Is it just me who thinks that both Highland and Juniper are all about reduced manufacturing time and costs, and have zero to do with boosting sales through cosmetics?
I think Highland and Juniper do have some lower manufacturing costs and the GA phase is probably quicker.
I see it as a 3 cornered triangle with all 3 points being hit:-
- More attractive and efficient product.
- Lower components costs.
- Faster build time.
We still don't know what was done, or how it was done, and we will not know until a teardown is completed..
The Highland name did cause some to associate the new Model 3 with "Highland Park" implying that the refresh was all about cost reduction.
However, the Highland is clearly a better product than the previous Model 3 and some of those changes like a rear screen or additional speakers would have cost more.
It is likely that the improved suspension and interiors cost less than the previous version, and this is the strongest clue about what was actually done.
As far as we know many product improvements and cost reductions were not included:-
- Front and rear castings.
- Structural battery pack.
- Etherloop and 48V architecture
- steer-by-wire
- 800V architecture and V2H.
- 4680 battery cells.
- New motors.
We also know that most of the R&D for Highland was done in China and ruling out the major architectural changes above, changes were probably in the GA phase on construction and probably mostly involved new components - e.g. headlights.
What I expect to find is that a lot of the components that are installed in the GA phase have been reviewed and revised, and any new versions are cheaper and better, as well as being faster and easier to install. So my guess is lots of small changes adding up, but large potential future improvements left on the table for now.
In this context we can view Highland as a precursor to Cybertruck and Gen3, some of the improved components and processes are probably also in those models.
When it is lots of small changes all adding up, it will take a really expert teardown to work out what has changed, what the cost savings are and to sum the overall result in terms of COGS - time and money.
