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Elon Musk says 'we dug our own grave' with the Cybertruck as he warns Tesla faces enormous production challenges
(www.businessinsider.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
It's got a lot of new things to them
800v power train
Newer 4680 cells
~85% custom chip controllers (up from 60s on Y)
48v power electronics instead of 12v, which is fairly new to everyone and the supply chain isn't as robust as the 12v one, but long term it's good for industry. (Edit I've heard talk of how they connect everything is going to be very different too, but nothing I've seen confirmed)
Folding the stainless steel at scale
9000T press, biggest one made
The wheels that can turn on front and back
New assembly method (excluding stainless steel part)
I'm sure there's more they didn't tell us.
It went from being a weird vehicle (love or hate it) to a new technology platform.
How is 48v better than 24v, for example? I don't really know much about car electronics
ok i work in a kind of tangential industry and can kind of answer this probably
in general the higher the voltage the smaller the current, which you're generally happy about because your 1) electrical losses and 2) cable/wire diameter are both proportional to current
the tradeoffs being 1) it gets harder and more important to isolate the circuit (e.g. your wire insulation that prevents the 12V bus from shorting out to the vehicle chassis now needs to be thicker) and 2) all the stuff people make for cars (i dunno, windshield wiper motors, radiator fans, whatever) is currently for 12V
in general this move probably makes sense, provided they're able to figure out their supply chains, and if tesla can position themselves as being like the first company to figure out a bunch of these 48V components at scale that's probably going to be really good for them. they did a kind of similar thing with the charging infrastructure if i understand currently, like now the tesla charging cable is the de facto north american standard
The charging cable isnt de-facto the standard. It is the standard now. All new vehicles from the big 3 and many foreign manufacturers will utilize NACS.
Pretty sure we're still waiting on Stellantis?
Them and VW.
I was reading VW might be more complicated due to the emissions scandal and the requirements of rules for EA, but not a blocker, just more to work out.
For sure. Might have jumped the gun on stellantis, but they will fall in line with Ford and GM.
Regardless, NACS is here to stay and will be the standard moving forward. Tesla gets a fuck ton wrong, but their charging system and charging logistics is light years ahead of the competition.