Sure maybe they focus on star rating and very low drag, but that might mean the design suffers.
Won't happen. The Model 3 must be (and therefore it will be) better than any ICE in its segment and thus so compelling that people have no logical choice but to buy it, otherwise their Secret Master Plan is at risk of not coming to fruition.
And yes Tesla has been creative, but that's a luxury you mostly have with high margin cars, not so much with a mainstream high volume car.
Creativity is not synonymous with high margin cars. The whole point of creativity is the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, etc... Tesla excels at creativity.
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Tesla already has all the tools and know-how to work with aluminum. It has never manufactured a high strength steel car before.
Stop now. Tesla had never built an EV before the Roadster. But they did. Tesla had never designed and built an EV from the ground up. But they did. Tesla had never manufactured an aluminum vehicle before. But they did. I can go on for several lines, but I think you get the idea.
They will have to build (via the recently acquired tooling shop in Michigan?) a new set of tooling for the Model 3. So it's a non-issue to design and build tooling for something like HSLA steel instead of aluminum. If they don't have any toolmakers on hand that know how to work with HSLA (highly doubt it), then they can hire some. There's no need to worry about press lines. What they have will be capable of stamping steel parts. Big presses tend not to be fussy that way, they're happy to hit harder or softer, faster or slower, deeper or shallower.
But no one really knows what the current thinking inside Tesla is beyond Elon and a few senior executives. Maybe 3% aluminum maybe 85%.
Correct. I was specifically addressing the 'a steel car is too heavy, blah, blah, blah, blah, therefore it has to be aluminum, blah, blah, blah' arguments.
