Tesla has combined a series of innovations to make a technological breakthrough that could transform the way it makes electric vehicles and help Elon Musk a
The company pioneered the use of huge presses with 6,000 to 9,000 tons of clamping pressure to mold the front and rear structures of itsin a"gigacasting" process that slashed production costs and left rivals scrambling to catch up.
Terry Woychowski, president of U.S. engineering company Caresoft Global, said if Tesla managed to gigacast most of the underbody of an EV, it would further disrupt the way cars are designed and manufactured. Tesla was expected to make a decision on whether to die cast the platform in one piece as soon as this month, three of the sources said, though even if they do press ahead the end product could change during the design validation process. The breakthrough Tesla has made centres on the how the giant molds for such a large part are designed and tested for mass production, and how casts can incorporate hollow subframes with internal ribs to cut weight and boost crashworthiness.
That has been deemed prohibitive by automakers - especially as a design might need half a dozen tweaks or more to achieve a perfect die from the perspective of noise and vibration, fit and finish, ergonomics and crashworthiness, the sources said. That means Tesla can tweak prototypes as many times as needed, reprinting a new one in a matter of hours using machines from companies such as Desktop Metal and its unit ExOne.
The aluminium alloys used to produce the castings behaved differently in sand and metal molds and often failed to meet Tesla's criteria for crashworthiness and other attributes.
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