Tesla’s Chief Designer
The Tesla world is practically vibrating with excitement over an interview dropped by the Ride the Lightning tesla podcast on January 15th.
In it, Tesla’s Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen talks about several upcoming projects - mostly the Cybertruck - in detail we haven’t heard from Tesla in quite some time.
von Holzhausen is an industry veteran, - having worked since 1992 for companies like Volkswagen, GM, and Mazda.
He’s been working at Tesla for about fifteen years, and has been the driving force (heh) behind almost the entire Tesla lineup. The Models S, 3, X, and Y, as well as the Tesla Semi, and - of course - the Cybertruck, are all part of von Holzhausen’s impressive portfolio.
And in the interview, he goes into some detail about the processes for not just the Cybertruck - but an upcoming second-generation Tesla Roadster he and his team are designing.
Franz was understandably a little tight lipped about the Roadster and a few other things, but buried in the discussions about Tesla’s various vehicles - we got a great glimpse of the company’s design strategy.
While speaking about how much time he spends on the Model S, Franz acknowledged that constant tinkering is a strategy used for almost all the Tesla vehicles currently.
When asked about the Model 3 for instance, and what he would change, Franz said that he really couldn’t think of anything specific - because he and his team are making constant improvements to that vehicle. Design iterations - the versions of specific elements of a vehicle - are frequently updated.
McCaffrey noted that there have been at least four seat changes in the Model S for instance. And the infamous yoke steering wheel in the Model S and X have been recently updated to allow for a more standard wheel if an owner wants that option.
Steering wheels are actually a really good example of how Tesla changes and updates their design all the time as they get user feedback. The yoke for instance is so popular that they’ve included it in the Cybertruck’s design.
And the Capacitive controls - the “force touch” scrolling buttons on the newer Model 3, and Y steering wheels - will be continued as well, and modified according to user feedback. These new buttons are designed to remove that “stalk” on conventional steering wheels that control the turning signals and windshield wipers.
Franz said this change was made because the designers saw a need - older cars with mechanical switches on the wheel and stalk get worn down and corroded with time. Hopefully, these new controls will solve that issue and be easier to keep clean - but it’s all about trying to change the things that don’t work.
Going back to Franz’s comments about constantly working on the Model S, those changes are all for things that aren’t quite perfect yet. When talking about why the Model 3 is - in Franz’s view - a pretty well-designed car, he says that Tesla uses the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality. Sure they tinker with the small stuff, but unless a larger redesign is needed, Franz says the team don’t regularly touch any larger parts.
And what makes this constant design work so easy is that there are very few barriers to the design team collaborating with people in other disciplines - which Franz says is not typical of the other companies he’s worked at.
Remember, Franz has been in the industry since 1992, and has worked for some of the biggest automotive companies out there. He says that at Tesla, there’s no middle-managers to go through if he needs to talk to engineers on the assembly floor. He has daily - sometimes hourly - meetings with Tesla’s on-site aerodynamicists about the design of their car bodies; so if people are wondering why Tesla makes such solid designs, Franz says that’s the reason.
Going with that though, Franz was asked why Tesla didn’t keep a unified design language for their vehicles. Most other car companies go to great lengths to make sure that they have a recognizable body shape, or silhouette, which helps mark them from their competitors. Tesla’s do have a recognizable shape language, but it’s not exactly consistent.
Franz explains that this is done on purpose. Tesla wants to make sure that new designs are being produced by their world-class team without restrictions. How else would something like the Cybertruck come from the same company that made the Model S?
That’s why when there was some discussion of the potential for a “Cyber” line of vehicles, Franz seemed to pan the idea. It’s not like they hadn’t thought of it, but there are other designs that might work better in places like China.
And that brings us to the design centers in both Berlin and Shanghai, which point to another reason for a lack of continuous design language at Tesla: localisation.
Use cases for vehicles are different depending on environment and culture - so Tesla wants to eventually be able to have vehicle designs that reflect those differences. They want Asian-designed vehicles in Asia, and European ones for Europe. Maintaining a tight grip on design language would make that difficult for no good reason.
Throughout the interview, Franz was consistent in his tone. Sure, we got some confirmation to things the community was wondering about - like the Cybertruck’s scratch resistance, or newer paint colours potentially coming to North America - Franz says the new colours are really pretty up close, by the way.
And we got little moments where McCaffrey got some stern “No comments” from Franz as he bumped up against questions like “Is the Model 3 redesign going to include a structural battery pack?”
But what we really got with this interview is a look inside the philosophy that makes Tesla tick. Their design team is integrated directly into almost every other team in the company - worldwide! That level of flexibility is what keeps them ahead in their field.
Franz said in the interview that Tesla’s big focus is improving the manufacturability of their vehicles - right down to shortening the time between design and production itself. Every time he answered a question about where the designs for a vehicle were going, it was always with that in mind.
If Franz and his team are representative of the other teams at Tesla, then it’s really no wonder why they’re as innovative as we’ve seen.