Tesla
Role: Senior Mechanical Design Engineer, Website: tesla.com
Tesla designs and builds electric vehicles and energy storage solutions. Their mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. I began interning at Tesla in 2014 on their Materials R&D team, and transitioned to their exterior vehicle lighting team in 2015, where I worked for 4 years.
When I began in 2015, I developed Tesla's very first automatic headlamp leveling system on the Model S. This system uses ride height sensors to automatically adjust the aim of the headlamps based on the height difference between the front and rear of the car:
Shortly thereafter, I managed supplier teams to design, validate, and launch the side repeater camera (present on Model S, X, 3, and Y), license plate lamps (3 and Y), and rear reflectors (3 and Y):
In support of Model 3's development, I fabricated a set of custom lamps that allowed employees to safely drive Tesla's test vehicles at night. This was necessary because production lamps weren't available yet. Black housings were 3D printed and spray painted before threaded inserts were installed, creating attachment points for the lighting hardware:
During Model 3 launch and production, I was responsible for making sure there were no issues with the bodyside lamps, the decklid lamps, and the center high-mounted stop lamp. Most of the work involved ensuring parts were to specification to prevent fit issues and reliability issues. This also meant working with internal teams and suppliers to coordinate and integrate changes, as needed.
In my final year at Tesla, I worked with our lighting suppliers to ensure our Model 3 lamps met all legal requirements in Europe, China, Australia, Japan, and Taiwan. I also ensured physical and electrical integration of carry over lamps from the Model 3 to the Model Y platform, and led sourcing, development, and design of lamp cost down solutions resulting in over $5M of savings annually (and growing).