The engineer tells you what are the highlights of Model X.

Article | Daji

How did Tesla achieve lightweighting and endurance in Model X?

· Body

1. Lightweight aluminum body, reinforced with high-strength boron steel (similar to Model S), ensures the passive safety performance of the vehicle. The aluminum body is also a measure of lightweighting or energy-saving emissions reduction, which has a positive effect on improving range and acceleration performance.

2. Aerodynamic components. The aluminum body only offsets part of the overall vehicle weight, which is still around 2.4 tons. To further improve energy efficiency, Model X is equipped with aerodynamic components – diffusers on the body. During high-speed driving, the device can be partially retracted, further improving driving efficiency and stability.

3. Streamlined body design with a drag coefficient of 0.24, which has great positive significance for range.

4. The ideal state of front and rear axle load distribution is close to 50:50, which is conducive to vehicle stability and mainly improves handling performance and speed limit when turning.

5. 20-inch tires are unmatched.

6. Embedded door handles. When the car key is close to the car, the door handle will pop up automatically. The embedded handle design reduces driving resistance and is full of technological sense.

7. LED headlights. LED headlights with automatic sensing, high brightness, long life, and high energy efficiency.

8. Air suspension can raise the ground clearance of the vehicle from 165mm to 195mm to improve off-road performance.

· Lightweighting: 1. All-aluminum body. So far, there are no other mass-produced models besides Jaguar Land Rover and Tesla that use aluminum bodies. 2. Front and rear suspension components are largely made of aluminum, including subframes, swing arms, links (hollow design is used to further reduce weight), and steering knuckles.

· Range: 1. Lightweighting is an indicator of increased range. 2. The overall vehicle drag coefficient is much higher than the industry average, with lower drag and driving resistance and increased range. 3. The battery itself has excellent performance, such as power output, ventilation and heat dissipation. 4. The chassis of the entire vehicle is highly flat, and the chassis is almost completely flat covered, which is conducive to rapid airflow and improves aerodynamics, thus facilitating range.

· Convenience

1. The rear doors use a wing door design. This system is very different from the ordinary wing door. The wing door of Model X has a two-level hinge, making it easy to fold and open on both sides even when there is an obstacle, greatly facilitating access to the rear seats.

2. Another benefit of the wing door design is that once the door is opened, the space above the third row is optimized, and there is basically no need to worry about hitting the head when entering.3. The middle-row seats are independently adjustable in a 60:40 split, making it easy for passengers to enter and exit from both sides.

3. There are cup holders in the center of the third-row seats, but I personally feel that it is unnecessary equipment. The addition of this device will create a hard feeling around the seat cushion, which is not conducive to comfort.

4. Because the vehicle adopts a streamlined liftback design, the headroom in the rear may be insufficient, and adults sitting in the back may feel cramped.

5. All doors, front trunk, and rear trunk can be manually opened from inside the car.

6. Since the powertrain is not located in the front axle, the front engine compartment is typically available for storage, similar to some supercar designs.

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· Interior space: The seats have strong flexibility, making use of the space in a versatile way. The second and third rows can be folded down flat to the floor. The workmanship is tidy. The 2+3+2 seating layout is a common SUV layout (currently, Tesla also has a 2+2+2 layout). Although I haven’t experienced the interior space in person, the 2965mm wheelbase should be sufficient to ensure the longitudinal space, such as legroom (currently, the wheelbase of 7-seater SUVs, such as Toyota Highlander and Ford Edge, are not as large as Tesla’s). The only space deficiency of this car may be the headroom in the back due to the liftback design sacrifice. However, its sunroof is said to have been optimized to increase a part of the headroom, but the specific effect needs to be tested.

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Tesla Electric Vehicles, Google Self-driving, Elon Musk, Autonomous Driving, BYD, Batteries, Apple.

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.