Additional Notes on Variables: 1) (+) The Model 3 has a $28,000 production cost. This means Tesla could save more than what's indicated here. 2) (-/+) Tesla could keep the the battery and motors the same size. This would mean lower cost savings. However, the customer would still benefit from longer range, better MPGe, and acceleration. Thanks for your support!
Re: Steel vs Pressed AL. Is the AL ends intended to be sacrificial crush zones, so damage pressures will minimally intrude beyond the immediate ends being crashed upon? If so, will body shops be provided pressed AL "clips" by which they can quickly impart repairs vs steel?
I feel that this video understates the case. 1) Casting makes it easier to form complex shapes, with complex, deep embossed / raised ridges on any number of axes at once (as can be easily seen in the geometry of the casting). This increases the net thickness of the piece, and thus its stiffness. 2) Casting makes it easier to preform bolt holes, wiring mounts, and any number of fittings that would require extra machining or parts with conventional manufacture. 3) Apart from price, casting reduces the part and joint count. Each joint is a new opportunity for problems to emerge such as noise, improper alignment, bad welds, etc - you just get in general a better vehicle if you can keep the part count down. One could also mention that UHSS is famously a pain to work with compared to HSS and esp. mild steel.
Jordan, this is top notch material science engineering analysis. It boggles my mind that you don't have a traditional engineering degree. You clearly are a super bright and capable guy! I'm surprised Tesla hasn't tried snatching you up 😉
@@AudiTTQuattro2003 I respectfully disagree! Performing material analysis investigation, selection, and especially highlighting the magnesium strength & weight analogue study (which was then compared to aluminum), was some good engineering sleuthing. To put that all into a condensed and easy to understand presentation is where Jordan's top-notch work really shined.
@@AudiTTQuattro2003 You’re speaking too soon. Tesla is already at nearly a million per year vehicle manufacturing run rate with just the two vehicle factories that it has, and the Shanghai Gigafactory hasn’t reached its peak output. Also the Fremont Factory hasn’t fully ramped the new Model S production line or even started delivering the new Model X which typically outsells the Model S. The Berlin Gigafactory is larger and more advanced than the highly efficient Shanghai Gigafactory which will improve the final product while simultaneously decreasing cost for Tesla’s European customers. Then there’s the Austin, Texas Gigafactory which is even bigger than Berlin and according to Elon will be used to test the cutting edge of Tesla’s manufacturing techniques so even more advanced than Berlin. Tesla is forecasting a 20 million a year vehicle manufacturing rate by 2030 and I believe them. They’ve got practically unlimited cash and have shown that they can build two Gigafactory simultaneously in about a year for a cost of just ~$400 million each. Contrast that with VW’s Tennessee EV plant expansion/conversion that costs $800 million or GM’s $2.2 billion dollar EV factory also in Tennessee, and you’ll start to understand Tesla’s huge capital efficiency lead.
@@AudiTTQuattro2003 It's not small at all. You should not count how many cars the brand put out. Count how many they can put out on their most advanced factories. OEM does 200k at most per factory per year. Giga Shanghai's new Production Rate is 450k per year.
Elon has said his real technological advantage is in manufactring. A traditional car takes 22 hours for assembly, give or take an hour for what car/factory/brand you're looking at. I've seen tesla saying it takes 10, yes ten, hours to ass'l the 3/Y with gigacastings. So that's DOUBLE the production rate for the same size factory/workforce.
It's not only the throughput due to speed, less space is required for each production line as there are fewer steps, and a lot fewer robots. As the video says, there is an additional improvement in quality some defects, such as panel gaps, are only apparent further down the line. Improving the defect rate has a compound effect and makes the manufactuing more profitable.
Ten hours is not that fast... Nissan Sunderland can build a car from painted shell (coming into trim line) to start up in around 6 hours or so..might be quicker with no lunch break... Each work assignment is well under 1 minute turn round.. has been the most efficient in Europe for years.. Tesla seem to think what they do is fast...haha... No where near.. what they do is brag about what they do... Need to try comparing data... Oh hang on.. he daren't...
Speed or throughput are not good key numbers to compare. A factory that produces a car in half the time but costs three times as much to build and operate is not better. You need to break down speed and throughput into their associated costs. Both in capex and running cost. Again, using half the labour but spending twice the saved cost on electricity is no win.
There's another factor in play soon reducing costs of production. What to do with the main battery packs when they are no longer viable in a car. They are going back to the factories to be used as storage batteries linked to the factories own solar and wind farms. Nissan announced recently that they will be carbon neutral in the next ten years. Some going when you see the size of machines running. By reducing the third biggest cost of a car (1st being parts, 2nd being labour), the energy costs to make a car need to come down. These apply to all manufacturers.. something's they can't reduce such as labour costs but energy and parts they can control and can be ruthless. Suppliers tend to be moving nearer factories now, reducing costs of transportation and uncertainties in markets. Before covid most parts were made in very low wage countries... That's changing. The shortages of silicone chips has thrown another spanner in the works too... 90% of manufacturers are still on downtime working on and off as stocks arrive.. try buying a new car... Wait times are huge unless in stock. There's also another factor in play.. new upstart companies trying for their own slice of the cake... Market share has shuffled around a lot.. China being a huge player in the EV markets now... Consistency of quality for new companies... Can they keep it up...
@@terrybrown6057 google some...22 hours labor to build a car...remember the engine and transmission, seats and more arrive ready to assemble in the body.
Pretty decent analysis. Couple of refinements: 1. There is IMHO no universally-accepted definition of "high strength steel". So, be careful when comparing; 2. Magnesium is an oddity. Its USP's include high damping - ideal for dashboard support. Again, be careful what you compare... 3. Strength is easy to talk about until you look closer: e.g. fatigue strength and energy absorption potential are quite tricky to pin down. Keep up the good work.
@@AudiTTQuattro2003 Nothing is certain but death and taxes, and playing the market is gambling by any measure. However, I can't think of a more certain bet today than this company. The next 4 years or so will reveal the answer, afterward will be building on the successful execution of Tesla's gameplan. No, not a lock, and there is a chance I may not wake up tomorrow, but I don't bet against Elon.
Japanese motorcycle makers often use cast aluminium frame parts. They look good and stiff structures are easier to make a than using steel tubes or steel pressings. I can see Tesla using castings for door structures and for the car sides (A, B, C pillars plus roof and sill frames). These can be welded but today’s industrial adhesives could literally glue the car together.
The complexity and depth of analysis is amazing in this video. What I am most interested in is the fact that the concept/vision/imagination of this product and procedure came first and is the "Cause" while the analysis is all after the fact. This is how most if not all great advancements have been made throughout history. The root cause of everything in the physical world is the unseen spiritual world of consciousness. Elon Musk clearly has an understanding of developed intuition.
An additional advantage with casting is that you are generally provided a more flexible design space. You can more easily position the part topology (can be optimized using finite element methods) to the most efficient shape possible to get a given job done. Therefore you can use even less raw material and further decrease costs. This may also lead to more flexibility in overall assembly design, where you can position other components with more freedom. The benefits just keep coming.
@@AudiTTQuattro2003 It would be interesting to know the bottom-line total cost per major die iteration. Since the dies are likely lifecycle limited, much of the cost would be on the development side. Tesla's vertical integration, holistic engineering approach, and use of smaller elite teams allow them to do the engineering balancing act better than any other automobile manufacturer. It really is a joy to watch these developments roll out.
Wrong, the casting actually reduce your flexibility in the manufacturing. Stamping is stupid cheap and modifying a stamped part is even way easier than repairing a casting.
Nice work! There a whole area of Industrial engineering name OR, operational research, today with assembly simulation all this question can be answered, including all Capex and Opex, even what happens with cost fluctuations 😁
Jordan, just a thought. In an accident the aluminium is probably harder but more easily fractured than the steel is. Instead of passing the impact through to the passengers the aluminium takes the brunt & gives way; ie crushes in the moulded areas. Steel at the battery frame is necessary for stiffer protection but would be harsher on those inside.
Jordon, thanks for the great content. It would be interesting to see a comparison of repair costs after a collision. I imagine repairing a one piece cast aluminum frame assembly would be extremely difficult.
@10:23, stiffness is a function of moment of inertia, I, rotated about its principal axis times E, the modulus of elasticity. The symbol K is often used to represent stiffness. K = fn ( E, I). The value of I depends on its geometry. For a given geometry, the value of I is the same regardless of the material. However, K is different between a steel and aluminum part having the same geometry because E (steel) is greater the E(aluminum). The only way for an aluminum part to achieve the same stiffness as a steel part is to increase I, ie change of geometry of the part such as making it beefier. A beefier aluminum part would cost and weigh more, two factors not considered in the “Final Tally.”
Difficult making hollow section, if you're not using sand casting and hollow sections are usually good for moment of inertia, where you get both increased bending stiffness and increased structual stability. I also wonder if they need to add material places, that are not necessarily needed from a structual perspective in order to make the casting process work.
This video is so great. But it remains in my mind why your analysis doesn't include corrosion resistance as a consideration. The simplicity of EVs strike me as a reason to go for long life durable vehicles which retain value. I'm thinking aluminium is more corrosion resistant, but nice if you addressed it.
Yet another amazing video, Jordan! I just had one question, are we accounting for higher scrap rates (over 50%) for these kind of large aluminium castings or is Tesla avoiding that with the use of their special Al alloy material?
When it comes to nuanced analysis of complex material science and manufacturing cost systems Jordan is a super ninja 🥷 You just destroyed an MIT cost study with a few well reasoned analogs. Well done, grasshopper.
You should keep well clear of considering Magnesium castings, the casting technology is difficult and the corrosion problems are an order of magnitude greater than Aluminium. Check the experience of aircraft manufacturers with Al vs Mg.
I think you should consider selling your analysis to financial trading outfits, like Bloomberg does with their data. They get it a week early for a small king's ransom.
What matters is the use of stainless steel as the obviates the need for paint and why the Tesla Cybertruck is such a big deal. Vehicle painting and paint is incredibly energy intensive to apply and of course very expensive unto itself. If you take away the need to paint a vehicle in the first place first off you save a ton of money (perhaps literally these days) but more than that is the time savings in production...thus getting to market quicker and in far greater volumes if the vehicle design is a winner.
Thank you for diving into gigacasting. This was the "one more thing" from Battery Day that I really thought was the most important announcement. But it only works as a major cost savings for a new company expanding into new factories. Ford et al can attempt to add this technology, but it means losing investment capitol in old manufacturing equipment. The sunken cost of old equipment investments is the hardest part of vehicle manufacturing for people to really understand because it's hard to imagine an investment that pays off in 20 years and requires millions of cars produced before then. So Tesla (and Chinese manufacturers) get the speed and upfront cost advantages basically for free because they arnt having to figure out what to do with legacy equipment, workers trained to operate them, and buildings and production lines designed around them.
Yes, amortization of costs and cost accounting is a trap that prevents the replacement of old equipment with improved equipment that increases profits. You must do a current cash flow analysis.
@@AndyZach its also why we see Ford trying to do interesting things with castings on the same vehicle that they used a parts bin approach to the coolant system. Tesla is just beginning to get to the point where they might fall into that trap and need to be sure to stay limber going forwards.
Re - Cost of Aluminium Aluminium is effectively solidified electricity! The major cost is in the electricity required to make Aluminium Tesla is also working on massively reducing the cost of electricity - and a large part of going renewable will mean that power generation will be overbuilt so that there will be seasonal "surpluses" of power This may/should have the effect of increasing Aluminium Supply and reducing Aluminium prices
Have you notices that when Tesla car is in an accident it seems with full frame system over individual parts the whole car has to be written off more often. After depreciation over a few years Owner will be left with paying higher insurance over time.
Jordan, I love the fact that I can go back and watch this multiple times to fully comprehend what you have laid out. You have a massive amount of information there... which is totally awesome. However, can the intricate design of a Tesla AL cast also make up for strength issues and deliver better safety results than HSS?
look at the Castings themslves , the Crash Rails and Reinforcement are Already formed into the Rear Casting. they will do the same for the FRONT casting , and they simply BOLT to the Structural battery pack.
High strength steel, only means that they will use for car three times thinner stell so when rust hits it will rust through three times fester. Did anyone see aluminum rust to white powder especially when exposed to salt?
I wish tesla would do an environmental savings impact for the single piece giga castings. Vs the 70+pieces that were required for the same part. As in cover everything involved in making that all come together vs a simple single casting made from one patent metal. Pressed in a single machine. The capex and energy savings alone from 300+less robots on the line. Has to be staggering. Let alone the reduced footprint of the factories, reduced heating&cooling etc. 🤔 Great stuff as usual man. I often have to re watch your videos because I just cannot absorb everything on the first run through. 😀
There is litteraly zero saving advantage in terms of the environment. Also other manufacturers doesn't use 70 different parts. Other manufacturers already have all the machines necessary for manufacturing and melting metal all the time requires alot more energy than just running some robots.
@@moineaux9173 we aren't talking about other manufacturers here. Tesla themselves said the single piece rear casting replaces over 70 parts of various sizes and metals that use different bonding methods with the single piece large casting. All of that complexity ad's up, plus the fasteners you now dont need. Glues and adhesives you don't need, labor you don't need and less machines. Nm like I already said less space to run the assembly line reducing factory footprints and saving further energy. Plus the weight savings of up to 14% allows the vehicle's to be more efficient as well. Which can reduce impact and costs even further. It's a interesting cycle, where less weight, means more efficiency. Which means less batteries per car equals more profit. More evs on the roads for the same amount of total kwhs of battery production. Reduced cooling system needs, reduced heating needs, reduced wear on components, reduced braking force needed, less wear on tires etc.👍🏻
@@4literv6 lol.... the 70 parts that tesla was talking about was just showing their inefficiencies in the manufacturing, again no other companies uses that much parts for just a car section, you're welcome.
@@moineaux9173 ahh got any proof of that by chance or links to share that can back up your claims? 🤔 I've been doing research on the history of evs and tesla for over 3 years now. And watched many of Sandy Monroe's video's. He doesn't seem to think tesla is doing anything besides leading on ev manufacturing. Which coincidently line's up nicely with their sales volumes as the worldwide ev leader. Further more vw just recently called an emergency all hands meeting over the tesla Berlin factories immenint opening. Apparently tesla makes a model 3 in about 10hrs total time. Whereas the id.3 takes vag over 29hrs to make. Now just how inefficient could tesla be when they can make the world's best selling ev in around 1/3rd of the time as it's nearest competitor? Doesn't sound much like tesla is inefficient now does it? Rather it seems the company supposedly more experienced in volume car manufacturing is the real loser here. 🤔
We live in exiting times. I’m going to Berlin, this autum, and will go out, too see the new Mega Factory. I might make a video about, how the locals feel, about the whole thing. 🇩🇰🙋🏻♂️🪐👩🏻🚀🇺🇸
Brilliant analysis, as always. You posed the question in your video about how much the gigcasting process speeded up Tesla production compared with stamped steel structures. The VW CEO and President are on record recently as saying that Tesla produces a car 3x faster than VW. Other sources suggest a VW ID3 takes 48 hours to produce versus 10 hours for a Tesla (I believe this relates to a Tesla Model Y out of Shanghai with only a single gigacasting). It's fair to assume that the gigacasting makes a large contribution to this faster speed of production at Tesla. So what happens when Giga Berlin starts ramping up next year with front and rear gigacastings (and later 4680 batteries with structural packs)? One has to imagine Tesla's productivity (or production speed) could be 5x to 6x that of VW... Scary thought for the legacy automakers! Good luck competing with that!
The mind boggles! But, methinks Elon has been here before! Pushing the boundaries of manufacturing that traditional manufacturers will not comprehend. Looking forward to further videos where your research and presentation style educates the unbelievers! I just can't even understand the measurement process.
Aluminum is great till it starts to corrode. The Japanese have been making motorcycles with aluminum frames for some years now. The older bikes that have been subjected to a lot of humidity... corrode very badly to the point where it isn't cost effective to repair. It will be much worse in a car that is driven in areas that salt their roads in the winter. If a major structural part of the car corrodes you will probably have to junk it.
Somebody on a german EV channel linked to this video: ua-cam.com/video/w5c5KzpamiM/v-deo.html It's from a guy who claims to be head of "Agile@Tesla". He talks about Tesla's manufacturing approach and company culture, how they are using agile methods to rapidly iterate their hardware products and production process. The video was mind-blowing to me. Everybody interested in Tesla should watch it. Jordan, I expect you will see this comment. If not, I will try to post the link on patreon.
No deep dive planned on CAPEX. The figures here included CAPEX. That is, we'd go far deeper for little marginal benefit (as far as I can tell). The answer would still be the same. Do you mean takt time or cycle time, or something else? Cycle time has already been covered. I may go deeper on this in a later video. On takt time, if you're considering the person who buys the car as the customer, then I'm not sure if it's relevant because Tesla is so supply constrained. If you're considering the customer the production line, it's hard to know unless we know which part of Tesla's manufacturing lines are limiting production speed and what they are designed for.
@@thelimitingfactor fair enough on capex. My mind was thinking about what happens in the eyes of traditional automotive when they would need to weigh up how much it would cost to change. On cycle vs takt, I’m just thinking about how time is proportional to money (and further to that, the best process is no process mantra). I can’t see why Tesla would be pushing so hard to lower cycle time if they were also not trying to push down takt. Yes, they could run multiple lines off the one casting machine but I think they will try to go one machine one line. I also suspect that they have gone the casting route to lower cycle because they believe that they are about to have a profound breakthrough with battery production. Hence why we are seeing castings stockpiled all over the place at the moment.
1) NICE. I'll keep an eye out for information. Idra is starting a gigacasting series as well. Maybe more information will shake out. 2) Totally! This sounds like a separate video, but would go even broader than gigacasting to the entire line. It sounds like VW's cycle time is like 30 hours and Tesla's is 10 hours to produce a vehicle. I also think that Tesla would like to go one machine per line. However, it depends on how tailored the machine is to the part. If they adjusted the part size, that would affect the cycle time when they change the die. That is: What determines the line speed for Tesla? I think this is actually a moving target.
@@thelimitingfactor you’re not wrong talking about changing the dies for a casting machine. In fact, anything they change seems to happen quite quick. I’ve not seen or heard anything close to it anywhere
@@thelimitingfactor Tesla is only currently supply constrained with batteries and chips. Over the next year or two, these constraints will go away and then takt time reduction will translate directly to a profitability increase.
Nobody is talking about rust? I would gladly pay $500 extra for a car that doesn't rust. That is the cost of a single undercoat spraying and a car needs maybe five of those in its lifetime.
For your consideration... min 5:50 an increase in thickness increases stiffness👍, but also increases deformation energy absorption 👍👍.....The required thickness of some body components is not dictated by the service loads (stiffness) , but by the crash safety requirements (energy absorption). A thicker aluminum part will require (absorb) more energy to deform/crumple than a thin steel part. This makes the thicker part better/cheaper/lighter for crash worthiness.
@@AudiTTQuattro2003 I would say this is a misplaced priority. Protecting occupancies is more important than the battery. Given the stiffness of the battery, Tesla uses the battery to share loads in protecting occupancies.
@@quansun7633 Impact damage is a serious danger to humans, so is the explosion of a damaged lithium battery. Watch the hydraulic press channel vid where they crush a power bank 😳
Kinda related, but VW's chairman, Herbert Diess recently said that it takes Tesla 10 hours to make a model 3, but it takes 3 days to make a VW id.3. I assume he's talking about Giga Berlin and Al casting. He proposed tearing down some current plants and building back with more efficient plants. I think VW is getting the message, but other manufacturers....?
the problem is that it seems Diess is alone at Volkswagen trying to convince them. So much that he dares mention the "T" word directly. It takes guts. I hope he gets fired from Volkswagen and Tesla hires him!
@@Akira-nw4jl I think all traditional auto manufacturers are facing boardroom struggles. IMO, Toyota is loosing the battle, BMW is on the fence while GM seems to be forging ahead. The recent sales numbers reported by Tesla are telling...they outsold BMW, Mercedes and Audi in the last quarter.
I don't know if it's already happened or not but Diess is facing a vote of no confidence at VW. These guys are still pretending it's 1995 and it will take Diess a miracle to survive inside a dinosaur 🙄
I REALLY appreciate the detail and effort you put into these videos. I love learning about the reason why something is rather than just accepting that it is with a surface level overview. You are doing outstanding work and I am always excited to see your next video!
There's another cost:weight dynamic that is of increasing importance... the after sale cost of fueling/charging the vehicle increases with the weight of the vehicle. The old combustion industry didn't care, since that cost was born by the customer after they'd bought the car (the colatteral enviro cost being completely ignored for 100 years of combustion). Now with climate change driving the dynamic it becomes more important to factor in the impact of weight on the lifetime fueling requirements. Lighter total mass might eventually become more important than cheaper build and market price.
I’m not usually a fan of European regulations. However they have forced car makers to improve fuel consumption and safety of passengers and pedestrians. Tesla did not want to be excluded from that market so designed its cars to exceed EU regulations.
For clarification, at 5:47 he is talking about flexural stiffness which is proportionnal to the cross section, lever effect and material deformation which are all proportionnal to the sheet thickness, hence the cubic power.
Good design means very little of the sheet material should undergo significant bending stress. In practice this means you don't get that cubic relationship
@@EdFrench_uk Well, it's under compression so buckling is an issue. But I guess that the advantage of using aluminium is that you can use simpler shapes.
Yes aluminum cars also last so much longer. Without crashes in mind rust is almost solely responsible for cars needing to be scraped. Aluminum never rusts. It forms a small layer of oxide which is actually harder and more durable than normal aluminum. Aluminum parts are easily recyclable and have life spans of hundreds of year. A well maintained aluminum car without any steel could out live the owner. Especially electric cars. Less moving parts. Regardless of material gas engines will always die eventually because they break them themselves apart while in use. We could easily see cars lasting 20 30 50 even a hundred years with minimal maintenance. Carbon steel shouldn’t even exist anymore. It is one of the shity materials one could use. Regardless of what it’s properties are new a material which naturally and rapidly decomposes is useless. And the rust takes enormous amounts of energy and chemicals to recycle back into iron for making new steel. So much it’s not worth doing it. There is never, EVER a good reason to use carbon steel anymore for absolutely anything in todays world. There will always be materials better in every way that last longer and at similar or lower prices. The only reason it is used is stupidity and because if products die and need to be replaced it is profitable for manufacturers. I absolutely hate carbon steel. It is usually used in super expensive products that are disposable items because of carbon steel.
@jacobleeson4763 if you knew anyone in the trucking industry where they use aluminum frames on trailer bodies then you would know that aluminum will not rust but actually dissolve when exposed to salts
You compare the cost per unit weight of steel versus aluminium. When you create stamped steel parts, there is a lot of waste steel that gets thrown away. When you create cast aluminium parts there is very little waste. Are you using the amount of steel (weight) that ended up in the vehicle, or the amount of steel that was purchased - in other words, do you need to include the cost of the steel that was thrown away.
@@terrybrown6057 I'm happy to hear that, but since the price that they get for the recycled cuts is less than the cost of new material, that difference would have to be included in the overall cost. Not sure if it significant, but it could be.
Hey Jordan, great work as always! Just curious: does the costing and cost savings include labor costs? With 1 part replacing up to or around 100 parts, I would assume there is a large amount of savings in labor just in assemblage of all that.
Any plans for videos on Aptera Motors? Love your videos, have you watched any videos from the Terran Space Academy Channel? It is similar to your channel, but he talks about rocket engines and aerospace!!
Speaking of advantages, you left out one of the biggies, literally orders of magnitude better QC on the panel gaps. Elon was serious about microns vs the current millimeters. Along with a brand new cutting edge paint shop, complaints about fit and finish will be history.
Complaints coming from customers are compared between manufacturers at 3 months of ownership (3MIS 3 Months In Service). This data is shared across manufacturers and QA evaluation data in house is compiled by each and published so manufacturers have an idea how they're doing. But... Tesla refuse to do this.... Why do you think that is? Customer satisfaction is more than just fit and finish...it's the complete ownership package.. how satisfied with the car are you... What issues did you have as warranty claims etc... Why don't Tesla publish their data? I would guess it's not upto scratch... If your good you'd make sure it was known... I worked 30yrs inspecting quality of new vehicles.. I've seen some Tesla's parked... Oh dear... There's some real bad panel fits out there... Not saying each manufacturer is perfect but bleating on that Tesla will be perfect is a pie in the sky... In real life getting a cars panels to fit properly usually requires manual bending somewhat to get it to fit. If you think that an assembly line WILL turn out perfect panel fit you know nothing of how cars are made, how cars are adjusted or how they are repaired to be ready for the customer from new. Go on a car plant tour... You'll learn something
@@terrybrown6057 Why should Tesla have to do as the legacy car manufacturers have traditionally done? Our 2 year old Model 3 is perfect, panel gaps and paint are as good as any car (confirmed by detailers), reliability has been 100%, and build quality is very near to perfect. The Tesla is MUCH better than any other new car we’ve owned, (and without counting, we have had a lot of new cars in the last 40 years.) The Tesla is just in a whole different league compared to all my previous ICE cars, which over the last 40 years includes European, American, Korean and Japanese built cars.
@@FutureSystem738 as I said... As a customer you would never know how the company as a whole is performing. Yea, you have a car are happy with..great . But the truth is in warranty claims... Why do you think Elon refuses to publish warranty claims? Everyone else does. There are good cars with every company... But even with your detailers they won't have access to engineering standards and what tolerances are allowed before a fault becomes unacceptable. For example a panel that is designed to be flush +/-1mm... Each manufacturer has different levels of tolerances allowed as to what is achievable to the drawings. And what is allowed to be shipped out the door. So anyone working outside of QA at the manufacturer will never know what is allowed to be good or not. Every part has tolerances from fit n finish to even allowance on how hot an LED should be on a switch... What I'm saying is pure quality data is compared from sources of customers fault feedback and offline fault detection and treatment.
The giga-cast is cool. But I can't even afford to look at a Tesla. I think Ford solves the problem pretty well with the F 150. They use the same full frame design as always, and put the battery in the middle same as a Tesla. $32,000 after tax credit. Seats 5. 200 miles range. It looks like a truck. If $28,000 is the cost to make a model 3. Maybe they should go to the cheap steel. And give the people a car they can afford.
One important fact has been completely kept out of the theoretical weight, strength and stiffness equation. Casting/moulding technology limits the minimum wall thickness. Theoretical mass and stiffness calculations become different when you can't make castings not thinner then 4-8mm although that would be enough for strength. Steel sheet products have almost no thickness limitations, can be as low as 0.2 mm So castings are always much havier because of wall thickness limitations. Why is Tesla using Al castings? They're a newbie in automotive/mechanical engineering and production technology. They try many things new and different, supported by companies always willing to expand their customer base. Some of these ideas are good and some of them are bad
Steel rusts, aluminum doesn't. In as far as body panels go, if you have any respect for your customers you won't make your body panels out of steel. One of my favorite vehicles from about 8 years ago was a Honda CRV that still ran like a dream but the underside was so rusty that the suspension was no longer mounting to the body and it became dangerous so I had to let it go. Anyone living in the rust belt of the United States knows that a brand new car begins to rust after about 2 years of purchase... Planned obsolescence cannot keep being the norm as it has been for so many years! Aluminum is lighter than steel which positively affects the performance of the car and it won't rust which will improve on the reliability of the car.
Just to say, Magnesium and Aluminum have a similar melting point, about half of steel. Because the casting machine is made of steel with a similar melting point, and the desired crystal structure of the steel may not survive casting, casting steel seems unlikely. If possible, it would take more energy to melt the steel and cool the casting machine.
Steel can not be used in die casting. The crystal structure devevelops during cooling the steel, and often further heat treatment. You typically need slow cooling, and cooling at the same rate everywhere in the part. Steel is just completely different to handle, and this method does not work.
Correct. Steel can be cast, but with extreme difficulty, and NOT in this kind of detail. Incidentally, magnesium is a lot easier to cast than aluminium still, with noticeably longer die lifetime. Melting temperature is just one of many factors.
@@pasticcinideliziosi1259 We have more than enough ice cars. But cars made of frozen water are new. Large ships have been build from ice, successfully.
Great stuff again. I see gigacastings as a real bottleneck for Tesla. Sure, they get an hour or two of production down to 3 minutes, but the process is pipelined. the fact that it takes longer to make a car (high latency) doesn't matter so long as you can make lots of them (high bandwidth). Even going 24/7 a gigapress can only do 175k/year. You've got to halve that for a 2 part subframe (front and rear), so the factories are going to need banks of gigapresses to achieve million plus run rates. It's difficult to see legacy following Tesla down this rabbit hole. As you say they have the expertise and factories set up to press and weld steel. And they probably take the view that $100 bucks (or so) that they can't even see isn't worth going after, let alone the weight reductions. So far, they've all addressed range and weight issues just by sticking massive batteries in their vehicles. And if they want a cheap vehicle to compete with Tesla on sticker price, they appear to have thrown range under a bus. I just don't see how you make the massive investments in gigacasting tech when all you have are disadvantages everywhere else on your products. Elon called it at battery day, long term, everyone has batteries and and FSD, so the only way Tesla can stay ahead is by outproducing everyone else. Most of Tesla's engineering is going into the machine that makes the machine. Legacy is screwed. Maybe they know it, hence the EV bill. Maybe they don't. Maybe they think they can transition. I can't see how they transition. And there's no way they ever catch up.
Interesting stats on the gigacasting capacity. Where did they come from? Given that you're correct, I believe Tesla has already purchased and installed 10-12 of the presses, which puts them over 2M castings per year, or 1 million vehicles. This is not counting whatever they buy in 2022.
One of the few vehicles that have a million/year run rate is the F150. While Tesla does plan to have a larger gigacasting as part of the Cybertruck structure, a bigger part will be the folded exoskeleton. I think that Tesla can afford one or 2 more 8,000 ton gigapress machines to keep up production rates. More interesting to me will be what they come up with for the model 2. I can see them ordering a larger number of smaller versions from IDRA.
@@petersmangalisongoma2013 Yes, I used 3 min/piece rate to get the 175K annual rate that Andy Onions did. I believe I heard that rate from some gigacasting video here on UA-cam. Are you certain there is only 1 gigapress in Shanghai? How do you know?
First your videos and content are awesome. My comment intends to take nothing from that. I feel you have underestimated your emphasized savings. You made room for it but the number range in your conclusion is just very low. The plant space, labor, equipment, jigs, coatings, treatments and mechanical adjustments of the array of steel assembled into the body all add dramatically to cost. Labor and rework=more labor is king. I think the giga casting is a massive savings vs conventional builds. I offer this as an electrical engineer on a couch with an opinion in the hope that you can with your superpowers make it into more robust content at some point. Any detail is more that I have provided. Footnote: I grew four large successful manufacturing operations in my life with my opinions... Again love your work, patreon and huge fan...
Hi Eric! For sure! I was angling to underestimate. I'd also note that the MIT paper and the DOE work appeared to take into account the factors you mention above. That is, aluminum is a material just costs more, and even if gigacasting eliminates all production costs, it's about the same price as stamped aluminum. However! How many more cars is Tesla able to pump out of this line for lower capital cost? That is, I find it difficult to assess how much more quickly the lines ramp, how much higher quality they'll be, and how much that will suck money into Tesla's coffers 😀
@@thelimitingfactor I think Aluminum sheet does not talk to a cast part from a labor and square footage perspective. The large casting is not what those papers were thinking. It is not the material, it is the complexity and piece count. Labor and variance are Huge costs, they dwarf material in manufacturing. I get the underestimate part but I think you did such a good job you underrepresented the point significantly...
I couldn’t tell from the video so I’ll ask, you’re quoting a lot of metrics about aluminum but some of those properties could vary from what Tesla is using unless you’re using specific data from an analysis of Teslas materials? Sandy Munro mentioned they had very exotic alloys to give more of the properties they need. Any way to account for some of those specifics (if they’re available) if you didn’t already? Love the breakdown and detail, just wondering how much variance there may be from what tesla is actually using. Thanks for any feedback!
Great video, but you ignored aluminium's greatest advantage. Aluminium won't rust! Rust is still a big problem in colder countries, where salt is used on the roads. HSS will lose its strength if it rusts
15 and 20 minutes in: VW just admitted this week that the model Y takes 1/3 the time to assemble. Some of that MUST be from the castings. Correction Edit: VW said the Model 3 takes 1/3 the time.
At the end of the day you make a lot of money from this cast. Super short lead time, only one part number, no glue, rivets, screws, pre forming, less robots, assembly misstakes, fewer dies, molds.... do I have to go on? That's what we already know for 30 years, but till now nobody was implementing it.
Great Video like usual. You said that weight saving is important, but this is nothing new compare a Lotus Exige to Porsche Boxter or 911. I guess BMW tried to save to much weight compared to production efforts for their carbon fiber i3 Body?
Speed of production & manufacturing procedures have to be considered. One piece of aluminium vs 27 parts of steel to be assembled is the key factor when it comes to assembly cost.
Giga casting is going to take a lot of advance planing. Totally possible to get it working. But casting has the same but different issues of stamping. I wonder how they are going to deal with tool wear on the molds. Hmmm that's going to be expensive.
Jordan! My CEO loves your Limiting Factor content on UA-cam and would like to have a brief 15 minute Zoom to give you some insight into our unique 75 year synthetic graphite anode material project and pick your brain on the battery market. Please comment back so I can furnish you with more information.
Well reasoned, but... There is no evidence that Tesla scaled back it's powertrain to profit from the lower body weight. In fact, they are notoriously overpowered. Plaid!! It's unfair to assume that politics or intellectual inertia prevent automakers from considering castings. Automakers refit and redesign their factories all the time, with every generation improving on the last. You didn't mention the chokepoint created when all of the production has to go through one rare and exotic machine. The gigapress in Fremont caught fire in 2021. I suspect Tesla sees no cost or engineering advantage from gigacasting, but they do get a significant marketing boost. A lot of Tesla fans think the company is new, fresh, and thinking-outside-the-box; gigacasting gives them another data point to pretend that they're superior. It's cool when any company tries something new, or finds a better or more efficient method. That said, I look forward to the day when real automakers start mass-producing EVs so Tesla can quietly go out of business and stop using up all the oxygen.
It has been reported Tesla recently ordered a 12 ton gegacasting press, which will allow it to make a whole body casting, and 5,000 cars a day. My best guess is this won't/can't be used for larger vehicles like the Cycbertruck but can be used for their smaller $20k economy model hatch back. Worth checking into.
Production Speed, Tesla can produce a car in 1/3 the time and with nearly 1/3 the labor of VW because of Giga Casting! Tesla will be (already is) a money printing company.
Why are you comparing cost of per ton/ strength. Isn't aluminium parts lighter? 1. Point on skill isn't not that relevant, you understand that IC engineers are quite complicated casting? History is proved that in mechanical manufacturing their is no secrecy. 2. Tesla would have secured long term contracts for alluminium? No suppliers will assure prices for more than 3-6 months. 3. Cost of alluminium is going increase much faster than steel given the rise in copper prices with the rise in use of motors.
I doub't you will ever find the cost-analisys of the production element. I don't have them and I spent 15 year selling the robot based assembly and welding system for the automotive industry.. and I don't have them because they are a very well kept secret.. they let you know their margin on a platform, but not the brake down on that margin.. but for sure getting rid of all those robots and, even more so, the complex gigs required to put a car frame together, with all the small bits and bobs, all the poka-yoke, all the sensors, controls, phases, redundancies, robot programming, welding parameters.. it is going to increase that margin considerably AND it is going to reduce the time to market for the car.. no more two shift a day 60 days race to overhaul a production line for a new model.. you work, offline, on a new casting.. you set it up, a week of trials and you are up and running.. thanks God I don't do that as a job anymore.. or I would have ended up jobless in a couple of years...
Caustic soaps, when in contact with Magnesium wheels, caused cristaline seperation. Overnight, expensive magnesium racing wheels, inexpertly washed, collapsed.
"If everyone move to aluminium, then the price will skyrocket...it looks like may Tesla run away with the cheap aluminium...with the long term contract" Everyone seems accepting this assumption, to me seems not realistic that it will definitely play just an advantage for Tesla. Looking for a comment from a professional, thanks. Great video in any case.
Additional Notes on Variables:
1) (+) The Model 3 has a $28,000 production cost. This means Tesla could save more than what's indicated here.
2) (-/+) Tesla could keep the the battery and motors the same size. This would mean lower cost savings. However, the customer would still benefit from longer range, better MPGe, and acceleration.
Thanks for your support!
Great video really looking forward to seeing these incorporated into the Model Y and see what route Tesla takes, either lower cost or longer range.
Re: Steel vs Pressed AL. Is the AL ends intended to be sacrificial crush zones, so damage pressures will minimally intrude beyond the immediate ends being crashed upon? If so, will body shops be provided pressed AL "clips" by which they can quickly impart repairs vs steel?
I feel that this video understates the case.
1) Casting makes it easier to form complex shapes, with complex, deep embossed / raised ridges on any number of axes at once (as can be easily seen in the geometry of the casting). This increases the net thickness of the piece, and thus its stiffness.
2) Casting makes it easier to preform bolt holes, wiring mounts, and any number of fittings that would require extra machining or parts with conventional manufacture.
3) Apart from price, casting reduces the part and joint count. Each joint is a new opportunity for problems to emerge such as noise, improper alignment, bad welds, etc - you just get in general a better vehicle if you can keep the part count down.
One could also mention that UHSS is famously a pain to work with compared to HSS and esp. mild steel.
Are Ys with both front & rear castings now being made in Fremont?
@@karenrobertsdottir4101 Correct. One more benefit from the reduced part count is reduced inventory cost.
Jordan, this is top notch material science engineering analysis. It boggles my mind that you don't have a traditional engineering degree. You clearly are a super bright and capable guy! I'm surprised Tesla hasn't tried snatching you up 😉
🤜🤛 Thanks for the support as always Nick!
Shh nobody tell Dwight that Tesla makes SUVs and compact SUVs...
@@AudiTTQuattro2003 I respectfully disagree! Performing material analysis investigation, selection, and especially highlighting the magnesium strength & weight analogue study (which was then compared to aluminum), was some good engineering sleuthing. To put that all into a condensed and easy to understand presentation is where Jordan's top-notch work really shined.
@@AudiTTQuattro2003 You’re speaking too soon. Tesla is already at nearly a million per year vehicle manufacturing run rate with just the two vehicle factories that it has, and the Shanghai Gigafactory hasn’t reached its peak output.
Also the Fremont Factory hasn’t fully ramped the new Model S production line or even started delivering the new Model X which typically outsells the Model S.
The Berlin Gigafactory is larger and more advanced than the highly efficient Shanghai Gigafactory which will improve the final product while simultaneously decreasing cost for Tesla’s European customers. Then there’s the Austin, Texas Gigafactory which is even bigger than Berlin and according to Elon will be used to test the cutting edge of Tesla’s manufacturing techniques so even more advanced than Berlin.
Tesla is forecasting a 20 million a year vehicle manufacturing rate by 2030 and I believe them. They’ve got practically unlimited cash and have shown that they can build two Gigafactory simultaneously in about a year for a cost of just ~$400 million each.
Contrast that with VW’s Tennessee EV plant expansion/conversion that costs $800 million or GM’s $2.2 billion dollar EV factory also in Tennessee, and you’ll start to understand Tesla’s huge capital efficiency lead.
@@AudiTTQuattro2003 It's not small at all. You should not count how many cars the brand put out. Count how many they can put out on their most advanced factories. OEM does 200k at most per factory per year. Giga Shanghai's new Production Rate is 450k per year.
You're videos are so interesting. Absolutely brilliant work. I feel like I'm watching a documentary with each episode.
Elon has said his real technological advantage is in manufactring. A traditional car takes 22 hours for assembly, give or take an hour for what car/factory/brand you're looking at.
I've seen tesla saying it takes 10, yes ten, hours to ass'l the 3/Y with gigacastings.
So that's DOUBLE the production rate for the same size factory/workforce.
It's not only the throughput due to speed, less space is required for each production line as there are fewer steps, and a lot fewer robots. As the video says, there is an additional improvement in quality some defects, such as panel gaps, are only apparent further down the line. Improving the defect rate has a compound effect and makes the manufactuing more profitable.
Ten hours is not that fast... Nissan Sunderland can build a car from painted shell (coming into trim line) to start up in around 6 hours or so..might be quicker with no lunch break...
Each work assignment is well under 1 minute turn round.. has been the most efficient in Europe for years.. Tesla seem to think what they do is fast...haha... No where near.. what they do is brag about what they do... Need to try comparing data... Oh hang on.. he daren't...
Speed or throughput are not good key numbers to compare. A factory that produces a car in half the time but costs three times as much to build and operate is not better.
You need to break down speed and throughput into their associated costs. Both in capex and running cost. Again, using half the labour but spending twice the saved cost on electricity is no win.
There's another factor in play soon reducing costs of production. What to do with the main battery packs when they are no longer viable in a car. They are going back to the factories to be used as storage batteries linked to the factories own solar and wind farms. Nissan announced recently that they will be carbon neutral in the next ten years. Some going when you see the size of machines running. By reducing the third biggest cost of a car (1st being parts, 2nd being labour), the energy costs to make a car need to come down. These apply to all manufacturers.. something's they can't reduce such as labour costs but energy and parts they can control and can be ruthless. Suppliers tend to be moving nearer factories now, reducing costs of transportation and uncertainties in markets. Before covid most parts were made in very low wage countries... That's changing. The shortages of silicone chips has thrown another spanner in the works too... 90% of manufacturers are still on downtime working on and off as stocks arrive.. try buying a new car... Wait times are huge unless in stock.
There's also another factor in play.. new upstart companies trying for their own slice of the cake... Market share has shuffled around a lot.. China being a huge player in the EV markets now...
Consistency of quality for new companies... Can they keep it up...
@@terrybrown6057 google some...22 hours labor to build a car...remember the engine and transmission, seats and more arrive ready to assemble in the body.
As deep dives go this channel excels. Just subscribed.
Pretty decent analysis. Couple of refinements:
1. There is IMHO no universally-accepted definition of "high strength steel". So, be careful when comparing;
2. Magnesium is an oddity. Its USP's include high damping - ideal for dashboard support. Again, be careful what you compare...
3. Strength is easy to talk about until you look closer: e.g. fatigue strength and energy absorption potential are quite tricky to pin down.
Keep up the good work.
I always enjoy your contents. Really informative and in simple terms.
Thank you for your dedication to reinforce and building shareholders conviction. Your videos are educational and well researched. Props to you!
@@AudiTTQuattro2003 Nothing is certain but death and taxes, and playing the market is gambling by any measure.
However, I can't think of a more certain bet today than this company. The next 4 years or so will reveal the answer, afterward will be building on the successful execution of Tesla's gameplan.
No, not a lock, and there is a chance I may not wake up tomorrow, but I don't bet against Elon.
Japanese motorcycle makers often use cast aluminium frame parts. They look good and stiff structures are easier to make a than using steel tubes or steel pressings.
I can see Tesla using castings for door structures and for the car sides (A, B, C pillars plus roof and sill frames). These can be welded but today’s industrial adhesives could literally glue the car together.
The complexity and depth of analysis is amazing in this video. What I am most interested in is the fact that the concept/vision/imagination of this product and procedure came first and is the "Cause" while the analysis is all after the fact. This is how most if not all great advancements have been made throughout history. The root cause of everything in the physical world is the unseen spiritual world of consciousness. Elon Musk clearly has an understanding of developed intuition.
As always, impressively thorough analysis and explained in terms even I am able to follow! Thank you for your excellent work
An additional advantage with casting is that you are generally provided a more flexible design space. You can more easily position the part topology (can be optimized using finite element methods) to the most efficient shape possible to get a given job done. Therefore you can use even less raw material and further decrease costs.
This may also lead to more flexibility in overall assembly design, where you can position other components with more freedom. The benefits just keep coming.
Amen! It's a whole new bag of tricks!
@@AudiTTQuattro2003 It would be interesting to know the bottom-line total cost per major die iteration. Since the dies are likely lifecycle limited, much of the cost would be on the development side.
Tesla's vertical integration, holistic engineering approach, and use of smaller elite teams allow them to do the engineering balancing act better than any other automobile manufacturer. It really is a joy to watch these developments roll out.
Wrong, the casting actually reduce your flexibility in the manufacturing. Stamping is stupid cheap and modifying a stamped part is even way easier than repairing a casting.
@@jamesdorrell712 uhm nope!
Nice work! There a whole area of Industrial engineering name OR, operational research, today with assembly simulation all this question can be answered, including all Capex and Opex, even what happens with cost fluctuations 😁
Again a mind blowing video from Jordan 🤯🤩 Please support his brilliant work with Patreon !👍🍻
Jordan, just a thought. In an accident the aluminium is probably harder but more easily fractured than the steel is. Instead of passing the impact through to the passengers the aluminium takes the brunt & gives way; ie crushes in the moulded areas. Steel at the battery frame is necessary for stiffer protection but would be harsher on those inside.
Amen! That's my understanding as well!
Wow, that was really in-depth! I'm gonna have to watch some of your other videos...
😁 Prepare for the firehose of information!
@@thelimitingfactor I'm already working through the gigacasting videos. Give me a few days to watch all of your content lol.
Jordon, thanks for the great content. It would be interesting to see a comparison of repair costs after a collision. I imagine repairing a one piece cast aluminum frame assembly would be extremely difficult.
You had me at microcrystalline grain structure.
🤣🤣🤣
Excellent analysis.
@10:23, stiffness is a function of moment of inertia, I, rotated about its principal axis times E, the modulus of elasticity. The symbol K is often used to represent stiffness. K = fn ( E, I). The value of I depends on its geometry. For a given geometry, the value of I is the same regardless of the material. However, K is different between a steel and aluminum part having the same geometry because E (steel) is greater the E(aluminum). The only way for an aluminum part to achieve the same stiffness as a steel part is to increase I, ie change of geometry of the part such as making it beefier. A beefier aluminum part would cost and weigh more, two factors not considered in the “Final Tally.”
Difficult making hollow section, if you're not using sand casting and hollow sections are usually good for moment of inertia, where you get both increased bending stiffness and increased structual stability. I also wonder if they need to add material places, that are not necessarily needed from a structual perspective in order to make the casting process work.
This video is so great. But it remains in my mind why your analysis doesn't include corrosion resistance as a consideration. The simplicity of EVs strike me as a reason to go for long life durable vehicles which retain value. I'm thinking aluminium is more corrosion resistant, but nice if you addressed it.
Thanks man! Corrosion resistance is a property of the alloy. It's a series and will be covered in the appropriate video (the next video of the series)
Yet another amazing video, Jordan!
I just had one question, are we accounting for higher scrap rates (over 50%) for these kind of large aluminium castings or is Tesla avoiding that with the use of their special Al alloy material?
From memory, the scrap rate is very low for these. Like less than 10%. I forget where this was mentioned, but I think it was on an earning call.
Thanks for the research and sharing it!!
Great piece of content, thanks!
When it comes to nuanced analysis of complex material science and manufacturing cost systems Jordan is a super ninja 🥷
You just destroyed an MIT cost study with a few well reasoned analogs. Well done, grasshopper.
🤜🤛 😁
You should keep well clear of considering Magnesium castings, the casting technology is difficult and the corrosion problems are an order of magnitude greater than Aluminium. Check the experience of aircraft manufacturers with Al vs Mg.
I think you should consider selling your analysis to financial trading outfits, like Bloomberg does with their data. They get it a week early for a small king's ransom.
What matters is the use of stainless steel as the obviates the need for paint and why the Tesla Cybertruck is such a big deal. Vehicle painting and paint is incredibly energy intensive to apply and of course very expensive unto itself. If you take away the need to paint a vehicle in the first place first off you save a ton of money (perhaps literally these days) but more than that is the time savings in production...thus getting to market quicker and in far greater volumes if the vehicle design is a winner.
Thank you for diving into gigacasting. This was the "one more thing" from Battery Day that I really thought was the most important announcement. But it only works as a major cost savings for a new company expanding into new factories. Ford et al can attempt to add this technology, but it means losing investment capitol in old manufacturing equipment. The sunken cost of old equipment investments is the hardest part of vehicle manufacturing for people to really understand because it's hard to imagine an investment that pays off in 20 years and requires millions of cars produced before then. So Tesla (and Chinese manufacturers) get the speed and upfront cost advantages basically for free because they arnt having to figure out what to do with legacy equipment, workers trained to operate them, and buildings and production lines designed around them.
Yes, amortization of costs and cost accounting is a trap that prevents the replacement of old equipment with improved equipment that increases profits. You must do a current cash flow analysis.
@@AndyZach its also why we see Ford trying to do interesting things with castings on the same vehicle that they used a parts bin approach to the coolant system. Tesla is just beginning to get to the point where they might fall into that trap and need to be sure to stay limber going forwards.
Love your work.
Excellent, thanks
Re - Cost of Aluminium
Aluminium is effectively solidified electricity!
The major cost is in the electricity required to make Aluminium
Tesla is also working on massively reducing the cost of electricity - and a large part of going renewable will mean that power generation will be overbuilt so that there will be seasonal "surpluses" of power
This may/should have the effect of increasing Aluminium Supply and reducing Aluminium prices
Have you notices that when Tesla car is in an accident it seems with full frame system over individual parts the whole car has to be written off more often. After depreciation over a few years Owner will be left with paying higher insurance over time.
Jordan, I love the fact that I can go back and watch this multiple times to fully comprehend what you have laid out. You have a massive amount of information there... which is totally awesome. However, can the intricate design of a Tesla AL cast also make up for strength issues and deliver better safety results than HSS?
look at the Castings themslves , the Crash Rails and Reinforcement are Already formed into the Rear Casting.
they will do the same for the FRONT casting , and they simply BOLT to the Structural battery pack.
Thank you!
Welcome back TLF.
A great and informative episode.
High strength steel, only means that they will use for car three times thinner stell so when rust hits it will rust through three times fester. Did anyone see aluminum rust to white powder especially when exposed to salt?
The alloy is corrosion resistant. Some aluminum alloy definitely are susceptible to road salt, but not all.
While high strength steel is vastly superior to high strength aluminum, cars don't have to be tanks, they just have to be crash survivable.
I wish tesla would do an environmental savings impact for the single piece giga castings. Vs the 70+pieces that were required for the same part.
As in cover everything involved in making that all come together vs a simple single casting made from one patent metal. Pressed in a single machine.
The capex and energy savings alone from 300+less robots on the line. Has to be staggering.
Let alone the reduced footprint of the factories, reduced heating&cooling etc. 🤔
Great stuff as usual man. I often have to re watch your videos because I just cannot absorb everything on the first run through. 😀
That is fair, however energy translates to cost. So we can use the cost advantage as a proxy as well :)
There is litteraly zero saving advantage in terms of the environment. Also other manufacturers doesn't use 70 different parts. Other manufacturers already have all the machines necessary for manufacturing and melting metal all the time requires alot more energy than just running some robots.
@@moineaux9173 we aren't talking about other manufacturers here. Tesla themselves said the single piece rear casting replaces over 70 parts of various sizes and metals that use different bonding methods with the single piece large casting.
All of that complexity ad's up, plus the fasteners you now dont need. Glues and adhesives you don't need, labor you don't need and less machines. Nm like I already said less space to run the assembly line reducing factory footprints and saving further energy.
Plus the weight savings of up to 14% allows the vehicle's to be more efficient as well.
Which can reduce impact and costs even further.
It's a interesting cycle, where less weight, means more efficiency.
Which means less batteries per car equals more profit.
More evs on the roads for the same amount of total kwhs of battery production.
Reduced cooling system needs, reduced heating needs, reduced wear on components, reduced braking force needed, less wear on tires etc.👍🏻
@@4literv6 lol.... the 70 parts that tesla was talking about was just showing their inefficiencies in the manufacturing, again no other companies uses that much parts for just a car section, you're welcome.
@@moineaux9173 ahh got any proof of that by chance or links to share that can back up your claims? 🤔
I've been doing research on the history of evs and tesla for over 3 years now. And watched many of Sandy Monroe's video's.
He doesn't seem to think tesla is doing anything besides leading on ev manufacturing.
Which coincidently line's up nicely with their sales volumes as the worldwide ev leader.
Further more vw just recently called an emergency all hands meeting over the tesla Berlin factories immenint opening.
Apparently tesla makes a model 3 in about 10hrs total time.
Whereas the id.3 takes vag over 29hrs to make. Now just how inefficient could tesla be when they can make the world's best selling ev in around 1/3rd of the time as it's nearest competitor? Doesn't sound much like tesla is inefficient now does it? Rather it seems the company supposedly more experienced in volume car manufacturing is the real loser here. 🤔
Brilliant
Thanks man!
We live in exiting times. I’m going to Berlin, this autum, and will go out, too see the new Mega Factory. I might make a video about, how the locals feel, about the whole thing. 🇩🇰🙋🏻♂️🪐👩🏻🚀🇺🇸
Brilliant analysis, as always. You posed the question in your video about how much the gigcasting process speeded up Tesla production compared with stamped steel structures. The VW CEO and President are on record recently as saying that Tesla produces a car 3x faster than VW. Other sources suggest a VW ID3 takes 48 hours to produce versus 10 hours for a Tesla (I believe this relates to a Tesla Model Y out of Shanghai with only a single gigacasting). It's fair to assume that the gigacasting makes a large contribution to this faster speed of production at Tesla. So what happens when Giga Berlin starts ramping up next year with front and rear gigacastings (and later 4680 batteries with structural packs)? One has to imagine Tesla's productivity (or production speed) could be 5x to 6x that of VW... Scary thought for the legacy automakers! Good luck competing with that!
Hehehehe, amen! I may have to included Diess's comments in the final video
핫 스템핑을 말씀 하시는 건가요?
The mind boggles! But, methinks Elon has been here before! Pushing the boundaries of manufacturing that traditional manufacturers will not comprehend. Looking forward to further videos where your research and presentation style educates the unbelievers! I just can't even understand the measurement process.
Aluminum is great till it starts to corrode. The Japanese have been making motorcycles with aluminum frames for some years now. The older bikes that have been subjected to a lot of humidity... corrode very badly to the point where it isn't cost effective to repair. It will be much worse in a car that is driven in areas that salt their roads in the winter. If a major structural part of the car corrodes you will probably have to junk it.
Doesn't HSS stand for High Speed Steel?
Somebody on a german EV channel linked to this video: ua-cam.com/video/w5c5KzpamiM/v-deo.html
It's from a guy who claims to be head of "Agile@Tesla". He talks about Tesla's manufacturing approach and company culture, how they are using agile methods to rapidly iterate their hardware products and production process.
The video was mind-blowing to me. Everybody interested in Tesla should watch it.
Jordan, I expect you will see this comment. If not, I will try to post the link on patreon.
Watched it already 🤠 Some good insights. Matches my experiences with agile/devops
Jordon probably have a few doctor degrees not disclosed to us.
Anyone who makes good sense and steel man's the opposite opinion gets my sub.
What about cost of future repairs if even possible or do we total every fender bender?
🤦♂️ That's why the very first thing I say in the video is that the last video covered crashworthiness.
Crash worthiness is not the same as future repair worthiness but can go hand in hand if designed with both in mind
Im assuming Capex & TACT time will be included in the part 2?
No deep dive planned on CAPEX. The figures here included CAPEX. That is, we'd go far deeper for little marginal benefit (as far as I can tell). The answer would still be the same.
Do you mean takt time or cycle time, or something else? Cycle time has already been covered. I may go deeper on this in a later video.
On takt time, if you're considering the person who buys the car as the customer, then I'm not sure if it's relevant because Tesla is so supply constrained. If you're considering the customer the production line, it's hard to know unless we know which part of Tesla's manufacturing lines are limiting production speed and what they are designed for.
@@thelimitingfactor fair enough on capex. My mind was thinking about what happens in the eyes of traditional automotive when they would need to weigh up how much it would cost to change.
On cycle vs takt, I’m just thinking about how time is proportional to money (and further to that, the best process is no process mantra). I can’t see why Tesla would be pushing so hard to lower cycle time if they were also not trying to push down takt. Yes, they could run multiple lines off the one casting machine but I think they will try to go one machine one line. I also suspect that they have gone the casting route to lower cycle because they believe that they are about to have a profound breakthrough with battery production. Hence why we are seeing castings stockpiled all over the place at the moment.
1) NICE. I'll keep an eye out for information. Idra is starting a gigacasting series as well. Maybe more information will shake out.
2) Totally! This sounds like a separate video, but would go even broader than gigacasting to the entire line. It sounds like VW's cycle time is like 30 hours and Tesla's is 10 hours to produce a vehicle.
I also think that Tesla would like to go one machine per line. However, it depends on how tailored the machine is to the part. If they adjusted the part size, that would affect the cycle time when they change the die. That is: What determines the line speed for Tesla? I think this is actually a moving target.
@@thelimitingfactor you’re not wrong talking about changing the dies for a casting machine. In fact, anything they change seems to happen quite quick. I’ve not seen or heard anything close to it anywhere
@@thelimitingfactor Tesla is only currently supply constrained with batteries and chips. Over the next year or two, these constraints will go away and then takt time reduction will translate directly to a profitability increase.
Nobody is talking about rust? I would gladly pay $500 extra for a car that doesn't rust. That is the cost of a single undercoat spraying and a car needs maybe five of those in its lifetime.
Excellent point!
For your consideration... min 5:50 an increase in thickness increases stiffness👍, but also increases deformation energy absorption 👍👍.....The required thickness of some body components is not dictated by the service loads (stiffness) , but by the crash safety requirements (energy absorption). A thicker aluminum part will require (absorb) more energy to deform/crumple than a thin steel part. This makes the thicker part better/cheaper/lighter for crash worthiness.
Niiiiiice! Thanks for the info
@@AudiTTQuattro2003 fair point. post crash fire from a battery would take Tesla into Ford Pinto fuel tank problems.
@@AudiTTQuattro2003 I would say this is a misplaced priority. Protecting occupancies is more important than the battery. Given the stiffness of the battery, Tesla uses the battery to share loads in protecting occupancies.
@@quansun7633 -TESLA Already has BEST in class Safety.
@@quansun7633 Impact damage is a serious danger to humans, so is the explosion of a damaged lithium battery. Watch the hydraulic press channel vid where they crush a power bank 😳
Kinda related, but VW's chairman, Herbert Diess recently said that it takes Tesla 10 hours to make a model 3, but it takes 3 days to make a VW id.3. I assume he's talking about Giga Berlin and Al casting. He proposed tearing down some current plants and building back with more efficient plants. I think VW is getting the message, but other manufacturers....?
they are still building COMPLIANCE EV made with OLD FASIONED car Technology.
Diess said that it takes 30 hours……
the problem is that it seems Diess is alone at Volkswagen trying to convince them. So much that he dares mention the "T" word directly. It takes guts. I hope he gets fired from Volkswagen and Tesla hires him!
@@Akira-nw4jl I think all traditional auto manufacturers are facing boardroom struggles. IMO, Toyota is loosing the battle, BMW is on the fence while GM seems to be forging ahead. The recent sales numbers reported by Tesla are telling...they outsold BMW, Mercedes and Audi in the last quarter.
I don't know if it's already happened or not but Diess is facing a vote of no confidence at VW.
These guys are still pretending it's 1995 and it will take Diess a miracle to survive inside a dinosaur 🙄
I REALLY appreciate the detail and effort you put into these videos. I love learning about the reason why something is rather than just accepting that it is with a surface level overview. You are doing outstanding work and I am always excited to see your next video!
There's another cost:weight dynamic that is of increasing importance... the after sale cost of fueling/charging the vehicle increases with the weight of the vehicle. The old combustion industry didn't care, since that cost was born by the customer after they'd bought the car (the colatteral enviro cost being completely ignored for 100 years of combustion). Now with climate change driving the dynamic it becomes more important to factor in the impact of weight on the lifetime fueling requirements. Lighter total mass might eventually become more important than cheaper build and market price.
I’m not usually a fan of European regulations. However they have forced car makers to improve fuel consumption and safety of passengers and pedestrians.
Tesla did not want to be excluded from that market so designed its cars to exceed EU regulations.
For clarification, at 5:47 he is talking about flexural stiffness which is proportionnal to the cross section, lever effect and material deformation which are all proportionnal to the sheet thickness, hence the cubic power.
Good design means very little of the sheet material should undergo significant bending stress. In practice this means you don't get that cubic relationship
@@EdFrench_uk Well, it's under compression so buckling is an issue.
But I guess that the advantage of using aluminium is that you can use simpler shapes.
Imagine the advantage of buying back old castings and recycling without the impurities
Yes aluminum cars also last so much longer. Without crashes in mind rust is almost solely responsible for cars needing to be scraped. Aluminum never rusts. It forms a small layer of oxide which is actually harder and more durable than normal aluminum. Aluminum parts are easily recyclable and have life spans of hundreds of year. A well maintained aluminum car without any steel could out live the owner. Especially electric cars. Less moving parts. Regardless of material gas engines will always die eventually because they break them themselves apart while in use. We could easily see cars lasting 20 30 50 even a hundred years with minimal maintenance. Carbon steel shouldn’t even exist anymore. It is one of the shity materials one could use. Regardless of what it’s properties are new a material which naturally and rapidly decomposes is useless. And the rust takes enormous amounts of energy and chemicals to recycle back into iron for making new steel. So much it’s not worth doing it. There is never, EVER a good reason to use carbon steel anymore for absolutely anything in todays world. There will always be materials better in every way that last longer and at similar or lower prices. The only reason it is used is stupidity and because if products die and need to be replaced it is profitable for manufacturers. I absolutely hate carbon steel. It is usually used in super expensive products that are disposable items because of carbon steel.
@jacobleeson4763 if you knew anyone in the trucking industry where they use aluminum frames on trailer bodies then you would know that aluminum will not rust but actually dissolve when exposed to salts
You compare the cost per unit weight of steel versus aluminium. When you create stamped steel parts, there is a lot of waste steel that gets thrown away. When you create cast aluminium parts there is very little waste. Are you using the amount of steel (weight) that ended up in the vehicle, or the amount of steel that was purchased - in other words, do you need to include the cost of the steel that was thrown away.
Good question! The research was pretty comprehensive, I'd have to look through all of it.
The off cuts are recycled back... Not thrown away
@@terrybrown6057 I'm happy to hear that, but since the price that they get for the recycled cuts is less than the cost of new material, that difference would have to be included in the overall cost. Not sure if it significant, but it could be.
@@lauriedavis7088 depends on whether the car plant has its own smelter ... Some do..
Hey Jordan, great work as always! Just curious: does the costing and cost savings include labor costs? With 1 part replacing up to or around 100 parts, I would assume there is a large amount of savings in labor just in assemblage of all that.
GREAT question! Yes, the MIT estimate included energy, labor, overhead, tool cost building cost, maintenance cost, material cost.
The dives. They are so deep. Fantastic research!
Any plans for videos on Aptera Motors?
Love your videos, have you watched any videos from the Terran Space Academy Channel? It is similar to your channel, but he talks about rocket engines and aerospace!!
Cool company but I have a backlog of other things to cover at the moment. 🤠
Nah, I hadn't seen that channel. I'll check it out!
Speaking of advantages, you left out one of the biggies, literally orders of magnitude better QC on the panel gaps. Elon was serious about microns vs the current millimeters.
Along with a brand new cutting edge paint shop, complaints about fit and finish will be history.
Covered in a previous video and will be covered again in the summary video
Rock on - Sandy Munro also did Analysis on Tesla Gigacastings.
says QC is minimal, and can Shread rejects and Damaged parts.
Complaints coming from customers are compared between manufacturers at 3 months of ownership (3MIS 3 Months In Service). This data is shared across manufacturers and QA evaluation data in house is compiled by each and published so manufacturers have an idea how they're doing. But... Tesla refuse to do this.... Why do you think that is? Customer satisfaction is more than just fit and finish...it's the complete ownership package.. how satisfied with the car are you... What issues did you have as warranty claims etc... Why don't Tesla publish their data? I would guess it's not upto scratch... If your good you'd make sure it was known...
I worked 30yrs inspecting quality of new vehicles.. I've seen some Tesla's parked... Oh dear... There's some real bad panel fits out there... Not saying each manufacturer is perfect but bleating on that Tesla will be perfect is a pie in the sky... In real life getting a cars panels to fit properly usually requires manual bending somewhat to get it to fit. If you think that an assembly line WILL turn out perfect panel fit you know nothing of how cars are made, how cars are adjusted or how they are repaired to be ready for the customer from new. Go on a car plant tour... You'll learn something
@@terrybrown6057 Why should Tesla have to do as the legacy car manufacturers have traditionally done? Our 2 year old Model 3 is perfect, panel gaps and paint are as good as any car (confirmed by detailers), reliability has been 100%, and build quality is very near to perfect.
The Tesla is MUCH better than any other new car we’ve owned, (and without counting, we have had a lot of new cars in the last 40 years.)
The Tesla is just in a whole different league compared to all my previous ICE cars, which over the last 40 years includes European, American, Korean and Japanese built cars.
@@FutureSystem738 as I said... As a customer you would never know how the company as a whole is performing. Yea, you have a car are happy with..great . But the truth is in warranty claims... Why do you think Elon refuses to publish warranty claims? Everyone else does. There are good cars with every company... But even with your detailers they won't have access to engineering standards and what tolerances are allowed before a fault becomes unacceptable. For example a panel that is designed to be flush +/-1mm... Each manufacturer has different levels of tolerances allowed as to what is achievable to the drawings. And what is allowed to be shipped out the door. So anyone working outside of QA at the manufacturer will never know what is allowed to be good or not. Every part has tolerances from fit n finish to even allowance on how hot an LED should be on a switch... What I'm saying is pure quality data is compared from sources of customers fault feedback and offline fault detection and treatment.
Excellent on all counts. A pleasure to watch and learn from your analysis. Thank you!
Outstanding job Jordan! I appreciate the extraploation efforts!
I'm glad to hear it Jeff! Thanks for the support!
The giga-cast is cool. But I can't even afford to look at a Tesla. I think Ford solves the problem pretty well with the F 150. They use the same full frame design as always, and put the battery in the middle same as a Tesla. $32,000 after tax credit. Seats 5. 200 miles range. It looks like a truck.
If $28,000 is the cost to make a model 3. Maybe they should go to the cheap steel. And give the people a car they can afford.
One important fact has been completely kept out of the theoretical weight, strength and stiffness equation. Casting/moulding technology limits the minimum wall thickness. Theoretical mass and stiffness calculations become different when you can't make castings not thinner then 4-8mm although that would be enough for strength. Steel sheet products have almost no thickness limitations, can be as low as 0.2 mm So castings are always much havier because of wall thickness limitations. Why is Tesla using Al castings? They're a newbie in automotive/mechanical engineering and production technology. They try many things new and different, supported by companies always willing to expand their customer base. Some of these ideas are good and some of them are bad
Steel rusts, aluminum doesn't.
In as far as body panels go, if you have any respect for your customers you won't make your body panels out of steel.
One of my favorite vehicles from about 8 years ago was a Honda CRV that still ran like a dream but the underside was so rusty that the suspension was no longer mounting to the body and it became dangerous so I had to let it go.
Anyone living in the rust belt of the United States knows that a brand new car begins to rust after about 2 years of purchase...
Planned obsolescence cannot keep being the norm as it has been for so many years!
Aluminum is lighter than steel which positively affects the performance of the car and it won't rust which will improve on the reliability of the car.
Great content, and insightful comments, excellent channel you have Jordan. Thank you!
Just to say, Magnesium and Aluminum have a similar melting point, about half of steel. Because the casting machine is made of steel with a similar melting point, and the desired crystal structure of the steel may not survive casting, casting steel seems unlikely. If possible, it would take more energy to melt the steel and cool the casting machine.
use Japanese crucibal Steel - Tamahagane.
Steel can not be used in die casting. The crystal structure devevelops during cooling the steel, and often further heat treatment. You typically need slow cooling, and cooling at the same rate everywhere in the part. Steel is just completely different to handle, and this method does not work.
What if… we just make a car out of water. It melts easily, takes any form and keeps that form once solid. Why arent Tesla execs thinking about this?
Correct. Steel can be cast, but with extreme difficulty, and NOT in this kind of detail. Incidentally, magnesium is a lot easier to cast than aluminium still, with noticeably longer die lifetime. Melting temperature is just one of many factors.
@@pasticcinideliziosi1259 We have more than enough ice cars.
But cars made of frozen water are new. Large ships have been build from ice, successfully.
And then, change all drive units to axial-flux electric motors.
Great stuff again. I see gigacastings as a real bottleneck for Tesla. Sure, they get an hour or two of production down to 3 minutes, but the process is pipelined. the fact that it takes longer to make a car (high latency) doesn't matter so long as you can make lots of them (high bandwidth). Even going 24/7 a gigapress can only do 175k/year. You've got to halve that for a 2 part subframe (front and rear), so the factories are going to need banks of gigapresses to achieve million plus run rates.
It's difficult to see legacy following Tesla down this rabbit hole. As you say they have the expertise and factories set up to press and weld steel. And they probably take the view that $100 bucks (or so) that they can't even see isn't worth going after, let alone the weight reductions. So far, they've all addressed range and weight issues just by sticking massive batteries in their vehicles. And if they want a cheap vehicle to compete with Tesla on sticker price, they appear to have thrown range under a bus. I just don't see how you make the massive investments in gigacasting tech when all you have are disadvantages everywhere else on your products.
Elon called it at battery day, long term, everyone has batteries and and FSD, so the only way Tesla can stay ahead is by outproducing everyone else. Most of Tesla's engineering is going into the machine that makes the machine. Legacy is screwed. Maybe they know it, hence the EV bill. Maybe they don't. Maybe they think they can transition. I can't see how they transition. And there's no way they ever catch up.
Interesting stats on the gigacasting capacity. Where did they come from?
Given that you're correct, I believe Tesla has already purchased and installed 10-12 of the presses, which puts them over 2M castings per year, or 1 million vehicles. This is not counting whatever they buy in 2022.
@@AndyZach excellent point. Another one is in a recent video idra admitted they are sold out for several years now with their latest gigapresses. 🤔
One of the few vehicles that have a million/year run rate is the F150. While Tesla does plan to have a larger gigacasting as part of the Cybertruck structure, a bigger part will be the folded exoskeleton. I think that Tesla can afford one or 2 more 8,000 ton gigapress machines to keep up production rates. More interesting to me will be what they come up with for the model 2. I can see them ordering a larger number of smaller versions from IDRA.
@@petersmangalisongoma2013 Yes, I used 3 min/piece rate to get the 175K annual rate that Andy Onions did. I believe I heard that rate from some gigacasting video here on UA-cam.
Are you certain there is only 1 gigapress in Shanghai? How do you know?
@@grahammonk8013 I think model 2 will go for a one piece casting if it can, or at least subframe and body in one each.
First your videos and content are awesome. My comment intends to take nothing from that. I feel you have underestimated your emphasized savings. You made room for it but the number range in your conclusion is just very low. The plant space, labor, equipment, jigs, coatings, treatments and mechanical adjustments of the array of steel assembled into the body all add dramatically to cost. Labor and rework=more labor is king. I think the giga casting is a massive savings vs conventional builds. I offer this as an electrical engineer on a couch with an opinion in the hope that you can with your superpowers make it into more robust content at some point. Any detail is more that I have provided. Footnote: I grew four large successful manufacturing operations in my life with my opinions... Again love your work, patreon and huge fan...
Hi Eric! For sure! I was angling to underestimate. I'd also note that the MIT paper and the DOE work appeared to take into account the factors you mention above. That is, aluminum is a material just costs more, and even if gigacasting eliminates all production costs, it's about the same price as stamped aluminum.
However! How many more cars is Tesla able to pump out of this line for lower capital cost? That is, I find it difficult to assess how much more quickly the lines ramp, how much higher quality they'll be, and how much that will suck money into Tesla's coffers 😀
@@thelimitingfactor I think Aluminum sheet does not talk to a cast part from a labor and square footage perspective. The large casting is not what those papers were thinking. It is not the material, it is the complexity and piece count. Labor and variance are Huge costs, they dwarf material in manufacturing. I get the underestimate part but I think you did such a good job you underrepresented the point significantly...
I couldn’t tell from the video so I’ll ask, you’re quoting a lot of metrics about aluminum but some of those properties could vary from what Tesla is using unless you’re using specific data from an analysis of Teslas materials? Sandy Munro mentioned they had very exotic alloys to give more of the properties they need. Any way to account for some of those specifics (if they’re available) if you didn’t already? Love the breakdown and detail, just wondering how much variance there may be from what tesla is actually using. Thanks for any feedback!
Ok caught up at the end.. my questions will be answered in the coming videos :) Can’t wait. Thanks!
Hehehe, yeah, got a lot of info out the patent
I really like your approach and delivery style.
Does the new aluminum save vs. HSS because of less anticorrosion/rust treatments being required?
That was factored into the calculations
Rust destroys cars...
Great video, but you ignored aluminium's greatest advantage. Aluminium won't rust! Rust is still a big problem in colder countries, where salt is used on the roads.
HSS will lose its strength if it rusts
Not ignored. It's a series. It'll be covered in it videos.
Excellent content as always
The Limiting Factor is "over"! 🤖🧡
I wish I could give this presentation TWO "likes."
This new video is one of your best. You are sending most analysts to the corner of shame.
🤣 🔥 Comment of the day
15 and 20 minutes in: VW just admitted this week that the model Y takes 1/3 the time to assemble. Some of that MUST be from the castings.
Correction Edit: VW said the Model 3 takes 1/3 the time.
Possibly not, they said it was the model 3 and the model 3 doesn't use castings yet
@@thelimitingfactor Well I got the model wrong, but I will bet that the ratio is similar for the Model Y.
This channel is so awesomely infomative.
Great content, I've learnt a lot with the new casting in Tesla's production.
I love how so in depth you go with your videos!
Patreon supporter foreveeerrr!
🤜🤛🤠
One of best explained cost analysis
At the end of the day you make a lot of money from this cast.
Super short lead time, only one part number, no glue, rivets, screws, pre forming, less robots, assembly misstakes, fewer dies, molds.... do I have to go on?
That's what we already know for 30 years, but till now nobody was implementing it.
What an awesome program. Reminds me of that show "how it's made" growing up
🤜🤛😀
Great Video like usual. You said that weight saving is important, but this is nothing new compare a Lotus Exige to Porsche Boxter or 911. I guess BMW tried to save to much weight compared to production efforts for their carbon fiber i3 Body?
Speed of production & manufacturing procedures have to be considered. One piece of aluminium vs 27 parts of steel to be assembled is the key factor when it comes to assembly cost.
Giga casting is going to take a lot of advance planing. Totally possible to get it working. But casting has the same but different issues of stamping. I wonder how they are going to deal with tool wear on the molds. Hmmm that's going to be expensive.
Jordan! My CEO loves your Limiting Factor content on UA-cam and would like to have a brief 15 minute Zoom to give you some insight into our unique 75 year synthetic graphite anode material project and pick your brain on the battery market. Please comment back so I can furnish you with more information.
Well reasoned, but...
There is no evidence that Tesla scaled back it's powertrain to profit from the lower body weight. In fact, they are notoriously overpowered. Plaid!!
It's unfair to assume that politics or intellectual inertia prevent automakers from considering castings. Automakers refit and redesign their factories all the time, with every generation improving on the last.
You didn't mention the chokepoint created when all of the production has to go through one rare and exotic machine. The gigapress in Fremont caught fire in 2021.
I suspect Tesla sees no cost or engineering advantage from gigacasting, but they do get a significant marketing boost. A lot of Tesla fans think the company is new, fresh, and thinking-outside-the-box; gigacasting gives them another data point to pretend that they're superior.
It's cool when any company tries something new, or finds a better or more efficient method. That said, I look forward to the day when real automakers start mass-producing EVs so Tesla can quietly go out of business and stop using up all the oxygen.
It has been reported Tesla recently ordered a 12 ton gegacasting press, which will allow it to make a whole body casting, and 5,000 cars a day. My best guess is this won't/can't be used for larger vehicles like the Cycbertruck but can be used for their smaller $20k economy model hatch back. Worth checking into.
Production Speed, Tesla can produce a car in 1/3 the time and with nearly 1/3 the labor of VW because of Giga Casting! Tesla will be (already is) a money printing company.
Recycling Tesla's proprietary aluminum alloy also sounds like more recoverable asset or money.. at least good publicity...
Why are you comparing cost of per ton/ strength. Isn't aluminium parts lighter?
1. Point on skill isn't not that relevant, you understand that IC engineers are quite complicated casting? History is proved that in mechanical manufacturing their is no secrecy.
2. Tesla would have secured long term contracts for alluminium? No suppliers will assure prices for more than 3-6 months.
3. Cost of alluminium is going increase much faster than steel given the rise in copper prices with the rise in use of motors.
I doub't you will ever find the cost-analisys of the production element. I don't have them and I spent 15 year selling the robot based assembly and welding system for the automotive industry.. and I don't have them because they are a very well kept secret.. they let you know their margin on a platform, but not the brake down on that margin.. but for sure getting rid of all those robots and, even more so, the complex gigs required to put a car frame together, with all the small bits and bobs, all the poka-yoke, all the sensors, controls, phases, redundancies, robot programming, welding parameters.. it is going to increase that margin considerably AND it is going to reduce the time to market for the car.. no more two shift a day 60 days race to overhaul a production line for a new model.. you work, offline, on a new casting.. you set it up, a week of trials and you are up and running.. thanks God I don't do that as a job anymore.. or I would have ended up jobless in a couple of years...
Caustic soaps, when in contact with Magnesium wheels, caused cristaline seperation. Overnight, expensive magnesium racing wheels, inexpertly washed, collapsed.
"If everyone move to aluminium, then the price will skyrocket...it looks like may Tesla run away with the cheap aluminium...with the long term contract" Everyone seems accepting this assumption, to me seems not realistic that it will definitely play just an advantage for Tesla. Looking for a comment from a professional, thanks.
Great video in any case.