If you sit on someone’s shoulders and forget that they’re doing most of the work, you can be shocked all you want when they collapse out from under you but nobody on the ground is going to have any sympathy at all for you.
I’ve worked for software subcontractors and it’s always frustrating when the customer is so excited about all the things we’re going to accomplish together, all the plans that hinge on our mutual success, and isn’t it so wonderful that they’re getting such a great deal on it too?
Meanwhile we’re slowly going broke because we can’t make money on that sweetheart deal loaded with scope creep not spelled out properly in the contracts. Good luck with those plans when we go under.
Ajax Fasteners where a small manufacturer in the name of Division of Labour, and when they went into receivership, it took down Australia's entire car industry. Let me repeat - Australia no longer has a car industry.
Holy crap: https://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2006/s1719988.htm
You'd think the car companies could have just bought the manufacturing assets of the supplier if it was this critical (that's assuming they weren't looking for a back door excuse to shut down their own Australian production, that is).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry_in_Austral...
A good rule of thumb I have is if a politician is there at a ribbon cutting, and talks about jobs, then it's nothing more than vote buying in disguise.
... but the Australian car industry was nothing more than rent seeking anyway, so it was a good thing we stopped funding a non-utility.
Actually this point is something im curious about - it seems to be redundant to have a 3X redundant processor ..probably placed in different places on the car body for safety.
Would that not be superior to current architecture..while being able to tap into the most modern chip architecture of the day ?
I'm not a car engineer and dont understand CANBUS, etc. But just wondering if this is indeed possible.
Airplanes need 3x redundancy on safety critical components, because they carry a lot of people and are not fail safe when they are in the air. Cars can generally stop safely.
As far as changing architectures - think about safety critical loops and real time computing. Some processes should never be pre-empted.
"Brake-by-wire is used in all common hybrid and electric vehicles produced since 1998 including all Toyota, Ford, and General Motors Electric and hybrid models."
"Three main types of redundancy usually exist in a brake-by-wire system:
Redundant sensors in safety critical components such as the brake pedal.
Redundant copies of some signals that are of particular safety importance such as displacement and force measurements of the brake pedal copied by multiple processors in the pedal interface unit.
Redundant hardware to perform important processing tasks such as multiple processors for the ECU"
As of 2016 the NTSB has not directly investigated passenger car and light truck brake-by-wire vehicle accidents, and the manufacturers have taken the position that their vehicles are completely safe, and that all reported accidents are the result of "driver error"."
How can it not be "purely" brake by wire, if, when depressing the brake pedal, the friction brakes are not always triggered?
If electronics decide not to apply hydraulic force when everything is going fine, that there must be a potential failure mode where they ignore the pedal inappropriately.
Can you explain further?
There's a difference between a fail-safe that usually works, and a mechanical connection that's always there.
Electronics can fail in many interesting ways other than simply turning off. And they do! Ever looked at nhtsa.gov?
"Brakes Failed problem of the 2017 Honda Accord Hybrid
Failure Date: 10/31/2018
There have been three instances of total brake failure. Initial instance occured on vehicle startup, a number of errors were given including "aadaptive cruise conrtol problem","collission mitigation system problem","road departure mitigation system problem" and "brake system problem". When I put the car in drive it immediately began moving forward. Car was towed to dealer where Honda blamed the issue on the undercaoting causing components to overheat. This was October 2018 in philadelphia. Replaced brake system and removed undercoat on affected areas. Second instance occured in February 2019 it had stopped raining but road was still wet and had puddles. Driving downtown, at a yellow light brakes completely failed, I ran the light and was able to stop with emergency brake. Car was giving the same set of errors. This time restarting the car made errors go away. Brought to the dealer, they said they did a software update but could not replicate the problem so did nothing else. Third instance was February 2nd, while driving about 30-40 mph, again either after rain had stopped or still had a slight drizzle. This time I saw the errors while driving before I needed to break and recognized the issue. Managed to use emergency brake to pull over. Again restarting the car cleared the issue, I have not brought back to the dealer yet."
The hardware doesn't spend that much time in high rad environment, it's not a sat or a rover.
That makes me think that as companies retire legacy gas/diesel products they'll probably switch to an automotive PoE standard. Allows you to to power the window lift regulator, door locks, and read the switches off a single 20 gauge cable. Weld a fully assembled door assembly to the body and than plug in a single cable. What's not to like?
What makes that voltage a better trade off?
6 and 12 V electric systems in vehicles came about because lead-acid batteries made sense in this application, and cetpar. a higher voltage lead-acid battery is overall costlier to manufacture, because it contains more individual cells. Another big thing is that there are many switches and relays in a car, and those often switch significant power. E.g. the light switch for the headlights has to deal with around 200 Watts total for incandescent/halogen headlights, indicators are like 15 Watt each front and back, the starter motor requires a tremendous amount of power, and has a very robust power switch built into it.
All of those switches become much more expensive when you increase the voltage. DC at 12 V and sizable currents is something you can reliably switch with mechanical contacts without costs going through the roof.
Being able to use 48 V for everything in a car is more or less dependent on using silicon switches for everything, not something that was possible in the past. The reason why legacy ICE cars (all ICE cars are now legacy) stick with 12 V is because everything is 12 V, and everything would have to change for the new voltage.
Note: These were never sold in the North American Market, but they're extremely common in Australia, South Africa, etc.
Naturally, I can't find any links to the info...
Just built a car without a single relay. I used PMUs (basically boxes of mosfets and current sensors AFAIK).
Wouldn't a more important question be how does the failure mode change?
With AC, the arc will self-extinguish a half-cycle after the switch opens. With DC there is no cycle, and contacts can be completely vaporised in tens of milliseconds.
Commodity switching components are usually rated "30V DC, 250V AC" for this reason.
It is possible to design switches so that even DC arcs self-extinguish, but the result is expensive and not as reliable as one could wish.
If cars had been invented after 1980, they would probably use solid-state switches except for the very high current circuits such as the starter solenoid and headlights. (Transistors were around a lot earlier than that, but engineers are sensibly cautious about new technologies.)
Edit: To answer your question directly: no. Cost is prime.
You could also just switch the HV (400V+) bus directly down to 48/60V as all the high current devices motor/ac/power steering etc run off the HV bus and you would just be left with lights, entertainment and servos on the low voltage side. The 12V battery is probably a bit silly when you have a 50KWH main battery and 97% switching conversion efficiency regulators and I am guessing it may disappear in the next 10 years
I meant to the customer or owner, over the normal lifetime of the vehicle, not to corporate accountants that translate pennies into millions of dollars.
"More expensive" presumably is a small amount per car; the average new car in the US is over $40K.
So to minise weight/wire size, use the highest voltage possible (and thus the lowest current). Losses are purely related to current (I^2*R) so the incentive is to squeezee the current (so needing to increases the voltage).
There's a reason the high-voltage overheads are 432 kilovolts (or more); 10 amps at 432kV = 4.3MW (MegaWatts) while 10amps from a stock AC outlet is 1.2KW (KiloWatts). The wire thickness required for both is the same (though the HV wires need to be better insulated, out of the way of crazy fools etc).
So a 60V system for a car carries 1/5 the current of a 12v system, and the wires can have 1/5 the cross-sectional area.
(yes, I know there are caveats when it comes to AC).
Wire guage follows a 10log10 of ohms per 1000ft, relative to 0.1 ohms per 1000ft:
0ga .. 0.1 ohms per 1000 ft
10ga .. 1.0 ohms per 1000 ft
20ga .. 10 ohms per 1000 ft
30ga .. 100 ohms per 1000 ft
http://www.interfacebus.com/AWG-table-of-different-wire-gaug...
Nitpick: the wire as a whole includes insulation, which technically does need to be thicker at high voltage (though at 40-60V, and maybe even at 40-60kV, it's probably dominated by tolerances for erosion and abrasion and such).
High voltage power lines use air, which is actually a fairly good insulator per se, but has the problem that wires tend to pass through it on their way to a short circuit if not well-restrained.
At 12V, we are just talking about 6mA, where you can feel the electricity but it should not be hurting too much.
I'm an electrical engineer working in an automotive related field.
I have no doubt that your company and all the other big automakers are running the numbers and trying to weigh those risks and costs with the risks and costs of not updating.
Given that the chipmakers and supply chain experts are not making rosy predictions for things to drastically improve in the next 12 months or longer, I wonder if the balance is shifting towards taking action.
I can't find a public source, but some actions are being taken. Bear in mind that any major shifts would happen in a new product, that is, something 5-7 years out.
Is it that the component specification+acquisition cycle you describe is optimized to take as long as the development cycle of a new car?
Tesla is valued as a growth/tech company. As long as people believe in their growth, they get more cash.
I don't personally understand how Tesla hasn't had more problems with their apparently uncontrolled engineering changes. At least part of it is customer enthusiasm for the product papering over any drawbacks.
It's not that GM can't make changes like this, it's that GM WON'T make changes like this.
All of this is, again, solely my own opinion.
It's that nobody cares and the media doesn't cover it. A friend of mine-- his Tesla has broken down a dozen times and he still happily pre-ordered the cyber truck.
My 10-year-old Honda has never had any work done to it other than maintenance-- but that doesnt make the news either.
This is not a useful way to look at a product.
https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/0000...
"On July 16, 2021, we issued a notice of redemption to the holders of the 2025 Notes informing the holders that we will redeem the notes in full in August 2021 at a redemption price equal to 102.65% of outstanding principal amount, plus accrued and unpaid interest, if any."
It appears to me that they are steadily issuing stock at the rate of about 20% of their market cap per year, or roughly at the rate of $10 billion per month.
It looks like the number of (diluted) shares outstanding increased by over 20% between 2019 and 2020.
What did that consist of? Their annual report says mainly:
- Issuance of common stock for equity incentive awards
- Issuance of common stock in public offerings
"On September 1, 2020, we entered into an Equity Distribution Agreement with certain sales agents to sell $5.00 billion in shares of our common stock from time to time through an “at-the-market” offering program. Such sales were completed by September 4, 2020 and settled by September 9, 2020, with the sale of 11,141,562 shares of common stock resulting in gross proceeds of $5.00 billion and net proceeds of $4.97 billion, net of sales agents’ commissions of $25 million and other offering costs of $1 million."
"On December 8, 2020, we entered into a separate Equity Distribution Agreement with certain sales agents to sell $5.00 billion in shares of our common stock from time to time through an “at-the-market” offering program. Such sales were completed by December 9, 2020 and settled by December 11, 2020, with the sale of 7,915,589 shares of common stock resulting in gross proceeds of $5.00 billion and net proceeds of $4.99 billion, net of sales agents’ commissions of $13 million and other offering costs of $1 million."
Also, as of their 2020 annual report, roughly a billion shares were authorized to issue, which is on the order of another 100%, or double the current outstanding.
https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/0001...
You might dismiss this as "way back in 2020", but it does seem to be their latest annual report.
Their latest quarterly report is as of June 30, 2021, and guess what? Shares outstanding are up about 4.6%. Compounded over a year, that's going to be just about 20% again.
10-Q: https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/131860
"Stock-based awards" seem to have been 93 million in the last three months. TSLA is around $775/share.
2020 was a significant shift in the company as it became profitable ex-ZEV credits. Future public offerings are unlikely absent major changes in the company's fundamentals.
Stock based comp is a standard cost of business in most large tech companies; given how badly TSLA is been beating competitors (esp in the context of the chip shortage), it seems to paying off.
>Stock based comp is a standard cost of business in most large tech companies
The public offerings come at intervals, but the total raised seems to be pretty steady. It all contributes to keeping the business running. Money is fungible. "Everybody does it" is not an argument for anything.
Your opinion could be perfectly correct, in terms of predicting the future, and I am not an expert on Tesla. But your comment doesn't convey to be even the tiniest hint of why you hold your opinion.
Maybe they are simply more dynamic, have better on the fly testing, more flexible software to manage their production, are more vertically integrated and have thus more control over their production.
The argument that Tesla had significant more quality problems compared to others really doesn't hold much water today. The fact is Tesla had far fewer problems with batteries and drive trains while delivering far more EV. People love to complain about minor panel gaps (that most people don't ever notice anyway) and ignore that Tesla has a very good track record in terms of drive train and battery.
Compare Tesla Model 3 to Leaf or the Bold that came out at the same time and had far more problems. Leaf had to replace all early batteries and Bolt is being recalled right now.
Tesla should get credit for this, rather then just them being 'lucky' or that Tesla costumers are just willing to buy broken products (another myth that doesn't hold up).
In terms of drive train and battery Tesla worse failure by far was that they had to under-power a number of Model S produced in 2017. There has never been a large recall of Model 3 or Model Y.
Maybe they are simply more dynamic, have better on the fly testing, more flexible software to manage their production, are more vertically integrated and have thus more control over their production."
Yes. That's cost of entry. It works when the customer takes delivery.
They can also do smart things like have consistent APIs, electrical bus systems, etc (I don't know if they do, but they could)
Even with all of that, technical debt on physical products in the real world will drag you down to the depths of the ocean.
You see this with the customer experience on repairs. But like I said, Tesla is a growth company. As long as people believe Tesla is a growth company it will continue to be a growth company.
Most complaints about experience with repairs are more about how long it takes because of limited service centers, not actually bad service or overly broken cars.
On the other hand, many people have a really great experience as well. The mobile service is absurdly popular and make many repairs 10x better then what basically anybody else has.
In terms of 'check this individual horror story', you can find those for every car maker.
I have not yet seen any systematic real analysis on costumer experience for repair. The evidence seems to be based on individual stories.
Partly I think because Tesla is so integrated all repair problems are more directly associate with the company, while for other companies you just had a bad dealer experience.
I honestly don't know how to evaluate this in any systematic way, 'my friend had X problem with Tesla Service' is not good enough.
Judging by the number of recalls, Tesla doesn't seem to be doing worse than GM, Porsche or Ford.
There's things they do well but I don't know if I'd qualify them as having better reliability.
I would guess it’s a mixture of culture, cost, and scale. Culture wise, Tesla is extremely vertically integrated so that gives them a lot more breathing room. Cost wise, Tesla pretty much still sells car at a loss and relies heavily on carbon offset subsidies for income. When your revenue is established, trying to change margin or anything is probably much more difficult. Lastly, it’s scale, while Tesla is trying to catch up, the throughput of the major automakers is absolutely mind defying. The whole system is an oil machined that any sort of downtime is detrimental and difficult once the line is established. To put into perspective, Tesla “monumental” Q2 quarter shipped 200K cars or so. GM in the US only sold 200K per month.
I'm sorry but that is just straight up complete nonsense. Like seriously, you are directly disagreeing with public financial statements. We know exactly how much margin Tesla has, with and without carbon offset.
The simple fact is, Tesla has leading automotive margins even when you exclude any carbon credits.
According to reports (https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/31/investing/tesla-profitability...) Tesla received $1600M in regulatory credits and had a net income of $721M.
If you look at the 10K (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459021...), Tesla received $27,236M in automotive revenues (which includes sales of regulatory credits, thanks Elon). The corresponding cost of sales is $20,259M giving gross profit of $6,977M and gross margin of 26%. But after that, you have operating expenses ($4,636M) (blah, blah, interest, taxes, other, blah) and a final net income of $721M.
Their 'Automotive gross margin' is 28.4%. If you exclude regulatory credit that is still '25.8%'.
Those are flat out great margin number in the automotive industry.
These facts literally disprove this phrase:
> Tesla pretty much still sells car at a loss
Unless you simply interpret that phrase differently then everybody else.
If you want to make a larger statement about Tesla on a company level, that is a whole different thing.
If you want to ignore unit economics Q2 they made 354 million $ in credits. Total GAAP gross margin 24.1%, ignoring credits its still 21.8%.
I'm to lazy to calculate the operational margin, but its still good excluding regulatory credits. This regulatory credit storyline is literally on its last legs.
Tesla is still a growth company and their margin and profitability are already good despite them not even having manufacturing in all large markets. In Q2 they didn't even build their high margin vehicles.
My main point being again, claiming that Tesla sells vehicles at a lose, is literally nonsense.
Find the numbers here:
https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/ZBOUYO_TSLA_Q2_2021_Updat...
Any claim that Tesla has no business without credits is just fundamentally wrong.
And Q3 looks like it will beat these numbers again.
Whatvyhe other poster did was diving into Tesla's sec fillings. Those show:
Tesla is offering stock -> they still raise money
Tesla is selling emissions certificates -> that explains most, if not all, of their profits.
Not sure how new funding factors into their cash flow, and I am too lazy to look it up. It does seem so, that Teslas car business isn't enough to stand upon for now.
Other OEM might have new platforms, but those platform are built with supplier and OEM themselves often do not make the detailed choices.
There are some great stories about SpaceX trying to source components this way and then finally ending up having to DIY.
What they found was that modern CAD and rapid prototyping made it easier than it used to be. Car companies would probably find the same thing, and have the luxury of doing it piecemeal at their own pace by gradually insourcing components in the order of necessity or benefit.
The “do not want to” part probably points to these companies being run by Ivy League MBAs educated in the 1990s and 2000s when this was conventional wisdom. The world is changing.
In aerospace cost didn't matter a lot and many things are custom built, even down to custom alloys and materials. Also the amount of planning, numerical analysis, simulation, preparation and especially testing is insane. Project timelines are sometimes more than a decade.
In automotive 'cost down' is the mantra and is often enough measured in fractions of cents. Almost nothing is customized and parts reused for different product lines whenever possible.
Come on, Really? So GM cancelled the orders for all the tings that the chips go in, and you want to spin that as "well technically GM did not cancel the chips"
That is bullshit.... The supply chain does not work like that, if GM cancels an order for 100,000 ECM's the supplier for the ECM is going to cancel their order for 100,000 chips for them to make the ECM for GM, it is unrealitic to believe anything else would happen.
Aircrafts historically been using high frequency AC, on both sides of the iron curtain (as both sides were copying each other.)
Old analog instruments actually benefited from AC availability.
And when SMPS were big, and heavy, transformers were much more reliable, and smaller (and they are still are, depending on the frequency)
3 phase power was also giving some interesting cost cutting benefits at the time
Some things to emphasize:
OEMs (GM, Ford, Toyota, VW, etc) do not design components, and they do not want to. They design specifications for components, and then get suppliers to bid. This is great for efficiency in established ecosystems, not great for agility.
To my knowledge, GM did not cancel any chip orders, because GM itself had no chip orders (this is oversimplified). The suppliers cancelled chip orders.
For a 1st tier supplier to move to a different process/chip would also be difficult, because they do the same thing the OEM does - supply a specification, and get 2nd/3rd tier suppliers to bid on it.
A wholesale migration to a modern architecture is risky and costly.
Smaller process/feature size on a wafer is believed to be less resilient, for example to heat and vibration.
The risk to large automakers is that something goes wrong and they have to do a recall. The risk to up and comers (Tesla) is failure to grow. Also, Tesla has a small product line and absolute loads of cash.
If you were going to design a new car electrical architecture from scratch today, you would have something like a 40-60V system with a centralized controller (or pair of controllers in a safety redundant configuration).
Even with a largely cleansheet design, Tesla uses 12V because of the sheer ubiquity of 12V components.