Ford Mach-E Rear Motor Teardown and Analysis 

Hi, can you please expand on this? Is it still a Ford Mach E rear motor?

Sandy's sarcasm is wearing a little thin. His videos are becoming more showmanship than actually informative as he hams it up for his non-industry audience.

@@Miata822 If I was chief engineer over the Mach E, I would be showing this to the entire team. Plenty of meat there. You want the industrial grade info, that's probably gonna cost you. Buy the report.

@@rockon7848 I have the i3 report. It's mostly part-by-part costing and source info. The Mach E inverter is made by Denso. Ford will probably bring it in-house if they think they can improve it or cut cost. I was impressed by the use of SiC switching.

@@Miata822 So Ford threw a bunch of off the shelf components to get the Mach E out the door ASAP, they will re-engineering it if they live long enough. Something like that?

@@Miata822 The info is still all here - the packaging has improved tremendously though

@AnalogueKid2112. Then you probably know that both Ford and GM farm out the vast majority of their design work to the Detroit design infrastructure and beyond ("beyond" being for example the Chevy Bolt having an LG Drivetrain). You can tell that Tesla has control of every detail and are designing organically/systemically, there is design iteration being co-ordinated from a central locus, and even often manufactured in-house. US legacy manufacturers are full of teams that oversee parts design from a zillion vendors off-site and around the world. Fords look like design-by-committee, GMs look like Sears appliances, where contracts are let based on spec to the lowest vendor bid. Teslas are more like the classic band, Boston...where a really smart guy designs all his equipment, plays all his equipment himself and it works really well and sounds different from everyone else.

love the name!

@@johncahill3644 Spot on. This is how we ended up with the now "infamous" Six Liter Power Stroke. A really good engine that got butchered up in an effort to get it EPA qualified (not a bad thing in itself) by several committees. In so doing they nearly killed a legendary Ford cash cow.

I thought it was Bosch?

I think 🤔 that engineer was gonna do the 1 gram everyday reduction plan and he never got around to starting it, lol 😂 He was set for complete development cycle with that housing !

@@maples328 He was quite a fox designing it heavy so he could easily achieve the target of mass reduction and get boni on a regular basis. 😂

It's a big-block motor, see? ;)

@@itekani You said that perfectly

He can't think of one. Probably because he's clearly not an engineer.

and writing a code is 1 time cost and can be used a any number of vehicle without additional cost

Program design is easy, code coding can be hard. Firmware is always changing since the hardware is improving and new features are added.

Code is one time expensive, and maintenance of code is not cheap. But no weight.

@@aitorbleda8267 If you write the class that handles the parking brake the right way, you do not have to maintain it, other than maybe improving it overtime. I'm petty sure making modifications to the code and much, much cheaper then producing all these parts for every single vehicle, plus - if you want to improve the behavior of the mechanical part that means you have to replace it in most cases.

Validating it and making sure it passes all the right standards however costs a fortune.

BEST! LOL

@@gunnar4200 Sandy- I hate bolts Me- whys that? Sandy- They always catch on fire

it will be like defusing a bomb. The carbon fiber is so tightly wrapped that when you cut it the motor inflates twice its size!

Lol.... carbon wrapped rotors have been used in applications over 200k rpm for years now, nothing special to see here.

@@carholic-sz3qv The bigger thing is that it is being mass produced I suppose by a machine created by themselves. Will be interesting to see if there's anything else new with the motors too though of course. We've seen the 3/Y motors with Munro but never S/X. :)

@@carholic-sz3qv Except these Tesla engines are part of the fastest production vehicle ever built. To me that's kinda special.

@@alaricgoldkuhl155 really?! Stfu! The model is quick but not fast. Impressive things are buggati chiron(fastest car in the world) with 300mph, mercedes unimog with tousands configurations possible for any applications, a scania 770s.......

I don't see how someone could challenge the intelligence of a design god that understands everything man-made that moves. He could've saved every OEM billions of dollars by using least amount of components to achieve highest level of design perfection. Thing about how much all these money can do to world peace.

resonant frequencies are a b1tch... a simple interaction between a couple of fans and a hdd can make a pc case vibrate so loud you'd think it will disintegrate. :) also by the look of the board at 25:56 the fasteners appear to be thermal couplers and the plate that mounts on top is a large surface heat sink.

🤣🤣

Sandy should give us a total count of threaded fasteners needed to build that assembly

Was that designed and built by a third party? The labor of assembly and all the extra parts!

@@billy-go9kx It's a Borg Warner IDU. B-W did the overall design, subcontracting out the design and part of the manufacturing for the motor and controller. The case and gearing was done at B-W, and the final integration was to Ford specs.

@@1djbecker You'd think that a Borg collective effort would be better than that.

Won't the standoff want to walk out (just like the spring would if the standoff wasn't there)?

I'm pretty sure that spacer at 15:40 would make sense if they had understood the order of assembly. The gate driver board with mounted FET modules is installed, with the FET modules slotting into the cooling plate assembly. Then the spring and wedges/spaces are installed to apply clamping force to the stack.

Either way, it is a shitty build lol

Ditto, love my MS.

Fasteners are Fascinating.......lol.

@@markplott4820 and boos for screws

One of the important things that Tesla and SpaceX is doing which is completely over looked is inspiring people in all sorts of areas. It's getting young people interested in engineering, electronics, even construction with the drone videos of the factory builds and so on. My wife teaches primary school kids and often shows them videos of rockets and other such things and the kids love it. It's important to get those kids to want to learn but also injects some positivity in their lifes and future, which is often lacking.

How true! It is amazing how fascinated we have all become to see the competition. Amazing research for investors that is “free”

Yes, that's undoubtedly how it's actually done. I imagine the MOSFETs are attached to the PCB, and the entire control circuit side is assembled before being fed through the cooling plate with the TIM applied to the pre-applied MOSFETs. This makes it a very simple process that isn't very error prone. The top side assembly could be largely automated then... one tech installed the first plate, sends it to a machine which handles all the welds, then it goes on to the next station... insulation is applied, next plate, back to the next welding station, etc...

@@looncraz Makes Sense! Still a lot of steps and welding and soldering during assembly time.

@@AndrejGobec Sure, but that's not much of an issue for this particular component since each step is basic enough you can train replacement workers easily and quickly and run several production lines at once. The numerous fasteners are the greatest issue, as always.

Exactly, I'm pretty sure Sandy got this part wrong. Never the less, the design of the inverter could much more elegant and simple.

@@looncraz The 3 welding steps they described probably go in different sequence - put both coper contacting sides at one time maybe manually, then machine welds it, puts the middle top part and weld it again.

Excellent !!

That has been on Ford parts for decades.

@@Miata822 These idiots have never been under a hood before.

Watching SANDY, is like watching Professor PROTON on Saturday morning...... Lol.

What's wild is, this sort of deep-dive, technical episode is really for me as an EV customer. I would never buy a Mach-E after seeing this. I wouldn't want the "many opportunities for failure." I like the idea of buying a clever and efficiently manufactured (lean design) EV.

Or use leaded solder again...

@@dangraff8467 They're either wave soldered or the parts have solder "paste" and are heat flowed, but they are flowed in one shot.

@@dangraff8467 You can weld certain things, but when you are attempting to electrically attach delicate components, it's not easy to contain the current or magnetic flux welding produces. It would also be extraordinarily time consuming and expensive. Plus, welding is impossible on ball grid ICs of which many are used these days in dense boards. Properly soldered circuit boards should easily last 30 years in a car environment from a physical standpoint (including shock and thermal stresses).

@@dangraff8467 The subject though was solder connections on circuit boards which was all I was addressing here.

@@dangraff8467 Thicker, more thermally stable circuit boards can improve long term resistance to solder related failures, but the old leaded solder was less prone to crack. Also, proper ventilation of the board and arranging the connectors so they don't get stresses on them which help accelerate solder failures. It comes down to the manufacturer and how much they want to spend to extend life.

He is a perfectionist, he brings up valid points but in the end none of it matters, as long as the customer is happy, and the device functions. Nobody typically cares about how their car is assembled.

@@slayyou Until it starts having problems after the honeymoon is over. Triple the amount of coolant hoses, parts, brackets, clamps, etc. as the Model Y -- can't be easy to repair. As much as I like the Mach E's interior and driving experience, I'm going with an Ioniq 5 or a Model Y. Just as fun to drive and better engineered.

But, being from FUD motors, I was expecting a ICE engine..... .lol.

Couldn't they have used snap in standoffs to do the same thing? I've been involved in a few product designs and we only used screw standoffs for prototyping. I can't think of a single case where we used them in production.

@@videcomp What are you prototyping?

The design team likely has a spec for the area and weight between circuit board supports for each environment. Since this is rigidly mounted to the drive unit, it's a high shock and vibration environment. Without the freedom to select a thicker, more rigid circuit board stack-up (which creates its own process change problems), the solution is more clamping supports.

@@6AM_YT Latest project is a smallish remote crawler with manipulator attachments for making repairs inside sewer pipes. I'm mostly providing guidance, experience and refining the requirements. My engineering student intern is doing all the heavy lifting. He's been working part time for me since high school and can now out program me in one language and is definitely faster using Fusion 360 for mechanical design. So he is doing most of the hands on work.. I actually quote Sandy to him and say "look we can leave that screw in for now but remember you'll have to figure out how to remove it from the next iteration." I like Sandy's "we call them un-fasteners" . We try to limit them to where a tech might need to access a part for troubleshooting, repair or maintenance. We try to avoid someone accidentally breaking an assembly because they can't figure out how to disassemble it, so we use "un-fasteners" because that is what they are for, not for assembly purposes.

There are many better ways of preventing flexing and fixing a pair of boards and a shield between them. Especially as you have a ridged cover on top of them. With proper design maybe 10 screws for both boards.

They are not IGBT's

@@vidznstuff1 These are IGBT's. Can confirm 100% that there are no SiC MOSFET power cards in production at Ford today.

Awesome! Thank you!

If you missed the Tesla tear down videos - I highly recommend you watch them when you get a chance. Informative, educational and entertaining.

@@videcomp Watched them all. That's when I started watching Munro.

^this 100%

Exactly what I was yelling at the screen lol. I understand his point. People do maybe oversimplify the making of an electric motor. But it does have massively less complexity and individual moving parts

The multitude of stampings in the body shell are all welded together and do not move individually. they are still in the count of parts as an inseparable assy.

Most people don't know about all of the independently moving parts in common machines. How many moving parts are there in a hydraulic lifter? What about the variable valve timing actuators in your favorite ICE engine? And the throttle actuator?

You also never need to disassemble the laminates on the rotor for service. That's like saying babbitt bearings are multiple parts because they are layers of metal.

And imagine your car is San Francisco and catches fire, and start rolling down the hill, because the software just burned ...

I was wondering about the regulatory ramifications of using a mechanical parking pawl.

@@Fix_It_Again_Tony Legislation doesn't demand that it's a traditional park pawl/park lock - many OEMs are now just relying on the worm-gear driven e-brake integrated into the foundation brake calipers.

OMG, can you imagine Sandy and AvE together. I would pay to see that.

@@MegaPraystation if AvE would hold firm on never being on camera, we would only see AvE's hands. But I would be so happy just to hear the two discuss. I am sure Sandy and AvE would have an amazing exchange over something like the inverter shown here.

We would have to demonetise that video, as I think AvE would bring out the bar room Sandy, negative filter. 😂

exactly my thoughts haha

I feel like sandy is too focused on cost reduction. Faulting Ford for having an oil cooler while praising others for not having one is nuts IMO. Give me the oil cooler any day. Or welding a high voltage electrical connection over a snap in. I’ll take the weld. Especially in an application with plenty of vibration. He knows his stuff, but this mentality is why we get cheaply built crap. It’s anti-consumer and pro bottom line for the company.

@@AustinFerguson the build quality of the Electric Motor in the Mach-E looks way more advanced and robust compared to the Tesla.

19:07 MECHA-MUNRO!!

Yep...I was about to post the same comment

Great to hear!

don't forget to count those capacitors too 🤣😂🤣

The Mach-E is assembled in Mexico, but maybe the inverters are assembled in a UAW shop. Somehow Ford still got invited to the Bidden/UAW EV-party.

Glad you like them!

I was hoping for BLOTTO Sandy, that would have been fun ......... lol.

Like them both as he needs to poke the Ford team to do better, and the fact that they have turned their backs on many of the things he implemented when he was there, well, I don't think he has much sympathy for them.

That also explains the fancy coated screws, thanks for the tip

Shielding for EMI can be a real headache, no? I don't know if they used used a conductive gasket on the lid, perhaps a molded rubber one with a woven metal strip around the entire perimeter.

D. G-S, how do the other manufacturers get around that without the mess that we saw here? I'm sure there's a way to design this better, especially given that we've seen evidence of this being done.

If that’s the case why not use a RF gasket sealing arrangement?

What's bad it is designed 10 years ago? Electric tach has come a long way in 10 years.

@@michaelsmith2723 Most of the criticism aims at the manufacturability of the inverter - not the electronics per se. Electronics like the power transistors being Silicon Carbide MOSFETs are very up to date. It just seems to me, if Toyota sticks to this design for so long, it can't be that hard to manufacture. Or they just figured out a good way.

Yes, while those others are in their intern meetings not disturbing the other engineering departments which are stupid anyway...:)

Like the 4 blind men holding a different part of the elephant.

...sometimes Sandy is a little too cavalier with his critiques.

Yeah, had a big WTF moment there for me too. Not sure what he was trying to get at there.

Ford's heat exchanger was inside the case (noticed from the short clips in the opening sequence). Tesla's is outside. That might be what he meant.

@@charlesball6519 In the second brief clip barely one second into the video you can clearly see it on the outside of the drive unit (upper left in portion of the image).

They're laser welded. And yes it looks like the mosfet and Buspars could be pre-assembled, inserted and bolted down as a single unit.

You're welcome!

Imagine the joy on a dealers face, when someone comes in with a rattle in the inverter, and occasional cutting out. " Oh yeah, we get that a lot, someone's dropped a screw inside the inverter." That'll be $1849.63 please.

Have you ever heard of an EV inverter failure? I haven't, but I'm sure it must have happened somewhere. Parts like this are replaced, not repaired. The three copper strips Sandy complains about allow inverter replacement w/o opening the motor housing.

@@chrisheath2637 or a short - no one will hear that tiny rattle

This why I do not buy anything from Ford....only an idiot buy a electric car from Ford.

@@chrisheath2637 But before they repair it they will try to tell the customer that the noise is normal and a reboot is nothing to be concerned about.

Probably a copy of Audi on the inside since all they do is copy the Germans.

the KOREAN cars will be better than anything from VW, Ford or gm.

Definitely. It would be very interesting to see how they have solved things with their (production wise) modular battery, 4 wd system etc.

Our pleasure!

I see what you did there,brilliant.

I was hoping someone else would catch that!

Virtually every part in a Ford Motor Company vehicle is marked with "FoMoCo"

@@bradcavanagh3092 So you are saying Ford invented the Fear of Missing Out?

Wrong video, buddy - this doesn't have any

@@vidznstuff1 Mentioned in the video. They were earlier switching semiconductors, and now they are moving to silicon carbide Mosfets, which have advantages, but are more expensive.

Why should they? They don't own him any explanation at all. Only time will tell and show if he was right.

...yes, that would be even more informative for everyone. Some things may be done for cost reasons, but there might be hard data as to why others were done. IE, that board with 17 screws might have failed with only 15.

Peter, problem is Ford has too many Engineers working on the SAME system , from Different aspect. not, what you want.

It's not a lead engineer but a commute.

@@thealienrobotanthropologist - I never claimed to be one.