Lightweight Design Tesla's Cast Aluminum Body: "A Wonderful and Worthwhile Task".

Tesla advertises that it will soon produce a body "from a single piece". Heinrich Timm, a member of the Board of Management of Composites United e.V. and long-standing head of the Audi Lightweight Design Center, gives the announcement classification in an interview with the trade magazine Automobil Industrie.

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Tesla Motors

Albert Handtmann Metallgusswerk GmbH & Co. KG

Fondarex SA

Mr. Timm, you were largely responsible for developing the "Audi Space Frame", or ASF for short, in simple terms a composite of die cast nodes and extruded profiles. Now Tesla wants to produce almost the entire body from a single casting. Will this process replace your idea?

Concerning Elon Musk's statement to replace 70 stampings with four die cast aluminum parts, the expert knows that this does not refer to the entire body, but to about one third of the parts of a modern car body. In the bodies of the second and third generation of the Audi A8, one third of the body weight in each case was realized using aluminum die casting.