Tesla Motors

Before continuing above,

Let's talk about Tesla's two days of news about "Reduced Configurations", where the actual configuration of the delivered vehicles does not match the relevant list, and consumers were not informed of this, which is suspected of being fraudulent.

In this 315 consumer rights protection day is coming, Tesla to their own "do things". A newly purchased domestic Model?3 owner found that the trip computer should have been equipped with the latest 3.0 version of the chip hardware, but his car is equipped with the 2.5 version of the chip hardware, while the 3.0 version of the chip's image processing speed is 21 times faster than the 2.5 version. In practice, these chips are used to support Autopilot, Tesla's driver-assisted driving system, and the lower version of the hardware will have a direct impact on future feature upgrades and vehicle driving experience.

After the reduction was revealed, Tesla released a statement like the one above, in which there is a sentence that says, "Tesla's Shanghai SuperWorks resumed production on February 10th. During the period based on supply chain conditions,......," many netizens questioned, why emphasize the February 10 resumption of work? This is to dump the blame on the recent "epidemic"?

Subsequently, some imported Model?3 owners also found their own cars have that reduction problem.

For this incident, a lawyer said, "If Tesla's behavior is found to be in line with Article 55 of the Consumer Protection Law, 'fraudulent behavior', then the consumer demand for 'one refund and three compensations' will be supported. ' claim will be supported."

Next, let's move on to the previous article, "Tesla Motors? Biography (previous post)? |? How This Abrasive Goblin Grew Up? To continue, Tesla followed Musk's roadmap, "Master?Plan", a three-step strategy to grow and develop step by step.

One, build an expensive, niche sports car (the Roadster);

Two, use the money earned to build a cheaper, middle-selling car (the Model?S/X);

Three, use the money earned to build a more affordable, best-selling model (the Model?3);

Four, do all of the above, and offer a zero-percent price tag. all of the above, while also offering a zero-emission power generation option.

What difficulties and challenges has Tesla experienced in practicing this program? What special things have been done?

Capacity has always been a problem

Tesla has continued to build its Superfactory

Capacity is a tricky issue for any new car-making force, and assembling tens of thousands of parts at scale into a car that can fly down the road is no easy task!

Tesla, a new foreign car maker, is no exception to this problem. As we mentioned earlier, Tesla's first car Roadster, due to the former CEO Eberhard too much focus on technology development and performance enhancement, ignoring the production arrangements and product control, greatly delayed the delivery time, more than 30 out of 1,000 scheduled users canceled their orders because of delivery delays. Originally sold little, and can not be delivered on schedule, which puts Tesla in an embarrassing situation.

And then the Model?S, Model?X, and the already red-hot Model 3, Tesla's production capacity for each of these cars has never kept up, and Tesla, which uses an order-based production system, has little inventory, which makes it so that new users always have to be mentally prepared for delivery delays.

As for the reasons for the delivery delays, whether it's the high internal rework rate of the early Model?S, or the improper debugging of the highly automated production line, it's undoubtedly the immaturity of the production system and the lack of production lines. In the face of growing demand, Tesla is also continuing to ramp up production capacity, while opening more production lines to meet demand.

Currently, Tesla has five factories in the world*** and one under construction. Each factory has a highly automated production capacity, and Tesla is gradually making the robots on the production line work more efficiently as it continues to break in.

The Fremont factory, which Tesla remodeled in 2010, is the same NUMMI factory mentioned in the previous post, and was owned by Toyota before it was purchased. it was here that Tesla rolled off the assembly line in June 2012 with the first Model?S built. The mega-factory boasts the nation's largest Schuler SMG hydraulic press, a welding robotic arm built specifically for Tesla, and close to 500 Kuka production line robots. Despite the highly automated production lines, more than 10,000 workers work at the 930,000-square-meter factory, which was expanded in 2016 to total 930,000 square meters. The plant also produces finished complete vehicles for the Model?S, Model?X? and Model?3.

Factory Fremont (US-California)

Tesla's ambitious plan to produce 500,000?cars per year by 2020 puts Tesla's own battery demand already at the level of the global supply of lithium-ion batteries, which is expected to require an annual capacity of 35GWh of power batteries at that point.

And the Gigafactory?1? factory was born for large-scale battery and powertrain manufacturing. The factory makes power batteries, Model 3 motors, electric drive axles, and other automotive components, and in the future may also build automotive production lines and more.

Gigafactory?1 (U.S.-Nevada)

Construction of the Gigafactory?1 factory began in July 2014, and it is the work of Tesla and Matson. The whole factory is divided into two, half of which is used by Panasonic to produce batteries, and the other half is used by Tesla to establish the production line of battery modules and packs, and the perfect combination of the two allows the production cost of battery packs to drop by 30% directly.Gigafactory?1 has already begun to produce lithium-ion batteries in volume, and as of the end of 2018, Tesla's battery pack production capacity in order to reach 24GWh/year, and some of the world's current Large battery factories only produce about 4GWh of lithium-ion batteries per year. And the factory is currently only 30% complete, and when it is finished, it could be the largest building in the world in terms of floor space.

"Accelerating the world's transition to sustainable energy" is Tesla's vision, and above we have introduced Musk's roadmap for Tesla's development, "Master?Plan", the last of which is to provide a zero-emission power generation option. The last one is to provide zero-emission power generation options. The Gigafactory?2 factory is part of that plan.

Gigafactory?2 (US-New York)

The Gigafactory?2 factory is also a joint operation between Tesla and Panasonic, and is used to co-produce solar panels and storage batteries for the Solar Roof.

Gigafactory?3 (China-Shanghai)

The completion of Tesla's Chinese super factory is in 2019, and the German super factory after it also started construction not long ago, so it does not belong to the arrangements in Tesla's first ten-year plan, and the detailed introduction of the detailed introduction we put in the next article to talk about it, and put forward here is to let you have a complete understanding of the scale of Tesla's overall production We'll talk about it in detail in the next article.

Tilburg Assembly Plant (Netherlands)

Tilburg Assembly Plant is Tesla's first plant in Europe. The plant went into production in August 2013, and in October 2015, it completed an expansion and opened. Tesla ships Model?S and Model?X models in bulk to the Netherlands, where final assembly is completed and sales are targeted for Europe. The plant will be limited to complete vehicle assembly operations and will not involve component or system manufacturing.

As Tesla's production line continues to improve, it's also making a step-by-step climb in capacity, on its way to becoming a global car company.

Special feature number one

Laptop batteries as power units?

The battery system takes up 30-40% of the cost of an EV and is the top priority. So how did Tesla create this "energy source"?

The Tesla Model S battery system disassembled by foreign media

Tesla's power battery system includes the battery cell, battery management system (BMS), heat management system, cooling management, etc., of which the battery cell accounts for more than 70% of the cost of the power battery system.

Let's start with the battery cell, which occupies the largest share of the power battery system. Tesla has applied 18650 and 2170 cylindrical batteries before and after, and the latest 2170 cylindrical battery adopts nickel-cobalt-aluminum NCA equipped with silicon-carbon negative electrode, and the capacity of single battery is between 3~4.8Ah, and the energy density of single battery can be up to 300Wh/kg, and the performance is 20% higher than that of previous-generation 18650 batteries with energy density of 250Wh/kg.

18650 cylindrical encapsulated battery monomer (diameter 1.8cm, height 6.5cm, 0 on behalf of the cylindrical)

In 2013, most electric vehicle OEMs are still stuck in the lithium iron phosphate batteries with NCM111, Tesla has begun to use the high-energy-density NCA ternary lithium batteries on the Model?S; when most of the manufacturers in the market in 2017 began to transition from low-nickel materials to NCM622/NCM811 high-nickel cathode materials, Tesla has explored the application of higher energy density silicon carbon anode, Tesla battery technology and vehicle range has always led the industry.

2170 cylindrical encapsulated battery cell (i.e. 21700 battery, diameter 2.1cm, height 70cm, 0 for cylindrical)

Tesla is currently using these battery cells, are supplied by the production of Panasonic, these Panasonic batteries are not mysterious, the market many laptop computers lithium battery packs, encapsulation of this battery, the production process is very The production process is very mature.

Traditional laptop battery disassembly

A laptop's lithium-ion battery pack probably encapsulates 6 or 8 18650 cylindrical batteries; a Tesla Model?S?85, for example, would require more than 7,000 of the same batteries.

These batteries are packaged in groups, and by connecting them in series and parallel, they end up being packaged together as a whole collection. At the same time, due to the non-linear discharge characteristics of lithium batteries, excessive charging and discharging of individual cells will cause permanent battery damage, resulting in unstable voltage and temperature of the entire battery system, which will lead to serious thermal runaway events.

According to the order of "single battery-brick-sheet-pack", Tesla has adopted a battery management system with accuracy much higher than the industry level. According to the dismantling of Model 3 by foreign media, the BMS of Model 3 can adjust the voltage difference between 23 and 25 individual battery packs. According to the disassembly of Model?3 by foreign media, the BMS of Model?3 can control the voltage difference between 23-25 independent battery packs at 2-3mV, which is far lower than the level of other ordinary electric vehicles. At the same time, the set of battery management system is highly integrated, Tesla BMS module integrated high-voltage controller, DC converter and multiple sensors, which can reduce the high-voltage wiring harness required for internal communication, and ultimately reduce the total weight and reduce costs.

Tesla Model?S?Battery teardown

But, speaking of which, are you wondering if laptop batteries don't get hot with use, and some laptops even produce hot batteries after prolonged use, so wouldn't the 7,000+ batteries be a huge source of heat? No wonder the @#? Since #%&? * burn @?...? ...But in winter, the low temperature will also dramatically affect the efficiency of the battery! This, we need to talk about his battery thermal management system.

Battery thermal management, Tesla takes 50% water and 50% glycol as the coolant liquid cooling program, realized by the four-way valve motor and battery cooling cycle series-parallel structure. Controlled by the system chip algorithm, when the battery temperature exceeds the set target value, the battery cycle and the motor cycle are independent of each other and are connected in parallel to cool down the battery; when the battery temperature is lower than the set target value, the battery cycle and the motor cycle are connected in series to utilize the motor's waste heat to heat up the battery and the cockpit, and the excess heat will be discharged by the heat exchanger at the air intake.

This solution makes full use of the heat from all the components in the vehicle to circulate the heat efficiently, which greatly improves the heat dissipation of the battery cells and the consistency of the temperature between the cells. As a result, the temperature difference between Tesla's vehicles is kept within 2℃ regardless of the extreme weather conditions in winter or summer, reflecting the strong temperature control capability.

Later, Tesla upgraded its batteries, and the flammability point was reduced from about 175℃ for 18650 batteries to about 65-82℃ for 2170 batteries, which puts higher requirements on the battery cooling system. Comparing the old Model?S?85, the new Model?S?P100 and Model?3, it can be found that the battery cooling system has been upgraded in stages, from a single cooling belt in the early days to independent cooling belts on each level today, providing better temperature control for the new 2170 battery and greatly improving the efficiency of battery cooling operation.

Special Feature #2

Use of Niche Motors

Unlike the permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSM) used by the mainstream models in the current passenger EV market, Tesla chose to use induction motors, which are more expensive to manufacture. If the comparison is simple, it can be understood that permanent magnet motors are more efficient and induction motors are more powerful.

Tesla motor engineers

In addition to having more powerful battery support, allowing Tesla to sacrifice some of the motor efficiency to choose performance, Tesla's choice of induction motors and its initial technology is very much related. In the previous founder's story, we mentioned the earliest to Eberhard and Tabernine technical help as well as cooperation with AC?Propulsion, and this company has a leading technical strength in induction motors; coupled with induction motors demagnetization risk is small, the technology is mature; and, permanent magnet synchronous motors have to use a relatively large number of raw materials of rare earths, and the world's rare earth capital is basically concentrated in East Asia, especially in China and Japan, which will bring about the development of permanent magnet synchronous motors. In particular, China and Japan, which will bring obstacles to the procurement of a combination of factors, Tesla chose to carry induction motors.

Tesla?Model3 dual-motor four-wheel-drive version

Of course, Tesla has made a series of enhancements to the induction motor technology at a later stage, including the design of corresponding punches, torque improvement, cooling system and other means, of which the most innovative is the patented copper-core rotor technology of the induction motor.

Tesla uses silver-plated copper inserts to fill the copper bar rotor slot gap, and then reinforcing the two ends, sealing the confinement ring piece of the method, reducing the casting difficulty at the same time to improve the efficiency of the motor operation, to complete the Tesla special power transformation.

In the permanent magnet motor, Tesla has also tried, in the previous Model3 rear-drive long range version of the model on the use of permanent magnet switched reluctance motor single motor configuration. Tesla's permanent magnet motor adopts the oil-cooling method that only a few large manufacturers in the world have, and after technical improvement, the number of revolutions can be up to 18,000 revolutions, far exceeding the average level of 12,000 revolutions on the domestic market, even if there are manufacturers with relatively high technology, they can only reach 15,000 revolutions. But later, Tesla based on the global model layout and sales strategy, cut all the two-wheel drive models.

Special feature three

To put the car according to the computer?

In my opinion, Tesla, in addition to promoting advanced pure electric car-making technology, the most important thing is that it has pioneered the OTA upgrade service in the automotive industry, which can be said to be a subversion of automotive after-sales service.

There was a well-known U.S. automotive media pointed out that Tesla Model?3 has the problem of long braking distance, which caused an uproar. If it is a traditional car company, to solve the similar situation needs a large-scale recall of vehicles, or through the 4S store on the replacement of parts, both programs need to waste the owners of a long waiting time, the car company also have to pay a huge economic loss. However, Tesla engineers were able to upgrade the system via OTA (Over-the-Air), which solved the problem in a matter of days.

This is the most fundamental difference between Tesla and traditional car companies - Tesla can upgrade its system like a smartphone (OTA), while traditional car companies' OTA is only limited to on-board navigation functions, and is completely unable to control or upgrade the interior temperature, brakes, charging, and other functions involving vehicle components like Tesla does The OTA of traditional car companies is only limited to on-board navigation, and is completely unable to remotely control or upgrade functions involving vehicle components such as temperature, brakes and charging like Tesla.

The deeper reason behind this is that the underlying electronic and electrical architectures are completely different. The development of each part of the ECU of the traditional car companies are completed by the supplier, so each part has its own underlying code and permissions restrictions, the collection of the whole car, the huge redundant code can not be unified management, and the supplier is not necessarily provided to the car company's code permissions, not to mention upgrades. This has resulted in automotive software updates that are almost synchronized with the vehicle lifecycle, greatly affecting the user experience.

Unlike traditional car manufacturing, Tesla has adopted a centralized electrical and electronic architecture, i.e., by independently developing the underlying operating system and using a central processor to unify the management of different domain processors and ECUs. This architecture is very similar to smartphones and PCs.

Taking the electrical and electronic architecture of Tesla Model 3 as an example, it is divided into three parts, CCM (Central Computing Module), BCM?LH (Left Body Control Module) and BCM?RH (Right Body Control Module), where CCM consists of three parts, namely, IVI (infotainment system), ADAS/Autopilot (Assisted Driving System), and internal and external communications. The CCM runs X86?Linux on the CCM. BCM?LH and BCM?RH are responsible for body and convenience systems, chassis and safety systems, and powertrain functions.

Such 3C-ized modular development facilitates the application of OTA, making it easier to update software and iterate systems in the future of the vehicle, and allowing for continuous post-delivery vehicle operations and services. The delivery of traditional automotive products means the beginning of wear and depreciation, but software OTA gives more life to the car, bringing a better user experience. Of course, the significant optimization of the electronic harness structure inside the vehicle also brings more convenient production operations and improves production efficiency.

Since the Model?S was launched in 2012, the Tesla software system has so far a **** carried out 9 major updates, an average of a few months a small update, has accumulated more than 50 new and improved features, including automatic assisted driving, battery warm-up, auto-parking and other functions. If the three electric system field Tesla is still just competing with traditional car companies in the same dimension, then the whole car OTA belongs to Tesla's traditional car companies and even traditional automotive tier 1 suppliers of a downward strike.

In 2018, Volkswagen CEO Dees clearly proposed to build vw.OS operating system, traditional car companies have also begun to recognize the trend of technological change, but compared to Tesla, which originated in Silicon Valley, it is clear that software development is not a strong point of Volkswagen, and how the future performance will be, we will see.

As a true believer in the first principle, Musk is good at returning to the essence of things to analyze and solve problems, rather than using analogies and improvements. Tesla has indeed won market recognition with its advanced technology and ideas, but how will it evolve? In the next article, we will talk about Tesla's second ten-year plan, see you in the next article!

This article was written by the author of Automotive Home, and does not represent the views of Automotive Home.