4 ms·
They are great until you take a look at the price of aluminum
by seydor 4y ago
They are great until you take a look at the price of aluminum
- HPsquared 4y agoCar structures are often made of aluminum anyway, do these parts use significantly more than e.g. bonded extrusions?
- dsfyu404ed 4y agoThese presses are for complex and fairly thick structural parts. Think like radiator core supports, subframes, dashboard support structures and control arms. Yhe resultant parts are substantially more expensive than the stamped and welded steel they replace. The range of cost difference vs steel also wide because the complexity of the part and the shape of the part affect the service life and initial cost of the die a lot. Some parts lend themselves well to the process, some don't. What this increased expense buys you is weight and NVH improvements. In previous cases aluminum has been used for car bodies and cosmetic sheet-metal panels. The cost difference vs steel is not nearly as large in that application.
- bluetomcat 4y agoBig car manufacturers use their own modular platforms for the chassis of different vehicles, in order to optimise R&D and production costs. An upsized vehicle from the range usually uses the same basic platform with a few size adjustments here and there. "Gigacasting" would require them to create moulds for every individual part.
- ajross 4y agoI did, actually. Looks like aluminum is down about 60% from a peak last year, and sitting about 20% higher than its pre-pandemic level (which inflation-corrected isn't much of a change at all). Is there a specific point you're trying to make? Or you're just saying steel is cheaper?
- seydor 4y agoNo i mean the machines are great but the war is making the cost of cars uncertain and probably high
- alfor 4y agoIt’s mostly stored electricity and completely recyclable.
- robocat 4y agoSure, pure aluminium is. Surely the Tesla parts will be special alloys to get the correct plastic deformation during crashes (amongst other constraints). I would guess special alloys could require different recycling paths, or recycling to lower value impure material? Then again, it must be a solved problem, which I should bing!
- pixl97 4y agoWeight is negative fuel and must be considered in the equation.
- xnx 4y agoAluminum holds its value
- londons_explore 4y agoWith a typical car having 200kg of aluminium, thats $400. Substantial, but not massively so for the chassis of a $60,000 car.
- jiggawatts 4y agoI made a similar argument to explain that science fiction technologies like "asteroid mining" won't improve the cost of everyday products like cars. Even if the material costs were reduced to zero, the sticker price would remain essentially unchanged. Elon Musk made a similar point about the inefficiency of NASA-style rocket construction. The "raw materials" to make a rocket cost something like $500K, but the completed launch vehicle is often north of a billion dollars. The SLS program currently costs a whopping $4B per launch! Even if you got all the "expensive" materials like titanium or carbon fibre for free, the SLS launches would still cost too much.
- 01100011 4y agoEV passenger vehicles are great until you look at the supply of copper. Seriously, I love my car, but I also understand that we can't have everyone in one. Mass transit, walking, biking, e-bikes, etc... These are all competitors to EVs and unless we have a revolution in production requiring less copper or increases in copper supply, coupled with large increases in energy production, we're not giving everyone a cheap EV and the sort of mobility ICE drivers have had over the last 100 years.
- scythe 4y agoGoogle indicates that a typical electric car contains 183 pounds of copper. That's a lot! But a typical house contains 470 pounds. That's even more. So I'm not convinced that cars alone will dominate the market for copper.
- 01100011 4y agoDoes that include copper pipes, which are being phased out? Regardless, it matters. Nearly everything that is being electrified, including formerly gas appliances like water heaters and stoves, will require more copper. Unlike lithium, we do not appear to have readily available reserves of copper that aren't already being extracted. Unlike lithium, there is no suitable competitor right now like you have with sodium.
- scythe 4y agoThe majority is in wiring, but pipes are included in the average. Aluminum wiring is a thing, but allowance must be made for its high coefficient of thermal expansion, which has led to fires with aluminum wiring in the past. Overall, I would agree that copper is one of the tightest resources right now (moreso than nickel or lithium) but I don't think it's going to create a worldwide crisis. Applications where switching to aluminum is the least difficult will probably be changed first. But do also notice: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adfm.201806792 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adfm.201806...
- londons_explore 4y ago
- chrisjc 4y agoNo great for those who probably didn't lock in their prices long ago. I assume those that have bet long on gigapresses also had the presence of mind to think ahead about the cost of everything related.