Featured Image Credit: Tesla

Tesla posted two jobs for its revolutionary paint shop in Giga Berlin this past month. The EV automaker is looking for a Manufacturing Engineer [for] Paint and a Process Engineer [for] Paint for its Gigafactory in Berlin. Both positions were posted in June. 

Construction on Giga Berlin's Model Y manufacturing plant has not been approved yet. Tesla resubmitted its application papers for the plant to the State Environment Agency a few weeks ago. The revised application indicated some changes to Tesla's plans for Giga Berlin. One of the changes in the application concerned a new factory design for the Model Y production building. 

The State Environment Agency is expected to convene in September to discuss Tesla’s application. Given Tesla’s recent job posting for its paint shop in Giga Berlin, however, the outcome could be positive. 

#GigaBerlin

It looks a little like Mars. 🔴#GigaMars 😉 pic.twitter.com/24cyjxgy6W

— @GF4Tesla..🏗️🏗️.build #GigaBerlin. (@Gf4Tesla) June 23, 2020

The role of the Manufacturing Engineer was described as follows:

“The successful candidate will have technical knowledge and Manufacturing Engineering experience within a high-volume manufacturing environment - specifically, experience in managing new product and technology introductions, equipment projects (new installations) and process optimization, upgrades and modifications. In addition to developing manufacturing equipment and processes, Manufacturing Engineers work with cross-functional teams throughout the entire product lifecycle. You will work closely with Design Engineering, Quality and Production to take new vehicle designs or design changes from initial concept through prototype development and into full production. Knowledge and experience of project life cycle from FEED through to equipment handover is essential. Experience in automotive paint processes is preferred in an operations, maintenance or design capacity.”  

As for Process Engineer, Tesla described the role as follows: 

“The Paint Process Engineer will be the technical subject matter expert of their assigned process. He/she will be expected to determine the most effective method(s) of processing while improving cycle times, reducing downtime, lowering cost, and driving improvements in overall Paint quality in order to ensure the continued performance of the process.”

To be clear, Fremont & Shanghai will also be upgraded over time, but it’s hard to retrofit these improvements to an operating paint shop

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 15, 2020

Elon Musk first mentioned Giga Berlin’s revolutionary paint shop in an episode of Third Row Tesla Podcast. He seemed very excited about it. He told the members of Third Row that Giga Berlin’s paint shop would add another three layers of paint to the cars the factory produced. 

“In order to get dimension on paint, you really need multiple layers. We’re going to do this in Berlin for the first time. If you get dimension, there’s something called flop, where you see the change in color with curvature,” said Musk. “If you can do something like lay down a gloss layer, then lay down a layer with color tint, then lay down another gloss layer, you can get kind of a 3D feeling to the paint. It just pops. It’s so much better than anything else."