Tesla has announced that it will be buying Perbix, a private machining firm company, which produces automotive equipment for factories. according to a report from CNBC, Perbix has been a Tesla supplier for almost 3 years, but the acquisition can allow the car manufacturer to bring the production of more elements in-house. Tesla describes the deal as a further step with its long-term goal to “build the machine that makes the machine.”
The acquisition comes in the middle of a spell of bad news for Tesla production. Last week, the corporate reported a huge $619 million quarterly loss and said it’d not be able to meet its goal of manufacturing 5,000 Model three sedans per week in 2017. On Twitter, Tesla chief executive officer Elon Musk blamed the production issues on unspecified “bottlenecks,” with reports suggesting these might include a current reliance on hand-made parts.
Tesla Semi unveil now Nov 16. Diverting resources to fix Model 3 bottlenecks & increase battery production for Puerto Rico & other affected areas.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 6, 2017
“With Model 3, either the machine works, or it doesn’t, or it’s limping along and that we get short quite severely on output,” said Musk on an earnings call. within the third quarter of the year, Tesla built only 260 Model 3 sedans, well short of its forecast of 1,500 units.
Whether or not Perbix will facilitate with this remains to be seen, but the acquisition is par for the course in Tesla’s current focus on factory automation. A year ago, the car manufacturer bought German company Grohmann Engineering, making a new division within the firm called Tesla Advanced Automation Germany that would take advantage of engineering talent in the country. That August, Musk said his ambition was to build factories so automated they appeared like an “alien dreadnought.”
Tesla did not reveal how much money was paid for Perbix, but the financial filing showed the owner James S. Dudley received 34,772 shares of Tesla stock, value more than $10 million.
