It's an Italian company that was very recently bought by a Chinese company.
My understanding is that they saw the usefulness of these machines quite early and were developing them in this direction and that they had already produced 4000 tonne presses of this general type. Now it's at 6000 and 8000 tonnes.
Customers are needed to make use of good ideas-- you can't take them otherwise, but the innovation is the work the Italians did.
Yeah that company had no other costumers that were considering 6000+ machines. Tesla put down the money and the internal engineering to prove out that using huge casting as a structural member for the car was viable and then worked with a supplier to design the exact machines they needed.
Machines that like still wouldn't exist today had Tesla not done the necessary investment.
There is the machine and then the application of the machine to an actual production process.
Tesla may also be unique in having a strong need for machines of this kind, which in a way, attempt to avoid assembling of complex metal parts. If the other manufacturers have that down, then their need for very large components of this kind is lower.
It's like Germany and its heavy presses, during WWII. Lack of manpower, or in this case, something else that is wrong, leads to an player going for the most complete realization of that is easier and has major advantages.
My understanding is that they saw the usefulness of these machines quite early and were developing them in this direction and that they had already produced 4000 tonne presses of this general type. Now it's at 6000 and 8000 tonnes.
Customers are needed to make use of good ideas-- you can't take them otherwise, but the innovation is the work the Italians did.