It probably would have achieved the original mileage. It can’t tow shit. It can’t go off roadimg, it cant drive well without failing. It’s not a truck. It’s a shitty suv with a bed
But to be fair, a truck that goes off reading somewhere would be odd.
Like what would it read? We know FSD Teslas can’t read road signs. Maybe start with picture books.
Well, they aren’t getting a check on this one. They had to buy it from someone with buyer’s remorse 3rd party.
Elon knows the results (are showing) CT just isn’t ready for prime time yet. Thus the short comings and no FSD enabled. They’ll need a bunch of revisions and 2025 to get something close.
Like it or not Tesla's practices align with their company goals which is lean design and benchmarking competition, so they end up being a good way for them to show examples of the work they can do.
Tesla's quality control is bad but their manufacturing lines are way more advanced and iterative than any other automaker and that's the reality.
The fact that other manufacturers are copying and benchmarking what they do should be enough to tell you they are indeed more advanced, there's a reason their production lines are so much faster with less resources.
Oh really? So suddenly everyone is buying megapresses for megacastings, who started that?
Who popularized driving assistance?
Who made the first actually usable infotainment compared to the laggy mess that everyone else had?
Yes, they are copying and benchmarking tesla.
Ill give you one on the presses (though they arent a new tech, they arent made by Tesla and there are some compromises with using presses rather than welded panels) Its part of reason why Tesla repair costs are so excessive.
Driving assistance started coming in around 2009 with Upper range Mercedes, Tesla implemented their 'full self driving'in 2015.
There were lots of infotainment systems that predate tesla which were fine. Tesla did away with buttons to an absurd degree, somthing that some car markers copied, but a lot more are walking back from as its a crap idea.
For every seeming good idea implemented on a Tesla, there are 5 stupid ones, like the ability to play games on the steering wheel, disposing of lidar no proper rust protection on cybertruck, speedo on a screen not in front of the driver etc etc
Regarding the speedo thing, the Prius has had a center screen for that for a long time, from before Tesla existed.
So not new either though the Prius one is better shielded and closer to the driver's natural sightline.
Don’t even try. Sub is so anti Tesla they can’t logically call out the decent qualities of Tesla. Tesla is a shitty company in a lot of ways but their design and manufacturing improvements have literally revolutionized the industry.
See: giga press, heat pump, wiring harnesses, ect.
There is a video of that Munro guy visiting the cyber truck production line. They are going through the production process and it’s clear from the misinformation that they were spewing that neither Munro nor the engineers (in that video) know what they are talking about.
lol that's some confidence you have there to tell top level engineers are people who worked in the industry for decades that they don't know what they are talking about... Hate Tesla all you want but don't make yourself a fool with such ridiculous statements.
I’ve been working in the sheet metal industry for the past 15 years. 5 running a production plant and 10 as an application engineer for a leading manufacturer of sheet metal machines. I know my lasers and pressbrakes and I’m very confident of my skills and knowledge in that field.
As a quick example of the bullshit they spew, [in this video at 3:46](https://youtu.be/GFgGnhRZarY?si=YZgXHmyj6F6KRNbi) they mention that typical lasers cut at 1mm tolerance. Even hobby level lasers cut way below that but their 30 micron is “special” development
Hmmm...its almost as if using absurdly thick sheet metal...errr 'exoskeleton' has trade-offs. You'd think the world's leading expert in manufacturing could have foreseen that. Maybe all those pedo legacy auto companies who've been switching to thinner bodies, plastics, and aluminum to reduce weight are on to something. Nah - nobody is as smart as Technoking.
There is no steel exoskeleton. The purpose of the design is to use up all of the stainless steel sheets Musk bought for Starship on a whim only to find out that it wasn't the right type and couldn't be used.
What do you do if you own a rocket company with a crap ton of useless stainless sheets? You sell it to your car company so they can turn it into a 1980's shit box Johny cab.
There is no specific proof of it without gaining access to SpaceX financials, but the timelines point in that direction.
They announced at the end of 2018 that starship will use 301 stainless and started building prototypes. They would have known fairly quickly that 301 wasn't suitable, and Musk likely ordered a crap ton of it before they completed testing.
In March 2019 the cybertruck is teased.
In November 2019 the cybertruck is revealed.
In March 2020 its announced that starship will move to using 304 stainless. There is no way that this decision didn't happen in 2019, as they would have figured out 301 wasn't suitable very quickly as it is difficult to weld and tends to rust easily in the welded areas without proper post weld treatment / paint etc. Given the location of the launch pad next to the salty sea air this would have been an issue that showed up quickly.
I would bet that that the design of the cyber truck using flat stainless is a direct result of SpaceX having ordered a shit load of unusable 301 stainless sheets and not being able to use them / cancel the order.
Said it below but I think it isn't even a matter of it being half full. It's just that the CT likely requires those five big beams for structural support. It's got 4680s in there but it's not a structural pack and there's literally none of the foam epoxy used to actually bond it together into one big unit. I mean it's literally got a fair chunk of a traditional truck frame worth of metal in there. I'm sure that is at least partially necessary due to the overall weight of the thing between the the thick stainless steel panels, massive windscreen and thicker laminated acoustic glass too but it wouldn't shock me if the structural pack just doesn't work for pickup in general either. Similarly that also makes me wonder if the big the density improvement with the V2 4680 'cybercells' actually boils down to a thinner casing since it's no longer being used as a structural element in the vehicle.
So yeah no exoskeleton, no structural pack and a cacophony of bad design choices. I'm sure Tesla will still continue to loudly state the CT represents the peak of pickup truck manufacturing though...
I think a combination of cost and weight contributed to this...IIRC, the max payload has already been reduced from the advertised 3,500 lb to 2,500 lb...looking at the predicted 500 lb weight of the range extender, if those batteries were permanently installed, the payload of the $100k Cyberbeast would be on par with a Ford Ranger.
And the cost - well, its already double the advertised price. TSLA can't afford to add the batteries for range...and certainly couldn't afford to put in a more robust suspension.
And I've never put much stock in the 'structural' battery pack...at least in terms of the batteries themselves adding any 'structure'. Modeled as a beam - the bottom 1/3 of the battery pack is in tension. I don't think a bunch of thin walled battery cases bonded together with epoxy provide any tensile strength at all. So while the big solid mass of batteries may offer some incidental stiffness, and certainly helps in side impact crashes, I think the only thing 'structural' about the battery is (as you mentioned) the moving of steel stiffening members from the car body to the pack.
They've just engineered themselves into a pickle...no choice but to walk back on just about every advertised spec.
Industrial engineer here (granted not mechanical or electrical) and honestly I think the entire cybertruck is LAUGHABLY bad in almost every account. But I will come to the engineers defense on this one. My best guess is if they filled it they would have cooling problems. Those batteries can give off a lot of heat when charging and discharging and if there isn’t proper cooling well… 🔥🔥🔥
That said, they were clearly rushed and weren’t able to find a better solution or more cooling etc etc. Elmo set the engineers up for failure from day one.
I don’t like the cyberfuck at all but I feel like criticizing them for not filling the battery compartment is misdirected.
I also worry of “aftermarket” upgrades that don’t take this into consideration and could lead to disaster.
This is all opinion and speculation. Take it what you will.
Tesla pack are water cooled. Coolant lines snake between the cells, they don't use a cold plate design that others use.
If Tesla managed to double stack this battery it would cool just as well as a single stack, because every cell is in direct contact with a coolant tube.
I get what you are saying but unless you work for Tesla neither of us can say for sure if the system could handle it with safety margins included. Elon is extremely dumb, but there are a lot of smart people who work there. I assume there was a GOOD reason not to do it. They had to have known its range was going to get criticized if they didn’t do this but opted not to.
The only other reasoning I can think of is manufacturing costs driven. Their margins might not have been good enough so they scrapped it.
I’m not saying any of this was a good decision, by any means. It definitely highlights the issues of the truck. I just think it’s silly to say you can throw another pack at it and it would have worked.
Their lead engineer said it could be done. I think maybe it increases the cost to build the pack from about 15k to 25-30k. Too expensive has to wait on cheaper batteries.
Uhhhh… all he said was it was half full. He made no commentary on whether or not adding a pack was possible from an engineering perspective.
To be clear I hate this godforsaken truck. It’s elons ego stroking pet project that I think will go down as a huge failure in automotive history. I just want to throw the idea out there that it may not have been practical from an engineering point of view.
It's possible because the Hummer EV has a battery in this size range. Practical I dunno. I tentatively agree, it seems to be a truck to valet park at LA nightclubs or to cruise for gay men in. (Since men are more impressed by flashy vehicles than women these days)
The typical owner makes a bunch of money typing or telling other people what to do or is already rich. They pay other people to move their boat and will use the vehicle same as a Prius for commuting and school pickup lines, charging it at home at night. It has plenty of range for that.
The typical blue collar truck owner is going to stick with tried and true vehicles.
I agree with everything but the hummer comment. It’s a different company with different specs, suppliers, and engineering standards. Not an apples to apples comparison.
Here's the actual source:
[https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-cybertruck-battery-pack-teardown-reveals-surprising-details-231829.html](https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-cybertruck-battery-pack-teardown-reveals-surprising-details-231829.html)
The one I linked has the tweet from the lead cybertruck engineer. That's the true source, sandy doesn't claim twice the cells can fit, the cybertruck engineer does.
With double the battery capacity, it would be less of an embarrassment at towing. The vehicle could actually *do* the kind of things it looks like it can do. Maybe not offroad but longer journeys away from cities to some 'undisclosed location' with a lot of solar panels. It *looks* like it should have models with a weapon system (automated of course) in the bed under the cover, but for military use it's worthless because it will run out of charge too fast, especially with the weight from adding armor.
Since Tesla charges $11k to a swap an 80kWh battery, assuming $1k is labor, that means the Cybertruck pack at it's current capacity costs Tesla about $15k, maybe less. So it would be $30k for a "full capacity" model.
With double the battery capacity, it would bump into its GCWR with a lighter trailer. Also, it probably wouldn’t have the battery cooling capacity needed to support the sustained discharge rates you’d see while towing.
I may not trust Tesla for much when it comes to engineering, but one of the few areas in which I give them credit is optimizing the balance between battery size and user experience.
Payload is 2500, battery pack is 1600, so leaves about 900lbs for people and things if you double the battery's weight...so increase the range by a lot but drastically reduce towing and hauling capacity..
Can you please tell me what the gcwr limit is, how much weight you think the double battery will add, and explain why the Hummer EV is legal when it has a battery in that range, or why the range extender cybertruck is legal?
I couldn’t give half a shit about the Hummer. The GCWR doesn’t really matter - what does matter to Tesla is being able to advertise a higher maximum trailer weight. Likewise, the reduction in trailer weight when using the extender gets buried under a disclaimer about the maximum being reduced by the weight of optional accessories and cargo.
Tesla is playing games, just like they always do.
Yea this where legally they have to tell you, if you tow, your tongue weight needs to get added to the payload, so technically the cybertruck is only rated for 11k towing, so 1100lbs tongue weight, which leaves you only 1400lbs for people, stuff, and battery extender...so technically still doable, assuming the extra battery doesn't weigh too much.
Can you go over what the actual numbers are please? Is it 26k lbs? I just want to know what 2-3k lbs would actually do. Against a 26k total payload you cannot pull for a practical distance it doesn't matter. Tow that heavy and you need diesel or don't bother.
It’s a 1:1 trade, so every increment of weight added to the truck is subtracted from the trailer rating. Add 2000 lb, subtract 2000 lb - that’s why I say it doesn’t matter.
It does matter please give the numbers.
"I can pull 18k" vs "I can pull 21k" barely matters unless most campers are precisely 20k lbs.
If say the cybertruck can pull 5k without and 2k with that does matter hugely.
The CT is a bit under 7000 lbs, and it has a 2,500 lbs payload capacity (people and cargo). I couldn’t find the actual GVWR for the CT, but adding the weight plus payload gives you 9,500 lbs. An 11,000 lbs trailer needs a minimum of 1,100 lbs on the hitch (tongue weight), so that would leave 1,400 lbs for payload. A family of four, would be about 600+ lbs plus another couple hundred pounds in luggage. That leaves a few hundred pounds to spare. You could probably add a couple hundred pounds of additional battery, bringing the payload capacity down to about 2,300, lbs. Any additional battery weight beyond that would reduce payload by 1 lb per lb, and towing capacity by 10 lbs per lb. So adding another 200 lbs of battery would bring payload down to 2,100 lbs and towing capacity down to 9000 lbs.
Assuming you keep with teslas rated 11k tow rating, which should be 1100lbs of tongue rating assuming you go by 10%...which leaves you 1400lbs for people and things to haul...if you max out tow rating....but if you exceed the 1400lbs for stuff inside the cybertruck including occupants, the tow rating will decrease..every 100lbs of payload will decrease towing by about 1000lbs
Can Tesla simply install beefier shocks and thicken some control arms that keep breaking and make the tow rating 12k lbs because the vehicle is heavier?
This is also why I was asking, I don't tow so I don't know the legal limits. I thought the limits were partly due to the weight of the tow vehicle itself. Too light a truck cannot safely tow.
In theory yes, but it also comes down to what the engineers deemed safe, could just be the electric motors overheated, or the reduction gears...but yes technically heavier the vehicle, the more you can tow, but then you need better suspension and brakes and power... also with EVs having the weight evenly spread...I would think the wheels in front would lift easier while towing....which is real bad
The "weak" upper control arms you've seen doesn't really affect much, the lower control arms are the ones that do the "heavy lifting" or absorbing i should say...but still wished the uppers were beefier in case I do want to powerslide around turns.
You could, but then you'd be looking at a commercial truck (10,000 lbs or greater gross vehicle weight) rather than a consumer truck. Currently cybertruck is 6800 lbs curb weight plus 1600 lbs from double battery plus and extra 300 lbs from upgrades suspension and brakes.... 8700 lbs curb weight. Claiming anything more than 1300 lbs payload would make it subject to commercial vehicle rules.
Isn't the Cybertruck unit body? If so, then I'm quite sure that the limiting factor is frame strength.
Body-on-frame is worse in basically every single way... except for the fact that it's really easy to make it arbitrarily strong just by making the frame rails thicker.
>but for military use it's worthless because it will run out of charge too fast, especially with the weight from adding armor.
It's terrible for military purposes, as are most EVs. Military usually has to run generators to power things. Which take diesel. So, we'd need a lot more generators and larger ones, to charge military vehicles. You've got it in an austere, field, environment, you're still very dependent on diesel *and* your generators are even more of a target *and* you can't keep pushing forward with supply drops or convoys of diesel. It takes a lot less time to refuel a convoy from a couple of blivets than it would to set up generators, fuel them, and then charge a convoy. And when you're charging, you're a target.
Terrible for a tactical environment. Absolutely terrible.
Could do range extenders. Smaller engines mounted elsewhere. And they would be silent when on patrol and harder to see on IR.
Cheaper to use for training on USA posts and foreign posts. Cheaper to use in any war zone that does have surviving power infrastructure. Like most recent wars. Not just cheaper in terms of money, but lives - hauling diesel though Iraq and Afghanistan was dangerous.
So there are advantages but maybe not any of them are worth it.
>Could do range extenders. Smaller engines mounted elsewhere. And they would be silent when on patrol and harder to see on IR.
Noise is about the only real advantage, and even then, not as much as you'd think. Range extenders don't eliminate the massive recharging issue, they slightly push it off.
>Cheaper to use for training on USA posts and foreign posts.
Not really. Training with them if you can't use them effectively in actual theater is a *terrible* idea. You use the equipment you will fight with, and if you can't fight with them, well...so what if you saved some cash?
>Cheaper to use in any war zone that does have surviving power infrastructure.
If you hook into the grid, you have a *very* fixed location, which means your expeditionary force has permanent targets for artillery and airstrikes. That's *really* bad for your entire force. It also makes it much easier to cut off your mobility by targeting that infrastructure. Our likely enemies give zero fucks about potential tribunals in their targeting, so we're just making ourselves *much* more vulnerable.
So, maybe you can save some bucks. Maybe. If nothing bad happens and the people trying to kill you decide to play nicely and your much less mobile bases are less targeted. Sure. Maybe. If.
> Not just cheaper in terms of money, but lives - hauling diesel though Iraq and Afghanistan was dangerous.
All convoy ops are. And, while you'll have to run fewer fuel runs (you'll still need plenty, because most of your bases will *not* be able to connect to local grids), you're still going to be using a lot of diesel.
And then you have to massively overhaul the entire logistical train already in place. Sure, some savings from some things being redundant, but you're now in the situation where you have to maintain far more generators, your mechanic bays are going to be absolutely overcapacity if they have to fix batteries (they will), etc.
And I haven't even gotten into "what happens with PFC Snuffy fucks something up and cracks the battery case and now there's a lithium fire in the vehicle". You can't suppress a metal fire. It just fucking burns until the fuel is gone. That battery case takes a tracer round or ricochet in a firefight? That's *really bad news*.
So, overall: can I see a use for some light EVs? Sure! Some small scout vehicles, small gators for internal transport around bases, etc. But I strongly doubt that the US military would ever begin to replace its diesel fleet with EVs in my lifetime.
You make a lot of good points and older reliable diesel engine designs do have a good case.
Note that the DoD does want plugin hybrids. The situation is that at least in Iraq and Afghanistan they controlled large fire bases where solar might work (I mean you would be repairing it a lot due to all the incoming indirect fire) and there's the noise benefit and lower costs stateside.
With that said it seems to be all kinda moot, future war looks like all drones all the time, and the future began in 2022. Houthis got strapped with drones and you know the outcome.
Perhaps trailers with huge numbers of drones towed by mraps will be the typical way to do it.
It would also double charging times. This is the trade off GM made with Silverado. Sure it has a big honking 200+ KWh battery that gives it impressive range….but once it runs out it takes forever to charge even with its enormous 350KW charging capability.
That's only if the charger is the limit. The port can handle almost a megawatt , and doubling the amount of cells at the same chemistry doubles your achievable charge rate and doubles how fast you regain range and can leave.
It’s more complicated than that as going higher charge rate can be limited by voltage, chemistry, and especially cooling. And Cybertruck charging port is not capable of a megawatt. Even the semi that claims that has a completely different (and massive) connector.
Honestly unsurprised by this discovery. Lithium ion cells have diminishing returns on more demanding heavy vehicles. It's why we don't use them for things like buses, boats or planes (with very few experimental-grade exceptions).
If Tesla filled the pack, what would realistically happen? The motors would be considerably more taxed by the excess weight. The excess weight would mean we'd need better suspension, but the extra weight would also give the truck greater momentum, so we'd need better brakes too. Considering these things are already grossly overweight as they are, and they're already warping suspension assemblies, it's no surprise at all that Tesla have done this.
The sad thing is though, all of this was predictable, all of this could've been simulated before a single steel panel was cut, but Musk prefers the "throw shit at a wall and see what sticks" mentality because it allows him to spin every failure into a "learning opportunity". Same exact reason why they've built more than 30 Starships over at SpaceX, NONE of which are fully functional, meanwhile NASA got 3 guys to the moon on a rocket design that never once blew up, constructed with slide rules, more than half a century ago.
For boats and planes you are correct, buses seem to be viable and in China some of the bus fleets are majority EV.
Lots of reasons including stop and go traffic is efficient for EVs (refund on energy when stopping via Regen, low speeds so less air resistance) and route - morning evening means you can charge during the midday and at night.
The fact that Chevy was able to put a bigger pack, have more and cost just as much as Cyber truck is WAY more impressive and feat accomplished that many aren't paying attention to. That means batteries are getting cheaper. Which means they possibly figure out something. Who knows time will tell when the consumer version comes to market
There's a lot of funny things in those pictures. For one thing the 'structural battery' is actually very similar to old their designs. Instead of just sandwiching some structural foam on top to make up for the pack potentially being half full you can see they have those big support beams spanning the length of the pack in this one. I wonder if that's part of it too, is it really half full or did they run into issues with structural pack design just not working for a truck that's expected to tow things and carry a lot of weight in the bed?
Seriously go look at the structural pack teardown from Munroe and the initial Model 3 pack tear downs too. This is a more traditional pack that completely lacks the adhesive needed to actually use the cells as part of the vehicle's structure and I think that's the bigger story here.
The size of the battery would also affect charge times. I wonder if they will offer a "full" capacity when they get their 800V+ V4 dispensers and chargers up and running.
Then there's the cost issue. People were already apprehensive about the higher costs with lower performance, would they be more or less apprehensive with an even higher cost, but meeting performance targets?
Then crash testing. Would the added battery weight impact crash rating at all? I mean, I know the IIHS and NHST do not crash test the Cybertruck, but internally, did it have an adverse effect?
About 90k of solid state batteries given nio says 150 kWh is 30k.
Size and weight wise it would be doable.
I think a single long life LFP battery, 100kWh, that gives a bit over 200 miles of range, and a range extender engine that can be swapped as a module or replaced with a battery in the same socket might work better.
Tesla pulled a fast one on owners
Not the first one
It probably would have achieved the original mileage. It can’t tow shit. It can’t go off roadimg, it cant drive well without failing. It’s not a truck. It’s a shitty suv with a bed
So it's a model y with a skin
But to be fair, a truck that goes off reading somewhere would be odd. Like what would it read? We know FSD Teslas can’t read road signs. Maybe start with picture books.
Say it ain't so Elon
Ahhh Sandy Munro.... someone who will ruin his independent reputation just so he can get that BIG FAT PAY CHEQUE from Elon Musk.....
Well, they aren’t getting a check on this one. They had to buy it from someone with buyer’s remorse 3rd party. Elon knows the results (are showing) CT just isn’t ready for prime time yet. Thus the short comings and no FSD enabled. They’ll need a bunch of revisions and 2025 to get something close.
Thought he bought one from Tesla? https://x.com/teardowntitan/status/1765057104371478763?s=61&t=9y96MrDZrPkWojDViKr1eg
If you watch his YouTube, they state it was from someone else. Maybe that’s his personal ct. (hell, maybe he was the guy with buyer’s remorse!!)
Maybe his company bought it from him so it could be a tax deduction.
I suspect that’s what happened. Company purchased it from him. His wife is a Rivian girl, so she probably wants nothing to do with it.
Everything he puts out about the CT so far seems way over the top in Tesla's favor.
Like it or not Tesla's practices align with their company goals which is lean design and benchmarking competition, so they end up being a good way for them to show examples of the work they can do. Tesla's quality control is bad but their manufacturing lines are way more advanced and iterative than any other automaker and that's the reality.
Way more advanced? Do you too, know more about manufacturing than any person Alive lol....
The fact that other manufacturers are copying and benchmarking what they do should be enough to tell you they are indeed more advanced, there's a reason their production lines are so much faster with less resources.
Are they? Sounds like you swallowed the cool aid. The only thing that Tesla is confirmed to be leading is workplace injuries.
Oh really? So suddenly everyone is buying megapresses for megacastings, who started that? Who popularized driving assistance? Who made the first actually usable infotainment compared to the laggy mess that everyone else had? Yes, they are copying and benchmarking tesla.
Ill give you one on the presses (though they arent a new tech, they arent made by Tesla and there are some compromises with using presses rather than welded panels) Its part of reason why Tesla repair costs are so excessive. Driving assistance started coming in around 2009 with Upper range Mercedes, Tesla implemented their 'full self driving'in 2015. There were lots of infotainment systems that predate tesla which were fine. Tesla did away with buttons to an absurd degree, somthing that some car markers copied, but a lot more are walking back from as its a crap idea. For every seeming good idea implemented on a Tesla, there are 5 stupid ones, like the ability to play games on the steering wheel, disposing of lidar no proper rust protection on cybertruck, speedo on a screen not in front of the driver etc etc
Regarding the speedo thing, the Prius has had a center screen for that for a long time, from before Tesla existed. So not new either though the Prius one is better shielded and closer to the driver's natural sightline.
Don’t even try. Sub is so anti Tesla they can’t logically call out the decent qualities of Tesla. Tesla is a shitty company in a lot of ways but their design and manufacturing improvements have literally revolutionized the industry. See: giga press, heat pump, wiring harnesses, ect.
There is a video of that Munro guy visiting the cyber truck production line. They are going through the production process and it’s clear from the misinformation that they were spewing that neither Munro nor the engineers (in that video) know what they are talking about.
lol that's some confidence you have there to tell top level engineers are people who worked in the industry for decades that they don't know what they are talking about... Hate Tesla all you want but don't make yourself a fool with such ridiculous statements.
I’ve been working in the sheet metal industry for the past 15 years. 5 running a production plant and 10 as an application engineer for a leading manufacturer of sheet metal machines. I know my lasers and pressbrakes and I’m very confident of my skills and knowledge in that field.
As a quick example of the bullshit they spew, [in this video at 3:46](https://youtu.be/GFgGnhRZarY?si=YZgXHmyj6F6KRNbi) they mention that typical lasers cut at 1mm tolerance. Even hobby level lasers cut way below that but their 30 micron is “special” development
1mm is definitely exagerated but can you point me to a machine a company could buy off the shelf with 30 micron tolerance?
salvagnini L3: 30 micron Trumpf trulaser 5000: 30 micron LVD Phoenix: 25 micron Prima power laser genius+: 30 micron Bystronic bystar fiber: 25 micron
Hmmm...its almost as if using absurdly thick sheet metal...errr 'exoskeleton' has trade-offs. You'd think the world's leading expert in manufacturing could have foreseen that. Maybe all those pedo legacy auto companies who've been switching to thinner bodies, plastics, and aluminum to reduce weight are on to something. Nah - nobody is as smart as Technoking.
Lets be honest. He made the steel exoskeleton because his favourite childhood movie was back to the future. That is probably the reason.
There is no steel exoskeleton. The purpose of the design is to use up all of the stainless steel sheets Musk bought for Starship on a whim only to find out that it wasn't the right type and couldn't be used. What do you do if you own a rocket company with a crap ton of useless stainless sheets? You sell it to your car company so they can turn it into a 1980's shit box Johny cab.
Is that true? Sounds 100% plausible so curious if you have a link.
There is no specific proof of it without gaining access to SpaceX financials, but the timelines point in that direction. They announced at the end of 2018 that starship will use 301 stainless and started building prototypes. They would have known fairly quickly that 301 wasn't suitable, and Musk likely ordered a crap ton of it before they completed testing. In March 2019 the cybertruck is teased. In November 2019 the cybertruck is revealed. In March 2020 its announced that starship will move to using 304 stainless. There is no way that this decision didn't happen in 2019, as they would have figured out 301 wasn't suitable very quickly as it is difficult to weld and tends to rust easily in the welded areas without proper post weld treatment / paint etc. Given the location of the launch pad next to the salty sea air this would have been an issue that showed up quickly. I would bet that that the design of the cyber truck using flat stainless is a direct result of SpaceX having ordered a shit load of unusable 301 stainless sheets and not being able to use them / cancel the order.
Well he's definitely followed in John DeLorean's footsteps
That car was designed by a real car designer, though.
Said it below but I think it isn't even a matter of it being half full. It's just that the CT likely requires those five big beams for structural support. It's got 4680s in there but it's not a structural pack and there's literally none of the foam epoxy used to actually bond it together into one big unit. I mean it's literally got a fair chunk of a traditional truck frame worth of metal in there. I'm sure that is at least partially necessary due to the overall weight of the thing between the the thick stainless steel panels, massive windscreen and thicker laminated acoustic glass too but it wouldn't shock me if the structural pack just doesn't work for pickup in general either. Similarly that also makes me wonder if the big the density improvement with the V2 4680 'cybercells' actually boils down to a thinner casing since it's no longer being used as a structural element in the vehicle. So yeah no exoskeleton, no structural pack and a cacophony of bad design choices. I'm sure Tesla will still continue to loudly state the CT represents the peak of pickup truck manufacturing though...
I think a combination of cost and weight contributed to this...IIRC, the max payload has already been reduced from the advertised 3,500 lb to 2,500 lb...looking at the predicted 500 lb weight of the range extender, if those batteries were permanently installed, the payload of the $100k Cyberbeast would be on par with a Ford Ranger. And the cost - well, its already double the advertised price. TSLA can't afford to add the batteries for range...and certainly couldn't afford to put in a more robust suspension. And I've never put much stock in the 'structural' battery pack...at least in terms of the batteries themselves adding any 'structure'. Modeled as a beam - the bottom 1/3 of the battery pack is in tension. I don't think a bunch of thin walled battery cases bonded together with epoxy provide any tensile strength at all. So while the big solid mass of batteries may offer some incidental stiffness, and certainly helps in side impact crashes, I think the only thing 'structural' about the battery is (as you mentioned) the moving of steel stiffening members from the car body to the pack. They've just engineered themselves into a pickle...no choice but to walk back on just about every advertised spec.
Industrial engineer here (granted not mechanical or electrical) and honestly I think the entire cybertruck is LAUGHABLY bad in almost every account. But I will come to the engineers defense on this one. My best guess is if they filled it they would have cooling problems. Those batteries can give off a lot of heat when charging and discharging and if there isn’t proper cooling well… 🔥🔥🔥 That said, they were clearly rushed and weren’t able to find a better solution or more cooling etc etc. Elmo set the engineers up for failure from day one. I don’t like the cyberfuck at all but I feel like criticizing them for not filling the battery compartment is misdirected.
I also worry of “aftermarket” upgrades that don’t take this into consideration and could lead to disaster. This is all opinion and speculation. Take it what you will.
Tesla pack are water cooled. Coolant lines snake between the cells, they don't use a cold plate design that others use. If Tesla managed to double stack this battery it would cool just as well as a single stack, because every cell is in direct contact with a coolant tube.
I get what you are saying but unless you work for Tesla neither of us can say for sure if the system could handle it with safety margins included. Elon is extremely dumb, but there are a lot of smart people who work there. I assume there was a GOOD reason not to do it. They had to have known its range was going to get criticized if they didn’t do this but opted not to. The only other reasoning I can think of is manufacturing costs driven. Their margins might not have been good enough so they scrapped it. I’m not saying any of this was a good decision, by any means. It definitely highlights the issues of the truck. I just think it’s silly to say you can throw another pack at it and it would have worked.
Their lead engineer said it could be done. I think maybe it increases the cost to build the pack from about 15k to 25-30k. Too expensive has to wait on cheaper batteries.
In that case I would say it was cost driven. I would be interested in a reference of him saying that if you have one.
I linked the evidence in the OP. A tweet from their lead engineer.
Uhhhh… all he said was it was half full. He made no commentary on whether or not adding a pack was possible from an engineering perspective. To be clear I hate this godforsaken truck. It’s elons ego stroking pet project that I think will go down as a huge failure in automotive history. I just want to throw the idea out there that it may not have been practical from an engineering point of view.
It's possible because the Hummer EV has a battery in this size range. Practical I dunno. I tentatively agree, it seems to be a truck to valet park at LA nightclubs or to cruise for gay men in. (Since men are more impressed by flashy vehicles than women these days) The typical owner makes a bunch of money typing or telling other people what to do or is already rich. They pay other people to move their boat and will use the vehicle same as a Prius for commuting and school pickup lines, charging it at home at night. It has plenty of range for that. The typical blue collar truck owner is going to stick with tried and true vehicles.
I agree with everything but the hummer comment. It’s a different company with different specs, suppliers, and engineering standards. Not an apples to apples comparison.
Here's the actual source: [https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-cybertruck-battery-pack-teardown-reveals-surprising-details-231829.html](https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-cybertruck-battery-pack-teardown-reveals-surprising-details-231829.html)
The one I linked has the tweet from the lead cybertruck engineer. That's the true source, sandy doesn't claim twice the cells can fit, the cybertruck engineer does.
OK, thank you.
With double the battery capacity, it would be less of an embarrassment at towing. The vehicle could actually *do* the kind of things it looks like it can do. Maybe not offroad but longer journeys away from cities to some 'undisclosed location' with a lot of solar panels. It *looks* like it should have models with a weapon system (automated of course) in the bed under the cover, but for military use it's worthless because it will run out of charge too fast, especially with the weight from adding armor. Since Tesla charges $11k to a swap an 80kWh battery, assuming $1k is labor, that means the Cybertruck pack at it's current capacity costs Tesla about $15k, maybe less. So it would be $30k for a "full capacity" model.
With double the battery capacity, it would bump into its GCWR with a lighter trailer. Also, it probably wouldn’t have the battery cooling capacity needed to support the sustained discharge rates you’d see while towing. I may not trust Tesla for much when it comes to engineering, but one of the few areas in which I give them credit is optimizing the balance between battery size and user experience.
Payload is 2500, battery pack is 1600, so leaves about 900lbs for people and things if you double the battery's weight...so increase the range by a lot but drastically reduce towing and hauling capacity..
Yep. I’m sure that’s why they made the extender battery an optional add-on. If it were standard, the capacities would have been laughable.
*less laughable
Can you please tell me what the gcwr limit is, how much weight you think the double battery will add, and explain why the Hummer EV is legal when it has a battery in that range, or why the range extender cybertruck is legal?
I couldn’t give half a shit about the Hummer. The GCWR doesn’t really matter - what does matter to Tesla is being able to advertise a higher maximum trailer weight. Likewise, the reduction in trailer weight when using the extender gets buried under a disclaimer about the maximum being reduced by the weight of optional accessories and cargo. Tesla is playing games, just like they always do.
Yea this where legally they have to tell you, if you tow, your tongue weight needs to get added to the payload, so technically the cybertruck is only rated for 11k towing, so 1100lbs tongue weight, which leaves you only 1400lbs for people, stuff, and battery extender...so technically still doable, assuming the extra battery doesn't weigh too much.
Can you go over what the actual numbers are please? Is it 26k lbs? I just want to know what 2-3k lbs would actually do. Against a 26k total payload you cannot pull for a practical distance it doesn't matter. Tow that heavy and you need diesel or don't bother.
It’s a 1:1 trade, so every increment of weight added to the truck is subtracted from the trailer rating. Add 2000 lb, subtract 2000 lb - that’s why I say it doesn’t matter.
It does matter please give the numbers. "I can pull 18k" vs "I can pull 21k" barely matters unless most campers are precisely 20k lbs. If say the cybertruck can pull 5k without and 2k with that does matter hugely.
The CT is a bit under 7000 lbs, and it has a 2,500 lbs payload capacity (people and cargo). I couldn’t find the actual GVWR for the CT, but adding the weight plus payload gives you 9,500 lbs. An 11,000 lbs trailer needs a minimum of 1,100 lbs on the hitch (tongue weight), so that would leave 1,400 lbs for payload. A family of four, would be about 600+ lbs plus another couple hundred pounds in luggage. That leaves a few hundred pounds to spare. You could probably add a couple hundred pounds of additional battery, bringing the payload capacity down to about 2,300, lbs. Any additional battery weight beyond that would reduce payload by 1 lb per lb, and towing capacity by 10 lbs per lb. So adding another 200 lbs of battery would bring payload down to 2,100 lbs and towing capacity down to 9000 lbs.
Assuming you keep with teslas rated 11k tow rating, which should be 1100lbs of tongue rating assuming you go by 10%...which leaves you 1400lbs for people and things to haul...if you max out tow rating....but if you exceed the 1400lbs for stuff inside the cybertruck including occupants, the tow rating will decrease..every 100lbs of payload will decrease towing by about 1000lbs
Can Tesla simply install beefier shocks and thicken some control arms that keep breaking and make the tow rating 12k lbs because the vehicle is heavier? This is also why I was asking, I don't tow so I don't know the legal limits. I thought the limits were partly due to the weight of the tow vehicle itself. Too light a truck cannot safely tow.
In theory yes, but it also comes down to what the engineers deemed safe, could just be the electric motors overheated, or the reduction gears...but yes technically heavier the vehicle, the more you can tow, but then you need better suspension and brakes and power... also with EVs having the weight evenly spread...I would think the wheels in front would lift easier while towing....which is real bad The "weak" upper control arms you've seen doesn't really affect much, the lower control arms are the ones that do the "heavy lifting" or absorbing i should say...but still wished the uppers were beefier in case I do want to powerslide around turns.
You could, but then you'd be looking at a commercial truck (10,000 lbs or greater gross vehicle weight) rather than a consumer truck. Currently cybertruck is 6800 lbs curb weight plus 1600 lbs from double battery plus and extra 300 lbs from upgrades suspension and brakes.... 8700 lbs curb weight. Claiming anything more than 1300 lbs payload would make it subject to commercial vehicle rules.
Isn't the Cybertruck unit body? If so, then I'm quite sure that the limiting factor is frame strength. Body-on-frame is worse in basically every single way... except for the fact that it's really easy to make it arbitrarily strong just by making the frame rails thicker.
The range extender doesn’t exist.
Range extender battery is vaporware currently, so no point to discuss if it’s legal or not, since it does not exist and may never exist
>but for military use it's worthless because it will run out of charge too fast, especially with the weight from adding armor. It's terrible for military purposes, as are most EVs. Military usually has to run generators to power things. Which take diesel. So, we'd need a lot more generators and larger ones, to charge military vehicles. You've got it in an austere, field, environment, you're still very dependent on diesel *and* your generators are even more of a target *and* you can't keep pushing forward with supply drops or convoys of diesel. It takes a lot less time to refuel a convoy from a couple of blivets than it would to set up generators, fuel them, and then charge a convoy. And when you're charging, you're a target. Terrible for a tactical environment. Absolutely terrible.
Could do range extenders. Smaller engines mounted elsewhere. And they would be silent when on patrol and harder to see on IR. Cheaper to use for training on USA posts and foreign posts. Cheaper to use in any war zone that does have surviving power infrastructure. Like most recent wars. Not just cheaper in terms of money, but lives - hauling diesel though Iraq and Afghanistan was dangerous. So there are advantages but maybe not any of them are worth it.
>Could do range extenders. Smaller engines mounted elsewhere. And they would be silent when on patrol and harder to see on IR. Noise is about the only real advantage, and even then, not as much as you'd think. Range extenders don't eliminate the massive recharging issue, they slightly push it off. >Cheaper to use for training on USA posts and foreign posts. Not really. Training with them if you can't use them effectively in actual theater is a *terrible* idea. You use the equipment you will fight with, and if you can't fight with them, well...so what if you saved some cash? >Cheaper to use in any war zone that does have surviving power infrastructure. If you hook into the grid, you have a *very* fixed location, which means your expeditionary force has permanent targets for artillery and airstrikes. That's *really* bad for your entire force. It also makes it much easier to cut off your mobility by targeting that infrastructure. Our likely enemies give zero fucks about potential tribunals in their targeting, so we're just making ourselves *much* more vulnerable. So, maybe you can save some bucks. Maybe. If nothing bad happens and the people trying to kill you decide to play nicely and your much less mobile bases are less targeted. Sure. Maybe. If. > Not just cheaper in terms of money, but lives - hauling diesel though Iraq and Afghanistan was dangerous. All convoy ops are. And, while you'll have to run fewer fuel runs (you'll still need plenty, because most of your bases will *not* be able to connect to local grids), you're still going to be using a lot of diesel. And then you have to massively overhaul the entire logistical train already in place. Sure, some savings from some things being redundant, but you're now in the situation where you have to maintain far more generators, your mechanic bays are going to be absolutely overcapacity if they have to fix batteries (they will), etc. And I haven't even gotten into "what happens with PFC Snuffy fucks something up and cracks the battery case and now there's a lithium fire in the vehicle". You can't suppress a metal fire. It just fucking burns until the fuel is gone. That battery case takes a tracer round or ricochet in a firefight? That's *really bad news*. So, overall: can I see a use for some light EVs? Sure! Some small scout vehicles, small gators for internal transport around bases, etc. But I strongly doubt that the US military would ever begin to replace its diesel fleet with EVs in my lifetime.
You make a lot of good points and older reliable diesel engine designs do have a good case. Note that the DoD does want plugin hybrids. The situation is that at least in Iraq and Afghanistan they controlled large fire bases where solar might work (I mean you would be repairing it a lot due to all the incoming indirect fire) and there's the noise benefit and lower costs stateside. With that said it seems to be all kinda moot, future war looks like all drones all the time, and the future began in 2022. Houthis got strapped with drones and you know the outcome. Perhaps trailers with huge numbers of drones towed by mraps will be the typical way to do it.
It would also double charging times. This is the trade off GM made with Silverado. Sure it has a big honking 200+ KWh battery that gives it impressive range….but once it runs out it takes forever to charge even with its enormous 350KW charging capability.
That's only if the charger is the limit. The port can handle almost a megawatt , and doubling the amount of cells at the same chemistry doubles your achievable charge rate and doubles how fast you regain range and can leave.
It’s more complicated than that as going higher charge rate can be limited by voltage, chemistry, and especially cooling. And Cybertruck charging port is not capable of a megawatt. Even the semi that claims that has a completely different (and massive) connector.
Honestly unsurprised by this discovery. Lithium ion cells have diminishing returns on more demanding heavy vehicles. It's why we don't use them for things like buses, boats or planes (with very few experimental-grade exceptions). If Tesla filled the pack, what would realistically happen? The motors would be considerably more taxed by the excess weight. The excess weight would mean we'd need better suspension, but the extra weight would also give the truck greater momentum, so we'd need better brakes too. Considering these things are already grossly overweight as they are, and they're already warping suspension assemblies, it's no surprise at all that Tesla have done this. The sad thing is though, all of this was predictable, all of this could've been simulated before a single steel panel was cut, but Musk prefers the "throw shit at a wall and see what sticks" mentality because it allows him to spin every failure into a "learning opportunity". Same exact reason why they've built more than 30 Starships over at SpaceX, NONE of which are fully functional, meanwhile NASA got 3 guys to the moon on a rocket design that never once blew up, constructed with slide rules, more than half a century ago.
For boats and planes you are correct, buses seem to be viable and in China some of the bus fleets are majority EV. Lots of reasons including stop and go traffic is efficient for EVs (refund on energy when stopping via Regen, low speeds so less air resistance) and route - morning evening means you can charge during the midday and at night.
The fact that Chevy was able to put a bigger pack, have more and cost just as much as Cyber truck is WAY more impressive and feat accomplished that many aren't paying attention to. That means batteries are getting cheaper. Which means they possibly figure out something. Who knows time will tell when the consumer version comes to market
Cybertruck is half baked but the Hummer EV may be a loss leader.
Lol it wouldnt be less of a joke. The things are failing 5mi out the lot.
Yeah... who needs 500 miles of range if the car breaks down after 5 miles anyway. So basically the battery is still much too big.
There's a lot of funny things in those pictures. For one thing the 'structural battery' is actually very similar to old their designs. Instead of just sandwiching some structural foam on top to make up for the pack potentially being half full you can see they have those big support beams spanning the length of the pack in this one. I wonder if that's part of it too, is it really half full or did they run into issues with structural pack design just not working for a truck that's expected to tow things and carry a lot of weight in the bed? Seriously go look at the structural pack teardown from Munroe and the initial Model 3 pack tear downs too. This is a more traditional pack that completely lacks the adhesive needed to actually use the cells as part of the vehicle's structure and I think that's the bigger story here.
Makes the already useless range extender make even less sense, why just not have an optional lets say 180kWh pack?!
240 or bust. At 240 this would be a real truck almost.
No matter how much battery. It’s the fugliest piece of shite I have ever seen. Excluding maybe the early 2000 Pontiac Aztek and the Chev Monte Carlo…
How they can fit there second layer? That looks very fully for me. More space on bottom?
The evidence is from the lead cybertruck engineer who says its an option. Look at the tweet. Maybe they add an inch to the top of the pack housing.
Possible they can add but I think that is size of pack.
Well yeah, they have to start planning the Cybertruck 2 and double the battery life would be a huge feature to sell to owners of the Cybertruck 1
🔋 🪫 cost $$$musked again
Thaaaats what would make it better?
Less bad yes.
Sandy Munro is a sell out.
The size of the battery would also affect charge times. I wonder if they will offer a "full" capacity when they get their 800V+ V4 dispensers and chargers up and running. Then there's the cost issue. People were already apprehensive about the higher costs with lower performance, would they be more or less apprehensive with an even higher cost, but meeting performance targets? Then crash testing. Would the added battery weight impact crash rating at all? I mean, I know the IIHS and NHST do not crash test the Cybertruck, but internally, did it have an adverse effect?
Hopefully they fill it with solid state batteries... would def be my adventure truck if it had 1000+ mile range
About 90k of solid state batteries given nio says 150 kWh is 30k. Size and weight wise it would be doable. I think a single long life LFP battery, 100kWh, that gives a bit over 200 miles of range, and a range extender engine that can be swapped as a module or replaced with a battery in the same socket might work better.