Autoline Network
5 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2018–2026
1:29:53 · 331K views · Apr 19, 2018
An Autoline After Hours episode with teardown expert Sandy Munro and a panel of auto journalists. It covers his Tesla Model 3 teardown, including the battery, drive modules, build quality and manufacturing automation.
Commenters link it in Tesla threads as an informed, hands-on engineering view of the Model 3 and its manufacturing.
12 comments from Hacker News
> The $35k base model made at scale later this year will be profitable Here's the thing. SV Tech companies aren't too great at the whole "at scale" manufacturing thing. Maybe Tesla can figure it out, but they need to pay more attention to what the "boring dinosaurs" are doing this this regard. If you're interested, this video is great: this video
It could certainly be that the German automakers are more concerned about present profitability. That could easily turn into falling victim to the classic innovator's dilemma. It seems that by year end, both the Model S and Model 3 will have taken significant market share from their European competitors: [LINK] . The cannibalization is real, and that's why luxury automakers like BMW have announced plans for 12 fully-electric models by 2025 ( [LINK] ). Your points about electrical infrastructure are definitely thought-provoking ones. I'd agree that the infrastructure as of today doesn't exist for widespread adoption. At the same time, the market that Tesla and the luxury European automakers compete for today doesn't hit that 5% threshold ( [LINK] ). Add up the market share of car (not truck) sales from BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Porsche, and you're looking at a ~3% market share. I think this section of the video from Sandy Munro is worth a watch: this video . Munro has been a huge critic of the build quality of the Model 3, but that everything "below the skateboard [the floor]" is seriously impressive. The cells in Tesla's battery pack have a maximum of a 0.2 milliamp difference between cells. Say that I accept your premise that the German automakers today are biding their time, and could spend their R&D money on electric cars if they so chose. Who will they source their battery packs from? Will they try to build their own supply chain for the raw materials? What competence have they d
The cells and the packs are different things. The packs aren't just a bunch of cells glued together. See this[1] fun teardown discussion. Another company building battery packs would have different costs even if they were buying the same exact cells from Panasonic, and it's likely Tesla had a hand in designing the cells so I don't know if that's particularly possible. The reason for the Gigafactory is to compress supply chains, but more importantly because there isn't enough global demand/supply for batteries to support the volumes Tesla wants. Without building their own factory, the global supply would be a constraining factor for Tesla's plans. The Gigafactory is a long-term bet that they will need that much supply in the future. This is not a problem that other carmakers have where they would want to "vertically integrate" oil refineries and gas stations, because availability of gasoline is not a problem. [1] this video
this video 90 minute discussion of Tesla 3 with Munro and others on the excellent autoline network youtube channel ('Really heavy, really expensive')
Another parallel: Over-automation this video (the whole thing is worth watching if you are into this sort of thing)