Tesla Cybertruck Lead Engineer Wes Morrill just lately shared some insights on the electrical car maker’s deep integration and distinctive method to automobile design in a latest publish on social media platform X. As may very well be seen within the engineer’s publish, it’s Tesla’s intense consideration to element that finally makes the corporate’s automobiles as disruptive as they’re at present.
Anybody knowledgeable who appears to be like on the Tesla Cybertruck would know that the car is a symphony of automotive engineering. Tesla, nonetheless, took a while earlier than it reached this level. As per Morrill in his publish, Tesla in its early days utilized totally different groups with collaborative objectives in car design. Adopting this technique allowed the corporate to make nice vehicles, however the designs of the automobiles themselves weren’t optimum.
“A well-known instance – early days of Tesla there was a battery crew and individually a car constructions crew. Constructions crew designed their car physique to satisfy given necessities of energy, crashworthiness, torsional stiffness, and so on. Likewise, the battery crew designed their half to be self contained, it might survive sturdiness, by chance being dropped, being hit in a crash, and so on.
Good evaluation – that is what occurs when groups work collectively to make the perfect product. https://t.co/XAXf70k3jc
— Wes (@wmorrill3) September 14, 2024
“Consequently, we ended up with was an excellent dense battery in a powerful field like construction, which was then Put in into the car which had a pleasant area for it to mate into. There have been no points with integration, every part match collectively completely and met all product objectives. It achieved one of many highest crash security scores measured on the time.
“However we had a field filled with battery cells that was put in into one other empty field formed receptacle on the physique. A field in a field. Once you simplify it down that far it sounds clearly flawed. The 2 organizations had achieved their objectives, labored collectively with out friction, and the product met its total objectives. But the product ended up with a transparent lack of optimization because of the organizational boundaries of the 2 groups working in isolation. Nothing was flawed, but it surely wasn’t optimum,” Morrill wrote.
The Cybertruck Lead Engineer famous that Tesla realized from these experiences, and the corporate tailored. That is how improvements such because the structural battery pack—which is now being simulated by electrical automobile makers in China—took place. Morrill said, nonetheless, that such adjustments might require massive organizational adjustments, and there needs to be a drive to make the perfect product no matter ego.
Have you ever heard of Conway’s Regulation? It is an fascinating remark in regards to the root reason for why massive organizations normally make merchandise worse.
In 1967 Melvin Conway wrote “Organizations which design programs are constrained to supply designs that are copies of the communication… pic.twitter.com/SetWd6OfTe
— Wes (@wmorrill3) September 14, 2024
“Earlier than the following product was designed, the battery crew gave duty of the battery constructions additionally to the car constructions crew. On this iteration, we ended up with the structural battery, which is an integral a part of the physique and crash construction. With out it, the car physique won’t work. It’s the literal flooring for the car. However the redundancy is gone and the design is extra environment friendly consequently. This car additionally achieved one of many highest crash security scores measured on the time.
“It is a tremendous apparent instance (looking back) and solved with a pretty big organizational change however you may also see this occur in small technical choices and doesn’t require structural change to repair. Somebody simply must query if there’s a higher resolution in a crew open to criticism. This mindset to work collectively to make the perfect product no matter ego is the place you find yourself with essentially the most revolutionary merchandise.
“Some smaller examples have been seen when inspecting Cybertruck design. The chassis air suspension which is used to pressurize the battery pack to forestall water ingress. The subwoofer which makes use of the air quantity of the physique facet as an alternative of creating the enclosure bigger. Centralized zonal car controllers as an alternative of many small distributed controllers. Doorways which use the outside floor as a crash intrusion beam. The pedestrian warning system used as a horn. The record goes on. The joy and motivation by everybody concerned to work throughout boundaries and actively break down Conway’s Regulation is likely one of the many causes I like working at Tesla,” Morrill wrote.
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