As Ford plans to integrate megacasting into the manufacturing of a mid-sized electric pickup truck next year, an Automotive News story explores whether megacasting could lower not only price tags but also repair costs.
Last August, Ford announced that it would invest $5 billion to change how it makes electric vehicles to lower its EV prices. The target starting price for the mid-sized EV truck is $30,000 compared to the average EV cost of $56,000, according to CBS News.
CEO Jim Farley called the manufacturing shift “the most radical change on how we design and how we build vehicles at Ford since the Model T,” during an August event covered by CBS.
The shift includes changing how the assembly line operates and a reduction in the total number of parts used in the vehicle. For example, a Ford press release says the wiring harness will be 4,000 feet shorter.
However, the focus on reducing parts will be achieved through a process that Ford calls unicasting, which is essentially known as megacasting or gigacasting.
“Large single-piece aluminum unicastings replace dozens of smaller parts, enabling the front and rear of the vehicle to be assembled separately,” Ford says in its release. “The front and rear are then combined with the third sub-assembly, the structural battery, which is independently assembled with seats, consoles, and carpeting, to form the vehicle.”
Automotive News says the technique is meant to reduce manufacturing cost, but it raises questions about repairability.
The article asks, “Will customers’ bills skyrocket if collision centers have to replace one large component instead of smaller pieces? Would such parts be readily and widely available?”
The article says that some research shows large castings can be less expensive to fix as long as they’re intentionally designed from the beginning.
“What we quickly found is that actually, it’s easier to repair a vehicle that has unicastings,” Alan Clarke, Ford’s executive director of advanced electric vehicle development, told reporters, according to Automotive News. “When you make it a constraint — that it needs to be repairable at specific speeds, because we see customers actually having accidents at those speeds — it actually creates a bunch of creativity with engineers who figure out the easiest way to repair it, and it ultimately becomes an advantage.”
The article points to a study published by Thatcham Research in the fall of last year that found megacasting lowered repair costs on the Tesla Model Y.
Richard Billyeald, Thatcham Research chief research and operations officer, said in a release that, “Our research demonstrates that mega cast technology, when properly implemented with comprehensive repair guidelines, can deliver significant benefits for insurers, consumers, and the environment. The Tesla Model Y’s repair costs were consistently lower than comparable vehicles with traditional construction while maintaining structural integrity and repairability standards, which reduces the chances of a vehicle being written off in common accidents, improving its lifecycle CO2 benefits.”
In low-severity testing at 15 km/h, the mega cast exceeded expectations by sustaining no structural damage, which allowed for complete vehicle repair without any repair to the mega cast.
“This finding challenges initial industry concerns about the vulnerability of large single-piece castings to minor impacts,” the release states.
Medium-severity testing at 25 km/h necessitated full mega cast replacement due to cracking and structural misalignment.
“However, at £716 [$978] for the replacement component, the total repair cost remained competitive with, and often below, traditional repair methods for equivalent damage,” Thatcham said.
The Model Y’s mega cast construction delivered consistent cost advantages across multiple scenarios, the release adds.
Partial replacements cost £2,167 (about $2,961) less than the Model 3’s traditional multi-part steel rear sub-assembly construction, while full replacements saved £519 ($709).
Terry Woychowski, president of automotive at Caresoft Global Technologies, a Michigan-based vehicle teardown and benchmarking firm, told Automotive News that fewer parts are better than more parts. He said that the Tesla Model Y has 360 fewer parts than a traditionally built vehicle, and Ford is expecting its truck to have 144 fewer structural parts.
“The very first time I saw a megacasting, the first thing that crossed my mind was that repair costs would be astronomical, and that it was a flawed construct,” Woychowski said. “It’s a lot of people’s initial impression. I think it’s an unfounded concern.”
Ashe Crabtree, regional collision specialist at Body By Cochran’s in Pennsylvania, told Automotive News that most technicians can quickly learn to work with megacasted vehicles. The business runs two shops that are certified for structural repairs on Tesla gigacasting.
“Most of it’s fairly simple,” he told Automotive News. “You’ll just have one area where you’re taking a new part and fusing it to the existing structure. It can actually be a little less work you end up doing.”
He did say that some additional tooling, equipment, and training are necessary.
Automotive News notes that Thatcham’s study found one hurdle for repair was finding repair centers to perform the repairs.
“As this technology proliferates, establishing comprehensive repair protocols, nondestructive test procedures, and technician training programs will be essential for maintaining vehicle safety, insurance, and life cycle sustainability,” Billyeald told Automotive News in September.
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Photo courtesy of Charles-McClintock Wilson/iStock
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