Inside the Startup Making Cars 60% Lighter

Today I'm in Paris and behind me is a company that could completely change how we make metal parts. This is Tetmed. So at Tetmed we are completely rethinking how structures are designed and also how they are manufactured. What is a lattice structure? Here you see an example of a tiny lattice structure at Tetmed. We know that these are the most efficient way of structuring materials. If you actually manage to have topology optimized structures you'll be able to cut 60% out of the structural mass. 60%? Yeah. It's crazy. This is centuries-old knowledge. All we needed was an efficient way to design and manufacture them. Industrial manufacturing it's really a world that is mostly used to incremental innovation and right here what we're doing it's a step change. We're just scratching the surface of what's possible. All right today I'm visiting Tetmed in Paris. They are building lattice structures for the real world. Let's see. I'm there, right there, knocking on the door. Hey Hugo, welcome. Hey Tom, how are you? Welcome to Tetmed. Thank you. So at Tetmed we are completely rethinking how structures like the structural components of vehicles and buildings are designed and also how they are manufactured and that actually allows us the fact that we combine design with manufacturing that completely allows us to rethink how structures are made on a super efficient level. So what is a lattice structure? Here you see an example of a tiny lattice structure. A lattice structure, a 3D truss or a topology optimized structure and at Tetmed we know that these are the most efficient way of structuring materials. So we are rethinking how we can actually put this in the structures of our buildings, our vehicles, our objects and we're also thinking about how they can meaningfully efficiently be manufactured. Hello there, show me the robots. This is a simple off-shelf six-axis robot that can assemble longitudinal elements in any combination, in any length, in any thickness, in 3D space. So we can create any topology and with that we can create any shape with any underlying structural behavior. So nowadays many things are made of tubes, sheet metal, solid blocks that are cast for instance and if you actually manage to have topology optimized structures at a resolution like this you'll be able to cut 60% out of the structural mass but additionally you can create a sort of influenceable behavior by determining what goes on inside the volume of the material. Zero tooling, low capex, low resource intensive manufacturing technology. My name is Nathan, I'm the software lead at Tetmed so I'm in charge mostly of designing internal software for Tetmed. So basically customers come to you and they say we need to have a shape like this that has these properties and your job is to make it happen with less material. Exactly, that's the whole job of the software is to have as many inputs in different shapes whether it's a sketch, a volume or just boundary conditions of what needs to happen and turn this into a buildable part for our process. How does it go from the software and this part that we see on the screen to actually the robots over there and building the parts? Once we have a mechanically sound part we export the information of the structures and from then we have all the second part of internal software which is what you can see on the screen over there the process side and the editor which allows us to choose stuff such as the build order. Who's leading the other part? So you're leading the software so the first layer, who's the person I should talk to on the other side? That would be Pierre over there. So Pierre what's your role at Tetmed? So I'm the head of R&D at Tetmed. I'm mostly in charge of making sure that the process is working and that we are able to build our beautiful lattice structure. We add the rods one by one and as we add the rods we add more and more components and we start basically building up. It is really like a 3D structure that's being built right? Yeah exactly. And then you basically transfer that to the robot and you start building. Love it. I love the table. Yeah the table is interesting. So these are all tested structures. This lab there's a lot of testing going on there's a lot of like experimentation going on not only on the core processor which we've just seen with the robots but also on the validation of the application of the structures itself. So we research at the connection level but we also research at the structural level. We also see a sample that has a certain crash absorption energy. Would that be for a car for example? This could be for instance for the front end of a car but it could also be used in nuclear waste containers. This is a great example to show how like a simple cubic space could have multiple types of unit cells. What the structure does within these cells gives a volume a degree of programmable materials which is essentially unlocking a completely new world of engineering inside the volumes that we're used to work with. Should we go see the Eiffel Tower because I know you have a small Eiffel Tower in your office I want to see that. We have one here yeah. By the way you should see everything in here is a lattice structure. Of course we are in Paris so the Eiffel Tower which is also by itself an example of a lattice structure. This is not very heavy so this Eiffel Tower is completely made of stainless steel. It's also very strong very stiff. It kind of demonstrates how we can use steel to build very efficient structures. If I put it next to you it's what like probably like a meter a meter tall. Yeah there you go. We're optimizing for size and efficiency of structures and the only way we can do that is by not only rethinking the manufacturing process but also the design process. So that looks very light. Yeah this is something like 100 grams or so. The point is that this is a structure that simply like can easily bear 200 kilograms. You can just uh no it's it's really stiff. For instance at the Viva Tech a couple of weeks ago you see a lot of people that try to challenge that like big guys who say no it can never hold me and that's the power of a concept that has been understood in academia for such a long time and so what you can do with these structures has been very well understood. It's just that what we do is we unlock the efficient design and manufacturing processes for it. Did also Lacan hold the Eiffel Tower? Yeah he did and I think might have been this one. Eiffel Towers are the most popular lab When we think about the potential impact that it can have obviously we are an investor in Climate Club into TechNet. We do it for the climate reasons. It seems to be obvious that something like this has very low amount of materials in it. If we take apples with apples comparison with common methods of manufacturing we hit at a reduction of about 60 percent better strength to weight ratio so that's 60 percent less mass which is of course great when you're building an airplane or a space launcher or a satellite or even a car like electric vehicles they're always too heavy. 60 percent yeah it's crazy I mean it's a very high number because like if you think about electric vehicles for example you put a battery maybe you have 60 percent less power needed for the car to move. Yeah or you can simply put more batteries. So we take the strength to weight ratio advantages we take the programmable material properties advantages and we combine it also with the low CAPEX zero tooling manufacturing advantages so the bottom line in terms of impact the effect is huge and the cool thing is that if you don't use a lot of energy and you don't use a lot of materials cost also goes down and yeah that everything connects. It's a bit of the beauty and also the scary thing about Europe right now is if we want to be competitive if we want to have a say in the global market we just have to be smarter and I think that's a smart way of doing it I mean seems like a smart way right I love it. What surprised me the most about today's visit at TETMED is how much room we have to reinvent something as fundamental as manufacturing. If TETMED can deliver on what they are building at large scales the implication could be huge. Imagine if your electric vehicle would consume 40 percent less energy because it is lighter as a result of using lattice structures. The best solutions are not just greener they are faster they are better and they are cheaper much like TETMED is. If you enjoyed this episode make sure to subscribe like the video and please leave a comment with a name of a company you would want me to visit. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next episode.