A few weeks ago, the folks at EVTV Motor Verks did a teardown of the Tesla Model 3 battery pack that was wrecked. This is what they found.
The Weird Logo: This mason-jar-like logo was found on several components of the Model 3 battery. It looks like a Mason jar wearing a Superman-style cape with the numeral “3” on it. Jalopnik says it could be a reference to a “Superjar” version of the jar-like batteries from the early days. Either way, it has a very quirky, singularly “Musk-y” look about it.
Hardware Moved from Car to Battery: While a lot of the hardware components like the junction box and battery management system controller was spread out in the Model S, the Model 3 battery packs all of this into a sizable hump. Much of the important stuff is now in the battery pack itself.
Most Advanced Lithium-Ion Battery Yet: By design, the Model 3 battery is not an evolutionary step forward. It is lightyears ahead. According to one engineer who examined it, it was like “examining a crashed spacecraft from another world.”
Custom Battery Management System Controller Chips: It’s certainly a significant find that the silicon for the battery management system controller is not your basic off-the-shelf chips. Tesla has been talking about designing its own chips for AI for a while now, so this could be one of the first steps in creating custom-fabricated SoCs for Tesla EVs.
Jalopnik author Jason Torchinsky suspects that the components integrated into the battery could give Tesla a “much more universal platform to build cars on”, and I would agree. By comparison, a few years ago General Motors (GM) had no less than 26 different production platforms deployed all over the world. Their 2025 target is to bring that down to just four, and it is projected to save “billions”. This approach being used by Tesla now could help unify their production platforms in preparation for future EVs like the Model Y. That’s a huge money-saving move for the long term.
Here’s the long-ish video of the Model 3 battery teardown if you’re interested. It’s nearly an hour and a half, so be warned and don’t fall asleep at the wheel… at least, not without Autopilot turned on!
