3 ms·

What's the significance of this for someone unfamiliar?

• penjelly 3y ago
  i believe the original design was a patented concept that promised to streamline production, sounds like they flipped back to a standard chasis design to me?
  • ortusdux 3y ago
    IIRC, part of the goal was weight reduction, which is a significant consideration with EVs. If you can convert the cosmetic body panels into structural elements, you can reduce the overall bill of materials. They have since aggressively pursued large cast aluminum frame technology. This reportedly reduced the complexity of their car's frames from 100+ pcs down to 1 or 2. My guess is that they switched the trucks fully over to these Al frames as a way to homogenize their production lines. Purely conjecture, but they probably held off under the assumption that they could not produce the Al frames fast enough, but a sales slump freed up the production capability.
    • penjelly 3y ago
      appreciate the additional info here. thanks