Gigacastings to Modular Structures

Huge die casting machines and the unboxed manufacturing process

2024/06/27

Table of contents

Summary
List of Gigacast adoption plans by automaker
Gigacastings to Modular Structures
Tesla
Geely (including Zeekr, Geely-Baidu and Volvo)
NIO (NIO, Inc.)
XPeng (Xiaopeng Motors)
Xiaomi
Huawei-AITO
Toyota
(Supplement) What is clamping force?

Summary

Tesla has announced that it can significantly reduce assembly costs by modularizing the car body based on large die-cast parts. This has prompted other automakers, who are now faced with the need to reduce the cost of EVs, to seriously consider gigacasting. However, the cost reduction effect has been limited for OEMs with legacy production facilities, and so it has been the emerging automakers who have taken the lead in adopting the technology.

This report summarizes trends and examples of the adoption or rejection of gigacasting by various automakers.

Large die-cast parts are called megacastings or gigacastings, but in this report there term "gigacasts" is used refer to the parts, except for those with registered trademarks. In JIS (Japanese Industrial Standards) terminology, diecast is written as die cast, and this report generally follows that same rule in terminology.


Tesla Inc. is ahead of its competitors in terms of both mass and quality in gigacasting technology. The Cybertruck uses castings made with a clamping force of 9,000 tons.	All automakers other than Tesla producing gigacast parts are based in China. The aluminum die-cast parts of the XPeng X9, which was released in January 2024, are shown in green.

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