Tesla Cybertruck

Munro Live, YouTube channel of Munro and Associates, uploaded a new video in which Jordan Arocha and Sandy Munro retrace the history of Tesla's Gigacastings.

Starting from Tesla’s double rear casting in 2020 to Tesla’s FUB & RUB castings for the Cybertruck. Check it out here!

Here’s a short breakdown regarding Tesla Cybertruck’s Gigacastings.

1) General Information

The Cybertruck Castings are larger, heavier and more expensive and are connecting more surfaces, overall they are structurally more significant. Heavier and more expensive are not red flags. This is both because the Cybertruck is a larger vehicle compared to the Model Y but also Tesla is assigning more structural functions to the castings.

2) Process Evolution

Small but measurable quality improvements can be seen. The refinement on the casting edges is improved compared to the Model Y castings. This can be an indicator for better mechanical properties.

3) Geometry

As it can be immediately observed by comparing the Cybertruck castings to conventional ones, the geometry is pretty unusual. We don't see the usual straight lines and right angles, which are common with every casting, including Gigacastings, but we notice an organic structure tailored to manage the load paths.

4) Safety

The front castings have two load rails specifically designed to absorb the energy of a front impact. The most forward part breaks more easily than the rear ones which will break with progressively stronger impacts. The shape and wall thickness of the rails is designed to obtain this specific behavior.

Chery Full Underbody

The world’s first full underbody gigacasting will be present at the 2024 South China Die Casting Industry Conference which will be held at the Shenzhen Venus Royal Hotel from November 7th to 8th.

For a more detail breakdown of this casting and the know information check out last week’s article here.

An additional information that emerged this week is that the weight of the final product is around 180 kg.

Xpeng P7+ Castings Breakdown

For a full context and background about Xpeng and its Gigacastings, I already covered the topic in this article two weeks ago.

Here’s what we can see with the new images released by Xpeng on its social media profiles.

1) Rear Underbody Gigacasting

The Rear Underbody (RUB) Gigacasting requires a die casting machine with 160,000 kN of clamping force! In comparison the Xpeng G6 and X9 RUB require 7,000 and 12,000 t of clamping force respectively, while the Tesla model Y requires 6,000 t and the Tesla Cybertruck 9,000 t.

2) Size

Compared to Tesla and most RUB castings in the industry, the Xpeng P7+ RUB completely covers and seals the battery management system on the battery pack. This extra large flat area significantly increases the total surface area of the RUB casting.

In fact It may even have a larger area than the Cybertruck RUB casting. The reason of this design choice remains unclear to me, as you effectively just get a double floor with no apparent useful features.

3) Crash Cans

As usual for Chinese OEMs, like Xpeng, HiPhi, Xiaomi, Zeekr, etc... the RUB doesn't integrate crash cans. A few of these Chinese OEMs gave their reason by claiming that it makes the car more repairable but imo this is not true.

Crash cans don't make the difference in repairability if you have a simple solution to replace them in case of a rear impact. (check out this video about the repairability topic)

The advantage of integrating the crash cans? Less parts and processes, plus the ability to absorb more energy from a rear impact.

4) Front Underbody Gigacasting

After Tesla Xpeng is the largest adopter of both Front underbody (FUB) and RUB Gigacastings. With the P7+, now Xpeng has 3 different models adopting 2 underbody castings, the G6, a SUV launched in 2023, and the X9, delivered earlier this year, is dominating the Chinese minivan market.

Both the FUB on the G6 and X9 require 7,000 t of Clamping Force but this time Xpeng didn’t specify a difference between RUB and FUB on the P7+ despite the design being very similar to the one used on the G6.

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