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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.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by evk on Tuesday May 08 2018, @09:51AM (4 children)
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)
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
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)
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
This may be true for the UK, but not for all of Europe.