Most ICE cars today have the rear multi link suspension with differential mounted onto a steel subframe which in turn is attached via four rubber bushed mounts to the body of the vehicle. A similar arrangement holds the suspension arms, steering rack and engine at the front of the vehicle. Any collision that results in the distortion of the subframes, front or rear, will also deploy airbags and usually results in such extensive damage that it makes the vehicle beyond economic repair. The front and rear castings in the Tesla are akin to the subframes on ICE cars and once damaged the collateral cost of repairs will write the vehicle off. Economics plays a key role. The residual value of Tesla’s is high and it is often financially prudent for the insurance company to sell a moderately damaged car than to have it repaired.
Ehh. This is not really true. Replacing a subframe is not as bad as replacing the frame of a car. I want to agree with you but this is just not always true.
It should also be noted that a significant part of the cost of the car is in the batteries under the passengers. Even when a front or rear crash totals the body of the car there can be a significant salvageable components. I don't believe a modern ICE can say the same(for the engine) because it need to be part of crash absorption. The expensive parts are deeper.
False and misleading comment. The Giga casting does not substitute the subframe on the Model Y. The Model Y uses steel subframes that are installed underneath the giga casting. The giga casting substitutes the rear portion of the Model Y unibody.
I absolutely LOVE your channel and ALWAYS like (thumbs up) your videos. Not only do I learn a lot about your topic but also I analyze how you present your information and the research you had to put into it. REALLY REALLY enjoy this. Do you have some time to carve out and chat with me? I want to be able to produce similar content but for myself.
Excellent video. Your analysis is consistent with the arguments I made about repairability when Tesla first introduced gigacast underbodies and the use of crash rails. I don't know much about the fracture mechanics of Tesla's alloys, but unlike steel, Al is generally not cold workable and so although you can weld it, you likely won't be able to bend it back into shape.
The thing is that the Unibody is several pressed extrusions , then welded during assembly. Something that has never been done on an Automotive production line …. Single moulded Unit isn’t actually correct but it will do …
@@chrisbraid2907 Almost all current unibody frames are stamped (not pressed) and welded and epoxied. Tesla's frames are evolving from traditional unibody frames towards subframes (cast front and rear underbody subframes) joined (bolted or welded) to a structural battery back. The current Model Y is a hybrid between a traditional unibody bolted onto a cast rear subframe (rear underbody).
All cars three years or older with halved resale value will be a write off regardless of design if hit that far into the body. The biggest cost in a crash is related to injuries. If injuries are reduced money is saved even if the car is sacrificed. Most cars are never in a crash and those in a crash are either small crashes with no impact on structure or hit as hard as to be a write off regardless. Very few cars are in crashes of the type where you would consider repair of structural parts.
The combination of FSD and multi camera 360 degree video recording means in the great majority of collisions the other party will be at fault both factually and provably, so the cost of repair becomes less important.
That is a VERY important insight! Also applies to lesser likelihood of Tesla passengers being greatly injured or killed. Any medical issues quickly outpace repair costs!
@@koeniglicher Your ignorance on the subject is hilarious. 1) I’m talking about the level-5 FSD, not the current version. 2) The ‘overconfidence of the drivers’ is irrelevant because they won’t be driving. 3) There aren’t any bold marketing claims - Tesla don’t do marketing, they are currently completely clear about the requirement for human supervision. 4) There is no evidence that radar/Lidar is useful in bad weather. Heavy rain, snow and fog all block both radar and Lidar. Humans manage without either. 5) If you’d actually bothered to watch any FSD videos then you’d know that high acceleration and peak power simply aren’t used by it.
@@speedismyfriend I agree, that’s the current state and Tesla are very clear about that. However FSD on highways is ALREADY 100x safer than humans. When FSD reaches that level for city driving, the fact remains that the 360 degree video of any accidents will make it immediately obvious who is at fault in the great majority of cases. Given the 100x safer metric this will have a major effect on costs because most of the time the OTHER party will be paying. This will also lead much cheaper insurance for Teslas.
The camera data alone should mean that a Tesla is cheaper to insure. These insurance companies are truly shortsighted for charging such high premiums to Tesla owners. Trying to make a quick buck for a few years has led Tesla to enter the insurance business. Little did they know, Tesla will get into fewer accidents and prove the other driver are at fault with camera data. An insurance company's dream! 😂🤷
Thank for a rational analysis of this subject. People are too eager to rely on intuition to make judgements about matters they are unfamiliar with. Armchair engineers are a dime a dozen.
The thing is... You dont need to be an engineer or expert to figure this out. Just looking at the cutaway illustrations is enough information to guide one's intuition. I don't think this is individual intuition at work at all... I think its bandwagon effect. Dollars to dimes that some reactionary RU-vidr or Twittererer said something dumb about this and people are just parroting it instead of even using their brains at all.
Just one general note about writing off cars for insurance purposes is that if the airbag is deployed, the car will be written off. It doesn’t matter the damage. Additionally I have heard of people getting written off for surprisingly low speed impact like (10-15 mph) due to the damage intruding into the main unibody. I am sure Tesla will be similar.
Most modern cars are now a total write off if the airbags go off due to the extensive damage they cause to the interior - side panels, steering wheel, dashboard, windscreen etc.
If the Gigacasting technique works out as well as Elon wants it to and manufacturing gets orders of magnitudes faster, when you crash a Tesla covered by Tesla insurance, they will eventually just give you a new car and recycle the old one.
@@stcredzero Just how it goes now, everything is getting glued/sealed shut and device manufacturers are doing everything they can to shut down the right to repair
If the accident is bad enough to cause damage to the mega casting, it’s probably going to intrude or cause damage to the battery, so in any case, it will be a write off. In any case, if you look at people who fix salvaged cars you’ll see that even with the current design, if the accident crashes deep enough into the rear/side of the car to damage the quarter panel, wheel and subframe (which it would if it were to reach the casting), the car is a write off anyhow. Actually, any modern car with that much damage would be a write off. It’s not unique to Tesla.
I was in a single car accident where the car rolled onto the roof. There was no possible way that there was any structural damage and the airbags did not deploy. The car was written off with out a second thought because of body damage. I don't have extensive knowledge in the area of fixability, and insurance companies, but the people that leave the comments worrying that the structural components may be to costly to fix are completely clueless and shouldn't be commenting in the first place.
I just had my car written off, from a small dint above the wheel housing but released 2 airbags on a Honda Civic. Replacing 2 airbags and damage is over $8,000, plus body damage. It would be easy to cause over $40,000, on aluminum body.
@@granthendricks5988 I'm curious how you know the cost of a repair on a vehicle that was written off. I imagine that the reason why cars get written off with accidents that don't seem serious is that they are concerned that there may be other problems with those vehicles that may not be initially apparent which could make the vehicle unsafe (liability issue). So, regardless of whether the repair costs more than the car is worth, they will write off the car. This makes the price of fixing the frame irrelevant unless you want to salvage the car. That only matters to the owner if you would want to buy back your car and try to get it fixed or fix it yourself. Also please share the expertise you have to give an estimate on the cost of fixing an aluminum frame.
@@thegamingsociety7880 it’s simple, I talked to the ICBC insurance representative who wrote off the car and asked him the repair cost of the airbags and damage they caused. I have seen repairs done to vehicles with side swipes like on my car. The repair is simple as the door was not damaged but just 1 panel covering the rear wheel. There could be structural damage to frame but I believe as I slid off his bumper the force was distributed over the enter panel. In the end, I got more for the car than I paid, but did not replace the $2,600 I paid months earlier for Michelin tires and brake repairs. It would have lasted another 10 years. I wanted to keep it.
The Gigacastings will also improve the lifetime of the car. Corrosion of the steel structure is here a main limiting factor. Aluminium will not rust and stay stable in case of a crash even after a decade and a million mile...
Elon Musk was talking to Sandy Monroe about Tesla original designs which used dissimilar metals which had to me coated to prevent corrosion. The 1 alloy casting will eliminate this problem. Saving money, time and possible future recalls from body failures.
The main parts with corrosion are nowadays under carriage parts or doors (underside) and not the load bearing parts. Even they last longer than the combustion engine lifetime, at least in most european/ asian cars. Staying stable in a crash is the least thing you want, energy absorbing by deformation is the goal. I don't think the repairaility is the issue after a crash. TLF explains it in this video accurate why this isn't a issue. I've already designed load management parts for Car components made of Aluminium, Magnesium die casting and high strenght steel (1000N/mm²), in the end everything is dealable. But my main question is still open: Why alu die cast? Cost savings? no way! only if you calculate wrong. To get a consistent alu material quality will be very expensive. Less energie consuming process? (less robots) Forget it, the production of auminium itself is already pretty engergy consuming. In the end they could be happy if there is a black zero (no loss). Btw, big magnesium and Alu die cast carparts are actually an old hat, not that big as Teslas parts but since die casting is scalable, the limiting factor will be the tool, not the product.
Corrosion in steel car bodies is nothing as bad as it used to be. Aluminium alloy does corrode, maybe not so much on it's own, but it will when you start bolting steel parts to it with steel screws, due to electrochemical corrosion. Especially in damp environments with salt in the air.
The crash rails. On the newer castings, I understood, these are actually part of the casting, not bolted on. What Elon said was that if damaged in an accident they could be cut off and replaced with bolt on crash rails. My guess is that probably makes them a bit more expensive as bolt on rails will only be needed in small quantities. Win some loose some I guess!
The crash rail metal is to smooth to be casted metal. It also make sense to use a different metal alloy for the crash rails since they are not structural and their purpose is to absorb energy.
It seems as though the second most important thing to protect after the passengers is the battery pack, for potential reuse, since it is the most expensive single component. Also, to prevent potential battery fires caused by cell damage.
As usual, you're careful and precise in your comments. As I thought, high-speed crashes are always write-offs. You make a good point about FSD helping prevent accidents.
Thanks Jordan, this makes me feel a little better. The most worrisome thing looks to be the T-bone side collision. That's also the most costly (or maybe second most) for conventional steel unibody construction.
As always, great video Jordan. Structural says it all. Bend, crack, snap a front or rear casting and there's a problem. Replacement on the face of it shouldn't be that much. Intrinsic metal content isn't overly high and it's a 3 minute process to make... But as you say it's the energy and that's the square of the velocity. The same holds for pedestrians. Tesla's active safety features should reduce impact energies. Generally, in future, Teslas are less likely to be involved in accidents.
I agree with the general theme of the video. Definitely not worried about crash worthiness and I don't think there will be a significant difference in repairability vs. conventional unibodies. But I don't buy the "the material is weldable in principle so a damaged casting can be repaired" part (in the side impact section). Doesn't seem feasible to me. However I'm not a car guy nor a proper mechanical engineer, so take this with a grain of salt. Aluminum is not so brittle that it snaps without bending. If it's cracked, it will also be bent. If it's bent, how do you even get it back into shape? I once heard that car shops can use hydraulic tools to pull bent fenders back into shape, but the castings have very complicated shapes so that probably won't work. And there's a big problem: compared to steel, aluminum doesn't take too kindly to being bent repeatedly - the repair will introduce cracks or stresses that can lead to future cracks. Supposing the part is in the desired shape, but cracked and you want to weld the cracks. How do you even find all the cracks? The shape of the castings is probably too complicated to use portable ultrasonic testers. The castings are too big to fit in all but the largest X-ray machines and small cracks don't show up in x-ray anyway. Dye penetrant inspection is probably the most feasible, but that would still be a big hassle, and it only finds cracks that reach the surface. Then there's the welding itself. Can the alloy really be welded safely? If I were in charge at Tesla's materials team I probably wouldn't compromise on the all-important casting alloy to make it weldable. If it is weldable, where are you going to find a welder that's trained and certified to work with Tesla's proprietary die casting alloy? The most feasible way for a repair would be to cut away the bent/cracked section of the casting and weld on a replacement part. But that means you have to fabricate a unique replacement that emulates the structural properties of the shape that was cut away. Not easy, not cheap. And then you still have to weld it. If you think futuristic, you can get a computer to design the perfect replacement for the cut-away part and then have the shop 3D-print it directly onto the casting. Software that can do this exists (mechanical engineers routinely use software that can design parts when given load requirements, shape boundaries and manufacturing limitations), but I don't think we're quite there yet with the printing tech.
Regarding the last point, wouldn't you just take a new casting from Tesla a cut out exactly what you need out of it? Assuming welding a replacement works and Tesla wants to help you with repairs, this seems like an obvious choice to me. Then again, I have no idea about repairing cars beyond bolting a metal plate to patch a hole which was made due to corrosion. :)
@@peter.g6 In theory, yes. Tesla could make all kinds of replacement parts. However, that's not their focus at the moment and won't be for a couple of years. They'd rather put that new casting in a new car and sell that, much less organisational overhead.
@@w0ttheh3ll Are you their spokesman? :) IMHO setting a few gigacastings aside and sending them to Tesla centers would be a piece of cake for them if they wanted to do it. They don't need all kinds of replacement parts, they have 2 pieces per model. And if it makes sense (which I'm not saying it does, it's just a speculation), they might as well do it, cause it's batteries and chips that limit their production, not the casting machines' speed. At least I'd like to see that, repairability is an aspect of sustainability.
@@peter.g6 I agree setting aside some megacastings for each service center would be easy. The hard part is tooling and training the mechanics to be able to do the job. Then, as another person wondered, if the casting changes, which version do you stock? Are they backward compatible? These issues all have engineering solutions, but as @w0ttheh3ll pointed out, it adds overhead and cost to repair, stocking, and training.
Finally! I haven’t even finished it yet and need to Thank you for addressing this! How can we confirm is the casting is weldable? Pretty fair binary question? Are these secrets? Amazing research. Many questions answered. I now understand why it wasn’t addressed immediately. Still it’s concerning. All the efforts you had to put into this, that this information isn’t openly available and some things need to be assumed. Thank you. Looking forward to them all.
Hey Jordan! Awesome work. People can stop worrying about repair ability for all cars. When any car, what ever the car, gets a structural damage that makes rotating parts no longer being aligned the repair shop will give you a massive cost estimate and recommend a wright off. Twisting a warped structure back in to alignment precise enough for rotating parts to go back in to service is many times tougher than scraping the car and get a new car. Having a car being built in numerous stamped sheets and being welded and bolted together will not help you in any way. A deformation does not stop in one structure part and leave the next structure bolted and welded to it unharmed. People can stop talking about replacing structural parts in vehicles. Its not economically viable in any car no matter what car
Thank you for that great study! On other subject can you please make a chapter on 4680 and LFP conundrum? Wondering is there are technical or economical reasons that prevents LFP in the 4680 format. Or it is just a matter of time until the patent expire next year and Tesla start making 4680 LFPs. Cant believe all advance tech around 4680 cant be employed on 2/3 of battery production. That would certainly reduce the initial significance of the 4680 format.
I have been doing collision repair for 30 years. #1- Sandy Munro understands his area of expertise but it is not collision repair. #2- It will be up to Tesla if they make partial replacement pieces for the castings or if the whole casting will need to replaced. It is very unlikely they will allow any welding on the castings. #3- Insurance companies will decide to repair the vehicle or deem it a total loss based solely on what is most economical. #4- If they repair it, it will likely take a long time, so line up other transportation. A 30 day rental policy won't be enough.
@@rogerstarkey5390 Judging by watching all his past videos he doesn't have a proper understanding on how to repair vehicles. He has struggled with the simplest things in the past. His experience is in design and manufacturing of vehicles which he obviously has a good grasp of.
It is a very good summary with reasoning related to the repair of a product, in this case a car where lets face it, majority of the automakers designed cars with service profitability in mind.
@@markplott4820 you are correct, the OEM's are struggling to catch up and their cars are selling for negative profit. I think only Kia/Hyunday are kinda profitable as they started earlier.
Great video and explanation but I'd like to point out a couple things. I was a collision tech for 17 years so I have some knowledge in this area. 1. I thought the castings included the outer wheel well in the rear so this makes me feel a bit better in that regard. Having a separate outer wheel well makes this area much more repairable. 2. Even though there are bolt-on replacement rails it's not that simple. The energy transfer in even a moderate impact travels completely thru the vehicle and all kind of things move. Depending on the stiffness of the casting, if it deforms it probably won't be as simple as just setting it up on frame rack and pulling it back into shape (as in a normal unibody car). 3. The casting being stiffer is both a good and a bad thing. The bad part being it will transfer energy further into the vehicle and may cause deeper damage. 4. A lot of people think Insurance companies just write off cars at will. This is not true, it is base solely on the cost of repair vs the value of the car. (I was also an insurance appraiser after leaving the repair tech side of things) I've had to convince adjusters on a few occasions to total a car even though I could not write a repair estimate high enough to justify it on paper. You can do a lot of repair on a $80k car but that doesn't mean you should ;) When I was going thru ICAR training we watched a video done with a high speed camera that demonstrated the energy transfer thru a car on a minor impact and it was incredible. I tried to find this online but it was so long ago it may not exist anywhere. I started my collision repair career right when the switch was being made from full frame to unibody (early 80s) and remember the whining and wailing and gnashing of teeth from the old timers on how those things were junk and couldn't be fixed.
Really appreciate you tackling this issue. The Tesla content on this channel is simply not available anywhere else I am aware of. Thanks so much for your hard work.
Giga casting is an engineering masterpiece Modern cars are a "write of" very quickly already, having a giga casting doesnt matter much i think. The car is a write of, it gets recycled. Sucks for the owner though. With better autonomous driving, crashes should be a thing of the past
Thanks to Sandy Monroe, taking apart the latest Model 3 and Model Y, we get to see what Tesla done to protect the 3 piece frame from damage. Hopefully, the new design lowers insurance costs.
Hi Jordan. I just got my new lfp-battery done. Its 16 33140 Cells whit mgod bluetooth bms that has adjustable adjustments. It's just unbeliveable, amazing. 52v nominal, givs most of the power between 54 and 51 volts. Rated 75a peak. According to bms I got over 1kwh in real life capacity. wery compact and light, 26.4*14*8.5 cm pack including bms. Best thing is that I can use full power, go top speed and battery won't exhaust like my other 48v 20ah li-ion does after 10km at full power even it was full. li-ion is good at peak power, but for some reason it weakens under long heavy load. Not the lfp, that keep voltage up all day long :)
Solid engineering breakdown Jordan! Only thought of note: at 2:47, the structural truss webbing is arranged in a way to present much higher up/down stiffness vs. side impact stiffness. Probably optimized for a smoother suspension.
Thanks! The megacasting is an exciting breakthrough, even an amazing one, but the repairability is the focus of much curiosity, including mine. Your answers are very thorough and satisfying.
Once you crash the rear tire against the megacasting, you've also turned important parts of the motor assembly to mush. Same thing for non-cast EV-rear ends experiencing a similar shock.
I have seen a few wrecked Model Y in the junkyard and wrecked Model Y are in high demand. I was told that Tesla does not sell the rear casting as a replacement part for the Model Y. However, if people are able to source another wrecked Model Y with an undamaged rear casting, they could remove it and replace the rear casting on a damaged Model Y. Maybe in the future, Tesla may sell the rear casting to body shops for repair. But right now, Tesla doesn't offer rear casting replacement and they are in high demand in junk yards.
I think repairability is nullified almost completely with the castings. After a crash, tesla cars should be used as stationary storage for energy. I hope tesla comes out with that v2h adapter they were talking about.
Eugene - ELON completely SHOTDOWN the Idea of V2G and V2H. the 2009 Roadster has V2G and NO ONE used it. also, you need a Different battery for V2G as NICKEL cells are Expensive and dont have a HIGH Cycle life. Current model S/3/X/Y all use Expensive NICKEL cells . you will need a Different Chemestry , if you are Building a car with V2G in mind. you need a Battery with HIGH cycle life.
Nailed it. The people who were complaining about repairability I suspect never even watched battery day or ever bothered to look at the cutaway illustrations which clearly show this. I still see people commenting that gigacasting will replace ALL of the frame components. I dont even know where they got that idea. Probably one of the MANY bad Teslafan YT channels which are basically Reacts channels pretending to be News. The rumor mill is as bad or worse in the enthusiast community as it is in the short community. And another thing: Tesla does not support Salvage vehicles. So if people are worried about being able to repair written-off Teslas they bought at auction... thats already a moot point.
The cost of the component being higher due to the material cost of aluminum is actually an advantage for Tesla and Tesla owners. As this is a casting the labor costs associated with creating a new part are extremely low. When replacing the casting outright, the material from the damaged part will be returned to Tesla for recycling and the majority of the part cost will be recovered. In high volumes the recycling process will be incredibly inexpensive and require very little labor. Tesla engineers are geniuses.
@@markplott4820 To which I would respond that that part is non-repairable and it would be curious to know how much we cost to source and install that part given so much hangs of it. Possibly if it sustained that kind of damage the car may be a write off
@@chrisnewman7281 - because the Gigacastings are protected by the STEEL car Structure impacts are Neglagable. if the Gigacasting is Danaged the RAILS can be cut off and new ones BOLTED in place.
In other news, many RU-vid commenters who think themselves clever have forgotten that aluminum is weldable and that crash absorber rails are replaceable.
Think of glass. Cheap, thin glass like a picture frame or dollar store drinking glass breaks easily. A car windshield can actually take quite an impact without cracking or chipping; even including flying debris, basketballs, etc. Some glass is used as exterior structures of skyscrapers, and even walking bridges can be built of thick glass. You may have even seen video of would- be burglars bouncing hammers or concrete blocks off of storefront windows. This is brittle, low- strength glass. An aluminum mega casting has tremendous ability to absorb and distribute extreme impacts, especially as initially diffused by exterior structure. In fact, you could also think of a mega casting as an aluminum engine- sure, a wreck could damage it, but it's strong and well- protected by outer structure.
which makes the TESLA Armored Glass in the SEMI and Cybertruck very Compelling. Imagine having ZERO down time in a SEMI because of Broken Windshield glass.
I think it was Sandy Munro in one of his videos said that if you impart enough force on a vehicle to damage the casting, is the least of your worries. Not yet forty but I remember repaired vehicles on the road that really should’ve been. Vehicles that had tires that wore on one side faster, or pulled, and other nasty tendencies.
The fact of the matter is that if Tesla insures the car and it's a total they get the car back, the batteries the motors all of it.. that's a big reason why Tesla wants to ensure the car.
By the way Jordan, could you do short updates on the 4680 cell developments. I think the ramp up of the 4680 cells is the biggest limiting factor for all Tesla projects right now. Tesla Semi is waiting for 4680 cell ramp up. Tesla Cyber is waiting for 4680 cell ramp up. Tesla Roadster is waiting for 4680 cell ramp up. Mega Pack energy storage and power walls are held back by waiting for battery volume production. MY M3 MX MS is a balancing act of shipment prioritization in waiting for the ramp up of the 4680 cell ramp up. And nobody is covering where they are at in getting the 4680 cells online. All we get to see is impressive concrete foundations being pored in Giga Berlin. Other than that, its all quiet. Last we heard on the earnings call was that they had 10% engineering issues left with getting the dry powder in to films. It tended to be not so smooth in volume production. Maybe do like 5 min weekly clips on production advancements?
As a mechanical engineer I say you're right on the money. In simplest terms, the gigacasting eliminates the assembly (mostly welding) of multiple pieces that perform the same function, and behave in essentially the same way, as the gigacasting.
Heh. This is where Tesla insurance differs. It'll be based on the exact calculation of driving style as detected by the car. They'll give safer people lower rates and risk-loving people higher rates. But both rates will be less than traditional insurance, since they take Tesla's safety rating into account.
Castings can generally be repaired, provided the material is suitable. The alloys used by Tesla could be welded/brazed, as the alloy they use doesn't require being annealed. Minor damage could be repaired safely. This is minor damage such as a chunk being knocked out, or a crack. Any accident that deforms the castings could not be safely repaired. We might need to watch out in the future for shady repair jobs.
How about looking into the effects of electrochemical corrosion, caused by dissimilar metals being bolted together? I would expect aluminium alloy castings fastened to steel parts with steel screws to suffer accelerated corrosion at the point of contact when exposed to damp, salty conditions. Many cars already have aluminium forgings in suspension parts like wishbones, but these are usually separated by insulating polymer bushes from steel subframes. Aluminium is also mixed with steel in engine blocks and cylinder heads but these run hot and tend to drive off moisture. If you've ever had a motorcycle with aluminium cylinders and the exhaust bolted to it with steel bolts, you will find that the aluminium can corrode to a white crumbly powder that breaks away if you try and take the exhaust off. This generally means repairing it with a helicoil thread insert because there's no aluminium left to screw into.
Very comprehensive analysis. Pretty much what I thought. Bend your subframe and your car is probably a write off. Used to be able to straighten a slightly bent chassis. Crack a casting and maybe replace it if the rest of the structure it mounts to isn't damaged. Unlikely because of crumple zones.
You might want to touch on aluminum as a material. We all understand the benefits it offers, but it is at the top of the list for most toxic buildings materials we produce. Recyclability is extremely important.
One thing improving repair costs for Tesla is the far simpler cooling system. In a ICE car, the closest things to the front bumper is the radiator, ac condenser, transmission fluid cooler, engine oil cooler, and a power steering fluid cooler (last two are seldom present). Tesla, being an all electric, either doesn't have these systems at all, doesn't require cooling for those systems or needs far less cooling for those systems. This will further reduce costs for front end collisions.
Revisiting some of these very worthwhile! The way they bolted up the crush zones fore and aft looks like high priority for reparability...they could have built crush zones into casting instead (assuming Idra machine could accommodate bigger part), seems replacement of sacrificial elements was a specification.
The senior manager of Tesla chassis design told me that they expect other manufacturers to copy this system very soon because of the cost savings and manufacturing benefit from building cars this way.
A rear impact is what I was most concerned about and now I'm less so. The side impact will probably be more destructive. Although the wheel might act as some sort of a cushion, the suspension might bend the casting. You probably have to X-Ray the casting to find potential week points from cracks.
The images in the video seem to be of the V1, two piece casting. The V2 single piece casting extends further rearward and incorporates the crash rails into the casting. These will be designed to buckle in a rear impact. Tesla's stated repair strategy for this is to cut away the broken crash rails and bolt in a replacement crash rails. I have yet to see any example of this type of repair being completed.
It’s really simple. The giga casting is stronger than current car frames. If the impact is enough to damage a frame the car is totaled. The same impact might not damage a giga casting. Thus it’s an improvement in every way. No added costs. You will never replace a frame or a giga casting if damaged.
great video somewhat off topic - 'totalled' is an economic term where it's not ECONOMICAL to repair a vehicle because repair cost go above vehicle value. In an autonomous robotaxi scenario vehicle value would skyrocket, so even previously 'totalled' cars would suddenly become economical to repair
My concern is not repair ability but rather the aluminum casting’s durability against corrosion here in the NE, where we salt our roads like a super-sized fries in the winter.
Tangential anecdote for reparability--my little 100k pop town in NorCali has a "Tesla certified" independent repair shop. (they advertise) Another important component of T. car success, there must be independents included and supplied with parts and general assistance as part of better service experience, we all know how poor it is for some customers.
I haven't seen aluminum costs being higher than steel in my own manufacturing. I always find it less expensive than steel in the U.S.. I'm not sure where you get that aluminum costs more than steel, and high strength steel is actually quite expensive compared to mild steel.
@@thelimitingfactor I'm not sure what you mean by total manufacturing cost, because I manufacture products, and my costs don't reflect what you are saying, so I'll look forward to that video.
Depending on where are you manufacture. The US must import thin high strenght steel from abroad, that makes it pretty expensive. In Europe HQ Aluminium is more expensive. Since you pay steel per ton, the higher price for high strenght steel to mild steel will be compensate by thinner constructions (if your Engineer is halfway competent). As I said, depending where you manufacture, the result may be different...
@@speedismyfriend I have a feeling that this is based on their total costs, including their costs for the tooling, which is amortized. Aluminum welding is very different, unless you can use adhesives or fasteners. Moving steel parts around the manufacturing line is also different in that aluminum is not magnetic, and a lot of robotics in car manufacturing is electromagnetic based. For example Tesla couldn't use any of the Toyota/GM tooling in the Fremont factory, because they all were electromagnetic, and the Model S and X are aluminum bodies.
Tesla cars are indeed safe and avoid many accidents. The one issue is rear-enders where the driver behind fails to react in time. A longer rear overhang might have been worthwhile.
Long term it'll be less of an issue as most cars will be required to have crash avoidance tech whether they have FSD or not. The saving for GC is going to give Tesla the big stick it needs to beat the legacy automaker with. Being able to undercut them in price and production capacity capital costs at every turn will give them an extreme advantage.
I believe a Tesla will have more salvage value over a comparably priced ICE vehicle. If the damage is without a fire to the batteries, they have a high recyclable value through Redwood or one of Tesla’s recyclers. The motors can be used in the aftermarket if not damaged.
If any crash results in damage to the point the casting and alignment is out, almost any car would be a wright off. A 72 piece rear end damaged to the same extend renders it not possible for a jig to pull the chassis out as a rule. The main question is this, why did Tesla get a 5* rating across the board. Because it protected the occupants, so which way do people want it, survive or worse? Dont forget, considered a right off, supercharging is disabled.
Most modern cars will be a 'write off' after a significant collision, this is a combination of workshop costs, and the energy absorbing design of modern cars. As long as vehicles are properly recycled, this is probably a good thing. Well repaired crash vehicles never drive the same again, and poorly repaired ones are death traps.
Lots of people here are focusing on how easily the car would be written off. That is an important factor but the only consequence of that will be insurance premiums. The real question is how repairable the car will be after being written off. Tesla already make this very difficult by not supplying parts meaning the only option is usually to consolidate 2 or 3 written off cars into one usable one. The giga casting will just make this even more difficult.
Something else not mentioned is that the per unit cost of the gig casting is much much less than a uniform so it may actually be worthwhile to replace it in whole
