SWO
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2021
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- 2022 Mach E GT, 2021 Escape PHEV, 2019 F-150
I find the claim that it can be repaired highly dubious. High temperatures will greatly affect the properties of aluminum. It will never be the same and we're talking about part of the crash structure. Not sure a repair shop or insurance company (the insurance company has the final say) would touch it. I know one maker's CEO (Mercedes?) recently came out saying that they won't use them because it basically makes cars disposable.Gigacastings are repairable, per Tesla's repair guide. Not everything in them, but if you get to the portion that cannot be welded, then you are completely in "totaled car due to excessive damage" area. For example, the frame rails up front are not part of the casting, and if you are pushing beyond the frame rails, you are in a very substantial accident.
Structural battery pack - Sandy Munro had a great take on this. He's a former Ford engineer, and runs a company that does teardowns of all the EVs they can get their hands on and then sells the reports on them to other companies. Sandy said that you can make something highly reliable, or highly reparable, but they are almost mutually exclusive when it comes to batteries. By leaving the pack so that things can be opened up and modules replaced, the design in and of itself is less reliable. The Model 3/Y packs have been out in the 2170 variant since late 2017, and the defect rate of these requiring replacement is lower than the Model S/X packs that preceded them. Tesla says (for them) it is more cost effective to sell the car at a lower price and if a pack fails to replace it and then send the bad pack in for recycling and not even try to repair it (outside of the penthouse - where the electronics are and are pretty accessible).
EDIT - this article has the image from Tesla's repair guide for body shops. It shows what parts of the casting can be welded and how:
https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/...-despite-many-doubts-about-their-performance/
As for Sandy Munroe, Elon could fill the battery module with cheez whiz and he would call it a genius idea. He's also the last person an enthusiast wants consulting their favorite brand because he would make a car entirely out of those crappy little plastic clips if he could, and make the disposable cabin air filter an integrated part of the drive motor if it would save 10 cents per vehicle.
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