Every four seconds, in the middle of a factory floor in eastern Germany, a deafening thump-thump blasts out as a mold slams down on a sheet of steel. The percussion is just one small part—albeit one of the loudest—of the frenzied action inside the facility, as workers stoke raging smelting furnaces, and robots topped by “Godzilla” heads hoist auto bodies up onto assembly lines.
Germany is home to dozens of plants like these, but this is no ordinary car factory. After each thump-thump, two automated claws reach around the mold and retrieve an item that a certain kind of superfan can identify on sight: the dramatically curving tailgate of a Tesla Model Y.
