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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday May 08 2018, @01:32AM   Printer-friendly
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.


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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday May 08 2018, @06:45AM (10 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 08 2018, @06:45AM (#676922) Journal

    In Europe, three-phase power is common...

    Say... what? You count earth-protection as a "phase"?

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  • (Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Tuesday May 08 2018, @06:51AM (9 children)

    by KilroySmith (2113) on Tuesday May 08 2018, @06:51AM (#676924)
    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday May 08 2018, @07:02AM (8 children)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 08 2018, @07:02AM (#676929) Journal

      Ah, I see. Your phrase is meant as "In Europe, three-phase power is common for recharging electric cars at charge stations" - that socket is not at all common inside the usual European home.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by ledow on Tuesday May 08 2018, @07:32AM (7 children)

        by ledow (5567) on Tuesday May 08 2018, @07:32AM (#676938) Homepage

        It's not at all common precisely because houses don't have 3-phase. That's not what 3-phase is for. You generally give one phase to each house on the street, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3 and the STREET has three-phase. If you're a huge business you might ask for 3-phase to be installed, so long as you balance your usage of the phases properly, and your usage of them is actually required (e.g. high-power equipment - in Europe anywhere you see the line "415v" generally means it's three-phase (because the voltage from top of one phase to bottom of any other is 415v) and that's usually industrial use. So, yes, a refuelling station might well have 3-phase. But a house, no.

        That's no more common than in the US, though.

        • (Score: 2, Interesting) by evk on Tuesday May 08 2018, @09:51AM (4 children)

          by evk (597) on Tuesday May 08 2018, @09:51AM (#676970)

          I guess it may be different around Europe, but here all houses have 3-phase. Kitchen stoves are often connected on three phases. Apart from that you'd usually don't have 3-phase outlets except in garages and such. But single phase outlets in the house would be balanced over the three phases. Just as you describe the street, but it's done on parts of the house.

          For larger power tools such as welders, air compressors etc. 3-phase is very common.

          • (Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday May 08 2018, @11:28AM (1 child)

            by ledow (5567) on Tuesday May 08 2018, @11:28AM (#676986) Homepage

            So actually, it's LESS likely that the Europe version is the reason that there's anything about 3-phase in there, as you're more likely to use that in the US than Europe.

            I suppose with 110v, that's necessary to get the right amount of oomph without larger cabling.

            P.S. A standard UK house has a 100A breaker on the incoming fusebox, the stove will probably take (not all of) a 32A breaker. Which gives you 7.6KW, which is more than enough for an electrical double-oven with hob, without needing any extra phases. I don't think I've ever seen a private dwelling with more than one phase.

            • (Score: 1) by evk on Wednesday May 09 2018, @09:22AM

              by evk (597) on Wednesday May 09 2018, @09:22AM (#677384)

              As I said. That's probably different in different Europeans countries. Here (Sweden) the norm is 3 phases with 16A fuses on each phase. As far as I know _all_ houses have three phases.

              But I do agree that it would make sense to use 3 phases in the US even though I understand that it's not all that common.

          • (Score: 1) by Muad'Dave on Thursday May 10 2018, @02:33PM (1 child)

            by Muad'Dave (1413) on Thursday May 10 2018, @02:33PM (#677880)

            Are you in the US? If so I think you're confusing 240V with 3 phase.

            120V is 1 hot + the neutral. 240V is usually 2 hots with 240V between them and optionally the neutral. Here in the US we have split-phase 240V power [wikipedia.org] in houses, NOT 3 phase. If you look at Figure 1 in the link, 120V outlets are hooked up between either V1 or V2 and neutral, and 240V outlets use V1 _and_ V2, and optionally the neutral. Stoves, air conditioners, water heaters, etc use 240V circuits.

            Three phase [wikipedia.org], on the other hand, uses 3 hots and usually no neutral (unless it's 3 phase wye - see Y/Delta figure). This is only used in industrial applications.

            • (Score: 1) by evk on Friday May 11 2018, @11:19AM

              by evk (597) on Friday May 11 2018, @11:19AM (#678309)
              No, I'm not in the US. I'm in Europe and I'm talking about three phases with 240V each. I have plenty of equipment that runt on three phases, non of it industrial.

              I don't think I've ever seen a private dwelling with more than one phase.

              This may be true for the UK, but not for all of Europe.

        • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday May 08 2018, @10:10AM (1 child)

          by deimtee (3272) on Tuesday May 08 2018, @10:10AM (#676976) Journal

          Similar in Oz, although I think it may be a bit more common. I've known several people who had three-phase to their home, and almost any manufacturing business will have it. Pedantic nitpick: 415v isn't from the top of one wave to the bottom of another, that would be 480V. It's the RMS voltage of two 240V AC phases that are 120 degrees apart.

          --
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          • (Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday May 08 2018, @11:30AM

            by ledow (5567) on Tuesday May 08 2018, @11:30AM (#676987) Homepage

            Pedantic nitpick acknowledged.

            I'm going to hide behind "My answer was correct enough for people to understand what I'm getting at". :-)