this is just more outsourcing the costs onto the public and privatizing the profits for short term gain, they’re hoping the entire industry folds in on this but I am absolutely not buying a car where some asshole bumping into my parked car will result in me having to replace the whole front third.
Gigacasting saves car companies money, it doesn’t save car owners money. For the manufacturer it reduces their bill of materials and time take to assemble a vehicle. They might save a couple of hundred bucks. Possibly.
For the owner, it increases the risk that a small collision runs a fracture along the body of their car which is then basically impossible to repair and the entire vehicle is a writeoff. Castings could potentially have sacrificial points where some kinds of damage could be ground off and replaced with stamped metal but even if that were so, it’s still less repairable than if the entire frame of the car were assembled of stamped metal.
It’s more than a couple hundred dollars. Production time will drop from 10 to 5 hours per car. The tooling and multiple parts eliminated from large casts will save thousands.
I doubt it is thousands since most plants are automated, but even assuming it were, it’s the consumer who suffers when their car is basically disposable after a crash.
They’ll risk their reputation for much less than you might think. Tesla are getting rid of physical controls to save a few bucks even though it has a serious impact on usability and safety. E.g. The new model 3 will remove indicator stalks and put buttons on the wheel making it all but impossible to safely and legally traverse roundabouts. I reckon there will be huge backlash on this especially in the UK and Europe.
Such a scenario would be to Toyota’s benefit however, as an unrepairable car will still need replacement—potentially with a new car. Repairability is something the automotive industry has directly combated in recent years, with a Toyota-backed industry group sponsoring a scare campaign to (unsuccessfully) undermine a right-to-repair bill. Car companies make their money from selling new cars, not keeping old ones on the road. If cast bodies serve that end better than those stitched together, it’d be no surprise to see them become the industry standard.
Car companies need their cars to hold their value secondhand so that the people who buy their new cars can afford to replace them more often. The right to repair stuff is about forcing people to use their dealerships for repairs.
No idea what Toyota’s plan is for body repairs but destroying their second-hand market is probably not a part of it.
Also, don’t car manufacturers have ridiculous margins on original spare parts? I thought they made a lot of money on those over the pretty long lifetime of the vehicles.
Yeah, I mean the main advantages for Toyota are clear and massive. Huge cuts in assembly time and factory floor space. Any effect on the second hand market is likely not intended, but also almost certainly worth the savings made, as far as they’re concerned.
I'm still building it, but be prepared to buy a lot of tools and parts if you don't have experience already. I'm waiting on some electrical connectors to connect the controller and battery, and I had to get a metal file to file down the front dropout because it was ever so slightly too small to fit the motor on.
it's been fun. I've been working on the conversion since late last month. my work schedule sucks so I don't have that much time to spend on it day-to-day. a lot of the time's also spend working, finding out I need a part/tool I don't have, waiting for delivery, getting another because this one I got is the wrong size, etc. which introduces tedium. if I'm lucky it'll be complete soon.
If you have a large cast part you could do the same thing as you do with a frame or body panel now. As long as there’s a replacement cast part ready, it is lots of work in some cases, so it’s less “impossible to repair” and more accurately “cost prohibitive to repair”
I wouldn’t even say cost prohibitive. Imagine if you could just swap on a whole new front end after a car crash. Currently, it takes bodywork at hundreds of dollars per hour to repair damaged body panels while this could severely reduce that time and cost.
The expense of repairing frame damage is already really high and, in my personal experience with a couple cars that had frame damage from being hit, the insurance counts it as a total loss every time. I don’t suspect the average car owner is going to repair that kind of damage when it would be cheaper to just replace the entire vehicle. An enthusiast or someone with a sentimental bond with it, and has the money for it, might choose to repair it tho.
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