Tesla's Cybertruck may not be so stainless after all
(www.theregister.com)
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 13 Feb 2024 22:00
https://lemmy.world/post/11923474
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 13 Feb 2024 22:00
https://lemmy.world/post/11923474
Tesla’s Cybertruck may not be so stainless after all::‘Literally bulletproof’ but needs constant cleaning to stave off corrosion
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
CEO Elon Musk first unveiled the electric pickup model back in 2019, claiming that its “ultra-hard stainless steel” body and “transparent metal” glass were “literally bulletproof.”
Though beset with production issues and missing its speculative 2021-22 release, its unique polygonal design – as with anything Tesla and Musk-related – attracted legions of devotees eager to get their hands on the steering wheel.
Members pondered whether orange stains could be caused by “rail dust” from certain vehicles being delivered via train, yet Raxar posted some images of his Cybertruck’s body after driving it for “2 days in rain.”
In a separate thread, another user, vertigo3pc, reported that “corrosion was forming on the metal” of his brand-new Cybertruck after 11 days in the “LA rain,” leading some to worry that the steel body was becoming contaminated during production.
The documentation says: "To prevent damage to the exterior, immediately remove corrosive substances (such as grease, oil, bird droppings, tree resin, dead insects, tar spots, road salt, industrial fallout, etc.).
The Register asked Tesla whether it agreed with the description of Cybertruck corrosion as the “norm,” and if not, what the company expected to cause the spots documented.
The original article contains 590 words, the summary contains 194 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I deliver to a Tesla dealership/lemon farm everyday, and they had one on display. It had a smudge on the driver side rear quarter panel that they never got buffed out.
You don’t buff these things. You have to regrain them by rubbing an abrasive material across the panels in one direction same as a DeLorean.
Yeah that certainly reinforces a sense of longevity. Just rub off part of the door every time you have to clean it.
It’s sad that there’s nothing your can put on the metal, like something to paint on top of it or something. Like something clear, or in different colors even. Ah here I go again, being crazy with my imagination.
Apparently clear coat would also corrode the steel. This car annoys every last one of my redneck sensibilities.
That’s … What is it made of? Raw sodium? How is there nothing they can put on it to seal it from corrosion?
They couldve probably galvanized it, but didnt because they are stupid. The type of stainless steel they used is finicky at best as I understand and isnt really designed to be in open outdoor environments, so they used it for a car. I dont fully understand the details of why its fucky just that it is, I aint a metallurgical expert im a redneck who just knows what is good steel from texture, taste, and smacking it into shit.
That’s what buffing does to paint as well, but it’s not something you do when you need to clean it (whether paint or stainless), it’s something you do to repair cosmetic damage.
To anyone who is even slightly surprised by this, my cat has turds in his cat box with higher IQs than you.
This applies to anyone currently holding stock in any company associated with Elon Musk. You are all dumb fucks, and deserve whatever is coming to you. this goes doubly for anyone working for any of these companies still.
Really, what’s wrong with you people?
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I don’t think it’s that extreme, but I admit it’s not hopeful and people should be more realistic about their expectations.
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this is the second time you’ve said this, and it’s still disgusting
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I . . . thought we were talking about the cybertruck?
They thought you meant “Cybercuck 3 America fucks itself”
Anyone holding stock in any Elon-directed company and expecting to make money at this point* is a dumb fuck. I don’t think pre-emptively insulting people here is winning you any popularity, though.
* except by short selling; I applaud any risk takers tanking the value of those shares.
I’m not going to apologize for pointing out the very real fact that owning stock in a company owned by Hitler/Musk is not only financial suicide, but also tantamount to investing int he Nazi party.
If you don’t like that being pointed out, go fuck yourself. I can survive the downvotes because internet wha-whas don’t hurt me
The smarties sold a while back.
If SpsceX was publicly traded, I would have certainly bought in.
Lol. Tesla stock down 30% since June.
Tesla, seriously, that roaring sound that’s rising in pitch is y’all about to slam into the ground. Eject the dead weight already.
I mean, to be fair no one will be able to beat geely over the next decade.
BYD has been flooding the market lately
zooms out 5 years
Up nearly 800%
Yup, keep riding that baby down. I bought in 2011, sold 2021. Thanks for buying me a house!
Now I get to watch that child Elon fuck up this golden goose, and I don’t have to lose money while I laugh!
Oh I don’t own the stock. But you can’t deny that it’s been a great asset for anyone that got in early. Saying it’s down 30% from 6 months ago without looking at the big picture is short sighted.
Also, fuck Elon
The stock is down 30% since June, if you want more context, it’s lower now than it was January 2021. Meaning if you’ve been holding Tesla stock for 3 years, you are in the red. This In a period where inflation has also undermined the value.
Seems to me that a warning that Tesla might not be a good stock to hold anymore is in order.
finance.yahoo.com/quote/TSLA/
The big picture is that Tesla is really only worth 5-10% of the current market cap, when you compare to for instance VW.
Ignoring that the market cap is higher than the combined market cap of all other car manufacturers, whilst producing not even half as many cars as VW alone, is also short sighted. The stock is vastly overrated and will correct itself one day. The question is just when that day is going to come
My dude, even legacy stocks that pay dividends like fucking Costco and Microsoft are up 250+% the past 5 years. The market has been absolutely bonkers the past 5 years, and acting like Tesla is some incredible investment and not just a meme gambling stock is pretty hilarious.
i dont thibk musk would self-eject
yet another feature a regular Car can do better than this truck. its pretty damn sad when your truck fails at basic vehicle properties, before you even get to what its supposed to be, 'truck'. kinnnnda comical how bad this thing is.
such sweet nectar the schadenfreude, i could live off it for days.
Sounds about right
Didn’t realise I had subscribed to a cars community
This community has a hard on for anything remotely related to Musk, so it’s no surprise when his daughters(?) crayon drawing truck gets a ton of attention.
Can’t wait to see what happens when one gets dinged by road gravel, it’s going to be even uglier.
Oh and about that 5-6k coating that will prevent the rust? It’ll just prevent you from seeing the rust, don’t worry, the rust will get there, it always does, that’s one of a dozen reasons why steel has been moved away from for decades.
Done properly it should prevent rust. Especially on already rust-resistant metal. And you could use clear paint.
They won’t be applying the coating to the back side of the panels…
I think it’s shown to not be very rust resistant.
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.
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.
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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
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!)
Instead of gold versions, rich people will get inconel-pannel cybertrucks!
Don’t you talk about my cat that way!
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
I know. Like I said; I don’t have the expertise to make any conclusions from said video. I’ve seen plenty of videos like that and some of the vehicles get 3 stars and some get 5 but it all looks the same to me. I don’t need to have an opinion on this. I’ll wait for official test results instead and hear what the people who know what they’re talking about have to say.
Paint, they always need paint. A lot of science went into that. www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_hgPinCZks
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=b_hgPinCZks
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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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.
What a pos. Links to pictures here- cybertruckownersclub.com/…/cybertruck-spots-corro…
Lmaooo
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/33f22f7b-458e-4c5a-8d4e-1595e920f500.jpeg">
Yeah it’s like “I actually like getting brutally raped at the dealership, excited to get my backside exploded!”
Yes this forum sounds a lot like Elon’s exclusive club, where you are not allowed to say anything critical of the godfather or his products.
Insane levels of copium.
Holy shit that’s not insignificant! Those things are going to be piles of rust in just a few years.
Insane
One of the replies in that thread:
Wow.
The cope is strong with that one.
I dunno, a patina can look quite good though, if you like that aesthetic.
But really who cares, we are not forced to buy these cheesy blobs of cheap grade stainless. Let the tech bros take one for the team.
The people who get in a crash with one probably care
Imagine spending 80K on a truck that starts rusting in days. Oh the poor Elon Musk’s s***ers. It might be a really hard blow to feel that betrayed by their idol.
This cybertruck fiasco is getting more ridiculous by the day.
Cult of personality will make them accuse other actors for any of his failures.
What word is supposed to be censored there.
The Dark K***ht
Like, *** r***, though. What **** could that p******* *e?
Isn’t that the butler’s job?
Real stainless steel does not rust. I brew beer and daily soak down my stainless steel sink/kettles daily. Even harsh chemicals (muritiac acid, chlorinated caustic soda) don’t affect it.
There are a lot of grades of stainless, but they all can rust. What you’re doing with your kettles is unlikely to cause rust, because you are actively cleaning them daily. Letting a contaminant sit on them and periodically get wet without being cleaned our dried is a worst case scenario, and also what constantly happens to cars.
unifiedalloys.com/…/stainless-grades-families
Yeah and Musk used the chinesium (capitalist) grade, cheapest possible garbage
Probably
I am not an expert - just an avid knife freak - but in my experience “Stainless” means “Stain Less” not “Stain Resistent”. Eg.
s35vnis relatively high quality stainless knife steel - that does not mean it ain’t gonna pickup stains - all mine did… I suspect one of the differences between my knifes / Elons Cybertruck vs. your cookware is that your cookware is mirror polished while my knives and the cybertruck are sporting “satin finish” which looks quite esthetically first 5 mnts - but is quite inpractical…Theres no such thing as “real stainless”. Stainless steel 304 is corrosion resistant, it’s the cheapest and most common. 316 is better at corrosion resistance and is “marine grade” since it will hold up better to salt water. 316L is some of the best at resisting corrosion, it’s more expensive than 304 and is used in lab and surgical equipment. There are a lot of other types, like 309 for higher heat applications, etc.
Cybertruck is probably made from 304.
Definately not supprised that cybertrucks are having this issue. Especially with road salt in the winter. I’m sure the engineers at Tesla saw this coming too.
Not the cheapest, there’s 17-4 and 18-8 before 304.
What makes stainless steel stainless is that it corrodes quickly, uniformly and forms a dense rich en Cr carbide coating (I dont know how it is called in english). This reduces the rate at which it corrodes enormously. This is the same on most “corrosion resistant” metals and alloys, like aluminium, titanium and zirconium.
There are multiple grades of SS, some of them are better at halting corrosion than others. And given the right environment (chemical + temperature) it will ultimately corrode.
Some geometrical obstacles* can produce other, more localized, types of corrosion… again, sorry, I dont know the technical words in english.
Tesla has been pretty good at selling vehicles, even really expensive ones. This one has been kind of bizarre though. From the massive and strange body to the issues in production, I’m not sure if we’ll start seeing these become more common on the road.
lol. Cybertrucks are looking like my sink.
They should invest heavily in Barkeepers Friend. Works pretty well on the sink.
It’s relatively common for nice metal bikes to go the unfinished metal route…if they’re made of titanium.
Even so, my friend’s ti bike has stains on it that he can’t get out sort of polishing/ brushing it
Tesla is just recognizing that each cybertruck owner has different color preferences, so they deliver the cybertruck without any paint or coating so the owners can coat it themselves /s
I saw one in person 2 days ago. I took a picture, and none of my coworkers think it’s a real picture (or that I took it).
It was surreal. I could see it coming from WAY down the road and I was thinking to myself “there is absolutely no way I am seeing a cybertruck right now”
I am dumbfounded they actually made them. I still can’t believe what I saw the other day
same as my underwear bitch what do you think about that
Stainless is not stain proof. Different grades of stainless have different levels of rust resistance depending mostly on chrome, nickel, molybdenum, and carbon levels, but even the most resistant grade will rust under some conditions. The primary method of rust protection, what makes stainless stainless, is a continuous layer of chrome oxide on the surface. The problem is that layer is weak to chlorides like salt or bleach so exposure to such can allow rust to begin. Adding more nickel, more chrome, and more moly can help but nothing is rust proof, even extreme marine grades like 317L can rust.
Edit: the cybertruck is made using their own “30X” grade. The most common is 304 or 18/8, which has around 18% chrome and 8% nickel. 302 has less, 309 has more. I would bet it is near 304 as that is the most common austenitic (nonmagnetic) stainless steel. This grade does not have the molybdenum added to “marine stainless” grades like 316 and 317. That molybdenum provides some resistance to chlorides which is why it is used in marine applications and commercial kitchens. It is also quite a bit more expensive.