To Elon from millions of my engineering colleagues- you are welcome

The Japanese character in the image means people or human. One stroke leaning against the other, just like people lean on each other. We, people, need each other. And Elon Musk and his 100,000 + Tesla employees needed me and my now retired colleagues. Just as I needed the engineers that came before me. And the engineers 30 years from now will benefit from the Tesla engineers and engineering community advancing engineering tools.

So what?

I wanted to describe the positive feedback eco system of EV’s and Tesla so folks understand a bit better what is coming and why you can bet on EV’s replacing gas and diesel by 2035. But it might be easier to understand and for me to write about my own experience with positive feedback technology eco systems of my generation. That is electronic instruments, semi-conductors, computers, and software.

Between 1970 and 2010, the market for electronic products exploded. Increasing speed and density of semi-conductors is the heart of this growth. However, without instruments to test and debug the next generation of components, there would be very slow progress. Also, instruments would be essential for fast time to market for more complex products, especially computers. During this period the increased performance drove market demand, which provided R&D funding for the next generation of instruments, components and computers. Also, faster components made it possible to increase the speeds and complexity for instruments needed to test and debug increasing complex designs.

So, the eco system provided positive feedback to grow the profits and enable more complex and powerful (speed) elements of instrumentation, semiconductors, and computers until the year 2010.

Beginning around 2000, computers become powerful enough to make it possible for powerful Computer Aided Design Tools and Simulation tools so the need for instrumentation began to decline. Elon Musk’s Tesla now has the eco system of advanced Computer Aided Design, Simulation and AI to enhance components and materials in EV’s plus tools to speed the development of computers and software designed just for EV’s. And access to advanced physical tools with the ability to record and measure atomic behavior for their simulation tools. The auto industry as a whole need to enhance their eco system for development but no doubt they are busy doing this.

Before I entered college in 1965, I decide I wanted to make instrumentation and work for Hewlett Packard. Why? So my fellow engineers would not be blind, they needed to see the electrical signals to test and debug their designs. At the beginning of my career, vacuum tubes were still common and transistors were just becoming available. In a short time, transistors replaced vacuum tubes and integrated circuits soon (within a few decades) hosted billions of transistors on a single component. And Computer Aided Design and Simulation tools reduced the need for instrumentation, not to zero but close to.

I retired from Intel, working for a team tasked to ensure the instrumentation needed for each generation of components was ready for first Silicon test and debug. The engineering eco system at this time became dominated by Simulation, Computer Aided Design and these engineering tools continue to be enhanced for the next generation products in both semi-conductors, computers and the rest of the industry, especially for EV’s

At some point computer power and cost reductions enabled powerful software tools for engineering. So computer aided design could put large functions for a microprocessor as a completed design, place it on Silicon and automate the connections or routing to other functional blocks. There were fewer design errors to find, so fewer instruments needed. Then, as computers become even more powerful it was possible to simulate the circuit behavior of new Silicon. The models were accurate down to the behavior of a few atoms making up the transistors and interconnections. So fewer physical instrumentation is needed. Some instrumentation for sure to characterize the new material or processes but once that was done, the design rules provide low error rate in design, and fast time to market for the next generation of computers.

Automation of the computer board assembly and full Computer Aided Design software reduced the engineering hours and potential design and assembly errors of the computer board. So fewer instruments are needed.

The engineering tools developed by my generation of engineers and enhanced by this generation offer a fast time to market of new generation products that are cheaper, faster, safer and more fun. The tools will get better and the time to market for each generation will be faster, which will grow demand and another cycle of funding for engineering productivity tools.

Does Tesla or SpaceX develop all their tools on their own. No, but they will modify engineering tools for aspects of their engineering unique to EV’s. An example is simulation models of electric motors to remove the need for rare earth components and improve cost and performance for their next generation cars. Intel also makes custom engineering tools. In the case of Tesla, simulation models can predict the tolerance to temperature, vibration and predict the life of the motor before the motor is actually built. They can also predict yields. And the results may be used to modify the design, run the simulation again and the first prototypes tested will be close to the final product.

There are new instruments. Instruments that measure physical world, down to the individual atom. This data is used in simulation models. This is Tesla’s engineering world and some of the tools are from Government labs provide data down to the atomic level relative to material science, battery chemistry and other fundamental data for simulation models. By the way the same tools provide tools for advanced medical equipment, computers, US weapon systems, Space X, cell phones and so on.

First example-

The US government lab Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM) and Advanced Photon Source (APS) recorded atomic level changes that proved how to improve Sodium Battery life, enabling higher energy density and lower cost. A battery technology Tesla and CATL are already interested in improving.

“Seeing is believing,” Yuzi Liu, a nanoscientist at CNM, stated (4). “We don’t have to guess what’s happening during the synthesis because of Argonne’s world-class scientific facilities.” The scientists used the transmission electron microscope at CNM, and synchrotron X-ray beams at the APS to accomplish this (at beamlines 11-ID-C and 20-BM).elieving,” Yuzi Liu, a nanoscientist at CNM, stated . “We don’t have to guess what’s happening during the synthesis because of Argonne’s world-class scientific facilities.” The scientists used the transmission electron microscope at CNM, and synchrotron X-ray beams at the APS to accomplish this (at beamlines 11-ID-C and 20-BM).

https://timesnext.com/tesla-could-soon-replace-lithium-with-sodium-ion-batteries/?ssp=1 &darkschemeovr=0&setlang=en-US&safesearch=moderate

Second example:

Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago and at Argonne National Laboratory have designed a new lithium-air battery that works in a natural air environment and still functioned after a record-breaking 750 charge/discharge cycles. Their findings are reported in the journal Nature.

This basically is the first demonstration the chemistry that can both provide a long life and 4 to 5 times the energy density of today’s EV battery. So ¼ the price. Or 300 mile range jumps to 1200 miles. Or heavy truck EV have 500 mile range with ¼ the weight.

New design produces true lithium-air battery — University of Illinois …

The new instrumentation for EV eco system includes instrumentation that measure behavior, in real time, of chemistry in batteries down to the atomic level. These tools are available in government labs in Asia, EU, USA … and likely from industry and internal tools in Tesla and the Battery industry.

Tesla’s positive feedback eco system includes US government research. Government research provides the physical tools, Battery companies provide better batteries and Tesla builds better EV, sales grow, providing capital for more development of better and cheaper vehicles, batteries and tools for developing them.

As EVs improved, a tipping point came into play. First came luxury cars ($100,000) that grabbed car of the year honors. Next came cars that matched the average car price of $40,000 that are more fun to drive and grabbed market share from gas car vendors in the most profitable market segments. At the same time, the EV for many applications is, today, the cheaper alternative to gas. For example, a fleet manager for a police cars can save 50% of transportation cost. For Uber a $40,000 EV is cheaper to operate than a $25,000 Toyoda. By 2028, most or all commercial use cases for new vehicles will purchase EV to save money. And that is with today’s technology.

The EV technology can offer a $25,000 car today (in China that price for a small step down in performance from Tesla is now available) and Tesla plans a high-volume version that can ramp up to high production and meet high demand by about 2026 or so.

But what will be the EV technology eco system productivity in 2030? The continuous improvement in simulation and CAD tools and instrumentation of atomic level behavior of battery chemistry will likely support another 4 X leap in cost or range but perhaps faster time to market than the last generation. The engineering tools will support a faster time to market for production equipment and battery qualification. At least that is my prediction.

Oh and me and my retired colleagues from the engineering eco system 1970 to 2010 of government and university labs, instrument companies, component design, computers and software engineering tools say “You are welcome to Elon and the Tesla development team and the new EV industry”.