A new era of Tesla: Data analysis + innovative research and development

Data analysis and our lives more and more closely related, and do not mention the overwhelming tide of large data, even CCTV reports, recently began to use data to speak. Where is the business value of data analysis? Better quality, lower costs, and discover new customers are all icing on the cake. It may explain why most Chinese manufacturers talk about data analysis when they are not in the mood for artistic creation to be wool. In fact, the value of data analysis is far more than just improvement. Tesla, a start-up in California, has used a lot of data analysis to innovate and research, not only to solve its own survival problems, but to create a new era for humanity.

A new era created by Tesla

The global auto Giants ' investments in hybrid and new-energy vehicles have been Tesla to the fore for many reasons: financial support from the US Department of Energy, experienced leaders in entrepreneurial ventures, and rational use of cooperation from Mercedes-Benz, Panasonic, Lotus, Apple and other industry giants; California's good entrepreneurial financing environment, and so on. However, if you go deep into any small, successful start-up, you can always dig out the highlights and stories that are similar to the above. This kind of story, sounds interesting, read novel, but still is suspicious: Tesla in the mature, competitive car industry foothold, with these? Obviously not just that. Behind the story, we were surprised to see that Model S model, the reason for the emergence of applause, its root cause is to lower prices, to achieve higher than the same level of fuel vehicle performance. For the first time in human history, a company has proved to the world that pure electric cars can really replace fuel vehicles!

This is not just a product, a company's success, which opened a new era of human energy transport.

For example, BMW M5 the U.S. market price, 0-100 km accelerated 4.4 seconds, 4.4 litres V8 turbo engine, full tank range of 400 kilometers (urban road mileage is significantly reduced), the price of about 100,000 U.S. dollars. Tesla MODEL S configured 0-100 km accelerated 4.4 seconds, full capacity range of 480 kilometers (because of electric, urban road conditions slightly reduced, but reduced by less than fuel vehicles), the price of 89,900 dollars. Chinese market, M5 price than Tesla MODEL s more expensive. Not to mention later maintenance, use cost, M5 I am afraid to dozens of times times the Model S. And a number of media testing showed that 0-100, 0-160 two important speed, M5 lost to the models configured. Over the years M5 has been hailed as the leader of this level. Obviously, it is not just BMW that is disgraced.

Why, so many big hard years can not do things, by Tesla, a group of "auto industry layman" Company, has done?

Why Tesla?

Now, look back at Tesla's entrepreneurial, growth history. The history of the media is not very reliable, we try to piece together fragments, digging clues, see some noteworthy fragments:

1. The Tesla Roadster prototype vehicle was released in 2006 and began production in 2008, with Tesla financing of $60 million, and the development of its two-seater roadster roster cost about 25 million dollars. The roadster was unveiled ten years after GM launched the two-seater electric car EV-1. With EV-1 charging only 100 miles, General Motors eventually gave up production.

2. Kurt Kelty,tesla Battery technology director, in an interview, said: "In the early stages of research and development, we can hardly find battery suppliers." At the time, Tesla was an unknown electric-car start-up. Battery manufacturers have a lot of concerns: if they provide us with batteries, and our electric cars are in trouble, they may be blamed and even liable. In fact, battery manufacturers have been blamed for the failure of some laptop batteries. So, we tried the market before and after more than 400 kinds of batteries, very hard, we visited a lot of battery manufacturers, as if only to doors. But a Japanese manufacturer's engineer is interested in our project ... Thanks to him, we can finally begin to develop our roadster. Now that we have a big reputation, many battery manufacturers are scrambling to provide products to us ...

3. Tesla designs and manufactures electric vehicle components for car giants

In 2009, Tesla and Mercedes-Benz reached a cooperative agreement on the development of two electric vehicle batteries and chargers.

In 2010, Tesla and Mercedes reached an agreement on the battery pack and charger for a high-end electric vehicle.

In 2010, Tesla announced a cooperation agreement with Toyota to develop an electric drive system for Toyota.

2012, Tesla again won the Mercedes-Benz orders, to assume the Mercedes-Benz A-class, B-class car electric transmission system for all-round development.

4. Tesla announced that the former vice president of Apple Doug Field has now joined Tesla, will be the vice-president of automotive projects, responsible for new car driving control research and development. Doug Field has previously been responsible for Mac hardware engineering at Apple. Tesla says he has led a number of Mac products, including MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and the imac. ”

Obviously, unlike the critics, Tesla is not just a "system integrator in the automotive industry", but a high-tech research and development firm with real gun guns: not only independent research and development, but also to provide technology and products for other car giants with a history of nearly hundred years. And when it comes to independent research and development, Will have to mention Tesla once competitors, just been acquired Fisker.

Tesla and Fisker: the dispute between research and development autonomy and outsourcing

China's auto industry, there is a typical "doctrine" axes: a plagiarism, two reverse crack, three research and development outsourcing. Can copy copy, copy not to crack, crack not to outsource. The so-called research and development outsourcing here is not really to outsource some of the research projects to the third party to do, but to abandon specific areas of independent research and development, in order to buy off-the-shelf technology and products in the market. The 2.4-liter engine of a Japanese company, for example, has been procured by major Chinese car brands over the past decade. The engine, the gearbox is the soft rib of the Chinese independent vehicle enterprise, is also "the outsourcing" the focal point. Research and development outsourcing is not necessarily a major mistake. At different stages of the enterprise life cycle, it is necessary to have different strategies, independent research and development may not necessarily be successful. However, the core technology or key components have not been in their hands, so uncomfortable not only pricing, and even endanger survival. Similarly, the U.S. automotive industry also has "research and development outsourcing." Fisker is one of the typical.

"The outsourcing model has led to a lack of mastery of core technology," the authors write in the Tesla of the Fisker bankruptcy crisis, a pingwest article from the Chinese web. Fisker company itself does not manufacture automobiles, all parts of its products are outsourced in the way provided by the partners, the Fisker company is only designed. ”

Tesla, not only with Mercedes-Benz and Toyota to develop electric vehicle technology, but also in battery technology with the supplier Panasonic Company to work together to develop a nickel based lithium battery.

As early as in 2003 when the Tesla was established, the company on the basis of the AC propulsion company patents independently developed a set of power transmission system for electric vehicles to build a "heart."

The outsourcing model shortened the car's research and development life from 5 years to 2-3 years, and reduced the cost of about 1 billion dollars to $333 million. Even so, the drawbacks of this model are beginning to follow, tantamount to thirst.

It is because of the heavy reliance on outsourcing vendors, there is no independent technology, the Fisker at a critical moment to lose capacity.

Elon Musk and Henrik Fisker: The founder's origins are different, and the company's destiny is distinct.

Although I do not like his "born different, Company's fate" of the birth determinism, but there is no doubt that the core technology of research and development outsourcing is Fisker to bankruptcy of the fatal. And the exhaustion of all resources for independent research and development, it is Tesla to survive multiple difficulties, the ultimate rise of the most critical factor.

Tesla's independent research and development

In the field of electric vehicles, battery system, motor system is the two core technical fields. Tesla after several business-endangering, was criticized for "burning money" The main reason is to put a lot of capital in these two core technology research and development. Instead of ignoring the "crisis education" and criticism, Tesla is more attached to the core research and development:

Last week, Straubel Straubel, chief technology officer at the US electric vehicle company Tesla, said the company had finally shortened its battery-full time to 5 minutes-almost as much time as filling a tank of oil. To make the electric car more practical, Tesla is desperately trying to shorten the charging time.

This May Tesla just announced an upgrade that will shorten this time to 20 minutes. Last September Tesla once announced a "super charging station" network designed for Model S and future electric cars, supposedly "able to fill half a battery in 30 minutes."

As the core components of electric vehicles, battery system is the most important Tesla research and development. Tesla's battery and endurance had been ridiculed and criticized by mainstream media such as The New York Times, Britain's Top Gear, and several lawsuits. Today, there are still people in the industry think Tesla Battery technology obsolete, security is doubtful, the endurance of water and so on. All these, have no influence Tesla persistent and enterprising, it is these persistent, Tesla again and again put Fisker far behind in the survival contest.

One of the reasons for the criticism is that the battery used in Tesla is a type 18650 cobalt-acid lithium-ion battery, which has been applied to laptops, is hard to put on the electric vehicle, and is said to have a safety hazard. Compared with other major electric vehicle brands (Chevrolet Volt, Nissan Wind, Fisker Karma, etc.), the preferred power battery lithium sulfate battery, the safety factor is low, the number of cycles of charge less, thermal performance and electrical performance is poor (plus voltage instability may occur charging overheating), the cost is high. So why Tesla use the "second-class products" in the eyes of the public as their core system? Tesla is how in a very short period of time to complete the opponents of decades of research and development, using the original battery management system to successfully solve these challenges, so that the ugly duckling into a white swan?

The answer is in the data analysis.

The biggest challenge of research and development is, of course, the result, and the second is the cost of time and money. The result is too long or too expensive to end up in the tech world. It is the brutal reality that Tesla must face to produce the results of battery research and development beyond the rivals, and to have a large number of rivals in the time to be more powerful.

Research and development process, whether automotive, pharmaceutical, chemical or semiconductor industry, the experiment is not past the ridge. The cost and cycle of experiment constitute the most cost and time loss in the whole research and development process. In the course of how to rationalize the experimental plan, we developed a series of methods and techniques, the most amazing method of data analysis is doe (experimental design). This statistic method can help the research and development professionals to reduce the number of experiments greatly, so that the arrangement of the experiment can meet the needs of the most reasonable test times and the development parameters, and match the cost and time requirements of the experiment. In many of the world's experimental design and data analysis methods, the CUSTOMER design (custom experiment) is one of the few analytical methods manufacturers can provide high-end tools. Tesla, through repeated comparisons and studies, eventually adopted the advanced DOE Platform and Data Analysis kit from JMP.

Through the advanced experimental design, data analysis suite and data mining method provided by JMP, Tesla successfully solves the problem of battery temperature and fast charging, and successfully realizes the monitoring of the temperature and working environment of each single battery, successfully solves the problems of the electric vehicle industry:

1. High efficiency charge

2. High Efficiency discharge

3. Safe and reliable battery work

4. Battery capacity Breakthrough

Throughout the history of human science and technology, the birth of any great breakthrough is accompanied by people's understanding of the upgrading of the world means. Data analysis is a more advanced and deeper way of understanding the world. The combination of data analysis and scientific and technological innovation, product development, for Tesla, is not the end, but the beginning: not only the beginning of the new era of human energy transport, but also the data analysis has become a formal prerequisite for human innovation and breakthrough.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)