The Mighty Cybertruck Keeps Getting Stuck in the Snow
The Mighty Cybertruck Keeps Getting Stuck in the Snow
Numerous online videos and images have been posted showing Tesla's Cybertruck getting stuck in typical wintery conditions.
LOL
Some more Tesla LOLs https://futurism.com/categories/advanced-transport/page/2
What a garbage article. Elon sucks, the cyber truck sucks, but an article about tweets is less than worthless. Perhaps the article instead of assuming elon just "didn't have time to run tesla properly", should dig a bit deeper and demonstrate that tesla was successful despite elon, not because of elon. Same with Space-X or Star-link.
Now as far as why the cyber truck is getting stuck in snow, tires is the low-effort answer, but maybe look at the weight of the truck versus the contact area. Maybe look at how the traction control system works? How about whether the car is front wheel bias vs rear-wheel biased. Does it make assumptions about which wheels have contact to the ground? Does it have a differential or are all 4 wheels independently controlled? (I don't know the answer to any of these by the way, but if I were concerned about a vehicle getting stuck in the snow, I'd certainly want an analysis that addresses all of the above.)
Welcome to modern “journalism”, throwing together a few sentences based on twitter and reddit posts, without any research or asking experts.
"Another user said...."
It's so ridiculously low quality journalism it's embarrassing
I see Jersey schmucks up here with their pavement princess trucks getting stuck in the snow all the time. I see locals in a Corolla or fiesta or other tiny light car make it just fine in deep snow. One of my bosses at the ski mountain used to drive a mini Cooper an hour to work every day.
This is a skill issue.
One of the most satisfying things for me is driving my wife's little Mirage in the snow. With normal all season tires it does great, with proper snow tires it's completely unstoppable - that is, until you need to stop.
It turns out that accelrating and stopping a 2,000 pound car on ice and snow is easier than it is with a 4,000 pound vehicle.
Nah it's more of a weight distribution issue. Pickup trucks in general are terrible at this. Engine, cab, transmission, basically everything is over the front axle but they are rear wheel drive.
Cybertruck doesn't have this problem.
Growing up my mom lived on one of the biggest hills in a town that was basically all hills. She remembers when it snowed they'd watch all kinds of cars and trucks get stuck trying to make it up that hill, and then watch a guy in a little VW beetle go right up the hill like it was nothing, perfectly happy will of that engine weight right over the rear drive wheels.
Years later I'm a new driver borrowing my parents's cars, a '93 RWD ranger, and a '92 Buick century, and that comparison did a good job of driving home how much difference that weight distribution matters. The ranger had some pretty good grippy tires, but without any weight in the bed, it didn't take much to make those wheels spin. The buick, on the other hand, handled snow beautifully, it had all the weight of that big boat-like front end over those front drive wheels, never once struggled to find traction, the only limiting factor was that it sat pretty low to the ground so it didn't take too much snow before that front end was just trying it's damnedest to plow through snow. If some mad scientist ever thought to lift an old Buick a few inches, I'm pretty confident that 4wd/AWD would become all but obsolete.
Nah, trucks get stuck in snow all the time. The tires are so expensive that a lot of people don't bother getting winter tires. Rear wheel drive trucks (very common) are notoriously bad because there just isn't enough weight in the back to get traction (many people put bags of sand in the bed in winter for traction). 4WD encourages more confident driving, but 4WD doesn't help with braking.
Don't buy a truck for winter driving, buy snow tires and chains. That'll help you stop and turn, which is far more important than accelerating.
skill? sometimes. the fact that those corollas and mini coopers only weigh a fraction of those huge trucks probably has something to do with it, too...
Weight and weight distribution are both important, but a pickup will usually perform better in snow with more weight, like 500 lbs of sand in the bed usually does the trick.
How you apply power to the road surface is also very important. Not enough weight and you will just spin tires. Break too aggressively and you lock up. Pedal to the floor and your tires are spinning. Overcorrect your turns when you start to slide and you'll never get back straight.
My car is a little older and actually drives better in snow with the traction control off.
I’d feel like such an asshole driving one of these things. If someone gave me one for free, I wouldn’t even want to park it in front of my house.
Sell it for some extra cash.
How is this thing still real?
They set out to make the truck version of the Delorean and succeeded.
How do we know it is? I suspect all photos of the thing are AI-generated deepfakes. 😜
I've seen them in the wild, I live in the bay area. They look worse than in the pictures. The brushed steel catches every speck of dirt and oil. It's like they're driving a damn crock-pot.
The engineers unironically ask themselves the same question. None of them wanted to do the project
https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-engineers-cybertruck-secret-design
I don't know, it don't even support to wash it.
Mighty? It was a joke from the start. The only reason for buying it is a novelty for collectors. I don't think it was ever meant to be driven.
I thought it was sarcasm but then i saw the name of the website
All season tires in snow = a terrible time
All seasons with a tiny sidewall = bad news pretty much anywhere but pavement.
Although I do think Tesla needs to work on their traction control system to better mimic having locked differentials after seeing the hill climb video from a few weeks ago. This should be able to be performed via an OTA update though.
Probably bad tires to be honest. Bad tires for a hideous truck: a loosing recipe.
Too bad the tires are tied to the wheel and can't just be exchanged
they aren't tied to the wheel, just the hubcaps. If you want to run it without the hubcaps, you can put whatever tire you want on it.
Really?! That is so more shittier than I thought!
And actual human beings purchased those things?
What, pray tell, are you talking about?
I remember MKBHD made a comment about the snow possibly being an issue opening the doors as well. Hoping these things were actually tested in super cold conditions
Tesla and tested?
That's what "launch edition" Teslas are for.
Tesla claims they've tested it with 3/4 inches of ice and should work on an inch. I'm sure we'll find out soon enough either way
Truck built for truck things fails at truck things
Could we assume that if you're stupid enough to buy that ghastly monstrosity, you're probably not a very good driver either?
Holy shit that thing is ugly..
Maybe if it didn't weigh 3 tons...
Weight is actually a good thing in the snow. Too light of a vehicle and it's hard to get any traction without something like tracks.
The struggling in the snow is most likely an issue of tires. If someone put some all terrain or ideally snow tires, I'm sure it'd do significantly better.
Weight is actually a good thing in the snow. Too light of a vehicle and it's hard to get any traction without something like tracks.
Absolutely not true. @6:30
Who would have guessed that an offroad vehicle designed in socal only works on bare, dry, triassic limestone.
Remember how well the Delorian didn't do? Mush has one that's going to do 1,000 times worse. Way to go boy genius.
The Delorean might've been fine if they hadn't tried to build it in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and if John Delorean hadn't been entrapped with drug trafficking charges. Musk doesn't have those excuses.
No, he doesn't. I'd say his being in the right place at the right time streak is nearing an end.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Tesla touts that its Cybertruck is "durable and rugged enough to go anywhere" on its website, but apparently snow may be its kryptonite after numerous online videos and pictures have showed the electric vehicle getting stuck in typical wintery conditions.
An Instagram user posted a video of a Cybertruck slipping and getting stuck in about four inches of snow in an unspecified location.
"There's literally a sedan like thirty feet ahead of it that made it all the way to a parking space," joked podcaster and journalist Robert Evans.
And back in December, a TikTok video also showed a stuck Cybertruck being pulled up by a sports utility vehicle on a slight incline of snow and ice.
All this content showing its performance in real-world conditions doesn't bode well for a vehicle that's being hyped as the next big thing in the lucrative consumer truck sector.
Regardless, the news doesn't come at a good time for Tesla's Cybertruck, which has had to contend with range and quality control issues, in addition to numerous delays and production problems.
The original article contains 388 words, the summary contains 176 words. Saved 55%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Shitty truck performs shittily.
Fixed their headline.
There is not a single good thing about the Cybertruck.
Several comments about tires being the issue. I've driven through worse with a simple set of all-seasons - is there something special about EV tires that make them perform so poorly in these conditions?
Low rolling resistance tires tend to be not very great in snow. They get that low rolling resistance partly by not having a very sticky compound, and partly by not having a very aggressive tread pattern (among other things, I'm sure). Both of those factors are going to have an impact on traction on anything but dry pavement.
It might also be due to other design choices. I've got a 2015 Ford Fusion PHEV, and I had a 2013 Fusion Hybrid before that; they suck so bad in the snow with normal all-season tires that I have to keep a finger on the electric parking brake switch to make sure I can stop if there's any snow on the ground.
I bet it has traction control which is great in wet conditions, and light snow. Get over 5" of snow and traction control is worthless if you start to get stuck.
So apparently after a quick search, I found that the truck does indeed have traction control, and it's buried somewhere in a submenu of it's touch screen controls. So I bet more than likely stuff like this is happening because the controls are not easily found and readily available to turn off when you need it.
Hell on my Jetta it's on the panel by the emergency brake. Easy to find and turn off.
Hubris?
I’ve driven through worse in a 1980s manual pickup with bald tires. It wasn’t pretty driving, but the truck didn’t get stuck either.
Edit: Not that I'm trying to show bravado or anything. Whole state was closed down in a state of emergency and my retail boss said I had to come in, and in 'mericuh you can't lose your job! Kudos all go to the bald tire truck. Nobody should ever try this.
You drove through this same location...? On the same day...? In a comparable pickup truck?
I'm curious if this is a "Cyber Truck" issue or an electric vehicle / drive train issue. I mean, do the electric motors in these vehicles have "gears"?
It's the tires
The harder and small the tire, the better the range.
Good truck/snow tires are huge and a little flat, pretty much the opposite.
They likely switched tires last minute to try and hide the horrible range
I have a different electric truck with 21" tires, and it does fine in the snow. It even has a snow mode. The weight might make it even better than some pickups.
This is the tires or something else with the design, for sure.
Technically they have gears, but not as you normally think of gears.
In my opinion, Partially it's an electric vehicle thing (lots of torque) and partially it's a software thing (wheel slip and torque control algorithms) The suspension design and tire size choice could affect this as well, but not as much in my opinion as the previous points.
If you're driving in the snow you don't want a lot of torque starting out. When I'd drive a manual transmission I'd start off in 2nd rather than 1st for this reason.
Electric motors are famous for having maximum torque instantly, so unless it's got an accurate wheel slip sensor it will apply too much torque and just spin.
Then there's the problem of it being super heavy. The best car I ever drove in the snow was a Scion xA. It was so light it would float above any accumulation. My motor scooter was even better.
mostly seems like a tire issue. These things come with all seasons made for fuel efficiency, not traction.
It's not an electric vehicle thing... Plenty of other EVs do fine in the snow. Mine even has a snow drive mode and it does pretty great on all season tires.
Snow is 90% about tires. Proper snow tires make a dramatic difference. I'm sure any other truck would get stuck in the same place. They have MUCH poorer weight distribution.
From another thread on this topic, I've learned that apparently the cybertruck uses custom tires that are the only ones that fit on the stock wheels. In other words, if you want tires that function properly in the snow you've got to replace the wheels themselves, too.
If you're getting a separate set of winter tires you're going to need another set of wheels anyway. I mean you could have them switched to the same wheels and be rebalanced twice a year but I don't know anyone who does that. Here everyone simply just has two sets of wheels.
I mean, it's a large American pickup truck. We all know that it's only a matter of time before those rims are replaced with polished aluminum trashcans
Lol no, I drive a 2011 GMC Serria 2500HD in rural Michigan, USA and my truck would have no problem going up that. In fact my driveway goes up a hill that is far taller than the one shown and most of the time I don't even have to turn on 4 wheel drive. I don't even have snow tires as my all terrains work just fine (as a former autotech I do highly recommend snow tires though). For the weight distribution, yes, but that's also why we throw weight in the bed over the rear axle which solves that real easy.
The problem with the cyber truck is it was designed by people who don't use trucks for a techbro demographic who don't need trucks.
There's no way you can know that.