hist78
Well-known member
Intel CEO Gelsinger proposes a fab tour for Elon Musk — could be an attempt to win orders from Tesla, other Musk companies
CHIP Act funding arrives, hastens the need to get IFS customers lined up.
Intel CEO Gelsinger proposes a fab tour for Elon Musk — could be an attempt to win orders from Tesla, other Musk companies
- Thread starter hist78
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Buy American versus Korea on Chinese, duhIntel CEO Gelsinger proposes a fab tour for Elon Musk — could be an attempt to win orders from Tesla, other Musk companies
CHIP Act funding arrives, hastens the need to get IFS customers lined up.www.tomshardware.com
hist78
Well-known member
Intel CEO Gelsinger proposes a fab tour for Elon Musk — could be an attempt to win orders from Tesla, other Musk companies
CHIP Act funding arrives, hastens the need to get IFS customers lined up.
I feel it's a little bit funny. Can Pat Gelsinger just call or email Elon Musk directly instead a Twit on X?
Couldn't hurt, but Elon is not a fan of Biden or the CHIPS Act (corporate subsidies) so maybe not. Worth a try though. Automotive is exciting because cars are so personal but automotive does not represent a lot of profit for the semiconductor industry. New cars have more chips but they also have a longer life. Tesla cars have an average life of 400k miles versus non EV cars 200k miles. My wife and I get a new car every 10 years or so and have not gone EV yet.
tooLongInEDA
Moderator
Not sure we really know what the average lifespan of a Tesla (or any other EV) is yet. I'd certainly put it at far shorter than a 1970s Mercedes. There's simply too much fast-depreciating tech that will be hard to replace when it goes wrong - and thanks to auto manufacturer lobbying (certainly in the EU) it is all deemed "essential", so if you're car fails an annual check, it's either an exortionate repair or a write-off. Built-in obsolescence is as embedded in cars as it is in iPhones. No thanks ! Old school I know, but I like stuff that lasts.
You have a 1970s Mercedes?
Even a car from the last decade has a lot of electronics in it and when it goes bad good luck finding parts. My 2006 has a few parts that I just leave broken because the replacement is either junk yard or crazy price from repair shop.
A modern ICE has many thousands of movies parts and needs oil, coolant and much other consumables while an EV or Teslas has likely fewer than 50 moving parts and I would argue the EV and Tesla have a cleaner electronic system. My wife’s Tesla has more than 30k in a year and replaced nothing bit the windshield.
I love watching those who preach old school, still use hotmail probabaly too?
I still use Hotmail. Anyone who doesn't like it can... [use your imagination about what pejorative acronym I might insert here].
I agree with you about EV drivetrains, at least on Teslas. I think the legacy carmakers are putting more component-level complexity in their EVs. For Rivian, Fisker, and Lucid owners - good luck with getting any parts ten years from now.
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tooLongInEDA
Moderator
No (though I'd quite like something Italian from the 1960s). Those Mercedes just seemed to last forever. Don't use hotmail either. But I do ride steel bikes from the 1980s - don't like the newer designs and everything is easily fixable at home and spare parts easy to find. And the metal parts weren't either all cost engineered to death or ridiculously expensive. The bike-to-buck ratio is much higher on old bikes.
Pat could be thinking of trying to woo Elon for the business of his FSD chips and infotainment systems for the 2+ million cars he sells a year.. followed by helping Musk build/source compute and AI chips for Tesla and X.
There’s actually a good strategy play here for Pat for building business. I’m pretty sure Pat could geek out with Elon to connect with him personally.
There’s actually a good strategy play here for Pat for building business. I’m pretty sure Pat could geek out with Elon to connect with him personally.
Except for the fact Tesla already committed to the big swing dick of silicon, LOL
Tesla becomes TSMC's first EV client for 4nm chips with 3x faster self-driving calculations
Tesla becomes TSMC's first EV client for 4nm chips with 3x faster self-driving calculations News
www.design-reuse-embedded.com
The lifespan numbers are based on the reports I have read. I'm working on an automotive research project and that is what the current thinking is in a broad sort of way. EV lifespan is expected to be 2x the norm. The lifetime of the batteries are the big issue and they may have to be replaced once or maybe twice. Either way the automotive market is not a big growth market and will more than likely tread water for the next few years. I agree that there will be a big EV consolidation in a year or three and yes good luck getting parts/service if your brand is extinct.
tooLongInEDA
Moderator
This is really a very interesting area - and I'm not saying that the EV parts of EVs won't last longer, simply yet to be proved. On the other hand, I've read some auto industry commentators saying that the maturity of the legacy auto industry and mastery of reliability engineering for existing components meant that cars had been increasingly designed to ensure that all components lasted the length of the warranty - but not any longer ! Where in the past, component designers tended to over-design to be on the safe side (the Volvo "red block" engine being an extreme case with collosal design margins and a 200K mile lifetime from a petrol [gas] engine not unusual).
But, as noted before, the actual lifespan of any vehicle is limited as much by the ever-changing annual vehicle testing requirements (emissions, functional checks, etc) as by the continued practical usability of the vehicle. Hold on ... it appears that many US states don't have full annual checks - and some have none ! Over here (UK), you have an mandatory annual MOT for any car over 4 years old. Similarly France has the "controle technique".
Vehicle only as strong as its weakest part. I'd guess the screen for a Tesla.
EVs have fewer moving parts, right? I think that is a big issue. Electric motor versus combustion engine... Just like smartphones, cars are not really made to last or be serviceable. I remember working on cars in my teens to late 30s. No chance now, I have a rear engine oil cooled Porsche. I can't even change the oil.
tooLongInEDA
Moderator
All true. But the failures of the future are going to be in the electronics, systems and software, not in the mechanical parts that did used to regularly go wrong and which you could sometimes fix yourself (memories of choke usage and flooding engines, adjusting carburettor damping screws and removing air filter covers at high altitude when the engine wouldn't start come to mind).
It's decades since I had a car that wouldn't start ... but ...
My last serious car problem was when the ABS engine warning light came on (with a constant, loud beeping sound that you couldn't disable). It took a main dealer over 4 weeks to fix it because they couldn't tell which component was faulty. They solved it by a process of elimination after ordering a $1500 part from the factory (1000 miles away in Europe, 2 week lead time), testing it and realising that wasn't the faulty part. Another $800 part from the factory eventually fixed the problem. The car was still perfectly usable all this time, but not legally drivable. The diagnostics weren't up to the job here.
Expect more of this. There's more to go wrong. And more people involved in the process to help it go wrong. We're never going to put as much effort into the diagnostics and maintenance as we do into the fun parts of the design.
hist78
Well-known member
"Couldn't hurt" .
I think it may.
In most supply chain negotiations, such as semiconductor foundry business, parties involved would like to keep things private for a variety of reasons. But in this case, Pat Gelsinger is publicly pushing Elon Musk to response. I believe as big as Intel Foundry(IF) is, IF business development team definitely had reached out to Tesla multiple times but haven't got the answers Intel wanted.
This time Pat Gelsinger is bypassing those Tesla executives who are responsible for Tesla semiconductor projects and going directly to Elon. Are those executives feeling good for such approach? Intel is creating more enemies even before they can make a deal.
Now Pat is using the government $8.5 billion grant as a reason to tell Elon, in public, that "our big brother is behind me and you better answer my phone call".
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delong.height
Active member
With Pat out, if Elon ever does want to take a tour at Intel, he may be able to do it at anytime by himself if he ever want to.
and he certainly won't care about that 8.5 billion grant, because his buddy (Trump) is going to give him much more than that.
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That's pretty pessimistic.
EVs give a chance to roll back the clock on complexity (40% as many parts on the drivetrain). They also further (easily) enable systems like 48V for low voltage also simplifies wiring.
With the electronics centralized such as in a Tesla - it's easier to build in redundancy (multiple self driving computers like they do today), and there's less distributed by electronics to fail.
Legacy automakers will need to do what Tesla and the Chinese makers have done; centralize in house development of the platform (hw and sw) so integration can be tighter. That greatly reduces the chance of failure and simplifies troubleshooting greatly. It also allows greater integration of parts...
Fwiw time (+temperature) is more of a killer to modern battery (good chemistry's + advanced battery management) than cycles (miles) at this point.
I'm curious is the thinking your reading that they'll last 24-30 years instead of 12-15 or is it more like 2X miles vs 15K miles a year? Both?
tooLongInEDA
Moderator
All true. And I expect there will be useful progress in these areas. A lot depends on the availability and motivation of engineers and companies to do this sort of work and whether they get sufficient economic reward from doing so. Remember that the auto business today is based on a one-off sale and not a sale plus an ongoing service/maintenance contract which may be worth as much as the original sale (as with aicraft jet engines).
We are also locking ourselves into a future where the modules which will ultimately fail within a vehicle are far larger, more complex and costly and have no guarantee of ongoing maintenance and support for more than a few years. What happens when your EV company goes bust (as some surely will) ?
In the past, auto servicing was easier and cheaper partly because there was a plentiful supply of third party spare parts. This won't be the case with highly integrated modules with complex software.
Yes, the problems are all theoretically solvable with enough thought and effort. Whether they will be is another question entirely. I'd like to think there's a large pool of engineers out there who care about this stuff and think about the bigger picture. But not sure there is.