# 2021 Model S and X skateboard - still slightly different



## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

When the Model X was first being designed, Tesla thought that it could simply slap a new body on top of the Model S skateboard. It turned out that the skateboard required a lot of redesign in order to handle the Model X body. I thought that with this refresh, Tesla would be able to design a single skateboard that actually would work well with both vehicles without any changes. But looking at the official skateboard photos that Tesla has posted, there appear to still be a few differences. The most obvious one is for (what I assume is) the penthouse above and to the front of the battery.

Model S:








Model X:


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## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

The tri-motor is interesting. It looks like a single housing, that they may have built two motors in. I'm thinking there are people that will argue if that is a single motor. Either way, it is hard to know what the rear/dual motor looks like from the pics that I've seen.


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## Gauss Guzzler (Nov 30, 2020)

Those skateboards look identical to me. The bottom one just isn't showing the "penthouse" cover installed but you can see it has the bolt holes to mount the cover. Meanwhile the top pic is missing the perimeter gasket and some mounting studs in the middle of the pack. I think the visual differences are just due to the graphics person being inconsistent with which components were shown / hidden in these renders.


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

GDN said:


> I'm thinking there are people that will argue if that is a single motor.


Only if they're coupled together. If each motor only controls a single wheel, and there's no mechanical coupling between the two (that is, no differential), then the fact that they share a housing isn't enough to make that argument.


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

Gauss Guzzler said:


> The bottom one just isn't showing the "penthouse" cover installed but you can see it has the bolt holes to mount the cover.


But that bottom one doesn't appear to _need _any additional cover - there's nothing exposed in need of covering. So in that case, it's possible that the bolt holes seen are only used by Model S variants of the skateboard.

Good point about the gaskets and studs elsewhere. But it seems strange that they wouldn't outfit them identically for the photo - especially considering that these are both most likely computer-generated rather than pictures of an actual physical skateboard.


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## Gauss Guzzler (Nov 30, 2020)

garsh said:


> But that bottom one doesn't appear to _need _any additional cover - there's nothing exposed in need of covering.
> 
> ...strange that they wouldn't outfit them identically for the photo - especially considering that these are both most likely computer-generated


It's not uncommon to have multiple covers for different purposes. Maybe that inner cover seals off some totally unserviceable high voltage stuff and the outer cover is the removable weather shield? There are wires and a perimeter trench visible that might need to be sealed. I don't know how much salty mud splashes up onto this thing but it's probably more than zero.

These are indeed computer generated, but there's still someone taking the entire CAD model for the whole car and manually selecting which components to hide/show for this marketing render. Maybe they made a mistake, or maybe the other model uses different covers/gaskets and proper approved versions of the CAD models were not available at the time the render was being configured.

Whatever the case, how awesome would it be to slap a steering wheel and a lawn chair to this skateboard?


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