https://leandesign.com/automotive/
Munro & Associates, Inc. of Michigan completed this 6,000-man-hour study of the Model 3. CLICK Motor Trend article on this subject matter for more information.
Design HMI lacks the core competence assumed to be part Munro & Associates to complete the tear down. My brief assumes that Munro & Associates had core competencies needed for this exercise. To that have added Tesla comments to provide a brief technology innovation summary. Again, recommend you may want to read the complete analysis and / or contact Munro & Associates or Tesla for more in-depth information.
Battery System
- 2,170 cylindrical Panasonic assembled with remarkable robotic precision.
- Each individual cell is glued to another and to the cooling channels.
- Unique low-heat ultrasonic aluminum wire-bonding process connects each cell to the cell-voltage balancing circuitry, which is also exceptionally precise—Munro measured a mere 0.2 millivolt variance between cells.
- Forming the protected top half of the pack in metal instead of lighter, cheaper fireproof plastic.
Body Structure
- Despite aluminum construction of nearly everything aft of the rear bulkhead, the Tesla body structure weighs more than its size peers.
- Strategy for the body is about as bad as could be,” Munro says. “It’s heavy and much more expensive than even the carbon-fiber BMW i3.
- One piece of low-hanging fruit: figure out how to assemble the body without an almost unheard-of 165 feet of pumpable body sealant.
Instrument Panel
Flash of brilliance is the instrument panel cross-car beam, an aluminum tube over which the plastic dash mounting structure is molded.
Electrical System
- Its electronic computing circuitry ranks somewhere between that of a cellphone and a Mars mission in terms of sophistication.
- Much more advanced………all in one location,” notes Munro of the consolidation of three or four modules to one devilishly complex circuit board.
- Solderless connections and extreme miniaturization might help realize cost savings (these boards are even smaller and denser than the Model X’s), but Munro’s cost analysis on the electronics is incomplete.
- Another savings—where Models S and X use a Tesla-proprietary touchscreen, the 3’s is closer to a commercial laptop touchscreen.
Sheet Metal Alignment
Many gaps exceed accepted norms for any price class, though the later car shows signs of improvement. Where the hood meets the left fender on the newer car, the shapes are mismatched, suggesting either a stamping problem or an attempt to bend the hood to match. Shut either front door with the window rolled down, and it rattles. The earlier car also had an extra piece of weather stripping glued to the driver-side front window track. (This was the only example of obvious rework.)
Dash Air Vents
The appealingly spare look of the Model 3’s dash is made possible in part by the lack of normal air vents. The ducting that aims that narrow, nearly invisible cross-car vent is unique in the car business. The air exits vent horizontally and attach to the dash to strike occupants low on the torso. Aim the vents up via a touchscreen command, and a second column of air blows vertically out of the less obvious slit just ahead of the mostly horizontal wood strip. Depending on the velocity of this air, the main airflow aims upward a little or a lot.
Munro Closing Comments
Tesla nails the Silicon Valley electrical/electronic engineering better than any current competitor Munro has studied, and his team has scrutinized all the leaders. There’s also abundant and impressive innovation in this car. But its essential body structure and design-for-manufacturing engineering trail the industry. It might be time for Tesla to raid mainstream automakers’ senior mechanical and manufacturing engineering ranks.
Tesla Generic Comment
Since we began shipping Model 3 last year, we have been very focused on refining and tuning both part and body manufacturing processes. The result being that the standard deviation of all gaps and offsets across the entire car has improved, on average, by nearly 40%, with gap improvements visible in the trunk, rear lamps and rear quarter panel. Today, Model 3 panel gaps are competitive with Audi, BMW, and Mercedes models, but in the spirit of relentless improvement, we are working to make them even tighter.”
The U.S. government found Model S and Model X to have the lowest probability of injury of any cars it had ever tested, and Model 3 was designed with the same commitment to safety. While there’s always room for refinement of cost and mass, which we are already improving, electric cars have unique safety requirements to prevent intrusion into the battery, and Model 3 was also designed to meet the latest small overlap front crash requirements that other reference vehicles may not have. We stand behind our physical crash testing and our computer simulations of it, which have been remarkably accurate, and the safety that they demonstrate. The safety of our customers is more important than any other metric.
For more information go to https://leandesign.com/
