Tesla’s Cybertruck may not be so stainless after all::‘Literally bulletproof’ but needs constant cleaning to stave off corrosion
Tesla’s Cybertruck may not be so stainless after all::‘Literally bulletproof’ but needs constant cleaning to stave off corrosion
Yeah. My understanding is that Deloreans were shockingly rust resistant but were also panels specifically so that they could be replaced.
I don’t know metallurgy/material science well enough to know if cybertrucks actually used good quality stainless steel or cut corners. And I can easily see a world where people assume the dirt is rust because of paranoia or just looking for internet drama/clout.
But… Rust or no rust, those cars are pretty fucked. Because they don’t even have a clearcoat. And considering we are in the season where roads are covered with salt and sand and cars are constantly bombarded with a highly abrasive slurry at speed, those panels are going to see a LOT of wear and damage.
Tesla uses SS301 stainless. DeLorean used SS304.
301 is cheaper, less resistant to corrosion, can resist more force applied to it before failure, formes better in stamping, doesn’t tolerate high-temperatures as well.
My guess is they used 301 due to cost and forming properties. Supposedly they use 301 on the Starships, so bulk pricing would help keep production costs low. Had they used 304 the raw material cost and cost of production at volume would be higher but they would be less likely to have these corrosion issues, assuming they aren’t welding the panels.
SS301 is a great material. It’s workable, ductile, and still plenty hard. It’s absolutely perfect for work holding in an industrial spot welding environment.
Why on earth they’d use that for body panels is fucking beyond me. Ok, it’s bullet proof, kinda, which is cool I guess? I’ve never been shot at in a car, I don’t know anyone who’s ever been shot at in car.
I know lots of people with cars that they don’t like to rust. Or scratch tho. Seems like the bigger problem in car design honestly
Totally agree. But is this an appropriate use for it? I regularly have to use sandpaper to remove surface rust from my SS301 knife. And I don’t leave that out in the rain. It’s just surface rust, doesn’t damage anything, but it is rust and it’s very ugly.
Thankfully with a knife, it takes two seconds to remove the rust. With an entire car? And body panels with areas that are hard to get to? Honestly if I was going to buy a cybertruck I would paint it.
If you want “real” stainless, you want 316, but it’s not as strong and would require significant modifications - making it thicker/heavier/more expensive/worse battery range/etc.
Maybe the cyber truck owners will convince themselves the rust is a beautiful patina (and your cat sucks because it doesn’t have one!)
Don’t you talk about my cat that way!
Instead of gold versions, rich people will get inconel-pannel cybertrucks!
I believe their intention was to make it more dent-proof which ended up making it bullet proof(ish) at the same. I think that’s a good feature. Modern cars are made out of cardboard
That’s by design. It’s called crumple zone and it saves lives
On cars yeah but I’m not sure if that’s so much of a factor on “body on a frame” trucks because the frame does not crumble much. Cybertruck doesn’t have such frame because it has an exoskeleton but if you were to make it out of thinner metal then you’d need to add the sub-frame anyway so the end result is still the same.
Also, Tesla has a pretty impressive track record on when it comes to IIHS and Euro NCAP crash tests so I’d be surprised if Cybertruck was an exception.
So what you’re saying is not only is it ugly, rust prone, and poorly designed, it’s ALSO unsafe.
I haven’t said a single thing about rust, appereance or design.
The Cybertruck is an exception tho. It was tested at ~50 km/h and hardly crumpled at all.
Well unlike you I’m a total idiot when it comes to analyzing crash tests so I’ll reserve my judgement untill I see some official test results and what experts have to say about them.
There’s a video of the test I mentioned
Well, starships don’t usually need to worry about rain storms
They do have a habit of blowing up tho.
Seems to be a theme with Elon’s contraptions.
Name a rocket company that haven’t had rockets blow up.
Some of the Falcon 9 stage one boosters have been re-used 16 times.
All I’m gonna say is that ULAs Vulcan flew for the first time last month, and performed perfectly.
Blue origin developed the engines for Vulcan, and they performed perfectly.
Starship has had 2 test flights that they’ve had to backtrack and spin as “successful” because they cleared the pad. This is supposed to be a human rated launch vehicle, and it took SpaceX a few minutes on the second launch to even notice that the fucking thing blew up on the edge of space.
I don’t really care how reliable the falcon is, when they haven’t seemed to apply a single thing they learned from it to Starship.
Starship is supposed to put the next humans on the moon. They got the contract because they quoted to NASA that they could do it cheaper than anybody else. They’ve now blown up 2 test vehicles, and failed to demonstrate a single example of any of the new technologies they need in order for the Starship lander to work.
Likely due to this, the next moon landing has been pushed back a year, and likely will keep slipping until NASA grows the balls to pull the contract from SpaceX and give it to a company with more realistic development strategies.
As much as I am annoyed by the time table slip, What I really, really don’t want to see is the first people to land on the moon in 50 years crashing and burning because of Elon’s cartoon rocket. Or getting trapped on the surface because the stupid fucking elevator gets jammed due to moon dust. Or getting all the way out to the moon, only to discover the dammed turbo pumped engines won’t spool up after sitting in space for a week. Or if the thing will be capable of getting to the moon, we’ve never transferred cryogenic fuels in space before, and it’s going to take over a dozen of these transfers to fuel the starship for the landing.
My point is that there’s 2 primary mantras when it comes to human space flight, and we’ve learned them through blood and sacrifice: Keep It Simple Stupid, and Failure is Not an Option. Starship, and SpaceX in general, fundamentally does not follow these. It’s already an over complicated and unproven design, and their whole design strategy is that blowing up is a success. That is unacceptable and contrary to developing a vehicle that is supposed to work 100% of the time while it’s 240,000 miles away. If you don’t design with those 2 goals in mind, you will get people killed, and we will have the very first bodies off of earth.
To end this, I want to talk about some of the procedures that Apollo had. If they were going to leave the moon, and the ascent engine wouldn’t light, they still had options. Option 1 was to exit the lander, and flip a switch that would release a blade to cut safety wires that prevent the engine from lighting accidentally. If that didn’t work, they had a literal pair of bolt cutters, and would go in and cut the safety wires and bolts by hand before coming in and opening the valves for the fuel, which would light itself. Ask yourself what those emergency procedures look like on starship. Ask yourself what the procedure is if those engines won’t light, or the elevator jams with people on the surface, or any of the other dozen things that can go wrong and kill you in space.
Tbf spacex has extremely good reliability with their falcons, and their spaceship tests are literally just that, see how it blows up to learn more.
There’s better things to criticize the company, such as their “what do you mean I can’t fuck my subordinates?” -CEO
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Paint, they always need paint. A lot of science went into that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_hgPinCZks
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Even “good quality” stainless steel can easily rust, as anyone who’s owned quality kitchen knives will tell you. Some stainless alloys are more resistant than others – but exposed to the right conditions they all corrode.