Energy efficiency and sustainability have become paramount concerns in the electric vehicle industry over the years. Tesla is leading the charge with revolutionary electric motors that have been praised for their unparalleled performance, longevity and low-maintenance design, but just when you thought they couldn’t get any better, Tesla has again pushed the boundaries of the possible. Pushed forward, Elon Musk reveals Tesla’s latest motor that’s already wreaking havoc in the industry.
think about electric transportation and before we stop using yahoo finance stop using google finance and it’s all freely available tesla company has been designing its own drive units since its inception It was originally incorporated as Tesla Motors by Elon Musk, who has been the company’s product architect. Since its inception, Tesla’s approach to innovative engineering and manufacturing has allowed it to remain at the forefront of the industry.
The original Roadster, designed nearly two decades earlier, incorporated the power electronics into a drive unit. It was built and designed by Tesla, but had technology licensed from AC Propulsion, which was a proof of concept at the time of the release of Tesla’s Model S. In 2012 the drive unit was brought completely in-house and the technology is no longer licensed.
from third parties. Tesla’s induction and permanent magnet motors are two of the most advanced and efficient electric motors on the market today, the induction motor was first developed by Nikola Tesla himself in the 1880s and is still the most widely used of electric motors Induction is one. A series of electromagnets are used to create a rotating magnetic field which in turn induces an electric current in the motor.
This creates the force that causes the rotor to rotate. mechanical energy. The design of an induction motor is relatively simple with fewer moving parts than other types of motors. Which makes it highly reliable with low maintenance. Permanent magnet motors on the other hand use a series of magnets to create a magnetic field that interacts with the current in the rotor to produce motion unlike induction motors.
PM motors have a fixed magnetic field that makes them highly efficient and generate little heat during operation, making them ideal for use in electric vehicles where efficiency and reliability are important. Tesla has built several generations of each. Motor types over the years but typically each of their vehicles use both motor designs. In rear-wheel drive setups, a permanent magnet motor is used.
In dual motor versions of the cars they use an induction in the front wheel motor and can transfer power between these two motors to optimize efficiency and torque in different driving scenarios. Generally induction motors are better suited for high torque applications such as acceleration or climbing hills, while PM motors are more suited for efficiency. Tesla has also developed a new type of motor for its Plaid vehicles, including the Model S and Model X Plaid as well as the Tesla Semi, each of which currently has three engines.
The equivalent ships with plated motors which are carbon wrapped permanent magnet motors which provide an insane power curve that continues to produce high power even at high speeds whereas other types of motors once they reach their peak power So if they hit Tesla’s upcoming next-generation motor, they fall. Now revealed by Elon Musk, the Extreme takes a slightly different direction by focusing more on scale.
Tesla has not only innovated on features that are very visible to customers such as power and acceleration as well as low energy consumption or efficiency, but also one of the most important innovations that is often included as some innovation costs. goes. has not been done. However, it takes a lot of effort to make high-quality products but at the same time keep costs down, which means that eventually more people will be able to access and use the technology, which is driving Tesla’s battery cell strategy. Is part of.
An analogy can be seen where the 4680 cell is optimized for manufacturability rather than extremely high power density. This was also mentioned by Elon Musk at Tesla’s recent investor day where he said that electric airplanes can deliver 450 watt hours per kilogram. The energy intensive unit that exist today and you can buy them, but they are quite expensive, even though Elon hopes the prices will eventually come down, the reason they are expensive is because the materials are potentially expensive to obtain. are difficult to compare with or use more complex manufacturing processes.
They can’t scale up to the 4680. Materials and manufacturing constraints on the other hand are designed to really scale up and keep costs down, with Tesla already taking costs out of its Model 3 motors that aren’t actually used. Despite the name, between 2017 and 2022 they reduced rare earth metals by 25 percent and took out 20 percent of the weight and surprisingly reduced the size of the factory to manufacture these motors by 75 percent, the cost cut by 65 percent.
I found the factory eventually ends up within the cost of the product because Tesla needs to charge enough to cover all its costs, so improving the factory is another important part of reducing the cost of the motor. Now, note car expert Sandy Munroe and team investor The event of the day is that Tesla is using a hairpin electric motor design.
Hairpin motors are a type of electric motor, they use hairpin shaped stator windings instead of the traditional round wire windings. One of the main advantages of hairpin electric motors is their increased efficiency due to lower winding resistance and better heat dissipation. Hairpin winding also allows for a higher copper fill factor which means more copper can be packed into the same space. Hairpin motors are a relatively new technology that is gaining traction in the automotive industry.
Companies such as Volkswagen, BMW and General Motors are already using the hairpin design in their electric vehicles. And it looks like Tesla has started using them too and they showed off their automated machinery at the Investor Day that is already working to assemble these motors Major challenges for implementing hairpin technology Copper The process of bending and welding hairpins is important because incorrectly welded hairpin ends can cause electrical losses.
Its rotating electric field Tesla claims its software is faster and more accurate than other competing software, allowing them to choose the best design through millions of designs. It’s actually a good fit for the hairpin technology that’s currently being developed. Heavy research is also being done and there may be overlap. For example AI with Tesla’s artificial intelligence expertise can be used to optimize the hairpin winding pattern to reduce the motor’s resistance and improve its overall efficiency and so once again this is Tesla’s software capability.
In addition to what is important to keep them ahead of competitors, Tesla builds on their high efficiency. Tesla’s chips are unmatched in the industry but they take them to the next level, according to Sandy Munroe, who has torn down many Teslas in an in-house level chip and competitive vehicles. Tesla’s chip is used for charging where he says are that every electron that jolts you down the road through one of these chip packages, they’ve been able to cut the amount of heat in half and reduce the number of microprocessors from four to one.
Orchestrating transistors while eliminating complex and intensive switching calculations means they can miniaturize the chip and reduce the amount of silicon carbide and expensive materials and the chip still doesn’t have the same efficiencies they have one hundred percent Have a highly vertically integrated plan for producing components and an organizational structure that allows each stakeholder team to communicate and participate in the design.
The manufacturing process again comes down to a major part of the software for each piece, even the hardware is designed in software which is Tesla’s specialty with its roots in Silicon Valley Now Elon Musk’s Biggest Reveal Rare Next Generation Motor Don’t use some rare metal that no one has thought of. Tesla claims that by doing this they are not sacrificing performance at all, if anything these new motors will cost less and have surprisingly high efficiency with zero rare earth.
This is shocking in itself and has already caused some volatility in some rare earth miners’ bets, including MP materials, which were down 13 percent after Tesla’s announcement, but bounced back a few days later. for Tesla. Earned real profit. It is that the next generation of motors will be able to scale very quickly without the constraints of sourcing scarce materials, which can have environmental and social impacts. Tesla also stands to save hundreds of millions of dollars by completely eliminating these expensive materials.
According to Tesla’s presentation, he previously used 500 grams of an unknown rare material and 10 grams of two others in each drive unit, and while Tesla did not specify which metals these were, the three main rare metals are commonly used. Tesla’s permanent magnets are found in neodymium, praseodymium and dysprosium.
These metals are used to make the neodymium iron boron magnets and are said to be an essential component of the motor, yet Tesla could do without them. Some of these metals cost a hundred dollars per kilogram or more than a million dollars. The current price per ton of neodymium is about one hundred and twenty-three thousand dollars per ton if we assume that it is 500 grams of material in each motor and that Tesla produces 2 million permanent magnet motors this year which would cost $123 million.
Tesla has eliminated rare earth metals from its next-generation drive units, and these savings will have an even greater impact as Tesla plans to increase its target of 20 million vehicles in the coming years. Now Tesla’s motor will also be used.
Chip size reduction with 75 percent less silicon carbide, as discussed earlier, but this can affect many types of chips, for example Tesla reuses inverters in casings for all its vehicles , which means you can take the inverter out of the model. Y and it fits perfectly into the Model S, even though the inverters themselves are slightly different, so it’s great for compatibility, but it has its limits. Tesla can’t make any major changes without breaking this backward compatibility, though.
The Value is the next production powered train Tesla needs to cut costs dramatically and so this is the perfect opportunity to redesign all of their components that will power Tesla’s upcoming vehicles for the next half decade. K set, which is one of the most incredible figures. The gen drivetrain will cost just over a thousand dollars, according to Tesla’s Sandy Munroe, and the team commented that competitors could almost triple that number.
Sam Kores of Arc Investments did some behind the napkin math to show that a battery pack costs about seventy dollars per kilowatt hour. , The next generation vehicle for this new powered train could cost around fifty two hundred one thousand dollars, sixty two hundred dollars now they have a rule of thumb that could be broken if Tesla changed the design of the vehicle but He estimates that the drivetrain is about 25 percent of the cost of the vehicle and so Sam Kores estimates the car at twenty-five thousand dollars.
Which fits Tesla’s plans, although the battery size that Sam Corse used in his calculations seems too large. Standard range Model 3s today use a 54 kWh battery pack and this next generation vehicle is set to be even smaller and lighter, so this answer by RE Hedgehog actually seems more accurate with a 45 kWh pack, resulting in a forty-one hundred Dollar Car meets Sixteen Thousand Dollar Powertrain and Using the Sam Core template.
This is actually better where Tesla wants to be because to get the 25 000 selling price the vehicle would have to cost a lot less and reduce profit and it is not out of the question that there are many gas cars that sell for more than that are price electric vehicles that have fewer parts and fewer parts should eventually be cheaper than their eyeball counterparts what really impresses me is that tesla says no one else but them can do this and we Have achieved that vertical integration.
Given the extremely flat organizational structure, which allows Tesla to build everything itself while everyone else is busy outsourcing parts and software, this is going to be even more on display as Tesla widens the gap against those competitors. Still holding on to Tesla’s older generation products. So what do you think? Over time Tesla’s next generation motor will eventually replace the current design in most of its vehicles, given its cost effectiveness and high performance.