Tesla is currently developing a product that will change the world. An electric car for the mass market. The first electric car that will be truly affordable, accessible and practical for consumers around the world. This next-generation platform will bring Tesla on the road in those countries.
Where they’ve never been seen before and in the hands of people who might previously have said electric cars are too expensive, it’s a tall order because Tesla has no interest in making low-quality bark and bin vehicles.
At this low price they want to make a proper Tesla that doesn’t look out of place next to the Model 3 or just a little smaller and a lot more affordable which is why Tesla has been hinting for years how they’re going to accomplish this while the vehicle may remain a well-kept secret in itself.
We already know a lot of the design and engineering elements that are going to be at the heart of this new vehicle platform, so here’s what to expect from Tesla’s next generation electric. The exotic car for the next-generation Tesla was actually revealed at Tesla’s Battery Day in late 2020.
Elon announced that the company was developing a new car with a target retail price of US$25,000, now apparently the value of a dollar has changed. Although the cost of an electric vehicle has risen over the years, the overall market is becoming more affordable.
The price target is still well within what Elon identified as the two primary factors that will allow Tesla to go down, even with inflation and other stuff. One manufacturing cost was a change in battery cell chemistry, he speculated, that would move Teslas away from using nickel-slash cobalt battery cathodes in the future.
Which will be across their entire lineup, instead a new high nickel low cobalt cell reserved for long range and high performance applications only, while standard range vehicles will transition to iron-based LFP battery cells with lower energy density.
The change in chemistry, combined with an increase in manufacturing efficiency and a reduction in raw material costs, was estimated to reduce the total cost of the Tesla battery pack by 56 percent per kilowatt hour of energy. Thing number two instead of the traditional stamped frame. A major change was the design of the skateboard platform, which consists of hundreds of small parts joined together by weld bolts and adhesives.
Tesla reworked its platform into three major sections with a physical battery pack at the heart, which serves dual purpose as a container for the cells and an ultra-rigid center for the front and rear quarters frame.
To fully realize that the Model Y is being produced in Giga Texas in 2022, but that vehicle and its rear-end manufacturing process have not been designed from the ground up to take full advantage of the structural battery pack and Giga castings What was there before, has since improved, yet a lot of efficiency was being lost on the production floor.
The next-generation platform fixed it Tesla’s designers and engineers presented at Investor Day in 2023 something they call the unboxed process.
Electric cars had to build the skateboard platform and vehicle body separately, then bring the two main assemblies together, integrate them, and then install the interior and put the finishing touches on with unboxing, they could make the vehicle smaller. Could be disassembled into sub-assemblies. Used to sabotage the assemblies, which were basically the front center section and the outer.
Shell so what they can do is build the entire front end of the vehicle as a sub-assembly starting with these single giga castings they unit steering suspension brakes heat pump battery electronics headlights frunk dashboard computer touch screen and steering wheel together Let’s add
Plus they can build the entire rear section the same way they go ahead and install the rear seats plus they paint and finish the side rails so they can join the front and rear assembly , at the same time they bring structural battery pack with fully carpeted center console and pre-installed front seats that just come up from the bottom, then glass is applied.
Pre-finished doors are fitted on the hood and trunk. Wheels and you are connected. The theory is that you can only work on a particular assembly from four sides at a time and there are only a certain number of people or machines you can work on.
So by breaking the vehicle into pieces you are increasing the surface area of the workpiece and by allowing all the sections to be tapped together on four sides you are increasing the total density of workers or machines in the whole vehicle and at the same time you are allowing them to do their job allowing easy access to.
Unboxing sub-assemblies until the final assembly process so the overall effect is a 44% increase in operator density and a 30% improvement in space-time efficiency, which translates to a 50% reduction in manufacturing costs in the final product. On a production floor that is up to 40 percent smaller, how will Tesla make its next-generation vehicle more affordable?
The main philosophy behind this is, it is not about cost cutting, but about increasing efficiency drastically, cutting costs will give you a cheaper car but increasing efficiency as well as reducing poor quality of the product. There’s a lot more to the equation of making a really affordable electric car without sacrificing the standard of quality than just mastering the battery pack in manufacturing.
You need a holistic approach to each major component of the vehicle. So Tesla designed a fully electric motor for its next generation vehicle. The goal here is low cost and high efficiency, no wonder designers are achieving that cost reduction by eliminating rare earth metals. Starting with the Model 3, Tesla began introducing a permanent magnet DC motor to its vehicle lineup.
This was a change from the basic AC induction motor previously used in the Model S and Model X platform permanent magnet motors, which inherently have higher efficiency. Alternating current electromagnets drive motors and this allows for the combination of both long range and high power that Tesla is so well known for. The downside of a permanent magnet motor is that they are usually based on the element neodymium.
It’s not in the rare earth category on the periodic table that neodymium is particularly rare in the overall composition of the Earth, but it’s hard to find near the surface and you won’t usually find large concentrations in one place, so the cost is relatively high. And the supply is relatively small, but engineers love neodymium for electric motors.
have a strong magnetic field which doesn’t last long so it justifies the cost now tesla is saying they can get by without needing any rare earth elements in their new magnet so they are widely what you use do?
The most common material for making magnets is called ferrite. It is a ceramic material of mostly iron oxides also known as rust with added metals such as manganese nickel and zinc but no matter what type of speaker you need ceramic ferrite magnets can find everything Will go
They also help keep your refrigerator door closed for electric guitars and cordless drills, so ferrite has less magnetic strength than neodymium, a very common and very cheap material, giving you more than the strength of a neodymium magnet Needed to match that would require a huge amount of ferrite and there isn’t much extra room to move around inside the electric motor.
We know that Tesla can make some of this back by increasing efficiency, which in the past engineers were only able to do in the time between Model 3 and Model Y. Reduce the amount of rare earth material needed for an electric motor without sacrificing any power but Tesla will lose some performance by essentially switching to ferrite magnets in its next-generation vehicle.
So now instead of going 0 to 60 in six seconds it might take eight or nine seconds which isn’t really the end of the world it’s a vehicle for mass market averages that prioritize performance far more than cost and Can still test it is an upgrade option for the dual motor.
All-wheel drive for anyone who really wants that extra boost. The final piece of the puzzle is Tesla’s redesign of the vehicle’s low-voltage electronics, so it means nothing is tied to the main battery pack that only drives. Powering the unit Cabin electronics Lights heating and cooling are traditionally powered by a secondary battery.
That power comes from a 12-volt lead acid battery, more commonly called a car battery, but now Tesla hasn’t upgraded its secondary batteries to lithium-ion chemistry. their vehicle range and it now gives them the ability to increase the voltage as much as they want with the Cyber Truck earlier this year.
tesla is going to 48 volt power so why did they do that the full answer is complicated and we are not going to go there today but in simple terms if the load is kept constant then the vehicle electronics here allow a higher supply to the load Gives a lower current of electricity; Higher currents require larger conductors.
so by going to less current you actually reduce the physical size of your wires, fuse switches and other electrical components that reduce current also reduce heat loss in the system, doubling the current reduces the amount of heat The loss will quadruple, so reducing the current by the same metric reduces the heat loss by a multiple. Higher voltage results in higher efficiency, lower cost, and lower weight. If you’ve been following these ideas for a while.
The first principle for greater efficiency is to think that what makes the best part of a machine is not what it is designed to manufacture, it is all coming together on a platform that makes this vehicle unique not only in its affordability makes it but is going to make it massively impactful as well.
Tesla will achieve that scale of production with this new car, whatever name they’re going to give it, it will change the game forever. Don’t forget to give this video a thumbs up today if you liked it, which is very important for our content to reach more.