field, everybody is in the same position in fighting to procure the raw materials.

⬐ jillesvangurp

It's a simple process conceptually but involves a lot of technology, some of which is patented, all of which involves access to a lot of lithium and other scarce materials and there's only so much of it on the market that isn't already locked up in contracts with people that got in early. And that's just the hardware; it involves software too. So no, it's neither simple nor a commodity.

It's still doable but just not in a hurry. Five years is not a lot of time to build this up from nothing. It took Tesla a decade plus to get where they are now.

A lot of manufacturers don't have the know-how, technology, factories, or access to raw material and are competing for contracts with the same sets of suppliers who are already shipping as fast as they can. The result is a lot of compliance and concept cars that were never even meant to be profitable and definitely not shipping in meaningful numbers because the manufacturer never planned to ship meaningful numbers and does not have the ability to fix that.