SoylentNews

Inside Tesla Model 3 -- Teardown Pictures and Comments

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday May 08 2018, @01:32AM   
from the Tesla-guts-everywhere dept.

http://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-model-3-teardown-details/

MotorTrend is running an overview of the 6000-person-hour teardown of a Tesla Model 3 by Munro & Associates, a well known reverse engineering and manufacturing consulting firm. A couple of details from the text (there are many photos as well):

Front Upper Control Arm—These are formed of thinner-gauge stamped steel then reinforced by having plastic webbing molded inside. This plastic also provides attachment points for routing the ABS sensor wiring. The oddity: Note the ingot of iron that is glued in place (held by zip-ties while glue sets). Munro reckons this is to dampen a troublesome natural frequency.

Charging Board—This large, complex board filters electricity coming in from the charger with the tall and modular board at right. This board is tailored to suit the electrical service of the vehicle's destination country. This U.S.-market car is prepped for three-phase current, so there are three big copper donuts under that board that look like the one on the left side of the board (that one handles the conversion to 12 volts). This approach is unique and deemed quite savvy relative to the Chevy Bolt and BMW i3 Munro has also analyzed.

Overall, they liked the electronics and panned much of the mechanical design and fastening/welding details--relative to current practice at other auto manufacturers. Which kind of makes sense given Tesla's location near Silicon Valley, and far from Detroit (although Tesla has hired many experienced engineers from existing car companies & suppliers).

The article includes a link to an overview of this analysis, which was published last week.

---

Original Submission

• Re:ingot = engineering or management failure? Re:ingot = engineering or management failure? (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 08 2018, @03:06AM (2 children)

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 08 2018, @03:06AM (#676877)

  Little masses like that one (visible in one of the photos) are fairly common on cars. Used to have an early '90s Corolla and there was a small mass on one of the rubber engine/transaxle mounts. When it started to fall off (flopping to one side), reversing the car led to a major vibration. The dealer first pulled it off and the major vibration went away. Later they got in the correct part and things were back to normal.

  Without seeing the full modal analysis of the Model 3, it's damn near impossible to work out what that mass does--it might be inertial damping a body resonance near the mounting point of the control arm.

  Parent

  Starting Score:	0		points
  Moderation		+2
  Interesting=1, Underrated=1, Total=2
  Extra 'Interesting' Modifier		0
  Total Score:		2

• Re:ingot = engineering or management failure? Re:ingot = engineering or management failure? (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday May 08 2018, @04:40AM (1 child)

  by FatPhil (863) <{pc-soylent} {at} {asdf.fi}> on Tuesday May 08 2018, @04:40AM (#676897) Homepage

  Without actually performing any damping itself, I think it's better to just call it ballast. It releases every single bit of the energy given to it by the parts it is rigidly mounted to straight back to those same parts. Of course, it may change the natural frequencies of vibrations such that other damping performs closer to critical, but that could better be achieved by changing the damping factor to match the original frequencies better.
  
  If we can't agree on "ballast", I can suggest other words beginning with "b" (and having 2 "l"s, and an "s" to boot).

  --
  Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves

  Parent

  • Re:ingot = engineering or management failure? (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 08 2018, @12:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 08 2018, @12:34PM (#677000)

    Sorry, poor choice of word...
    s/inertial/mass
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuned_mass_damper#Production_cars [wikipedia.org]

    Tuned mass dampers are widely used in production cars, typically on the crankshaft pulley to control torsional vibration and, more rarely, the bending modes of the crankshaft. They are also used on the driveline for gearwhine, and elsewhere for other noises or vibrations on the exhaust, body, suspension or anywhere else. Almost all modern cars will have one mass damper, some may have 10 or more.[emphasis mine]
    ...
    All four wheels of the Citroen 2cv incorporated a tuned mass damper (referred to as a "Batteur" in the original French) of very similar design to that used in the Renault F1 car, from the start of production in 1949 on all four wheels, before being removed from the rear and eventually the front wheels in the mid 1970s.

    Parent