Quote:
Originally Posted by openwheelracing
I will engage about this detail. Safety, crash test, chassis rigidity and battery protection.
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OK, let's go on a bit. I don't know who here is actually an engineer or not, but I can share a lesson (with regard to excess weight/material mass) from some senior engineers when I was early in my career at a OEM vehicle manufacturer. It went something like this....
"A great engineer doesn't regard the glass as half full, nor half empty. A great engineer simply points out the glass was twice the size it needed to be."
Strategic mass can indeed improve safety outcomes and vehicles of different mass above 500lbs of difference can tilt the advantage to the heavier vehicle. Unintended overweight is quite different. The program had a weight and impact management objective. The fact that the car came in overweight is not necessarily to its benefit, depending on where that weight exists. It may be positive, negative, or have no effect on NCAP or EuroNCAP.
Also, rigidity is not a quality where "more is better". Rigidity needs to be tuned with the crash pulse of the vehicle to manage the dissipation of energy before it is transferred into the occupant's body. An overly rigid platform/body-in-white will transmit the energy to the passenger compartment at potentially harmful amounts if not properly managed.
It is my understanding that Tesla has done well in impact tests. It may have done even better (Lower Chest Gs femur loads, lower HIC values, etc.) if it had been within the original weight parameters, and then also benefitted from improved range, performance, and handling.