Tesla Cybertruck

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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being aware that others also moved into this large casting direction (brands escape me now, but I read about it) … i think its a mixed blessing.

It helps the PRODUCER tremendously (efficiency, parts count, reduction in assembly process, consistent quality) …

but it pushes huge cost and inefficiencies towards the OWNER … e.g. in case of accidents of var. degrees …

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this reminds me of the 80ies/90ies, when jap. makes, as they were entering the global market - in order to keep the working capital and parts-count in 1000s of warehouses on the planet at check, “lumped” up spare parts …

before that, you could buy the special screw that went into the distributor for pennies, after they implemented their efficiencies, you could only buy a new distributor if said special screw got lost (made up example, painted with a broad brush, but true in essence).

Of course other producers saw the benefits and moved into the same direction, bringing their warehouse part-count down by a wide margin (at the cost of the consumers now having to spend top dollar for “lumps of equipment” instead of pennies for a specific screw.

I see that very same scenario with the casting tech … good for the producer, not so good for the owner.!

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And how. Musk apparently thinks that by insourcing a complicated process, he will automatically be able to make it better than anyone else does.

Tesla launched its own car insurance. These drivers say it's a lemon..

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I pretty much only use my truck from plowing these days. But I’ve used it and others for plenty more tasks.

This is, of course, a truck that will not be suitable to contractors. The 240v outlet is a nice touch. But really only for charging other EV’s. You could have a small portable welder on board to do some quick work I suppose. Welding though, is more technical than “I’ll just melt this together and be done with it”

Also, most contractors have roof racks so they can quickly get the extra dozen 2x4’s for the job at hand.

Lot’s of good things about it though really. Up to 17"s of ground clearance is great. The retractable tonneau cover a cool idea.

I don’t really mind the looks of it. In the 70’s and 80’s I gave up trying to be able to identify cars. All of them where jellybeans with wheels for better aerodynamics.

And while not a deal breaker with the Cybertruck. I still can’t imagine cleaning the inside of the front windshield. I have long arms, but…

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I’m sure at some point Tesla will release a special stainless steal squeegee with that Cybertruck logo laser etched on it specially designed to clean the inside of the windshield. It will be $175, and sell out in under 10 minutes. The handle may or may not be filled with tequila.

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Wasn’t Musk selling a flamethrower at one time?

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Yes, he was, but not for cleaning windshields. I think he used the residual stock on twitter.

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The cars still have crushable components that absorb impact up to a point. So while it’s true that if the casting is seriously damaged, the car is probably totaled, you had to have a fair impact to get to that point. Which means the car is probably totaled anyway, due to surrounding damage.

In the case of cars specifically, that’s really not so different than today. Recall that the castings replace stamped pieces that are welded or glued together. Those pieces aren’t individually repairable. And any forces that get applied to one are transmitted through the rest.

Some shops can do very limited unibody straightening, but not in any kind of serious accident. And limited repairs can be done to castings as well, though the repair shop knowledge probably isn’t so prevalent yet.

Now, trucks are something of a different case in that the ones using body-on-frame are somewhat more repairable. In particular, the bed is almost totally disconnected from the rest, so it could be pretty seriously damaged without affecting the rest of the truck (and it’s easy to swap in a new one). The Rivian is not body-on-frame and doesn’t have these advantages. But on the other hand, the stainless steel is much more durable, so damage should be less of a problem in the first place.

Overall, I’d say that there’s more of a threshold effect going on. Considering light day-to-day damage, I think the castings + stainless is a win. Same for light impacts, say under 10 mph. But above that threshold, body-on-frame does have advantages.

Of course, body-on-frame is worse in almost every other way. It’s basically a century-old design. It has very poor torsional rigidity; so poor that trucks have to sacrifice even more rigidity by disconnecting the bed and cab, because otherwise they’d just rip apart if you applied any significant force. It’s also inefficient in materials, weight, etc.

And there are other unibody trucks, mostly on the smaller side but with exceptions like Rivian. They aren’t using megacastings yet, but will have the same issues with heavy impacts, since again the castings just replace a bunch of welded-together stampings. The optimal choice depends on the circumstances, though personally I don’t buy cars based on how repairable they’ll be after a crash. In fact I want the car to sacrifice itself for my safety.

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Does anyone know any details about the stainless steel body? Is this just a thin layer of stainless over other materials? Was this part of the initial plan that resulted in the DeLorean look to the truck?

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Not all of the details are out yet, but the SS panels are not just a covering. As I recall, at least some of the panels are 1.8 mm thick, though this may vary based on location. They’re bolted to an inner structure of large castings, regular stampings, and the structural battery pack. They’re strong enough to carry at least part of the load under some conditions.

They use their own custom alloy, probably related to something in the 3xx series, but with increased manufacturability and long-term corrosion resistance.

The only part that seems different from the original plan was the increased use of castings. Probably some of the structural load has been moved from the “exoskeleton” to those castings, so it’s more of a hybrid now. They may have reduced the thickness of the SS sheets to compensate, but it’s hard to say.

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The CT supports a roof rack–in fact they already showed one at a previous event:
Imgur

Requires a different design of course, but roof racks aren’t exactly marvels of engineering. I’m sure there will be plenty of suppliers, and if not it’s trivial to weld one up yourself.

Not quite jellybeans, but no one can tell me there’s a lick of difference between any of these. Or that they aren’t ridiculous in their own way.

Imgur

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Modern “full size” trucks ARE ridiculous, from their “we provide you this handy built in step, because the sides are too damn high to actually access the bed” ginormity, to their $80K pricetags.

We have a Colorado, which is the “small” truck. It’s pretty much the same size as my 1969 C10 longbed, which used to be what a full size pickup was. True “small” pickups, like the S10 and the Ranger, are relics of the past.

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I’ll note that you cannot work on stainless with tools that have been used on regular steel. Ford ran into this with the aluminum on the F150, so maybe most body shops have adapted. The F150 is painted, however. You’re probably not straightening those panels anyway, just replacing them. In fact, looking at the ripples from the factory, there’s no way you can repair the panels.

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Yeah–this is one of the criticisms of the CT with the triangular bed side supports. Ok, fair enough–but have people seen modern trucks? They all come lifted 4"+ from the factory, and have a super high “waistline” to boot. Unless you’re pretty tall, you probably aren’t grabbing stuff over the sides. It might actually be easier to access the CT bed from the end due to the air suspension.

Agreed, but the panels were taking hits from a 20# deadblow hammer with no damage. Anything that can damage them is likely to cause more problems than panels that aren’t straight.

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Ok. Might work. I was thinking more along these lines though.

Could throw some 12’ 2x8 on there no problem

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We’ll have to see, but the difference between a 20# hammer (probably more like 10#) and another vehicle, even at low speeds, is vast. If the CT can shrug off a Toyota then I’ll eat my hat (Yum, salty).

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You can get the same basic thing with some slight adjustment. Here’s a pic I took at the showroom:
Imgur

See those rectangles near the edge? Not including the indented one with the buttons (that controls the tonneau cover), those are just plastic pieces that pop out to open a structural mount point. Or maybe push in; I’m not 100% sure. Anyway, easy enough to adapt a rack like in your pic to fit in those slots.

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Sure, no argument there. Well, unless you mean very low speeds, like <1 mph, where all that’s happening is some bumper compression.

Hopefully, the repair shops will have easy access to body panels. There aren’t too many of them and they should be fairly easy to replace.

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Huh. Well that’s really, really good thinking on their point. I stand corrected.

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any thoughts on “dis-simil metals corrotion”? …

AIU, the CT is the inverted function of the original Landrover (which was Alu-sheets on steel-frame - the CT is steel-sheet on alu-frame) … and iirc those had quite some problems with the more noble metal oxidizing the less noble one …

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Hard to say. The aluminum casting does have some kind of coating. Whether that’s paint, or powder coating, or anodization, or something else I’m not sure. But it might be sufficient to prevent any anodic corrosion.