Underneath the Cybertruck - Rear Cradle and EDM

[Music] [Music] a [Music] all right you ready sure okay hi everyone welcome to another episode of mineral live today we're starting to get more suspension stuff more modules out of the Cyber truck so we've got the rear here on the table I'm with Kevin today we're going to walk through some of the things just that first blush that we're seeing um getting this out of the vehicle there's some things that are structural there's some things from a thermal management perspective and I think just overall packaging are are some of the things that that we saw initially speaking so we'll start here we want to connect it to the body in the conversation and talk about some of the structural decisions and trade-offs that they made which we find quite interesting so maybe I'll hand it off to Kevin Kevin why don't you give us kind of some highlights some things that you saw when you first took a look at this so um I think one of the first things that we obviously because we were facing from the rear of the vehicle was looking at the inverters and essentially what we what looks like essentially Sage marks for the cooling for the igbts of the inverter that's what we kind of think you can see essentially every exposed surface for the the heat exchanger here is machined which is interesting obviously and expensive um but and then it looks like it essentially peened or saged against the housing cover itself which we thought was pretty interesting um for those viewers I know the acronyms we keep getting torn up so igbt this is a long one it's insulated gate bipolar transistor so that's essentially the electronics the switching mechanism within the inverter which is the thing that takes one type of electricity converts it to the other ACDC and gets power to the motors so igbt is insulated gate bip polar yes yes and keeping them cool is critical for like EV performance in general if you want to go fast and go fast for a long time it's it's imperative to keep them cool thanks to the three-dimensional Services Group for sponsoring this video whether you're looking to Source metal stamping Precision CNC Machining laser cutting welded assembly or plastic injection molding the three-dimensional Services Group should be the source to transform your EV Aerospace apply science or technology designs into reality while also providing a bridge to start of production hey boys and girls I'm here with Dan and we're at um three-dimensional Services Group and um Dan uh this pretty impressive why don't you give us a little background on U on what you guys do here okay well uh the three-dimensional Services group was founded by Douglas Peterson 31 years ago uh We've grown into the world's largest most capable and most agile prototype and low volume manufacturer in essence we're a Job Shop on steroids we work with the world's most Innovative companies to validate their designs and then we're able to take our low volume manufacturing processes and scale them across a massive amount of equipment to allow us to support volumes that a traditional prototype shop would never be able to support uh we we're always wor working with our clients to accelerate their product development type timelines and enable them to be as successful as possible by bringing their Market or their products to Market as quickly as possible so and then just as we were looking through here as we started to migrate over here Jordan was pointing out essentially something that they're doing you know these threaded inserts anywhere where they do not have clearance so ideally we wouldn't want to have to do this from a process step or cost step um but they simply don't have the clearance around some of these other components so here they do it's embossed and part of the casting there they don't and they add them and you can kind of see systematically where they have clearance uh they don't do it and where they need uh clearance for manufacturing uh they're paying the money for it so that's one thing that was kind of interesting just here as we were looking at the back as well one thing we were kind of talking to as well is the is the sway bar and the fact that it might be a little bit ad hoc or they might need a little additional like locating retention for the sway bar itself so you see these these band clamps here locating um this isolator around the sway bar more than likely to help keep it from shifting left and right typically we see pressed on collars on the sway bar itself whether they're on the outside on the bar or inside collocated or over molded um with the isolator itself so it's kind of interesting that we see it um on the back and uh not integrated but they may have tried to get away with not needing it and then decided to add if needed and uh and go for the Spartan approach first so yeah this is something though that like and not to not to criticize Tesla but something that I would say is not the most elegant execution in terms of the bushing so you know contrary to what we're seeing in some of the other higher volume Teslas there's some things on this vehicle that sort of give you the the picture or or allude to the fact that it is a lower volume vehicle and accordingly they're not able to Leverage some of the same higher volume executions right so for example something like this um this is likely quite a manual operation to get these bushings on and that's not great practice for a very high volume application um and by the way just to give you kind of overall orientation this is rearward in the vehicle so this is the backside the trailing end of the rear cradle assembly so to kind of give everyone the orientation so two Motors two plate cooling units on the top of the the gear gearbox so that looks like the thermal management strategy inside the motor and the gearbox unit gearbox units are very much so the same so they've got jumpers going from their plate coolers to the inverters where they're running eing lyol the coolant you know the water cooling if you will to and from those two different monuments and then as far as the plate coolers are concerned this is where from the inside of the gearbox they are going to exchange two different fluid types thermally speaking they've got your gearbox oil and your ethylene glycol so this is where they get to go back and forth in terms of the thermal picture so when you want to heat the vehicle up previous Teslas um what they would actually do is in effect it's more complex than this but they would stall out the motors that would create heat inside the unit they would use their remote electric pumps to Plum oil into the plate cooler to heat up the ethylene glycol to ultimately heat up the battery right which can mitigate the need for separate high voltage or we' say PTC heaters for example um so it looks like they're continuing on with that strategy but I would say overall this whole motor and gearbox unit uh I don't know how else to say it is pretty massive yeah it's you know it's extremely large but one thing that's kind of interesting if you remember on the model S plaid you know there was a essentially huge girdle in one of the that ran you know cross car across the cradle and captivated you know the top of the unit well there's a lot of packaging space here in the front on the the front like you know cradle shoehorns the rear is is not necessarily the the case right they don't have that same packaging space there so what's interesting to me and I don't know it's almost like a front cradle from the perspective of what lives on it right no very very few upper control arms uh live on the front cradle of a vehicle so this has you know it's it's overall layout architecturally reminds me of a front cradle itself um and you'll see here that there are no rear upper control arms they're mounted and they're still on the body so they are fastened to the body and then the Cradle is decked to um and and EDM ently to the vehicle itself so that's one thing I think is is pretty interesting is you know we have the lower control arm here you know we have the tie rod toink all that stuff going on and then here's the upper ball joint that is getting located and actually Jordan where yeah we think right here essentially there's like a clevus or fixture that's probably going around here and like a quick um quick pull pin to keep this all located and maybe it even captivates like the ball joint in its position so it decks from a trouble fee perspective um but that's thing that's what I thought was very interesting about this is essentially they're using the the Giga cast that they B bought and paid for to complement the structure of the Cradle itself and I would say to you know continuing with the upper control arm story and maybe we'll walk over to the body for just a moment to talk about it but I find it very interesting that Tesla has gone back and forth with respect to how they attach upper control arm so as Kevin was mentioning here's your control arm the primary member that's controlling camber for that whole rear knuckle assembly essentially the entire rear end of um you know the the rotor caliper knuckle the half shift all that is connecting through this spot on the upper control arm but they're leveraging all the structure in the rear Giga casting so when I was saying they're going back and forth on upper control arm strategies if you remember back to some of the early model 3s and model y's I believe they had a cast aluminum piece that the control arms the control arms on the front suspension mounted to which allowed the front upper control arms on those suspension systems to be decked with the whole chassis unit the whole chassis module as we' refer to it then after the Giga casting came out for the 2022 model y the new iteration they actually changed their bill of process so they got rid of that aluminum casting and they took the upper control arms and they moded them directly to the casting in the front and that's essentially what they've done here as well um different local execution right different axes of Bolt installation you know coming in the Z or top down access versus the the X for a right where the bolts are coming through um but it is interesting to see Tesla not just on different vehicles but on front and rear and different suspension architectures deploy different bill of processes as far as how they're executing and you know one thing that should be noted you know the packaging space around here is extremely limited when we were looking at it yeah uh before we decked you know the rear drive module we were looking through this and I mean I think you can get to it from a service perspective um but you you might be using essentially like like an open crescent wrench to get it and get through and get these started to get them off if you had to swap them out later in life for serviceability but um it might just be easier to dck the entire cradle if you're replacing bushings to do everything all at once anyhow but uh absolutely yeah and as far as rear control arms go I mean this is pretty he it's carrying quite a bit um and right here you've got your ride height sensors so I I do like the location of the ride height sensors it really mitigates the necessity for super long linkages sometimes you see these ride height sensors so as you go through JS and rebound right these are like a potentiometer going to to measure position of those and acceleration how fast they're going up and down so that's going to help with your air suspension positioning as well as roll pitch of the of the vehicle if you will as you're going through Dynamic scenarios um you know going going back to the the Cradle Kevin you know we were talking a little bit about the rear steer unit um what are your thoughts on the rear steer unit like we see Tesla's label there um it does seem like a compact unit any thoughts on the rear steer unit yeah I mean I don't know if they're building it in- house but I would suspect it it it might be uh if nothing else it is most certainly probably completely internally designed inhouse and maybe then sourced A supplier and then maybe with some very very select components um you know internal like the mode and everything like that for and maybe the board uh for the steering rack then being sourced brought in house and then built up um but its overall packaging size the way it's laid out is it's definitely atypical and different than what we've seen in the past from you know uh suppliers like ZF or someone like that you know where you we've seen these a lot on you know higher end Audi and Mercedes but uh just the overall layout of this is very very different so yeah and in some rear steer Vehicles this this link right here that's attached to the steering rack or the unit um in some cases just acts like a tie rod like on a front suspension tie rod it's going to help steer that knuckle in this case yes it's doing that but it's also acting as their toe link right so this whole Monument is an active part of the suspension strategy so there's a lower control arm there's an upper control arm that attaches to this ball joint which is pressed into the knuckle here with those arms going out to the body like we showed and then this is their toe link controlling um obviously the the four-wheel steering um but also like I said an active member of that suspension system you know kind of pivoting and going to the brakes you know just a couple of observations as we looked at it um it's it's a pretty large cast rotor a lot of vehicle Mass to control um we did notice they put some lightning holes in the rotor so obviously pretty hefty vehicle um they're taking some out wherever they can um not a bad strategy you know where grams matter in terms of how much mass they're trying to carry around um the other thing that we found sort of curious is this right here so if you zoom in a little bit Eric right here you'll see a little threaded hole and that threaded hole is actually in the wheel hub right so there's a hole in the rotor and there's another drilled and tapped hole in the wheel hub often those are used as assembly AIDS so often the rotor will come assembled to this whole unit onto the Hub and the wheel's not yet installed so there's no wheel uh lug bolts or lug nuts um depending on your orientation some folks do bolts some folks do nuts in this case nuts but most of the time if they're going to do this as an assembly Aid oems that is this will be a permanent element of this system meaning if you were to take the wheel off um I know we've got a Kia sitting just down the way they actually have two of them and they're still place in production what it appears Tesla's done is it looks like they use it for a period of time but it actually looks like they're removing it prior to um letting this vehicle ultimately roll off the assembly line so kind of an interesting approach if they are doing something as like a permanent fixture and getting some reuse although it's just a bolt and you may not think that much of it that is a cost-saving strategy that you could employ right it could be an assembly aid but if you're using that bolt in multiple instances you could save some cost yeah no for sure it's small probably dropped it and lost it but uh you know when you when you walk a line and you see how many fers are just everywhere sometimes unfortunately inside of vehicles it's it's interesting um one thing I'm a little surprised that and I get it from a packaging perspective when you look at how much space here from they have between the air strut from and the the CV axle itself a fair amount of space there obviously there's a lot of suspension kinematics dictating where some of this stuff goes but you know they kind of sandwich the control arm here there this rear one is essentially a stamped upper and lower they kind of they use some Lance and lock features here to help locate um the upper and lower Hales of the control arm before welding I'm a little surprised they didn't try to get um the um excuse me sway bar link bolted through on the control arm I want to say the F150s do this where they run through the control arm themselves and they don't necess need a separate bracket but obviously when you look at how tight the packaging is and the fact you do need section throughout here it just you know things this happens when you when you can't package around that so that's one thing I kind of thought was interesting just looking at how tight everything is here in comparison to the forward part of the the lower control arm well and truly when you talk about wheel envelopes meaning in a dynamic sense some people call them the Beehive or the the honeycomb or I've heard all sorts of names but essentially if you were to look at every possible permutation and position of the wheel through all the rebound and jnce movements and also turning that grows when you've got four-wheel steer so you know if you can imagine a tire and a wheel here now that we've got four-wheel steer this can now encroach on this space over here and so like Kevin's saying they need a certain amount of structure but that structure has got a finite amount of real state in which it can reside so with that four-wheel steer you're really starting to encroach here and limit where this control arm can package based on where that wheel envelope is so that's why a lot of this is it's a nice tall thick section um but it is pretty shrink wrapped in the 4A Direction likely to accommodate that wheel envelope going through its motion so yeah very interesting similarly in terms of dynamic envelopes and we saw this on rivan if you were to look at a fordraptor or a TRX or anything off-road really you would see very long spans between the inboard pivot point of the control arms and the outboard Point um where it connects to the knuckle and really that's going to allow you um a lot more travel in your suspension so with this air suspension system the vehicle does go up and down quite a bit or has the capability to with these air struts it can raise and lower um by going further in board with those it's going to it's going to reduce the amount of acute angles that that need to be uh present for both the bushings as well as the half chefs you know the these half shafts um they they don't like to articulate too much so if this was in full jce or full rebound right these pivot this one plunges and pivots on the inboard side from the half shaft the further away from the driven point on the motor to the hub that you can get um the better off you are as far as angles and and having anything severe as far as security is concerned in the system so off-road vehicle sort of right you're seeing some of those things um play out as far as the Cradle is concerned it's also interesting that um you know from the GetGo they're going so far in board so if you look at you know the Raptor the TRX stuff like that they're starting off production trucks with a an overall width you know wheel mounting surface to surface that's kind of dictated based off plant and some stuff and things of that nature and then they add right so the only way to get you know travel or height on an independent front suspension or in this case rear is to go out and longer so then they add flares and they push the overall envelope out where just like with the rivan this we're seeing that envelope being pushed in board from the get-go architecturally when they're where they're laying out pickup points knowing they want travel to be in a certain certain range it's just uh just interesting I totally agree and I think a lot of that's enabled by two things and both are tied together so one is that we're going with EVs and two is when we have offset gearboxes which is meaning you know they're not coaxial meaning the the gearbox the final drive unit of this system is in a different fora or z-axis space than the motors themselves so what that allows them to do as far as the crosscar f is the distance between out output and output right here essentially what I'm demonstrating with my hands can get shrink wrapped quite a bit versus if you had the motors these this sperical portion right here or cylindrical portion right here if that were aligned with the half shafts everything would get pushed out substantially so I think there's an advantage and you're pointing out Kevin like with rivan to going EV going offset gearbox and they can start much further in board just sort of from an architectural enabler perspective than some of our the ice counterparts like the TRX and the the Raptor for example right or even with the lightning right because that's you know concentric so overall the packaging width is is notably wider yeah indeed yeah I'm I think overall it's a it's an interesting execution from a structural structures perspective I'm very um interested to see how they executed uh the the difference in or kind of the lobbying you know uh juxa position of the upper structure and attaching to the Giga casting and really minimalizing the amount of structure needed for the lower cradle because if you were to look at that lower drive or this rear drive unit and then you were to separately on a table have that rear cradle and you would be like hey does that cradle go to that Drive Unit I probably would have guessed no because you're not seeing the full picture which still lives in the body yeah it's been interesting indeed well we're going to get further into it as the tear down progresses we'll get that the halves off the motors we'll dive further into some of the uh electronics and the other Tech so thanks for joining us um please stay tuned and if you've got further questions reach out at sales lanes.com thank you so much [Music] thanks

Channel: Munro Live

Views: 129,926

Keywords: EV, BEV, Sandy Munro, Munro, Electric Vehicle, Benchmarking, Electric, Insight, Lean Design, MunroLive, ElectricCars, Review, Car Review, Automotive, Automotive Review, Teardown Titan, Tesla, video review, Elon Musk, Munro Live, Ask Munro, Technology, Electric Car, Automotive Engineering, Automotive Technology, Innovation, steering by wire system, steer by wire, cybertruck, underbody, undercarriage, rear cradle, EDM, Electric drive modules, Motors, Tesla Cybertruck, cybertruck suspension

Id: QY79KbH8fKo

Length: 21min 58sec (1318 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 10 2024