Tesla Cybertruck Pricing and Specs

I would like to know the range when towing 11,000 lbs. In the full size market, I can only think of the Nissan Titan as having less than 12,000 lb tow rating. A base Ford F150 has a 14,000 rating. When you move up to diesels, you can easily tow 20,000+ lbs and even at 10,000 lbs you take very little hit on range if your load is somewhat aerodynamic. Pulling a full-size Airstream you can still get 20+mpg even in a small diesel like in the Chevy Colorado.

Other folks mentioned the frame or brakes as the reason for the low tow rating. I imagine the cybertruck has a strong frame, Tesla has never gone cheap when it came to that sort of thing, and I'm sure the braking is fine for small loads. Most big loads require the trailer to have its own braking anyway, so that's almost a moot point, even in the biggest truck, I'm not pulling over 10,000 lbs without a proper brake controller. I'm guessing they set the rating at 11,000 lbs because anything over that and you probably end up with a very expensive 30 mile battery range. I would initially compare the cybertruck to something like a Tacoma which has more like a 7,000 lb towing capacity, but then you look at the weight of a cybertruck at 6800 lbs, the damn thing is nearly 2000 lbs heavier than a base F150. The curb weight of the biggest F150 you can get is only 5800 lbs, still 1,000 lbs lighter than the cybertruck.

Except that, if you own the Tesla long enough, the savings per month will eat up the difference in cost between the Tesla and significantly cheaper cars.

Seems like there's been relatively less attention on the 48V/800V architecture and the Ethernet comms/steer by wire setup, but I think those are what make this particular vehicle quite interesting. Up until recently I think 48V power electronics have been fairly rare outside of telecom/other high cost situations, but I suppose one major difference is that at 48V, transformer-based DC-DC conversion is usually a better choice for digital electronics compared with a simple buck, which historically seems to be a significant jump in cost and faff to design. Perhaps PCB planar transformers will help here, but this may be one reason we don't see 50V EPR USB C devices yet (disappointed that the Cybertruck didn't decide to be the first 240W USB-C device, still stuck at 65W)

Seems like if there were to be some kind of electrical failure, now with full steer-by-wire it could be quite a harrowing situation.

Based on the images posted from the event [1] it seems to have two discrete power steering motors (we know from previous vehicles that these have two motor driver channels internally for failover), so there's probably a decent amount of redundancy here. There seems to also be some kind of a sensor that's only populated on one side, though I can't tell what it does from the picture (position sensor?)

Given that the steering is variable gain now, seems like the vehicle speed data would also be important, as in, the communication bus is now quite important for the function of the steering module.

With the Ethernet architecture they're using now, it's likely that it's not as problematic as with CAN bus (where water intrusion can take down the whole bus) but it would be interesting to see what the design choices there were.

[1] https://twitter.com/DriveTeslaca/status/1730305183572177107/...

The electric F150 weighs 6500 lbs...1,800-pound battery.