Actually, Tesla is a small automaker.
I don’t think that’s true anymore. They’re in the top 10 globally, higher if we’re looking at North American sales, and produce more than twice as many cars annually than Mazda. They’re bigger than Mercedes, BMW, Renault, and rapidly approaching Nissan.
Having a very small turning radius is a good thing. Off road the turns can be sharp and trails narrow because of holes, rocks, cliffs, etc. On road just getting a big truck into a regular parking spot can be a real challenge. Being able to make a very tight turn helps in both cases.
I’m sorta in the market for something like the Cybertruck. Current big loads/bad roads vehicle (a 95 Tahoe) has become an unreliable maintenance hog. I really like the idea of a 4-motor drive train for the bad roads portion of the mission. Would like to have something that isn’t burning 11-15mpg going anywhere.
However I’m not sold on 100% electric. Would prefer hybrid. The charging infrastructure doesn’t exist out in the remote canyons/mountains that are the reason for a bad roads truck (to me anyway). Maybe put a generator in the frunk and then have to listen to it the whole time the you’re camping?
Don’t think it has enough storage space for the “big loads” portion of the mission. Maybe if they made one with a bigger bed and no back seat? Hard to find that in any trucks these days. On the Rivian the SUV model can handle a longer load than the pickup.
And then price. Can’t remotely afford a $100k truck. Could maybe stretch to $50k. So, not selling one to me.
Yeah, it is, but putting it in the context of a go-kart track is dumb and not very useful. Also, they don’t really define what they’re comparing it against. I looked it up, the Cybertruck basically has the turning radius of a Subaru Outback, around 17.5 feet. Very nice for something it’s size, but not amazing and not something you can’t get elsewhere in an off-road package. If you really want a tight turning radius, you’ll go with an even smaller vehicle. Jeeps can apparently run around 16.5 if you equip it right.
Agreed as to huge improvements in TC in recent years, but there’s still plenty of new vehicles that could use some better TC. Quarter mile times for RWD cars, especially high horsepower ones, are all over the place. They’re very hard to launch. AWD cars do better. Teslas are super predictable. They launch so well that driver skill is almost a non-factor.
That’s not what I said. There are two salient points here:
- If you do bend the truck, how resilient/repairable is it?
- How likely is it that the truck is bent in the first place?
If the CT is 10x or 100x more rigid in the first place, then the first point is irrelevant. But while there are better and worse ladder frames, none of them are good.
I suspect I could get a noticeable deflection on a typical truck bed just by bouncing on one corner of the rear bumper. The truck easily springs back. So what? It’s bad that it deflected that much in the first place. The same experiment on the CT would cause no damage and also no deflection.
The 3-motor version does in the rear. On single-motor axles, they have a physical locking differential. And of course all have the standard traction control systems where a slipping wheel gets the brakes applied to send grip to the others, and there’s no front-back differential on any of them. The CT undoubtedly has all kinds of modes for various situations, or at least will once they get the software fully tuned.
Yeah, we’re not talking about the same thing at all. I’m talking about running it into a tree or rolling it over, not jumping up and down in the bed. I looked up what I could for that sort of thing. I found one leaked vid of a Cybertruck that was in a rollover test. It looks about as bent up as I’d expect it to be. If those outer panels really are the frame, you’ve bent it.
https://electrek.co/2023/09/07/see-what-a-tesla-cybertruck-looks-like-after-crashing-into-a-ditch/
Whatever that was involved in would have totaled any vehicle. I mean, if you want to argue that after a crash that destroyed the cab and the bed and the engine and the drivetrain and popped all the airbags, you might still be able to bend the ladder frame back into shape and salvage it… I won’t argue that.
Well, a rollover is an extreme example, but it does happen and body on frame vehicles actually do get repaired after them.
I’m also thinking about the less extreme incidents that happen to off-roaders such as eating a tree or a boulder on one corner. In a body on frame vehicle, you really haven’t hurt the functionality of the vehicle until you’ve damaged the frame or part of the suspension. So, you can generally keep using the vehicle until you can afford to repair it (insurance isn’t normally going to cover damage done off-road). In a unibody vehicle, you’ve bent the frame, and it’s unlikely that the wheels and suspension are where you’d really want them to be. It doesn’t seem that 10x-100x more rigid (interestingly wide range that is) is rigid enough to make much of a difference in that case. The truck’s still heavy enough to bend it.
I’m spitballing to an extent. Hagerty gave some numbers here:
So, approximately 10x better than the (traditional) unibody Maverick. The F-150 gets a “near zero”, which probably means the CT is more like 100x better. But without tests it’s hard to give a tighter range.
The CT still has crumple zones. If the large castings aren’t damaged (and they wouldn’t be in moderate cases like hitting a tree at low speed), then it should be fairly repairable. The stainless panels are still weaker than the castings and would serve to absorb impact energy.
Also, replacing a steel panel is a bolt-on. No paint to match, etc.
Also, a truck that doesn’t scratch or dent or rust, and which is heavily software upgradeable when new features come aling, should hold its resale value better than most.
Hehehe, without tests, it’s hard to believe much of what Tesla spouts. I’m sure those numbers might have some basis in reality, but they’re certainly going to be the tests that make the most favorable case for the Tesla. Heck, the image itself explains how it’s at least partly bullshit. Plus, the Maverick also has the same potential problems as the Tesla when it comes to repairing it. I wouldn’t be willing to take either far off road if they were mine.
Pretty much everything in a body-on-frame is bolt on, as well. The difference between getting a relatively rare stainless panel vs getting a normal panel and painting it will probably favor the painted panel.
I’m never interested in resale value in a vehicle. I always plan to drive them into the ground.
Not me. Each time I replace a car, it might be a little worse than it’s predecessor in one aspect but better in most ways. Maybe a little more power costs me higher fuel costs but the newer one will also be safer and quieter. There’s no way I’d still enjoy the 2007 car I was driving 10 years ago. By now it’d have over 200k miles on it, I’d find it noisy, and I’d be tired of that bipolar engine (it was a Honda Civic Si).
My Tesla is the 1st car that is better at everything than any car I’ve owned before. It’s also the cheapest to operate. Based on that, if I were somehow in the market for an $80,000+ truck, the CT would be the first one I’d look at.
Heheh, we’re obviously different folks. Since 2007, I’ve been through 4 different cars: 2007 Mini Cooper S (Ugh, don’t own a BMW after 100K miles. It was already in senescence), 2012 WRX hatchback (still have it. Useful, a rocket ship, and somehow still boring to drive), 2017 Honda Fit (gave it to my niece + nephew when they needed a car, still loved it), 2019 BRZ (still have it, relatively slow, but fun as hell to drive).
Of course, I used to put 20-30K miles on a car every year before Covid. Not anymore! The BRZ hasn’t hit 30K miles yet. It and the WRX may very well be the last cars I own at this rate. I’m totally fine with that.
We’re not so different. I had a 2008 Honda Fit, then the Civic Si. When it was totaled, I considered a WRX but bought a GTI, which I later replaced with a Golf R.
I’m still driving my 210 Honda Fit. It’s only at 63,000 miles so I expect to still be driving it for a few more years. It’s been in two accidents, neither of which was my fault, and received extensive repairs after both. The most recent was less than six months ago and the insurance company spent almost $7,000 fixing it. I was actually surprised they didn’t total it.
Wow, I am surprised as well. That’s basically the value of a Fit from that year, and common wisdom is that they total anything where the repair costs approaches 3/4 of the value of the vehicle.
I still miss my Fit. It was a manual, and you could beat it to death like a loon and not get to “Please take me straight to jail!” speeds.
They recovered the cost from the other driver’s insurance, so that may have helped.
+1
one more on the “sometimes good is good enough” old car driver here (hey, also a Honda Fit! 2003 or 2005 not sure …)
95% of all the people drive better cars (most belonging to the bank) than I do …
… but I own a house that is better than 95% of the houses of those with better cars than me…
Pick the asset class you want to put your money into… (and if you are smart you chose the one that appreciates) 