Tesla retreats from next-generation manufacturing process

The Tesla gigafactory in Austin, Texas.

Tesla has backed away from an ambitious plan for innovations in gigacasting, its pioneering manufacturing process, in another sign that the electric vehicle maker is retrenching amid falling sales and rising competition.

Tesla has been a leader in gigacasting, a cutting-edge technique that uses huge presses with thousands of tons of clamping pressure to die-cast large sections of the car’s underbody. On a typical vehicle, the underbody can consist of hundreds of individual parts. Last year, as Tesla developed a new small-vehicle platform, it aimed to punch out the underbody in a single piece. The long-term goal was to radically simplify manufacturing and slash costs.