Interesting teardown summary. It's a great car, but some poor manufacturing practices make it more expensive than it needs to be.
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Tesla 3 teardown
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Easy Livin’ 3000
Minister of Fire
In Elon's defense, car manufacturing is a little complicated. Plus, he's been distracted by planning a trip to Mars, solving the storage issues of green energy, and fixing Californias traffic problems. Just saying.
What a B.S. video! If this was built in a conventional factory it would be a superior product. What????? Detroit , Japan and germany had billions of dollars and decades of experience. Who stopped them to make that superior product?
They did not criticize the overall car. Overall they gave it high marks and found the car ahead of the competition in all areas except one. In the video they are just pointing out that several chassis issues have been solved years ago by major car companies and Tesla is behind the game there. These shortcomings don't affect the overall product except in increased expense due to extra parts and fasteners. They concluded that with some changes, Tesla would be unstoppable in the car market.
Many if not all car makers buy their competitions cars and disassemble them, but this was an independent look. Go on youtube and you will find many products deconstructed. Some top phones are failures when put under the scope. In this case, who knows, maybe Musk hired them for this. It would be a smart move. Now that Tesla is losing the tax credit they are looking how to reduce the price so this info is very helpful. Remember Musk's goal is for a $35K model 3. Small changes x 100,000 cars really adds up. There's still a way to go to get there. News last week was that Musk just fired 3,000 folks on the model 3 line.
Note, Munro also did a complete teardown and analysis of the BMW i3 and the Chevy Volt. These reports are down to the last bolt analysis of costs and construction together with operational testing of the complete cars. Caveat being that the Bloomberg video seems like a promo piece for Munro.
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Add the GigaFactory now building in China which will directly affect model 3 production methods and cost. Then there is the model Y coming up and trucks.
Easy Livin’ 3000
Minister of Fire
I got my living room picked up, organized my workbench, and added a little insulation to the stove room.
That guy is a phenom.
Just dont be like this company who did Not buy a Tesla https://jalopnik.com/mercedes-parent-company-daimler-dismantled-a-rented-tes-1820961392
The teardown videos of the BMW i3 are also interesting. Lots of innovation in this car.
(broken link removed to https://leandesign.com/bmw/)
(broken link removed to https://leandesign.com/bmw/)
Yeah, but the i3 is clearly a low volume science project for BMW. The germans are not 'happy' about EVs yet.
The same critique may apply to GM and the Bolt, since they have not ramped the volume. Of course, GM gets their battery cells (and the entire Bolt drivetrain) from LG Chem in Korea. So they can only build as many Bolts as they preorder drivetrains ~2 years in advance. Will they ramp in 2020 based upon 2018 market analysis? Will they actually build a family of Bolt-derived vehicles? As with the Germans, it remains nice PR vaporware at this point.
I think the Tesla chassis issue is heritage. With the Models S and X, they went with an all Aluminum chassis to save weight, which was really innovative but there was zero data out there about durability of joins and part fatigue in the Auto application. So they ended up overkilling it and doing welds AND fasteners AND adhesives....a literal belt and suspender (and double-sided tape) approach.
That Alum tech was a dead end cost-wise, it is just cheaper to add a bit more battery to a steel chassis car. So the '3' is the first car they designed that has a steel chassis. They are newbs at that, believe it or not. And it required a lot of new (if more conventional) tooling, which was part of the delay.
The same critique may apply to GM and the Bolt, since they have not ramped the volume. Of course, GM gets their battery cells (and the entire Bolt drivetrain) from LG Chem in Korea. So they can only build as many Bolts as they preorder drivetrains ~2 years in advance. Will they ramp in 2020 based upon 2018 market analysis? Will they actually build a family of Bolt-derived vehicles? As with the Germans, it remains nice PR vaporware at this point.
I think the Tesla chassis issue is heritage. With the Models S and X, they went with an all Aluminum chassis to save weight, which was really innovative but there was zero data out there about durability of joins and part fatigue in the Auto application. So they ended up overkilling it and doing welds AND fasteners AND adhesives....a literal belt and suspender (and double-sided tape) approach.
That Alum tech was a dead end cost-wise, it is just cheaper to add a bit more battery to a steel chassis car. So the '3' is the first car they designed that has a steel chassis. They are newbs at that, believe it or not. And it required a lot of new (if more conventional) tooling, which was part of the delay.
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