The Cybertruck's steel is made in "coils that resemble giant rolls of toilet paper," WSJ reported.
The stainless steel body of Tesla's Cybertruck is reportedly leading to issues with gaps in between the panels::The Cybertruck's steel is made in "coils that resemble giant rolls of toilet paper," WSJ reported.
Point 2 in particular is huge. Depending on the exact alloy steel can vary wildly in characteristics. One alloy might bend almost as easily as aluminum, while another might be nearly as hard as tungsten. Adding to that proper heat treatment and the difference in the mechanical characteristics of the finished product can be absolutely massive.
I saw one of the “RC” release candidates in the wild in San Francisco two weeks ago. It looked like shit in person. Marker lights weren’t aligned, the stainless already had fucked up scuffs and discoloration, etc. Water spots showed up just like my stainless kitchen sink.
You can see the stainless smudges and water spots here. I wish I got the tail lights when the brakes were off.
Similar to the one I saw in Oregon a few weeks ago. It had fingerprint smudges all over the body. Seems like it'd be a huge pain to keep clean and probably need a sealant or clear wrap over the top.
I'm hoping shareholders do push him out. They're still in a great position to compete if they focus on the right things (build quality, designing cars people actually want, etc). The charging network is still the best around and they're still ahead in battery tech, but they need to stop chasing FSD and give up on this cybertruck thing.
Don't you know that the revolution eats its children? The electric cars revolution is over. Tesla was part of the revolution. Now Tesla is obsolete and the others are going to take over.
I doubt anything but a man child would have gone with stainless steel.
But the normal Tesla build quality and gaps would still be there. Because that would involve major overhauls and retraining and is never going to happen while the company is successful... And won't happen if the board is looking to sell
Not a Tesla fan but this article is garbage. Basically all sheet metal comes on coils "that resemble toilet paper" including the metal that other manufacturers use.
It definitely seems like an irrelevant point. All car sheet steel arrives in rolls.
I'd be more concerned about how it is formed into panels, how resistant it is to corrosion, what tolerances parts have, how easy is it to replace parts, whether there are visible production flaws due to it being naked steel, and if construction techniques or material thickness makes it more dangerous to occupants or pedestrians in collisions.
I certainly won't be surprised if pictures start appearing in a year or two of cybertrucks that have been completely fucked by salt water corrosion, or heat warppage or other issues caused by their design.
The missing point is it's a property of stainless steel that it remembers being a coil and can unflatten itself weeks later if the manufacturer doesn't know how to work around that.
I've worked with stainless steel (specifically 304, 430 and 401) for 15 years and the steel shouldn't have a memory after being run through a de-coiling machine that is configured properly. Excessive heat in a focused area would definitely cause it to warp but this can usually be overcome by adding geometry to stiffen the parts. It seems like the team at Tesla is missing a step somewhere.
What’s funny to me is how fast the Korean car companies learned “metal bending.” They went from generic easy shapes with little forming to adding in creases all over the damn car just to prove they could do it and replicate it, and they did that in the span of a couple decades at the most.
Well at least Elon can pretend that all the panels were within 10 microns of gap when they left the factory, and it totally warped 2 cm (20000 microns) on the way to the customers.
So wait. You're telling me that materials can expand and contract due to many conditions such as shifts in temperature? Ya don't say (that was directed at Elon, not you).
Sure, he could say that. It's still his/Tesla's fault. Shipping the product is part of the process, and they'd still be responsible for that (or should be at least. Who knows in this dystopia).
He'd probably just say that it arrived in perfect shape, the customer just fucked it up and are lying. Or something like that.
What a surprise! The other well known stainless steel car, the Delorean DMC-12, is FAMOUS for being a huge pain in the ass to work on. Dents and dings are tremendous problems, and stainless steel is super heavy.
Probably not in this case. Most vehicle doors are designed to channel any water that enters the gap. But, Tesla may not be aware of this practice and rely only on the seals.
You should see the videos of model Y owners (a model they've had many iterations on) roll down their window during rain to get a drive through order and the water pours into the open window directly onto the, you guessed it, button console used to open/close the window and DOOR. I'm sure that won't eventually cause problems. With OPENING THE DOOR.
And it's not just falling rain, it literally channels rain from the glass roof directly into any open window. It's hilarious.
Much like the wealthy expert who built his own sub, there is a need to listen to other experts. Your employees that aren't fired will be the "yes" people
Every single thing you've ever had that had sheet metal in it came from "coils that resemble giant rolls of toilet paper". But it's the WSJ, I just assume the writer has never met anyone who works for a living.
Metal does not like to compress at all. But when you make it really thin it will be floppy like a spring you might find in a pen or wind up toy. However you can make it stiff again by making it curved so the sheet has structure/mass going on all directions. Infact believe it or not cars during the 1960/70s had quite a bit of curves dispute being a brick. And that's because they didn't want the panels to dent easily. So when a car has flat faces like the Cyber truck. Those panels don't even have subtle curves to give them structure and they are soo suspectable to dents that a simple brease does the job of denting them.
I assume the flat panels have an aerodynamic effect like the underbody of race cars. They ultimately create forces sucking the surface into a direction. And since on the sides it will be never stable it will flap around all the time. You can see that the most with the vertical fin stabilizer of Formula 1 cars. https://old.reddit.com/r/F1Technical/comments/nd2ayw/alpine_flexible_rearwing/
Here is a lot of wobbling and while the vertical changes are intended, the horizontal ones surely aren't and they tried to make it as stiff as possible. Certainly nothing a production car would achieve.
Correct me if I am wrong, as I didn't study this particular area.
I love how this is a joke that just went too far. Elon presented a stupid design, just for attention, as with everything he does. And now they are seriously taking about releasing the ugliest car since the Fiat Multipla.
I mean in the end it is a sign of sloppy craftsmanship. The gaps themselves might not be so bad, but they reflect an alarming lack of quality control, that could very well affect more critical systems.
If I can't trust you to make a good looking turd, how can I trust you to make an actual quality product?
If they were smart, they would pursue nitinol body panels or a similar memory metal. Get a ding in a panel? Take a heat gun to it or leave it out in the sun and the dent is gone. Another benefit would be a ~25% weight reduction.
All they would have to do is figure how to make large panels; which is no easy task, but neither is rocket science. The patent licensing could be a major revenue stream.
Nitinol is an alloy of 60% nickel and 40% titanium (usually). It can be used in memory materials or to capture energy from heat. Basically it can be bent when it's below a certain temperature (like a regular metal) and it creates force to restore its shape when it's heated.
Yes, I did learn that by playing modded Factorio. Why do you ask?
The Cybertruck's stainless steel body has been difficult to work with, especially when it comes to the vehicle's fit and finish, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
In October, Tesla set a delivery event for the first Cybertrucks for November 30 after two years of delays — and there's signs the truck will have a smaller release than initially expected.
Meanwhile, Musk has warned that it will be difficult to scale production due to the vehicle's unusual design and said the company aims to produce about a quarter million Cybertrucks per year by 2025.
"When you've got a product with a lot of new technology or any brand new vehicle program, especially one that is as different and advanced as the Cybertruck, you will have problems proportionate to how many new things you're trying to solve at scale," Musk said during Tesla's earnings call last month.
Yet despite the enthusiasm, some Tesla fans have already taken to criticizing the design, including the vehicle's enormous windshield wiper and images of its finger-print smudged doors, as well as misaligned panels.
Auto expert Sandy Munro previously told Insider it's unfair to judge the vehicle based off of images of early Cybertruck prototypes.
The original article contains 589 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 66%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Sandy Munro is a legit car reviewer. His firms tears down vehicles and predict reliability based on what they find among other things. He's a pretty well respected industry guide.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Munro
Sandy Munro lost all credibility when it came out that, while going on about all these wild claims about Tesla's incredible manufacturing prowess and how everyone else was shit, he held a fair bit of Tesla stock and even went on to gloat about how much he made off it during 2020.
Absolutely zero integrity and no reason to trust a single word he says anymore, because not only has he shown that he won't disclose serious conflicts of interest, but that he'll also gladly abuse them for personal gain. He realized he can make way more money shilling Tesla and selling merch than he ever did with his normal business, and rides off his company's past reputation.
Even if you ignore that, his analyses are basically entirely cost focused, and having seen some of the reports on projects I personally know quite well, he takes an incredibly simplistic view towards component design and focuses on almost entirely on cost/simplicity, with basically zero regard for longevity, function, NVH, etc. Which, for the massive 500+ page reports that are purely for cost and build analysis, is totally fine. However, he then spouts it to the public as if everyone else is an idiot for not wanting their cars to be rattling shitboxes.
He'll praise things like Tesla re-using the suspension from the Model 3 1:1 onto the Model Y because it saves on manufacturing costs and such, but will completely ignore that, until some fairly recent part changes, the Y had literally one of the single worst rides of anything on the road today, because they added 100s of pounds of weight and didn't even bother to change the spring rates.
I truly applaud the attempt to radically innovate, from stainless steel to eliminate car rust (how much of it truly is stainless, mechanically speaking?), to major aesthetical design overhaul (even though it does not appeal to me at all). With so much innovation, delays ought to be expected
That being said, everything else is just atrocious. Production issues are blamed on unexpected delays because of innovation and vice versa. It just screams project mismanagement. This thing should't have been revealed at all. Also, why the fuck does this have bullet proof glass? A truck for the apocalypse? Are they trying to sell an APC? Who asked for any of that?
The glass isn't bullet proof, although it's toughened. The body panels are supposed to be bullet proof (obviously only up to a certain point, as nothing is ever bullet proof against everything).
I think the bullet proof nature of the panels is more of a happy accident with the stainless being used just being very tough to begin with.
Worked for a car manufacturer doing statistical analysis on gap & flushness all over the exterior... And the door gaps are a bitch to get right. Probably the most difficult ones over the whole car. All the manufacturers struggle with this to a degree. This is also the one place where part quality is probably most critical.
The other gaps are usually handled by designing the angles in a beneficial way etc. When they show up in a bigger way it's almost always bad design.
that the truck is not designed or built right has been obvious from the getgo. Similar issues are found in all Tesla products, i'm not sure why we're pretending otherwise
electric ground vehicles are not going to save the world
anti-T articles almost as many pro-T. pics or it didn't happen. did see some showroom, not rc, that are pretty defect free. get ready. delivery day in 2, 1...