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.
The Cybertruck’s steel is made in “coils that resemble giant rolls of toilet paper,”
All steel is shipped from the steel mill in coils just like that.
Other manufacturers of all manner of stainless products seem to have figured out a solution to the problem.
Seems like tesla has an answer too:
sell the poorly made trucks to rubes while you crank out more as cheaply as possible.
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.
Also, the brakes flashed at you. Super annoying.
It’s not even smudge free stainless? LMAO
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.
QC issues aside, the design is pure ass
I thought it might grow on me but the flat tailgate looks absolutely atrocious like a door on some shitty commercial freezer or something.
Right? It’s not even a truck, but is somehow even worse.
It’s one of the biggest pieces of evidence (besides X…) of Musk’s growing mental illness and bubble of sycophants. I’m sure many very respected people in the field told him this would be a Very Bad Idea. I doubt any still work at Tesla. They should’ve had the first EV truck to market, now they’re left only with this abomination.
Well, Duh. Everything is over promise, delay, underdeliver. All Teslas have crappy panel gaps. Why would anyone expect anything better?
I wonder how much better Tesla quality would be if they dumped Elon. Is it a systemic problem, or just poor leadership?
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.
Charging network doesn’t matter anymore for them since basically every manufacturer (save for VW as of this writing) has signed on for the NACS. You should be seeing fords charging at Tesla chargers by either late December or early January.
Battery tech they’re mid on. They haven’t seemed to improve the pack much compared to rivals. Some Chinese manufacturers are even producing better packs.
FSD is something they should continue to pursue, but Elon needs to pull his head out of his ass and accept that things like LiDar and Radar are important additions to the car so that it can continue to “see” even when the cameras aren’t seeing perfectly or at all.
Build quality is their biggest uphill. It could be systemic, but I also suspect there is a bit of “move it along” coming from upper management and Elon. So that’ll never get fixed.
Shouts out to NIO. My stock could use it.
They said they’re a tech company and the car is tech on wheel, so i guess it’s just competency and inexperience issue.
dumped Elon. Is it a systemic problem
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.
When they make plywood it comes wrapped up super tight in a tree
yeah. panel gaps aren’t a sheet metal issue, it’s been a Tesla issue since forever.
“Water? Like out the toilet?”
Please only wash your Cyber Truck with Brawndo™
Yeah, but other manufacturers don’t try to origami sheet metal into a car.
That’s almost exactly what they do…
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.
Well, it wouldn’t be a Tesla if it didn’t.
10 micron!
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.
Seems like the answer here is “You’re an idiot if you buy Tesla products”.
Essy lesson to learn, imo.
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.
Not to mention all of the manual labour it took to make all the panels to fit properly. No 2 delorean were the same
Depending on the grade, the weight difference between stainless steel and carbon steel of the same thickness is not much of any at all.
Don’t most cars use aluminum as well as carbon steel in their frames, to save on weight?
I doubt this has any stainless in the frame. Really it should be a comparison of stainless vs aluminum and plastic body panels
I think the majority just use regular steel. Ford was a talking point when they started using aluminum for the F150 body panels. And then they started running into corrosion issues where the aluminum meets the steel fasteners and frame.
Panel gaps are just a ubiquitous feature of a Tesla. This isn’t a surprise, and the apologists will say it’s no big deal.
I am not a car guy. Would gaps allow water to come in and causes issues as well as act like asail increasing air resistance?
It would slightly increase wind resistance. Every car has weather stripping, making water not a concern even for comparatively very large gaps.
Don’t ask questions, just hail Elon our overlord who can do no wrong!
Seig heil! Seig heil! Wait, wrong person… Or is it?!?
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.
This isn’t even the first time this has happened to a Tesla, at this point this particular problem is just expected.
Tesla’s quality control just reflects Elons concern for all his biological children.
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.
4x8 sheets are pretty popular, too.
Watch what happens when people eventually discover what completely flat panels of sheet metal do in heavy wind.
There is literally a reason why no other auto manufacturer uses flat body panels on cars.
Just so I know, what does happen?
they get real flappy
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.
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
This is a problem with all of their vehicles lol
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.
Fiat Multipla
Damn that’s a goofy lookin car. Looks almost like the car that Homer Simpson designed.
I had to look it up. I was not expecting your joke to be literal. It does look like Homer’s car! Just without the second dome.
Should have just been left as a quirky concept car. Obviously divisive design but I think it looks best under specific lighting conditions.
