3 ms·

> And in my personal experience, vehicles are never quite the same after frame damage repairs. Same, a car with a damaged and repaired frame is usually a diffe

> And in my personal experience, vehicles are never quite the same after frame damage repairs. Same, a car with a damaged and repaired frame is usually a different car than the original. Overall this is a win. Fwiw this isn't the first mass-produced consumer vehicle with a unibody construction. For one example, the Nissan Pathfinder had it back in the 90s, though later returned to ladder-on-frame. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Pathfinder#Second_generation_(R50;_1995) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Pathfinder#Second_gener...

rootusrootus 5y ago
> this isn't the first mass-produced consumer vehicle with a unibody construction Isn't it already unibody construction, along with basically every other non-truck vehicle in production (and some trucks, too)? The only thing new is using casting for so much of the structure.
giobox 5y ago
The unibody construction isn’t unique at all in 2022. Virtually every car on the road (except for handful of pickup and some SUV/off-roader models) has been built this way for decades now, and isn’t what’s exciting about this new approach from Tesla. What’s unique is that so much of the unibody is just 2 castings - previously the front and rear required joining 140 separate parts. Such a massive front and rear casting has never been attempted in car production, the mechanical press used to do so is a record size for a car company. VW’s ceo Herbert deiss has stated this is a massive innovation from Tesla that ultimately will enormously reduce time to assemble a vehicle - we don’t need to just take elons word for it. Time to assemble is everything when it comes to car profits. Herbert points out a VW ID3 takes ~3 days to finish assembly, with this process Tesla should be able to complete a model Y in just 10 hours, putting large competitive pressure on VW too. VW’s margins on their electric stuff hasn’t been that great to begin with either.

rootusrootus 5y ago

> this isn't the first mass-produced consumer vehicle with a unibody construction Isn't it already unibody construction, along with basically every other non-truck vehicle in production (and some trucks, too)? The only thing new is using casting for so much of the structure.

giobox 5y ago

The unibody construction isn’t unique at all in 2022. Virtually every car on the road (except for handful of pickup and some SUV/off-roader models) has been built this way for decades now, and isn’t what’s exciting about this new approach from Tesla. What’s unique is that so much of the unibody is just 2 castings - previously the front and rear required joining 140 separate parts. Such a massive front and rear casting has never been attempted in car production, the mechanical press used to do so is a record size for a car company. VW’s ceo Herbert deiss has stated this is a massive innovation from Tesla that ultimately will enormously reduce time to assemble a vehicle - we don’t need to just take elons word for it. Time to assemble is everything when it comes to car profits. Herbert points out a VW ID3 takes ~3 days to finish assembly, with this process Tesla should be able to complete a model Y in just 10 hours, putting large competitive pressure on VW too. VW’s margins on their electric stuff hasn’t been that great to begin with either.