Tesla's body steel is harder than the deck of an aircraft carrier", is this true?
Earlier this year, a Tesla Model Y fell off a cliff on the west coast of the United States. The vehicle fell from a 76-meter cliff. The four passengers in the car, two big, two small, and four passengers were only slightly injured, which aroused widespread concern.
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Some auto media said that this is because "Tesla's steel body structure is harder than the deck of an aircraft carrier." Is this true?
On January 2, 2023 local time, in Northern California, USA, a Tesla car fell from a cliff more than 76 meters high while driving, and the car body was seriously damaged. Fortunately, all 4 passengers in the car were safe. Rescuers said they thought the passengers were hopeless until they found a hand still moving through the window. After several hours of rescue, all four passengers were rescued with only minor injuries. The driver, 42-year-old father Patel, was charged with attempted murder and child abuse by deliberately crashing the car off a cliff.
The car fell, but the passengers in the car were almost unscathed, which attracted the attention of the majority of netizens. Some auto media said, "It's hard for everyone to imagine that Tesla's body steel structure is harder than the deck of an aircraft carrier." Is this true?
Let me talk about the conclusion first, true, but not entirely true.
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High-strength bodywork abounds
First of all, the blogger said that Tesla's cage body uses 1300 MPa hot-formed steel, and the floor beam uses 1700 MPa martensitic steel. Indeed, modern car design will use high-strength steel or other alloy materials for some structural parts in the body structure for collision safety.
In order to improve the rigidity of the body, Tesla will use high-strength steel. However, this is also a very common operation in the entire automotive industry. Tesla is not the only one that uses 1300 MPa hot-formed steel as body structural parts.
Just open the new car introduction, you can see that Chery Arrizo 8, which is in the early 100,000 yuan, uses a lot of hot-formed steel with a yield strength greater than 1,500 MPa for the cage body. However, there are still gaps in the proportion of high-strength steel used in body structures for models of different price ranges.
1700MPa martensitic steel is also not uncommon, and it is also widely used in many brands and models, such as Ford Ruiji and other models. In fact, what is really worth mentioning about the body structure of Tesla Model Y is the integrated die-casting process of the body, which not only ensures the strength, but also reduces the weight of the vehicle. The downside is that maintenance costs skyrocket.
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The aircraft carrier deck is not harder than you
Harder than an aircraft carrier deck? It's a bit of a sneaky change of concept, which belongs to Guan Gong fighting Qin Qiong. The yield strength of aircraft carrier decks is generally 500-800 MPa, and the hardness is indeed not as good as the high-strength steel on the body. But the deck of an aircraft carrier is far more than an indicator of yield strength. The deck of a modern aircraft carrier has to bear the direct impact of dozens of tons of carrier-based aircraft at a speed of nearly 200 kilometers per hour, and at the same time withstand thousands of degrees of flame ablation from the aircraft's exhaust flame.
Therefore, the aircraft carrier deck needs to meet a series of stringent requirements such as high yield ratio, high toughness, oxidation resistance, high and low temperature resistance, and no deformation. This is more than that, the flight deck of the aircraft carrier should not be too thick, so as to lower the overall center of gravity.
At the same time, the processing volume of hot-formed steel and martensitic steel body structural parts is much smaller than that of the aircraft carrier deck. If the aircraft carrier deck adopts the same process, the cost will be even more terrifying. Moreover, the deck of an aircraft carrier can be as thick as 80 millimeters to increase strength with thickness. A car is not a tank, and a thick body can't stand fuel consumption.
There are only 3 countries that can build aircraft carrier decks. The number of countries that can manufacture automobile steel is far more than this, and there are even more steel companies.
body structure is important
In fact, there is another point that is easily overlooked by everyone, that is, today's automobile manufacturing process has been constantly innovating in the structure of the cage body. The cage body structure, as the name suggests, refers to the multi-directional connection of the frame of the body, so that the passenger compartment is constructed into a structure similar to a cage. It can be divided into two areas: "impact collapse zone" and "high-strength cockpit zone".
The cage body can effectively reduce the weight of the body while ensuring the rigidity of the body, so it is widely used. This is one of the reasons why we saw the aforementioned car accident, where the body was badly damaged, but the passenger compartment was intact.
After the cage body was invented, engineers continued to perfect the process. For example, how to add higher strength steel? Where is high-strength steel used? How to adjust the structure? A lot of improvements have been made. The common crash test is an important test to test the level of the cage body.
Of course, it is not because of high-strength steel and excellent cage body design that everyone can sit back and relax. The above-mentioned Tesla car accident did not fall directly from a height of tens of meters, but a car body rolled over a slope. Wearing your seat belt to avoid rolling over in your car is also an important reason to prevent injury.
In short, Tesla's body steel structure, like most modern cars, is harder than the deck of an aircraft carrier. After all, the deck of an aircraft carrier is not as hard as you.
