Environmentally friendly my ass. Any minor damage and the car will be toast because the insurance company will total it. Even if it gets back on the road it'll have a salvage title, something that's poison to a car and ensures that it ends up either crushed or parted out. These are already problems with unibody cars thanks to how quickly insurance adjusters will take any deformation of the core unibody, even just cos…
My Model S was hit in the unibody and not totaled, not sure how you're making this up.
They don’t always get scrapped - they often get sent out to another country, sold at a discount, fixed there.
so are we at..."this is bad because it will restrict the flow of unsafe junkers passed off to someone living in Panama"?
Not unsafe necessarily. The cost of labor is so high in the US that fixing even minor damage might not be cost efficient. Also consider the possible increase in the insurance fees if you continue driving a car after repairs. Other countries have lower cost of labor overall, so it's a profitable (and, hopefully, safe) business for them.
“cast bodies might be more difficult to fix in the event of major damage, such as a crash.” Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a car NOT be written off after “major damage”. The industry already doesn’t bother to fix cars, they just get scrapped, so I don’t see what the actual difference is.
Had a car with major body damage. Repair estimate magically came in $100 less than salvage value. Insurance company went with repair of course.
Cast metals are rather brittle, normally? Good for complex shapes that may be further refined by machining, and in compression loads, but not in shear or tension. I would think they would shatter in a collision rather than bend like steel.
Indeed, when I heard about the gigapress, I was like that is pretty neat, but when I read it was just casting, and not forging, I was like oh, it's not the *best* solution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forging
I assumed that the gigapress was a large stamping die. neither casting (melt the metal and pour it into a mold) or forging (shaping softened hot metal), but deforming cold metal in one or more steps using alot of pressure and a very hard mold.
With EVs this problem is getting a lot worse. In latest-gen EVs the battery pack is a stressed member of the frame. Any type of collision that distorts the frame will also imply a deformation of the battery module, which means instant write-off. So if you think about it - if you first decide you need to go down the "structural battery" route to save cost and weight, you've already lost repairability if the frame is b…
Don't you lose repairability anyway if the frame is significantly bent? AFAICT the actual batteries inside the "structural battery" are separate much smaller cells [1] that can at least be recovered from the bent frame and reused if undamaged. Consider four factors: normal car performance, car's safety in a crash, car's repairability after a crash, and car's price. They all work against each other; no wonder that rep…
A salvage operation where you harvest raw cells is no where near repairability. That is one step removed from taking a crushed car selling it for scrap metal.
Like I've said many times, until regulation mitigates the enshittification of vehicles, you will have to pry my dumbcar from my cold dead hands. You want me to buy an electric vehicle? Don't pull shenanigans that disempower me.
I really do miss physical keys. Replacement cost for an Audi key fob is over $700. And it extends to broader market brands. My mom's Mazda replacement fob cost $500. WTF is going on here?
Would you rather the keys be $5 from Walmart and pair with the car without needing an OEM programmer?
Environmentally friendly my ass. Any minor damage and the car will be toast because the insurance company will total it. Even if it gets back on the road it'll have a salvage title, something that's poison to a car and ensures that it ends up either crushed or parted out. These are already problems with unibody cars thanks to how quickly insurance adjusters will take any deformation of the core unibody, even just cos…
> Any minor damage and the car will be toast because the insurance company will total it.
Another best part is our currently skyrocketing car insurance - even for people who don't carry collision. Even if you don't contribute to the problem, insurance companies force you to financially support everyone who does.
Minor accidents resulting in cars being totaled does what to insurance premiums? Makes them sky-high. There was an article earlier this week how some Tesla owners were facing extreme insurance premium increases and others had their insurance dropped altogether.
All the savings you hear about with regards to EV’s are going to be more than offset by insurance premiums - which means these gigacast vehicles aren’t going to sell well.
If it turns out that in order to make EVs cheaper to build than combustion cars right now you have to switch to castings because batteries are expensive, then when batteries become much cheaper, will we switch back to the current non-casting-based 'strut and fastener' model?
Also, because Tesla is so popular, is it possible that its attractions have far less to do with the environment and more to do with everything else about the car?
These concerns about the environmental impact of increased write-offs and increased insurance premiums are perfectly understandable, but I wonder if they will stop even a single sale?
so are we at..."this is bad because it will restrict the flow of unsafe junkers passed off to someone living in Panama"?
Not unsafe necessarily. The cost of labor is so high in the US that fixing even minor damage might not be cost efficient. Also consider the possible increase in the insurance fees if you continue driving a car after repairs. Other countries have lower cost of labor overall, so it's a profitable (and, hopefully, safe) business for them.
Lots of passed off vehicles to poorer countries tend to be body on frame style. Lots of ford/Toyota trucks, where frame damage can as "simple" as welding steel bar stock or straightening with a basic frame puller.
If a unibody vehicle is totaled from major damage in the US, they get scrapped of nearly every usable part, then crushed and melted down. Not even worth the shipping/hassle to send a smashed up Kia to Central America, let alone Africa. People aren't stupid. They're just as savvy at this, if not more, than we would ever be. Hence the amount of body on frame SUVs and trucks that get salvaged there. Sure, you'll see "beat up" cheap cars there, but they'll pass on anything majorly damaged, cuz even there, it's simply not worth it.