Zac Valles

I studied aerospace engineering at UMichigan and spent some time there researching fluid mechanics to build supercavitating hydrofoils and torpedos. Before that, I studied mechanical engineering at UCR where a few friends and myself developed one of the first AWD electric vehicle's in the North American Formula SAE competition.

Currently I work at Tesla on the powertrain engineering team. I recently delivered the production design for the second largest casting on Robotaxi similar to this and drive unit bushings similar to this. Currently, I am working on building innovative engineering automation tools that take advantage of advances in machine learning to ramp future iteration speed of the parts I have been responsible for previously. I love to build. From consumer products that emphasize design vision and consumer experience to solving hard physics problems that take are combined heat transfer, material science, and structural mechanics challenges, I love to build.

I made this website to document my career, personal projects, and writings about life which you'll find below.