Yes, the super bottle. That’s the opinion of Sandy Munro of Munro & Associates who called the super bottle “the best thing in the whole damned car.” In this hour long interview by Sean Mitchell, Sandy Munro describes the Model 3 super bottle near the 47 minute 55 second mark of the video. Notabley, one of the services offered to clients by Munro & Associates is vehicle teardown benchmarking and reverse engineering services. Munro & Associates has torn-down and evaluated the Tesla Model 3 down to an individual component level. Leading up the Sandy’s explanation of what the super bottle represents, Mark Ellis (another Munro & Associates employee) is describing the stellar battery management system in the vehicle as well as the fact that the Model 3 is even designed without the need for a fuse box. At that point Munro interrupts Ellis with his opinion of what the super bottle really represents for Tesla. In one component, the Model 3 super bottle assists with all of the cooling needs of the vehicle – motor cooling, battery cooling, electronics cooling, etc. For Munro, this highlights a corporate cultural view rarely seen with traditional auto companies. According to Munro, traditional automakers don’t have the person or engineering organization responsible for cooling the cabin working with the department responsible developing cooling for the batteries, or the electronics. There’s not a lot of cooperation between departments at these companies. That’s just the culture of these auto companies. A traditional automaker would design several cooling bottles all designed to perform individual cooling functions for specific components or aspects of the vehicle. With Tesla, Munro believes the company landed on the design of a component like the super bottle because the organization is more concerned about what’s right for the whole car. Munro even asserted that this would not even be allowed to happen at a traditional auto company.
Not everything about Model 3 engineering is perfect, however. According to Munro, the body of the Model 3 could have used a dose of good ole’ fashioned traditional auto company body engineering know-how. The body is over-engineered, has too many components, and is much too heavy. Yet, other parts of the vehicle like the electronics have aerospace-levels of design and engineering that no automaker has ever matched. The Model 3 motors have an industry best performance-to-price ratio. Tesla’s motors are also smaller and lighter than other competitive EV motors. Teslarati describes the company’s approach to its battery technology as one that optimizes cost, energy density, and cycle life better than the competition.
Additionally, Munro believes Tesla has reached a “sweet spot” relative to vertical integration. The two extremes of vertical integration are 1) when a company engineers and produces every component and raw material needed to assemble the car, or 2) when a company purchases every component from a supplier and just assembles those components onto the vehicle. For Munro, Tesla’s level of vertical integration gives it an optimal level of “profound knowledge” which is a competitive advantage versus the competition. According to CleanTechnica, Tesla produces the body panels battery packs, electric motors, microprocessors for autonomous driving, infotainment system, seats, and even the A/C vent system. Additionally, Tesla develops all of the vehicle’s software. All of this integration would seem to give the company a competitive advantage in critical knowledge useful for vehicles systems integration.
Disclosure: I own shares of Tesla stock