Tesla Model S teardown
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Tesla teardown: Identifying potential uses for PM in electric vehicle transmissions Whilst the future looks electric, with ever more electrically-powered vehicles entering the market, there are still lucrative opportunities for the Powder Metallurgy industry. Höganäs AB’s Dr Anders Flodin, a long-time advocate of PM transmission gears for conventionally powered cars, and Babak Kianian, PhD candidate at Lund University, believe that one such opportunity is for PM gears in EV transmissions. To understand more, a Tesla Model S was the subject of a teardown and its transmission components analysed to understand if PM alternatives are suitable for such an application, and what advantages they might bring.
The automotive industry is evolving towards electromobility faster than we might think. There are very few vehicles under development propelled by fossil fuel-driven internal combustion engines (ICEs) alone; most are hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), battery electric vehicles (BEVs), or use hydrogen as an alternative fuel source, either for combustion or for powering fuel cells. The future is electric, and there is no doubt that, as the years progress, we will see more and more battery-powered vehicles entering the market. Some countries have announced a ban on future sales of ICE cars; Norway is one of the countries leading this trend and, in two years, the city of Bergen will ban ICE cars. By 2025, that ban will extend to the whole country [1]. South Korea and some US states plan to follow between 2025 and 2040. For the Powder Metallurgy industry, this has been an ongoing source of concern for some years, since automotive engine and transmission parts represent an important
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application for PM technology – but it could also offer new opportunities. Is the glass half empty, or half full? In this article, the typical BEV drivetrain will be investigated in more detail, using a Tesla Model S transmission as the example (Fig. 1),
to understand the opportunities present and the challenges that the PM industry must tackle if it is to protect its market share in the automotive supply chain when ICEs, manual, automatic, and transfer case transmissions cease to exist.
Fig. 1 A Tesla Model S was used as the example BEV for this case study
Winter 2021
Powder Metallurgy Review
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