Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tesla's Cybertruck Approach on Auto Manufacturing and Engineering

motortrend.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 70 posts

Re: Tesla's Cybertruck Approach on Auto Manufacturing and Engineering

#41

Post by czinck »

preommr wrote: post #37
serf wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The other really famous car made of stainless is of course the Delorean DMC-12. the metallic finish made the entire care near un-repairable. It showed flaws exceedingly well, and the properties of most stainless hinder most efforts at regular dent and ding repair. Aside : I got to smog certify a DeLorean when I was a mechanic in a previous life. It's one of the most memorable cars I have ever had the pleasure of dr…

Wouldn't it be more easy to maintain because you could just sand and blend away defects as opposed to dealing with paint where flaws are more noticeable.

Small scratches, sure, but dents are way harder to deal with on a stainless steel body panel. A dent stretches the metal, so you have to un-stretch and reshape it perfectly, which is time consuming and unless you take it to a shop that specializes in Deloreans no one will know how to do it. Compared to a regular painted body panel, everyone in every body shop has filled a dent with bondo, sanded it flush, and sent the panel to the paint booth hundreds of times. The painting itself can be finicky, but that's where the practice comes in.

Delorean assumed body panels would just be replaced when damaged, not repaired.

Re: Tesla's Cybertruck Approach on Auto Manufacturing and Engineering

#42

Post by lern_too_spel »

ZenModeRy wrote: post #5

This is the truck Howard Roark would build. Function over form for good reason and to hell with the critics. I for one absolutely love it.

The Prius is the ultimate function over form vehicle, and people still complain about its form.

Re: Tesla's Cybertruck Approach on Auto Manufacturing and Engineering

#43

Post by ziftface »

new_realist wrote: post #4
netfl0 wrote: post #2

This was the most compelling explanation of the visuals. They are saying that Telsa put function radically over form to reduce manufacturing complexity and efficiency. This is a purely utilitarian approach that is not self-evident. I hope Telsa will put together a better presentation to explain this to the public. This is the sort of technical progress you'd like to see in other domains.

These are mostly old manufacturing ideas which affect crash safety; repairability, an street legality.

Could you please explain how it affects those things? I'd be very interested in learning about that.

Re: Tesla's Cybertruck Approach on Auto Manufacturing and Engineering

#44

Post by throwaway5752 »

serf wrote: post #39
beat wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working pickups in the wild are subject to lots of sharp impacts that regular cars do not normally get. Glass is a big problem.

>Working pickups in the wild are subject to lots of sharp impacts that regular cars do not normally get. realistically this vehicle has very few of the traits needed in a work pickup. Expensive and remote repair, lots of gadgets to break, difficult to remotely fuel, very likely costly compared to the cheapest alternatives. It's like an anti-Jeep. This seems to me to be like an electric Honda Ridgeline; a truck made f…

Realistically only a very small percentage of pickups or Jeeps, even on the high end, are working vehicles. It's just a different form of virtue signaling.

Nobody has an interest in talking about it, but pickup trucks and truck culture in the US are a marketing driven phenomenon. It stems from the fact that most US auto manufacturers' profit is driven though light trucks as the result of the 1964 chicken tax. They are appallingly impractical and expensive for the most part, and I'd bet 99% of Silverado High Country package trucks doing no more heavy duty than typical suburb traffic, too. I think Tesla has just embraced the world as it is rather than trying to shift consumer preferences.

Re: Tesla's Cybertruck Approach on Auto Manufacturing and Engineering

#45

Post by mikepurvis »

interestica wrote: post #33
mikepurvis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole stainless steel thing is fascinating to me. The other really famous car made of stainless is of course the Delorean DMC-12.

"Well, if you're going to build a time machine, why not do it with some style? Besides, the stainless steel construction made the flux dispersal.....watch out!" I always wanted the rest of that line. As though the writers had thought up some way to make 'stainless steel' a necessary part of the the time machine construction.

Brilliant writing, though— hint that the reason is there without actually filling up the script with made-up gobbledygook. Author Sid Fleishman said that if you had a plot hole in your story, all you had to do was point to it and it would disappear:

----

For example, in McBroom’s Zoo I wanted to use the Hidebehind, a fabled frontier creature. No one knows what the Hidebehind looks like because every time you look, the animal hides behind you.

I saw the hole at once. All McBroom needed to do was to hold up a mirror and he’d see the Hidebehind’s mug. I plugged the hole by pointing to it. Works like magic. “I even tried walking around with a hand mirror.” McBroom declares. “But the Hidebehind was too eternal clever for tricks like that.”

Re: Tesla's Cybertruck Approach on Auto Manufacturing and Engineering

#46

Post by roland35 »

empath75 wrote: post #21
grecy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> durability (large flat sections of metal are more likely to dent than curved). I take it you didn't see the part of the presentation where they hit the Cybertruck with a sledge hammer with no effect. The "regular pickup door" did not fair so well.

So what happens when you get into an accident with this thing? Do you have to replace the entire body? Or does it just not properly crumple and you’ll just be dead or crippled so you won’t have to worry about it.

I would imagine it would probably be similar to any current car, it looks like it has panels which could be replaced. The roof was difficult to tell though, if there was a weld or seam on to top which was part of a larger panel

Re: Tesla's Cybertruck Approach on Auto Manufacturing and Engineering

#47

Post by Ozumandias »

sschueller wrote: post #29

Why would you need bulletproof glass?

The fact that the truck looks like a Warthog from the Halo video games aside, I feel that this truck is destined for the defense market. Overly sturdy frame, bulletproof windows, no gasoline. Electric vehicles that can self-charge through solar seem to be a massive logistical advantage. You can reduce the need for fuel supply lines.

Re: Tesla's Cybertruck Approach on Auto Manufacturing and Engineering

#48

Post by mikepurvis »

serf wrote: post #40
preommr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be more easy to maintain because you could just sand and blend away defects as opposed to dealing with paint where flaws are more noticeable.

paint can be filled and repainted, bare metal cannot without exposing fillers and ruining the finish. realistically no one is blending the metal during most repair jobs; the panels either get replaced or bondo'd, sadly -- unless we're talking about vintage or nostalgic cars that have inherent issues with panel supply.

Sounds like their plan for this is just that the panels are super thick and therefore really hard to dent, though I don't know what that means for crumple zones and safety.

Perhaps there's an argument here that the bare metal will acquire a kind of patina, that the accumulation of small blemishes will over time contribute to an attractive worn look? That's certainly not how cars conventionally age, but it will be interesting to see what a Cybertruck looks like once it's got 200k miles on it.

Re: Tesla's Cybertruck Approach on Auto Manufacturing and Engineering

#49

Post by throwaway5752 »

hobofan wrote: post #31
sschueller wrote: post #29

Why would you need bulletproof glass?

Why would you need an SUV in urban areas?

Because station wagons aren't as profitable for Ford. I'm not even kidding. A lot of groups benefit from increased consumption from this. Auto companies get protection in the light truck segment from foreign competition. Gas companies sell more gas. There is more churn on the consumer loan market as people overextend themselves to buy them (instead of getting more practical coupes or sedans and renting pickups as needed).

Re: Tesla's Cybertruck Approach on Auto Manufacturing and Engineering

#50

Post by gexla »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #9
netfl0 wrote: post #2

This was the most compelling explanation of the visuals. They are saying that Telsa put function radically over form to reduce manufacturing complexity and efficiency. This is a purely utilitarian approach that is not self-evident. I hope Telsa will put together a better presentation to explain this to the public. This is the sort of technical progress you'd like to see in other domains.

unconvinced. long, precise, sharp angles are expensive to stamp on thick steel plates. so I've checked around the pictures, apparently the marketing material has seams along the angle, but the car in the presentation has angled plates. something doesn't add up https://imgur.com/a/HO1HnGC

Saw this on Reddit. Seems to show a panel there which opens up. I don't think we can trust anything but the major bullet points making it to production though. This thing is a prototype and much of what we see could be up in the air.

https://imgur.com/a/r4drdJh

Post reply on HN