[HN Gopher] Tesla orders its first 8k-ton Cybertruck casting mac...
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Tesla orders its first 8k-ton Cybertruck casting machine
Author : CarCooler
Score : 86 points
Date : 2021-03-20 18:03 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.teslaoracle.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.teslaoracle.com)
| Animats wrote:
| It's interesting that Tesla chose to injection-cast the frame,
| rather than stamping it. All major automotive manufacturers have
| giant stamping machines (Ford has one that's 121 feet long) but
| injection-casting is rare.
|
| Here's the Ford F-150 assembly line.[1] One truck every 53
| seconds from this line. It's mostly aluminum, unlike the older
| steel models but like Tesla. Mild hybrid now, full electric in
| 2023.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze4MZbyLnm8
| [deleted]
| fock wrote:
| this kind of stuff has been around some time:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Press_Program - but in a
| financializing economy like the US probably every kind of
| building something physical is awe-inducing.
| elcritch wrote:
| Those were presses, but this appears to be a casting machine.
| Slightly different.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| I don't think they are, although I'm happy to be corrected if
| mistaken. It seems to me it's just a poorly named machine.
| How is this different from a press?
| ainiriand wrote:
| The main difference is that in a press you have a sheet of
| metal that you shape in some way and in a casting machine
| you get molten metal in which you apply force to generate a
| shape.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| Right, I understand the difference between casting and
| pressing. But the article frequently says "Giga Press"
| instead of "Giga Cast," I think they're actually
| referring to pressing machines and it's just not a very
| well researched article. There is nothing that mentions
| molten metal being used, and it regularly references
| previous pressing machines which did not take in molten
| metal.
|
| Again, I'm happy to be wrong here, but I'm not seeing the
| evidence of this being a casting machine. And I'm seeing
| a lot of circumstantial evidence that is indeed a press.
| pengaru wrote:
| It's clearly performing a casting process, just watch one
| of the videos.
|
| Maybe they're calling it a press because the molten metal
| is being rammed into the mold under pressure vs. gravity.
| I agree that there's poor naming at play here muddying
| the waters.
| [deleted]
| nickik wrote:
| This is just bad naming by the company (and or Tesla).
| This is 100% sure a molten aluminum die casting machine.
|
| This company already makes such machines for Tesla and
| this is the newest one.
|
| You can find videos of machines like that being assembled
| right now in Berlin and Austin. And you can find videos
| of it working in Fremont and Shanghai.
|
| This video Tesla battery day:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQfKZ5lo9dc
|
| That they have order an even bigger one has been part of
| investor calls and presentation.
|
| Here you see it assembled in Austin:
| https://youtu.be/02KR9sb5P6E?t=687
|
| You can see that it is vertical, a stamping machine
| stamps horizontally.
| [deleted]
| baybal2 wrote:
| > This is 100% sure a molten aluminum die casting
| machine.
|
| May well be semi-solid rather than just injection casting
| given them bragging about "alloy not needing heat
| treatment"
| chiph wrote:
| A press typically works with room temperature metal, or
| metal hot enough to be slightly soft. The blank is placed
| inside, and the press comes down and crushes it into the
| shape dictated by the mold. Excess metal is sometimes cut
| off by sharp edges on the mold.
|
| A die casting process starts with molten metal, and the
| metal is injected under pressure to fill the die cavity.
| The mold is separated and the new part is removed.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSyBsdJkQu8
|
| After die casting and the part cools, a press may be used
| to trim any excess off.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Injection casting is quite a bit newer than gravity
| casting, which dominated the industry until 197x-198x.
|
| Gravity casting had problem with voids, and fine
| features, but otherwise much more economical.
|
| Injection, or semisolid casting is much more expensive,
| both because of more expensive machinery, and mold
| expense.
| chiph wrote:
| Gravity casting using sand molds were, like you said,
| just how you did it until that time. Dad had an early
| 90's Saturn SL, and it's engine used the lost-foam
| casting process. You could see the surface texture in the
| metal from where the polystyrene had expanded when it was
| made. Sand molds weren't able to show a feature that
| fine.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_I4_engine
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost-foam_casting
| baybal2 wrote:
| Engine blocks are still sand cast, and there is not much
| need to use anything else for their production if you can
| nail the fluid dynamics in the mold.
|
| Only very small scooter engines I know are mold/semisold
| cast, everything else I know is gravity cast.
| lvice wrote:
| Impressive machine. As an Italian, I am pleased to see that the
| casting machine for Tesla is supplied by an Italian company.
|
| Living in Italy, sometimes it's hard to see why the country is
| still in the top 10 economies in the world, due to the fact we
| lack mega-corps and global consumer brands (luxury aside). The
| truth is that Italy is all-in on small businesses, with thousands
| on niches companies that fill a very specific spot in the world
| supply chain. I really hope that this model proves to be
| sustainable and we can find a path to growth again at some point.
| jdonaldson wrote:
| Italians have this long tradition of turning complex
| engineering into an art. Despite the fact that the Renaissance
| has come and gone, the roots for it run really deep in Italy
| still. I hope the same thing will be said about Silicon Valley
| one day.
| philippoi wrote:
| The Romans were already quite good at it long before that,
| too.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Your bathroom fixtures and tile materials/tech are the best in
| the world.
| lormayna wrote:
| I am Italian too and I am always surprise to see in how many
| niche sectors Italian companies are world leaders. We don't
| have many multinational companies, but specially in machanics,
| we have a lot of medium size companies that make best in class
| products.
| m463 wrote:
| Arduino.
| CalRobert wrote:
| That's really interesting, and heartening. When I've looked at
| places in Europe that could make sense to start a small
| business Italy is often described as having a high bureaucratic
| burden and generally being a challenging environment. Is that
| true? What do you think has caused small business to succeed?
| cunidev wrote:
| Definitely true. I would rather identify the problem (which
| is a wild guess) as having very similar burden between larger
| and smaller industries, meaning no particular protective
| measures, investments or auxiliary measures (e.g. simplified
| tax formats - which exist only to a smaller extent) are taken
| to ensure a newborn company can safely "hatch".
|
| Disclaimer: While Italian, I am no startup/industry owner, so
| anyone in the field could probably give a more insightful
| opinion.
| xupybd wrote:
| We get all of our industrial machinery from Italy. We're on the
| other side of the world, in New Zealand, and have a strong
| preference for an Italian brand.
| pastrami_panda wrote:
| Yes there's a ton of "smaller" quality companies in Italy. I
| recently discovered IK Multimedia that make truly amazing audio
| products. They have a several sets of studio monitors that due
| to some engineering magic punch way above their league in terms
| of sound relative to speaker size.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| It's fun to look at the largest companies' balance sheet in
| your country:
|
| Enel has a lot of hydro power plants installed in Latin
| America. Of course you won't see that living in Italy.
|
| https://www.enel.com/media/explore/search-press-releases/pre...
| w3ll_w3ll_w3ll wrote:
| Well, Enel has a strong presence in Italy, Spain and Latin
| America. It's actually the second largest power company in
| the world after China's state company. It was the first
| company to use smart meters in 2001.
|
| But yeah, you don't see that from Italy.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| The most amazing thing that I saw in Italy was when I just
| went to a random unknown small village there because I
| didn't feel good on the highway. It was so beautiful with
| statues and well kept gardens that people don't see by just
| going to the famous places.
| darkwater wrote:
| I guess that's because Enel bought Endesa, its Spanish
| counterpart which already had presence in Latin America.
| arkitaip wrote:
| EU has a total lack of vision when it comes to in-region
| manufacturing. Imagine if the Union decided that 50% of all
| goods would have to be made in the Union within 20 years...
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Decided how? If by banning imports that wouldn't work too
| well
| zodiakzz wrote:
| But sadly: Imagine the fuel it will give to the Euroseptics
| because of any (short term) inconvenience. Then EU ceases to
| exist.. task failed successfully.
| drnex wrote:
| The freedom to purchase goods regardless of where they are
| made is better for consumers, and everyone are consumers.
| arkitaip wrote:
| I would say this is one of the great myths of globalization
| and that we should offers consumers plenty of competitive
| offers from the EU primarily.
| luckylion wrote:
| How do you make companies competitive? If you just shower
| them with money, you often get the opposite result: they
| can't compete because they rely on subsidies and don't
| need to compete on the market.
|
| If you then force (or "heavily encourage" with tariffs
| etc) other companies to "buy local", you're hurting those
| other companies by having them buy the product that's
| unable to compete.
| vkou wrote:
| Nearly everyone also works for a living, or depends on
| someone who works for a living. Would you also argue on
| that same basis that strong labor protections, and high
| wages are better for nearly everyone?
|
| If you intend to cite negative second and third order
| effects as a counterargument - have you considered whether
| or not any negative second and third order effects might be
| applicable to yours?
| rsynnott wrote:
| That would lead to an increase in consumer prices, a decline
| in quality of consumer goods due to lack of competition (look
| at the rubbish the British car industry used to get away with
| due to protectionism prior to European accession...),
| followed by public outrage and either a swift reversal of the
| policy or the collapse of Europe.
|
| And there would obviously be retaliation. Europe makes a lot
| of the world's things-for-making-things (like this casting
| system, say). The market for that sort of thing would shrink
| due to retaliatory protectionism, and the quality would get
| worse due to in-Europe protectionism.
|
| In general, closed-off markets tend to produce poor quality
| consumer and industrial goods, priced too high.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Our companies would start so suck because manufacturers would
| have less of an incentive to compete globally and instead
| start selling locally. This is why US cars went to shit after
| the protectionism of the 80s and it took pretty much two
| decades to recover.
|
| The reason why Italian and German small businesses are so
| innovative is because the global market is hyper-competitive.
| mc32 wrote:
| Protectionism of the 80s was a response to the complacency
| of the 60s that slowly eroded preeminence in the 70s due to
| demand for economy cars which Detroit was loath to produce.
|
| Moreover, Detroit cars didn't get worse but rather
| stagnated in comparison with Toyota/Deming's continuous
| improvement model.
| mikestew wrote:
| I was an auto mechanic in the 80s. American cars in that
| period were no worse than they ever were. But they
| weren't any better, either, which is why Toyota, Honda,
| et. al., ran rings around them on quality. As you point
| out, there was no drop in quality but rather stagnation
| that looked quite poor in light of a Honda Civic.
|
| To be fair, that '81 VW camper in our driveway doesn't
| fair much better. I'd rather rely on an '80s Chevy
| Citation to get me home than that piece of parts-bin
| shit. Part of the problem for a lot manufacturers were
| 70s-era emissions controls, which is a small part of why
| a 4000 lb. vehicle has an engine that put out 68bhp.
| africanboy wrote:
| Europe has the same number of Fortune 500 companies than
| North America.
|
| The largest market for European companies is Europe itself.
| ketamine__ wrote:
| My space heater is made by an Italian company.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| my corkscrew. I was wondering about it. and now i know.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| As a concept the cybertruck looks really really cool. However,
| it's pretty scary if this is the final design.
|
| > The body of the Cybertruck is a unibody shell
|
| The profile is full of sharp edges at torso/head level for
| pedestrians. The shell concept sounds like it would have nothing
| in the way of planned deformations zones for outside pedestrians
| or crumple zones for inside passengers.
|
| Again perhaps this is just marketing bad ass looks and they will
| sanitize the final release but pretty scary if not.
| matz1 wrote:
| I don't know, safety for the pedestrian is less of my concern
| when buying car.
| Daho0n wrote:
| Fine, but the registration tax is higher in most of the
| western world on cars with worse ratings so at least you got
| to pay more for the worse car.
| paxys wrote:
| If you are hit by a 6,000 lbs truck I doubt the shape of its
| edges makes much of a difference in determining your fate.
| Better driver assist features in the Tesla (compared to other
| trucks) have the potential to make things safer for pedestrians
| overall.
| Daho0n wrote:
| Well it matters in the EU at least as most (all?) countries
| tax cars based on things like EuroNCAP ratings etc. Sharp
| edges = higher registration tax basically.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Well it matters in the EU at least as most (all?)
| countries tax cars based on things like EuroNCAP ratings
| etc.
|
| Wow I didn't know that. How does it work? Isn't a EuroNCAP
| rating entirely voluntary?
| Daho0n wrote:
| I obviously don't know the exact rules in all countries
| but here in Denmark there're different deductions from
| the standard registration tax based on things like if the
| car has minimum 5 stars in EuroNCAP, the price of airbags
| are completely excluded from the tax, etc. so yes it is
| voluntary but without it the cars gets taxed higher than
| the competition that did get a test (or a better test).
| Since EuroNCAP ratings are based on the car with the
| least amount of security in a line of cars even a very
| secure car will be more expensive if the manufacturer
| also sells a poorly rated version in the EU as it is the
| one the tax deduction is based on.
| arnaudsm wrote:
| I bet European regulators will never accept the current design.
| They'll probably have to design a safer version later, or skip
| the entire market.
| nimos wrote:
| US pick up truck sales are ~15x Europe. My guess is they skip
| it entirely.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Tesla does take reservations in Europe. Will be interesting
| how that turns out :)
| nightski wrote:
| From what I have heard the sharp edges/straight lines are what
| keeps costs down. It's kind of miracle they are talking a 45k
| price point, and this is one of the reasons they can accomplish
| that.
| hctaw wrote:
| I doubt you'll be able to pay 45k for one of these for a
| while.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Based on their prior pricing history, if they're talking a
| 45k price point, they will _not_ be able to accomplish that.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| In my last few moments, my head struck by the Cybertruck's
| sharp edge and its contents spilling open onto the crosswalk,
| I will contemplate this great miracle which saved rich people
| a few thousand dollars.
| xvector wrote:
| Not to mention, the stainless steel exterior will be easy
| to clean, since your pesky shattered skull bone won't find
| any paint to scratch! You can rest easy knowing that your
| viscera won't be an inconvenience.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Check out the average price of a new truck, and then their
| annual US sales volume (Ford's F150 specifically). Average
| America is who soaks up pickup trucks, not "the rich."
|
| Tesla needs to compete with legacy automaker trucks if
| they're to drive down the petroleum used by those fossil
| fuel vehicles (hence the need to keep per unit costs down).
| The fault for failure to prioritize pedestrian and
| bicyclist safety falls on federal policy makers, who could
| enforce these safety requirements by statute but don't.
| Tangentially, it should also be wildly illegal to lift your
| pickup for on road use.
|
| "Don't hate the player, hate the game."
| rsynnott wrote:
| The F150 appears to start at 28k. Average price of a new
| truck in the US is 50k, but that's probably pushed up a
| lot by commercial purchasing. And realistically, if you
| think anything from Tesla is going to start at the price
| they claim it will start at in early marketing... well,
| that's optimistic.
|
| This will be a car that at least _should_ be bought only
| by very well off people. I'm sure some people will take
| on silly debt and spend most of their annual take-home
| salary on a car, but that won't be the norm. Well,
| hopefully.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I'm just trying to help folks understand how it works
| outside the HN bubble. People buy trucks because it's
| what they feel they need (even if it isn't; that truck
| likely is going to be a garage queen and never leave
| pavement), for some it satisfies a part of their self
| image and ego, and a lot of folks buying them aren't
| fiscally responsible and buy them anyway (repo lots are a
| savvy way to find lightly used diesel pickups in good
| condition someone overspent on before a sophisticated
| broker/dealer acquires them and marks them up to the
| public).
|
| https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2018/10/pickup-truck-
| owner-de...
|
| > The Ford F-150 is the single most popular truck in
| America today _and the most-popular vehicle in 44
| states_. It outsold the Ram pickup in 2019 by 78%.
|
| > The average age of the new F-150 buyer is 55. It may
| not be too surprising that about 16% of new Ford F-150
| owners are female/84% male. About three-quarters of all
| new Ford F-150s are purchased by white males, although
| Hispanic buyers account for 22% of total incremental
| growth of new F-150 sales from 2010 to 2017.
|
| > _Despite any TV ads you see with F-150s in a rural or
| country setting, the vast majority of these new trucks
| are in large and medium-sized cities._
|
| > _The average household income of a new Ford F-150 owner
| is about $82,000 per year. By comparison the median
| household income in the United States is $61,937._
|
| > If that average household income sounds high, remember
| this! The F-150 has a base MSRP under $30,000. _But, we
| priced a 2020 Ford F-150 Platinum Edition with all the
| bells & whistles and accessories for over $74,000!_
|
| All emphasis mine. This is the market environment Tesla
| is operating in and attempting to displace combustion
| pickup sales in.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Sales volume is ~1 million a year.
|
| There's something like 50 million people that are very
| well off in the US.
|
| Narrative this, narrative that.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| People with purchasing power want trucks. Sell them
| Cybertrucks.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| It's obviously not about cost savings. Just look at the
| fucking thing. If they wanted costs down they would probably
| use lots of plastic on a smaller metal frame that didn't
| require a brushed-steel finish.
|
| It's clearly designed the way it is for aesthetic reasons.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I assume this is marketing; I have difficulty believing that it
| could be made road-legal in its current form, at least in
| Europe. Maybe it's a US-only model, but even in the US I
| would've thought it was a bit too... pointy.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Aren't most passenger cars a unibody design? Its probably just
| marketing to make that big a deal about a unibody truck.
| kazen44 wrote:
| most modern care yes,
|
| Usually the frame of a car is also part of the body these
| days. (T-frames and H frames rarely exists these days.
| xvector wrote:
| Here in the US, we don't care about pedestrian deaths from
| trucks.
|
| Despite absurdly disproportionate deaths from trucks [1], our
| lawmakers and regulators are too busy jerking off with wads of
| cash from automotive lobbyists [2] to care about something lame
| like "dying bicyclists" or "crushed pedestrians."
|
| [1]: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/10/31/why-american-
| trucks-a...
|
| [2]: https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a20879691/heres-how-
| mu...
| dillondoyle wrote:
| lol the paper cuts!
| CalRobert wrote:
| In the US, you are de facto allowed to kill people with your
| vehicle, so long as you're sober.
|
| If you shoot a kid you probably can't get away with "well I
| was duck hunting at the playground, it was an accident!", but
| run them down in your truck and you'll have a sympathetic
| judge telling you this shouldn't stop you from getting back
| behind the wheel, and how the kid shouldn't have been there.
| bredren wrote:
| Run away / spooked carriage horses that trampled were
| treated in a similar way.
| wilg wrote:
| The first link is about large trucks and buses, not pickup
| trucks.
| ChrisClark wrote:
| Considering the very top safest vehicles are all Teslas, I
| don't think they skipped safety on this one.
| Daho0n wrote:
| There's not a single Tesla in the safest cars tested by
| EuroNCAP. There were, in 2019, but even the small Toyota
| Yaris scores higher today. Remember a score of X in 2019 is
| way less than a score of X in 2021. The tests are harder to
| pass now.
| wilg wrote:
| This is a bit confusing, it doesn't seem like there are any
| tests of Teslas at all after 2019.
| (https://www.euroncap.com/en/ratings-rewards/safest-family-
| ca...) and the Teslas are the best in 3 of 8 classes in the
| 2019 "Best in Class" cars list on their website, which is
| the most recent year available.
|
| It does seem there were changes to the tests in 2020, but
| not 2021, and they say "2020 assessments differ
| significantly from previous years and star ratings should
| not be directly compared with those from earlier years."
|
| So IDK, your comment seems misleading?
| Geee wrote:
| That's just bullshit. You can see all the tested vehicles
| from Euro NCAP website. They haven't tested Teslas in 2020
| and 2021 because there hasn't been new models. Model Y
| hasn't been tested yet.
|
| In fact, on the Euro NCAP website their latest 'safest
| cars' list is from 2019, and you see that Model 3 and Model
| X are the safest cars in their category. You really think
| that the safest cars in 2019 can't pass the tests in 2021?
|
| https://www.euroncap.com/en/ratings-rewards/best-in-class-
| ca...
| wskinner wrote:
| GP is talking about safety for pedestrians, not safety for
| passengers. Is Tesla the safest vehicle for pedestrians who
| are accidentally struck?
| arghwhat wrote:
| I'd imagine that would be something like the V40 with its
| pedestrian airbags that pop up under the hood.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| Pedestrian concerns aside (this really can't be much worse than
| the other megalithic land yachts on the market), I like the
| idea of cars on the market that offer driver safety trade-offs
| in exchange for utility, aesthetics, or price. Insurance can
| price that into the premium. I'd gladly give up some physical
| security for certain benefits. Just put a 'do not resuscitate'
| flag on my card if the insurance won't clear or something.
| nikanj wrote:
| The SUV market offers numerous driver safety trade-offs in
| exchange for safety to everyone else on the road. Getting
| your compact car mangled by a F350 tank is horrible.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| Yes, I've been in that position. It ain't great.
|
| I'd like to be able to trade on my own safety, not others.
| wilg wrote:
| Is the idea that the Cybertruck is particularly dangerous for
| pedestrians more than idle speculation?
|
| I mean you're assuming there are no deformation or crumple
| zones for some reason, which seems ridiculous.
|
| Is it enough to just look at the thing?
| jcims wrote:
| How much pedestrian safety design is in modern trucks?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Pedestrian safety completely dominates the front-end design
| of trucks. See the radical redesign of the Defender for
| example.
| new_realist wrote:
| Giga -> Wanka
| chiph wrote:
| An Antonov AN-124 just landed this week at ABIA with parts for
| the Tesla factory. They are apparently from Tiancheng Coating,
| who makes robotic coating systems for the automotive industry.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/m8opqh/fun_time_wor...
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Why not AUS or KAUS? Do locals call it ABIA?
| thefourthchime wrote:
| Two of them landed actually. The Austin subreddit has lots of
| cool photos.
| pmcollins wrote:
| ABIA == Austin-Bergstrom International Airport
| junippor wrote:
| Wait..... they're actually making these?
|
| I thought it was a joke...
| CynicusRex wrote:
| Elon Musk's very own Spruce Goose.
| Daho0n wrote:
| It is a joke and they are making them.
| rektide wrote:
| It is absolutely jaw dropping to me watching that Model Y front-
| frame come out of that 6k-ton casting machine[1]. Incredible. Had
| not seen that before. What a potentially incredibly efficient use
| of materials & process, to produce a large well constructed,
| integrated piece.
|
| I do have one reservation, which is that this feels a bit like
| the creation of a dispose-only car. Trying to bend this unibody
| back into shape seems like it's going to be incredibly difficult.
| I'm trying to imagine how if at all we're going to fix a
| cybertruck, after it slides into a tree or pole. I was so
| delighted to see the Model Y front-unibody come out of that
| press, but a second latter, I was shocked, mouth open aghast,
| trying to imagine these cars as anything other than disposable.
|
| Like the NAND situation on Teslas, there's so much amazing high
| tech wonders afoot here. But vehicles, over the generations, have
| had to learn that maintainability, repairability, and
| sustainability are real factors too: there's many years of
| engineering that have gone into not just making cars, but making
| them able to be kept running. I know Tesla's not the only one
| doing unibody work, that this isn't entirely 100% a novel
| problem, but I'm still a bit jarred, a bit worried, that we're
| creating a truck- a vehicle format known for getting beat up a
| bit- that might not be repairable.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/Tesla/status/1357503277722718212
| extrapickles wrote:
| The alloys used in most modern cars work harden too much to be
| able to bend them back into shape trivially.
|
| Ideally, they would sell you a new front/rear casting and
| recycle the bent old one. I don't see this happening though as
| they have more motivation to hide behind "unseen damage" to
| sell you a new car.
| karlkatzke wrote:
| The same argument was made regarding moving from frame-on-body
| cars to unibody cars in the first place. It turned out that the
| weight and assembly savings and the increase in crash safety
| far outweighed the costs and risks, and that metal is pretty
| recyclable, so you just end up salvaging the parts you can and
| junking the rest.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > What a potentially incredibly efficient use of materials
|
| Actually no, casting requires more material for equal strength,
| and you loose materials in voids.
|
| But given Tesla's pricetag, and already huge weight, it might
| make sense. Even most poorly designed aluminium part is likely
| to be lighter than steel at least by a tiny bit.
|
| It is also not that much faster, as manufacturing from steel is
| automated so much these days, and cast parts needs further
| finishing.
|
| And, _MAYBE_ , having a huge casting machine, and some
| finishing is cheaper for Tesla than going with bigger
| metalworking line with their current scale.
| nickik wrote:
| Its not that much faster but Tesla claimed it removes 100s of
| robots and an incredibly long error prone assembly line.
| Also, when you weld lots of parts together you have
| tolerances stack up.
|
| Tesla developed its own aluminum that does not need to be
| heat-treated. It might still need some finishing, but not a
| very complex process.
|
| Check out this video of Musk and Sandy Munro (former Chief
| Engineer at Ford) talking about it:
|
| https://youtu.be/YAtLTLiqNwg?t=1024
| rklaehn wrote:
| Sandy Munro has covered this.
|
| There are some bars in the front of the front casting. If those
| were damaged, you would just cut them away and weld
| replacements in place.
|
| If the main part of the casting gets bent, it will have been a
| very severe accident that you are lucky to walk away from.
| Repairing the car will be the least of your concerns.
| _ph_ wrote:
| And a 3D aluminum cast should be way stiffer than steel
| sheets used so far, so it should be less likely to get a bent
| frame this way.
| coryrc wrote:
| Also today, even in body-on-frame vehicles, if the frame is
| badly distorted, you pull the frame and install a new one.
| You can't fix it well in-situ.
| [deleted]
| api wrote:
| I feel like this might be the Elon-style reaction to Tesla's
| perennial body panel alignment problems: "fuck body panels, make
| it a single die."
|
| That is one thing I admire about how Elon thinks. Don't solve
| problems. Make them go away by simplifying the design.
| bmitc wrote:
| I think it goes more like: Don't solve problems, just make new
| ones.
| ben_bai wrote:
| Then this is a must watch. Elon talks to Munro:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAtLTLiqNwg
| rektide wrote:
| Body panels can be replaced. I'm worried that this advancement
| means it is cars which must be replaced.
| phkahler wrote:
| Stainless steel can be cut and welded. Somebody will be
| around to repair them.
| api wrote:
| There are a lot of people who know how to work with steel.
| One of the things I love about the steel Starship is field
| serviceability. I imagine you could repair it off-world
| with some fairly normal tools (albeit different versions of
| them designed for use in a vacuum). Carbon fiber not so
| much.
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