Tesla Model 3 Teardown: What’s In It, How Is The Quality?

While some German manufactures rent competitors’ cars for testing, teardown and return them in bad shape, specialized companies do the same with cars they bought to examine production quality and true costs of the vehicle.

Munro & Associates, Inc. from Auburn Hills in Michiganis one of those companies. They purchased two Tesla Model 3 and disassembled them carefully into thousands of components, analyzed them, the engineering the build quality.

The result is available in a detailed (and costly) study, and here are some highlights.

Batteries

There is no doubt that Tesla’s batteries and the quality are the best in class. The 2,170 cells in the car have a cell voltage variance of only 0,2 millivolt. The cells are all glued to each other and the cooling pack.

Frame

Die car frame is surprisingly heavy, although Tesla uses aluminum. For the analysts the blame seems to be on the design, as well as the high amount of body sealant, which alone accounts for 75 kilogram.

Electronics

The car’s electronics  gains respect from the analysts. It’s top and the complexity is somewhere between the one used in smartphones and space exploration. While the touchscreen used in the Model S and X was a proprietary development, the Model 3 touchscreen is much closer to commercial screens.

Production Quality

The two cars that Munro put their hands on had multiple times between their manufacturing. Panel gaps stayed inconsistent both among each car and both cars, and they tend to surpass industry standards.

Ventilation

Ventilation is dramatically different from other cars. Air is blown through two almost invisible gaps and very innovative and unique in the industry. It’s also controlled only through the touchscreen.

Profitability

Munro has not yet finished the cost analysis, but the first details show that with a base price of 36,000 dollars the car should be at break even or even make a little profit. The current average order of the 500,000 pre-orders is at around 44,000 dollars.

Summary

Even that electronics, battery technology, and ventilation are innovative and of high quality, Tesla can still learn from other manufacturers on frame and production quality.

Tesla Statement

Tesla pointed in its response to the analysis to the improvements since production start and also to the safety standard justifying the weight of the car’s frame. Tesla’s cars have already shown in the past that they are among the safest cars in crash tests.

This article has also been published in German.