He posits the question that what is it Tesla does differently that might be a moat - and your answer to the question indicates they might just have something
So Evan's main argument seems to be, Tesla is a bit like Apple in that they make a highly restricted set of products, but all their component parts are hyper-specific to the product, meaning they go to town on integration - there are no factory line compromises to be made between product X and a batch of a thousand product Y tomorrow.
Your answer suggests that using an existing factory line to build your electric cars seems a good idea, but then all you can do is replace the space where the fuel tank goes with the space where the battery goes. That means they lose out on a "free" safety upgrade of putting the battery in the middle of the car.
So Tesla's approach - can it be mimicked by incumbents - sure - by those willing to throw away their existing factory capital and reinvest.
And it does make the idea of "the org chart of the car company is seen in its dashboard" as even more important - if the ideal position of the battery is compromised by the current factory investment, what else in the way car companies are organised is sub-optimal in a new world?
This also explains to large degree the momentum these compabies have once the move. And don't even talk about first time pass yield for the Model 3 compared to other companies out there.
EDIT: Typos
It seems like the thing that helped American auto makers "bounce back" after things went extremely south before 2010 is also their biggest Achilles heel outside of being inherently gas-based vehicles: their choice to create entire lines of cars that's profitability hinged on the interchangeability and cross-model compatible frames and parts is also the reason they can't simply "re-tool" or redesign any of their models without completely scrapping the ideas and starting from scratch.
In a sense I almost feel like if these car companies decide to do as much they may have to entirely scrap previous car models and start anew. Imagine Ford saying goodbye to the F-150 / general truck models, the Mustangs, the Explorers. Chevy and Dodge saying goodbye to the cars and trucks they are able to sell to law enforcement, military, and government.
I really can't. Maybe I'm oversimplifying things but from my outside, rookie POV it seems like these are huge reasons due to the fact that their entire manufacturing supply line is reliant on this model that's helped them all but die off in competition to foreign auto makers.
They're betting their entire North American future on light trucks and SUVs.
https://evannex.com/blogs/news/excuses-excuses-big-auto-can-...
They're putting new nests in existing machines. The fundamentals are largely unchanged. Yeah, the dies in the presses for forming body panels change shape. But they are still made the same way. And, for example, the shape of the engine mounts are not compatible from one year to the next...but the vehicles all have engine mounts.
Changing the form of engine mounts or getting rid of them all together is in effect the same thing and purely driven by design. In fact, getting rid of engine mounts makes production a lot faster and cheaper. So yeah, retooling in that regard means re-tooling. They will loose some benfits from their plattform strategies, but that is the main reason most EVs from traditional car makers are, as of now, based on existing plattform. Given a positive business case new plattforms will be developed soon enough, if need be. And EVs can still benefit from other common parts.
EDIT: The exption to the plattform usage is BMW, they went the opposite way. Also to develop knowledge on the use of composite materials that can be used in oter model lines. So yes, there are some generalizations in my post one can find counter examples to.
During assembly the dimension of a particular beam don't matter that much. The fact that this beam has to moved through an assembly line does. Once you remove that beam assembly is getting a lot easier.
You are right regarding swapping a fuel tank for a battery. But that was before they went to re-tooling assembly lines for EV vehicles. So it is easoer to run both cars through the same, specialized line. But that is the whole point, isn't it? Once these manufacturers did the re-tooling that doesn't matter anymore. And as soon as number go up even existing plattform are not that important as the are now.
You're right, I'm not an ME. I'm a controls engineer...and it's the same software, controls, and 90% of the machine that run your different tools for different years.
But the quoted sentence is the important one. You can change the shape of a beam...but that beam is there in your process because you assume that there's no structural battery pack to take the load instead, or that there is a huge, heavy, rigid engine block under the hood that needs to be accomodated. If you changes those assumptions you would need more than new tools to go on the current presses and robots and conveyors, you'd need a whole new process.
I have installed brand new machines less than a mile south of Greenfield Village at the Ford Product Development Center, where they're willing to spend millions on new equipment to develop new products but not really thinking about building new processes.
The little differences can have huge impacts: Tesla batteries are just a few inches wider than the Bolt's, but those few inches mean wiring has to go through the roof or side rails instead of a more conventional route. That's a really seriously large change for some cars. They potentially have to run wiring before the interior, drive or battery goes in- completely changing the factory floor.
but now if you want that integrated glass screen, you put software division and that new CTO just hired from AmaGooSoft, right at the top of the tree - want your lights susystemn to have screen real estate - talk nice to the new guy. If you think the other division heads will take the new guy lying down, I have a bridge to sell you.
The point being that it's easier sometimes to let Schumpter destroy a company with the wrong PoV and let the market raise a couple of others with the right pov. After POV is worth 20'IQ points.
To chase it down a little more, is it true that legacy car companies don't use the "skateboard battery" approach, since this hypothesis predicts they would not?
Having a massive production capacity in batteries means not only EVs, but also battery storage for utilities, power walls, possibly electric aviation, utility drones, etc.
edit. It's been pointed out that the steering column has not been a safety issue for decades. However, I suppose the point remains about the added safety of lacking an engine, that is not having a block of metal ready to apply a large force in the drivers direction during a head on collision. But I'm happy to be corrected on this point too.
It's not 1960 anymore. We have collapsible columns and we no longer have steering gears mounted on the frame forward of the axle (we have racks mounted on or in the vicinity of the firewall). Steering column in the driver's face is a non-issue and has been for decades.
As a first responder who has responded to hundreds of MVAs, I have never seen nor heard of a steering column being shunted into a driver by the engine block. Perhaps in the 60s or earlier, but steering columns are designed to crumple.
Traditional internal combustion engines have breakaway motor mounts these days, to allow the motor to detach from the chassis and drop down towards the roadway to minimize intrusion into the cabin, but having a motor crushed into your feet is only somewhat better than having it shoved into your lap, I suppose.
That said, the front compartment is a big messy jumble of boxy components. This may not impact(!) safety much, but does show how far GM is from the level of integration Tesla attains.
[0] http://gmauthority.com/blog/wp-content/gallery/2017-chevrole...
The bolt battery also has no internal ribs, just a couple pretensioning bolts (to prevent vibration). It's only slightly stronger than a gas tank in an impact. Tesla batteries have huge internal ribs/separators that make the battery very resistant to deformation and intrusion in an impact.
The Tesla battery is also about 10% wider, which makes a HUGE difference. A side impact in the Bolt will be through your leg before it hits the battery. In the Tesla the battery will be hit around the same time you are, making it an extremely integrated part of the safety cell. Its much more complex to build this way, since theres no undercarriage to route things through.
This is just an interesting aside note, but my mother was recently involved in a frontal collision while driving her 2016 hyundai i30. In what was approximately a 60-70 kph impact with another car, it was enough to shatter the aluminium engine block in several places, and the engine sort of crushed flat.
I'd never seen a block do that before, at least not in a relatively low speed collision. Wish I'd taken some photos of it. But it made me wonder if modern cylinder block design incorporates any failure points in their design for such a scenario...
Of course maybe it could have just come down to the randomness of crash dynamics.
And it is no surprise that the engineering at Tesla is competent. After all, Tesla does have a good contact to SpaceX, where actual rocket scientists work :). In any case, SpaceX is a great source of expert knowledge on material science and structural strength.
Factor #1 is the battery. It's far and above the biggest safety feature. Factor #2 is that nobody else makes electric cars as big as Tesla. The Model 3 is 9" longer than a Leaf and a full 21" longer than a Bolt. That means WAY more crumple zone -the crumple zone is the first thing to go in a small car, making room for legs- and that's the biggest safety difference between cars.
I think you're also underestimating the impact of the battery. The center of mass makes it practically impossible to roll, a huge source of injuries and deaths. It's also incredibly resistant to pole and many vehicle intrusions, since those happen either on or just above the battery, which is extremely strong compared to normal cars.
The battery also lets almost the entire front and back of a Tesla be used as a crumple zone. Nobody else is really doing this. The Bolt has the second best battery among EVs for sale currently, and it's still shaped and positioned pretty much like a gas tank. It blocks a lot of crumple zone. The engine in any normal car is totally incompressible and massively limits the crumpling- worse, the higher end, larger cars will still have correspondingly larger engines, limiting safety. They might have a foot or two of crumple distance, while the entire hood of a Tesla can absorb impact. Even the motor can snap up and back if needed.
In a Tesla, you automatically combine 3x the shock absorption with an extremely strong safety cell and the strongest anti-rollover feature of any car. It's zero surprise they do incredibly well in crash tests.