I must say, I would like to put a big ass roof rack on in with some 10’ 2x12s and run it around. Actually, that might be a good advertisement for it.
hard to think that they could have “missed” this aspect …
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I guess the once the CT gets out in the wild, lots of solutions will come to light … YT and all
IIRC there was a story a couple of years ago, where Mercedes rented a Tesla (don’t recall the model) over a weekend to completely disassemble it, document all “new-solutions” - and re-assemble it.
Tesla (or the rental company) found out (cracked paint on painted bolts, etc…), returned Merc. the car and sent them the invoice for a new one … and (going from memory) MB paid for the tesla
Volkswagen already did that 
I do wonder about that outlet. In general, anything that you’re plugging in to a 240 V outlet takes a lot of power. Making any significant use of that is going to take a lot of the battery, which means it eats into your range. Can you set it to reserve some amount of battery for propulsion, and automatically cut off the external outlet when the battery gets too low? Probably; it wouldn’t be too hard to make it do that. But if they didn’t, folks are going to get themselves stranded on job sites.
That’s going to be pretty tough. At full blast, the 240v, 40A outlet consumes 9.6 kW. And the main battery is 123 kWh, so >12 hours of use. Of course you need to leave some range for the drive, but that’s still a ton of use. A welder might use close to the peak when operating, but the overall duty cycle is low. Even if someone is welding all day, they aren’t going to use more than a small fraction of the capacity.
But yeah, I agree that some kind of software limiter would be useful and easy to implement. We’ll probably see some reviews of the software stack fairly soon. We’ve only seen snippets so far.
The test for a pickup truck is to hire several workmen not otherwise employed during a period of regard low unemployment and ask them to pick up a load of lumber, concrete blocks, several shovels, rakes, a 20# sledge hammer, a half dozen power tools, and a cooler with a six-pack of cold beer, then transport it all to a work site, unload everything, drink the beer, reload only the tools, and return the truck to it’s original location. 2 out of 3 times you’ll have to go pick up the truck someplace they left it. Frequently gentlemen’s entertainment clubs. If you wouldn’t even think of conducting any test like that on your truck then you don’t really need a truck do you?
When FSD is ready, you’ll just be able to summon the truck, wherever it happens to be. Though I suppose workmen can get awfully creative in wedging the truck in unlikely spaces.
Tesla doesn’t have a marketing department, and doesn’t advertise.
I don’t know enough about tractor pulls to know if I should be impressed.
Summary: The Cybertruck pull the sled 300 some feet, while the F-150 Lightning, an F-150 diesel, and the Rivian R1T only pull it 200 some feet.
I wonder what goes into calculating towing capacity. The Cybertruck is 11k lbs, which is good, but comparable to other trucks (like the Rivian). Brakes, maybe? Rear tongue weight limit?
Could be they have a towing kit upgrade with bigger brakes, etc., depending on what the limit actually is.
Well, good for pulling stumps at any rate.
I did not like the Cybertruck when I first saw it. Not because it looked weird - work trucks can look however they want. But it looked impractical. The sloped sides would make loading/unloading from the side difficult, it looked like the cabin had terrible visibility, and I want lots of visibility when manoevering a truck around in tight spaces.
And since the F-150 Lightning came out and showed how compromised electric trucks still are in cold weather and when hauling loads and towing, Cybertruck was going to be just as bad. The huge flat windshield looked like a reflection nightmare.
But having watched all the videos Dr. Strangelove linked (which I had already seen before), I agreed with Jason Commisca who said that the weird shape was the least radical thing about the truck.
Aside from all the innovations Dr. Strangelove listed, Cybertruck has a 48V low voltage system, with all devices getting power over over ethernet, and everything connected through gigabit ethernet insted of analog wiring or older digital buses. Not only does this provide a lot of savings of weight, complexity and copper, but it allows higher-powered auxiliary components, like the motors used for the steering.
The visibility issue was an illusion, I guess. All the reviews said it had good visibility everywhere but straight back, but it has a digital rear-view and camera to take care of that.
Even if Cybertruck fails as a design, the technology developed for it will make its way into many more vehicles. This is a leap forward in vehicle engineering.
So what is there about the Cybertruck that would attract truck enthusiasts, workmen, farmers, etc?
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Power. I loved the video of the cybertruck beating a Porsche 911 in a drag race - while towing a Porsche 911. It also has stump-pulling torque, and an 11,000 lb towing capacity. People don’t generally race their pickip trucks, but they do tow stuff, pull vehicles out of stuck situations, etc.
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Electrical power. Also a big selling point of other electric trucks. Do not discount the value of being able to power a remote jobsite from your truck. 113kWh is 12 Tesla Powerwalls worth of energy. It will run a typical household for several days, and can easily power the tools on a job site. Although if I were welding I’d probably bring a frame generator along. Oh, and Tesla also has 50 kWh ‘range extender’ battery available, giving you 470 miles of range and even more power for the jobsite. Takes up a third of the bed, though.
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4-wheel steering, and drive by wire. Ever had to manhandle a large truck around in tight spaces? What a pain. The Cybertruck looks like it’s a breeze. Turning radius of a Model S, variable ratio steering… Awesome. That might sell a few truck shoppers after they test drive it.
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Air suspension. This fixes the problem with the raised side rails, and makes loading and unloading the bed easier. And if you have to drive through mud and snow, or want to rock crawl, you can raise the truck to 17" of ground clearance with a flat, armored underbelly. With 33" wheels, it might be one of the best off-road trucks around. Farmers love that. They constantly drive pickups off-road, and getting stuck in a mud pit or getting high centered is always a risk.
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Stainless panels. Those panels are strong. How many people with $80,000 work trucks enjoy seeing them get dented and scratched on a job site, or won’t take them into the bush for fear of scrapes and dents? The idea that a Cybertruck can be put through all kinds of jobsite abuse or trail abuse and not take any visible damage should be a good selling feature.
Why might they not buy a Cybertruck?
- Looks. Some people won’t get past it.
- It’s electric, with all the downsides that brings for work trucks. It will be hard to charge at home without spending a fortune, just like the Lightning. Towing and loads may kill range.
About that range: My guess is that the Cybertruck will work better than the others in winter, and for towing. Tesla has a heat pump, their batteries are better, and all their range estimates are already using big off-road tires. Some of the other trucks get their range from highly optimizing everything including tires, aero, etc. So as soo as you put on different tires range goes down. Load the bed, range goes down. Tow something, range goes WAY down. Try to tow something in -20 weather in snow, and you might as well stay in bed.
Tesla has induction motors in back instead of normal brushed or brushless DC motors. They are more efficient, provide high power over a larger range of RPM, and use electronic speed controllers for very fine control. We’ll see if that translates into better towing performance, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it did.
The Cybertruck isn’t a full exoskeleton without a frame. In aviation we’d call it a semi - monococque design. The skin takes a good chunk of the load, but there are also giant formed stampings that are structural as well. This makes the Cybertruck super stiff, and floppiness is the bane of light trucks. So that might sell a few truck buyers as well.
The bulletproof thing is a ‘gimmick’, but don’t be surprised if the Cybertruck becomes the new favored ride of rappers, gangstas, and people who live in areas with lots of crime and carjackings. That could raise its cachet and make it cool.
It’s still too expensive, though. There’s a market for $80,000-$100,000 pickup trucks, but it’s nowhere near the size of the $40,000 work truck and fleet markets.
This is going to be a huge boon for their upcoming $25k model. Even if the CT doesn’t sell well, it will serve as a technology demonstrator. A practical $25k EV absolutely has to drive down costs in every respect. Every pound they shave off means you can get away with a smaller battery. Every bit of copper they remove drives down material costs. And every wrist-thick wiring harness they can reduce to a thin ribbon reduces assembly costs.
I think it was the Cammisa video that mentioned how a number of components in the car are connected with a simple ribbon with just power, ground, and ethernet conductors. Thin, flexible, light, and easy to manufacture.
EPA certifications just dropped:
Cyberbeast
AWD model
Nothing we didn’t know in there, as best I can tell. But good to see anyway.
Origin of the design?
True, someone has to go first. They may never really make it to the $25k mark, still, getting anywhere close to the prices of equivalent conventional vehicles at a profit would be huge and you’re going to need that sort of new tech to do that.
Not just new tech alone, but a change in how production is divided. Other automakers have for decades now been outsourcing components to a huge, multi-tiered supply chain. The advantage is that suppliers have an interest in optimizing their products and can amortize development costs across multiple customers.
The disadvantage is that it freezes a certain division of labor into place, and makes it almost impossible to optimize across these boundaries. It also creates chicken-and-egg problems like with the 48v thing: suppliers aren’t going to create 48v compatible components unless they can guarantee a large number of customers, but automakers aren’t going to build 48v cars unless they can source every required component. So nothing gets done, even though the idea of 48v systems has been around for decades.
I don’t know what Tesla did, but they probably in-sourced even more production, possibly including “dumb” stuff like the motors for power windows and seats. Possibly they invested in suppliers and guaranteed a certain production rate, but that’s not really their style. Probably there are still a few 12v systems, but with local power conversion circuits (which are pretty cheap these days).
I did have a laugh at this article I ran across:
https://whma.org/overview-of-48-volt-systems-in-the-automotive-industry/
In particular:
It is predicted that by 2025, one-fifth of all cars sold globally will have a 48V system. The good news for our industry is the necessity for more wiring systems.
Snert. The “Wiring Harness Manufacturing Association” is hoping that everyone will wire up dual 12/48v systems, and that will create even more work for them. But it looks like that’s not going to happen, and wiring harnesses will get massively simpler with 48v/Ethernet systems for power/data. For the automakers that actually go through with the transition, at least.
Probably a FOAF / UL story.
One of our (former?) members here worked for a major US automaker and had been to their disassembly labs. A multi-billion dollar company like Ford or MB would just buy a couple (few?) Teslas to keep and disassemble at their leisure. And keep all the subsystems and reverse engineer what they could. That’s certainly what this fellow’s company had done.
Having a marathon weekend dissasembly-reassembly relay race is too dumb to pass the laugh test.
It was reported in fairly mainstream news:
And the original German reporting:
Maybe not all that happened in a single weekend, but the basic elements of the story seem true.
I agree that it’s not unusual for an auto manufacturer to disassemble its competitors’ vehicles. What was weird here was doing so to a rental car. I assume manufacturers in other industries do the same thing, but again only after buying the product.
FWIW: Der Spiegel, Die Welt and Die Zeit is the german equivalent of Newsweek, Time Magazine and The Economist:
TLDR: The rental company found location data from Sindelfingen (MB-Testground) and a racetrack in spain (!) and started investigating furter what has happened to the Tesla (2017)
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couldn’t figure out how to post a google-translate of this pages - so you need to run it through GT on your own
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. Germany is looking for a connection to the electric car - using unusual methods. Daimler rented a Tesla Model X via Sixt, disassembled the car and tested it under extreme conditions. Damage: Several thousand euros. .
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Well, thank you. Clearly I’m quite wrong about that.
Color me mystified MB would be that ham-handedly clueless.