LIGHTWEIGHT METALS Tesla casts a new strategy for lightweight structures IDRA Group's OL 5500, one of the company's new Giga Press lineup designed to produce large aluminum die castings. The EV maker boldly invests in the world's largest aluminum die-casting machine to manufacture entire rear underbody structures. 12 June 2020 the case of the Model Y's die-cast rear underbody, his enthusiasm for this advanced use of aluminum - cast by a house-sized "giga press" - is supported by manufacturing experts who call it a game-changer. "It's definitely an all-new look at how to do things," asserted Laurie Harbour, president at Harbour Results Inc. manufacturing consultancy. "Elon Musk has always pressed his engineers to be creative." Reductions in - pretty much everything Musk spoke in detail about the new casting process in an episode of the "Third Row Tesla Podcast" in April and made more than a passing mention of it in Tesla's AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING IDRA GROUP A luminum is synonymous with "weight-saving" in most contemporary automotive-engineering reference points. But apart from a few applications - most notably Ford's F-Series pickups - aluminum largely is deployed where steel can be readily displaced without performance loss or for comparatively small components that deliver comparatively small weight or process savings. Electric-vehicle maker Tesla is readying the next step in aluminum use, however - one that effectively matches Ford's "big gain" approach by specifying a massive piece of structural die-cast aluminum for the rear underbody of the recently launched Model Y crossover. According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, this new aluminum application represents a radical step for its design and manufacturing advantages and its lightweighting potential. Musk is renowned for outsized promises, but in by Bill Visnic