Tesla‘s CEO Elon Musk said on Thursday that rival automakers are welcome to use the company’s new “Unboxed” manufacturing process.
The company was granted a patent for the process this week by the US Patent and Trademark Office.
Answering to the X user ‘alex_avoigt,’ who said that the process was “a game changer” that will “dramatically” reduce production costs, the chief executive highlighted the time efficiency of the method.
“What matters is that the cycle time of the overall production process can get to ~10 seconds and there is a path to cars coming off the line every 5 seconds,” Musk wrote, reiterating Tesla‘s target of producing a Cybercab each 5 seconds in the future.
He further added that he has “posted about Tesla taking this new path based on physics first principles long ago.”
The CEO then invited rivals to use it, by saying that “anyone is welcome to copy it. Our patents are open source.”
The method emphasizes modularity and parallel assembly and departs from traditional automotive assembly lines, where the entire vehicle body moves along a single assembly line from start to finish.
Earlier this year, the company started testing the ‘Unboxed Process’ in its Gigafactory in Texas.
Tesla reaffirmed in its latest shareholder deck in late July that the upcoming Cybercab will “pursue a revolutionary ‘unboxed’ manufacturing strategy and is scheduled for volume production starting in 2026.”
Last year, Musk said that the Cybercab will be 6 to 7 times faster to build than a Model Y at Giga Shanghai, where a vehicle is built every 33 seconds.
The vehicle is a compact, two-seat electric vehicle designed for ride-hailing, operating without a steering wheel or pedals and relying entirely on Tesla‘s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software.
The Cybercab will substitute the Model Ys modified with the Robotaxi FSD currently operating across the US.
Earlier on Thursday, Elon Musk also wrote on X that Version 14 of the Full Self Driving (FSD) will be rolled out “next week,” after hinting earlier this month that it was scheduled to be deployed “by the end of the year.”
Tesla‘s chief executive teased that “the car will feel almost like it is sentient being by 14.2.”
In a post on X shortly after the reveal, the CEO also commented on Tesla’s stock surge in the past month, criticizing those who “thought Tesla stock would collapse” with the EV tax credit expiring on September 30.
Over the past 12 months, the stock has risen 74.2% and, as of Wednesday’s close at $442.79, it is just 10% below its highest value to date.
