Automotive industry one die-casting research report: one-piece casting trend, independent brands have a lot to do.

Slasher leads the industry trend, one-piece casting has become a common practice.

Tesla pioneered one casting technology

Tesla proposed "one-piece casting" technology in 2019 and plans to apply it on Model Y. In July 2019, Tesla issued a new patent "Multi-directional Body Integrated Casting Machine for Automobile Frames and Related Casting Methods", proposing a frame integrated casting technology and related casting machine design. This technology will realize the casting molding of the car body in white through a multi-directional die-casting machine, a vehicle panel mold and several convex pressure molds that can translate relative to the panel mold. This kind of convex mold will move to the casting area in the center of the casting machine, responsible for the casting of different parts, and complete most of the casting work of the frame on one machine. In the same year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Tesla Battery Day that Tesla's Model Y model body-in-white would shift to aluminum casting design. "When we introduce a large casting machine, we can turn 70 parts into one. The robot does not need to assemble so many parts together, which greatly reduces the cost."

In 2020, the integrated casting technology will be applied on Model Y. In 2020, Tesla began to cooperate with Italian Ydra, a die-casting equipment manufacturer, to use the 6000-ton die-casting unit Giga Press to produce the Model Y white body rear floor assembly by one-piece die-casting. According to information released on Tesla Battery Day 2020, the rear floor of Model Y can reduce manufacturing costs by 40% by applying integrated die-casting technology to integrate 80 parts originally produced through stamping and other processes into one cast part. At the same time, Tesla announced the next generation of white body design, the vehicle floor assembly will be assembled from 2 to 3 large die castings, the battery pack adopts the design concept of structural pack, so that the whole white body has a higher strength and rigidity.

Model Y one-piece die-cast front cabin landing in Berlin factory, Cybertruck the rear floor will also be used. On May 17, 2021, German die-casting expert Axel Turck (Axel Turck) shared on Twitter the trial production parts of the front cabin of the integrated die-casting, mentioning that the Tesla Model Y model will use integrated casting technology to produce more parts in the future. In October, Tesla showed the core technical solutions such as the integrated die-casting machine mold, the integrated die-casting Model Y front cabin, and the structural battery pack (structural pack) to the public on the opening day of the Berlin factory, indicating that the "integrated die-casting" process will be fully used in the future models produced by the Berlin factory. In the fourth quarter 2020 earnings conference call, Musk said that the rear floor of the new generation of pickup Cybertruck will also apply integrated die-casting technology and will be produced using a larger tonnage 8000T die-casting machine. In the first quarter of 2022, Tesla's gross profit margin of 32.9 percent and the overall gross profit margin of 19.2 percent hit record highs, including the contribution of integrated casting technology.

Independent new forces to catch up, actively embrace the industry change

Among the new domestic forces, Weilai ET5 is the first to apply one-piece casting technology, lightweight, safety leading. In October 2021, Weilai announced that it had successfully verified the development of heat-free materials that can be used to manufacture large die castings, which will be applied to Weilai's second-generation platform models. The new material avoids the dimensional deformation and surface defects caused by the heat treatment of traditional die castings. In December 2021, Weilai officially announced at the ET5 press conference that it would start to adopt an integrated casting process. ET5 will use an ultra-high-strength steel-aluminum hybrid body to reduce the weight of the rear floor of the body by 30%, increase the trunk space by 7L, and increase the torsional stiffness of the whole vehicle as high as 34000N · m/deg.