Guest OMFG by David Middleton
‘Oh My F*cking God’: Tesla ‘Cybertruck’ Fractures During Demo
Elon Musk’s Tesla has unveiled its latest vehicle, a bizarre pickup truck, to a largely skeptical public. The truck was touted as having “impact-resistant windows” that were promptly smashed inwards with a small metal ball during a live demonstration on Thursday.
[…]
“You want a truck that’s really tough. Not fake tough,” Musk said, claiming that the truck’s body could withstand 9mm handgun bullets.
Von Holzhausesn then demonstrated the impact-resistant technology used on the truck’s windows, picking up a stainless steel ball and throwing it after a soft windup at the driver side window. The window promptly smashed, with Elon Musk audibly stating “oh my [fracking] god,” before instructing Holzhausesn to test the rear passenger window, which also promptly smashed. A video of the incident can be seen below:
[…]
Breitbart
Imagine thinking your Tesla truck is bulletproof because the company said it has Tesla Armor Glass, you didn’t see this video before you bought it, and some hipster breaks your window with a little rock pic.twitter.com/kPv5uafP6s
— Jarrett Galbreath (@jarrgal) November 22, 2019
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The truck was touted as having “impact-resistant windows” that were promptly smashed inwards with a small metal ball during a live demonstration on Thursday. – article
So nobody tested the window glass before installing it? Yeah, that’s REAL salesmanship and REAL TIME planning, ain’t it?
If Musk weren’t such a flibberty-gibbet, some of his bright ideas might work, but he can’t even manage what could have been a successful company, if he had paid attention to it and done his CO job properly. He has the attention span of a gnat, or maybe not even that much, and he should have seen the result of that disastrous demo coming by testing it ahead of time. DIMWIT!!!
Since pickup trucks are supposed to be practical machines, not yuppie decor, this is not only unappealing to the eyes of those who drive/buy the F-150 and the Ram and all those other pickups.
Maybe if we’re lucky, his Good Idea Fairy will go back to drinking in that cheap bar s/he/it came from.
Something tells me that Tesla won’t provide demo sponsorship trucks to the upcoming “Gold Rush” show season.
very cool design, reminds me of F117.
fun little toy to own.
We know how you like models, oh, sorry, climate toys.
Huh?
models? look UAH is a model of temperatures, I prefer thermometers.
Since we have less than 1% of the number of sensors needed to actually measure the temperature of the world, and most of the ones we do have, have major problems.
Converting thermometers to temperature is the job of models.
“Steven Mosher November 23, 2019 at 7:57 am
look UAH is a model of temperatures, I prefer thermometers.”
Yes I bet you do. It’s where the French insert things for toothache too.
Sorry Mr Mosher but I can’t agree about the design.
To me, it resembles a High School – Shop Class – Frankentruck student build project.
Unsure just how aerodynamic the truck would be as far as potential range goes.
Nobody asked you to agree.
And nobody asked you to respond to Bryan A’s comment. see comments like that work both ways.
Is there a big demand for bullet-proof pickup trucks?
If you live in the worst of the US inner cities.
Why limit that to “inner cities”?
And it’s not ALL US cities.
Chicago, LA, NY, SF … you know, the ones that now call themselves “sanctuary cities”.
Nope. This thing only appeals to nerds and the extremely gullible. And probably to paper billionaires that the Escobars want to kill.
Captain Climate
It appears that Musk is unclear on why people buy pickup trucks. What he has made is a large sedan with good towing capability.
Which is what the urban virtue signaling driver is apt to go for. I’d say Musk is keenly aware of his target audience.
I saw someone all giddy over the fact you could get one with a built-in compressor and use the battery as a generator. Yippee.
Wonder how the NTSB will feel about the supposedly super-hard shell and what it can do to other vehicles in an accident.
Solid, cold-rolled stainless steel body (LMAO)? No crumple zones? Won’t pass EU crash tests. FAIL!
I think this is diversionary.
The question being:
Is the EU a major market for this.
No. Truck sales in the EU are marginal.
Truck sales are not large in the EU and even the rich and woke would baulk at that sensationally ugly design
tonyb
Remember, ICE diesel and petrol vehicles are soon to be banned in the EU with incentives for EV’s. People who want a truck in the EU will have little choice.
Actually stainless steel, grade 304 I presume, is a very good material from crash energy absorption pov.
Then, actual detail design is more important.
Put an ‘L” for leaded on the end of that 304 and I’ll agree. Otherwise not!
As far as I could tell, it’s all flat sheet metal which isn’t really that good at providing protection in a crash as well as structural strength, it’s why traditional trucks are built on a separate, ladder frame, chassis with a bolted on body. It’s also why Land Rover “Defenders” are no longer made. Most monocoque bodies are made of shaped/formed metal parts that, while made from thin metal, are very strong once all assembled, but also deform in a crash situation.
I’m thought the idea of the crush zones in vehicles was to absorb the energy in a collision to save the occupants from death or serious injury. So Musk’s super rigid truck will come out OK but you have to buy new occupants?
There was a model S that was rear ended by a big rig at 40 miles per hour. The driver of the tesla waked away without a scratch. And no part of the passenger cabi was breached. The tesla lost its trunk. The damage to the semi was worse. Due to the need to protect the battery Tesla overall are more rigid with fewer crumple zones. Every tesla car currently in production gets top safety marks.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/7371/we-talked-to-the-tesla-model-s-driver-rear-ended-by-a-40-ton-semi.
I am fairly confident this was a staged publicity stunt. He garnered much more publicity than the otherwise ugly truck would have alone. Classic strategy.
I guess all that extra publicity explains why Tesla closed down 6% on yesterday, the day following the pickup truck reveal.
If it was a “staged publicity stunt” to increase buzz about Tesla’s new pickup, it did that to the financial detriment of the company.
Stocks go down, stocks go up, stocks go back down, etc. It’s what stocks do. Ultimately, unless Tesla is looking to immediately unload some stock to raise capital, closing down (even by 6%) on any particular day doesn’t do jack to the financials of the company.
John, the daily price of any stock can greatly impact the bottom line financials at the time convertible bonds issued by the company come due. Case in point: Tesla had to pay out $920 million in cash to cover convertible bonds due on on February 27, 2019, because the stock was not at or above $359.87 per share, the price set years previously for the bond redemption to be in new stock only.
Gordon, that again falls in the same category I already mentioned “raising capital”. The stock rising or falling on any particular day doesn’t mean jack to the financials except when the company is actually doing something that involves the stock price (selling stock, as I exampled previously, or converting bonds as you mention) which does not happen every day.
There was another stainless steel bodied car that was a total success and that was on the back of subsidies too. The DeLorean, oh wait!
Can this “pickup truck” be loaded with a welding machine, a full set of tools, and a heavy steel work deck, then go out on a remote job site for 12 hours, in – 40 degree temps or + 40 C temps, without so much as a current bush nearby, and drive 90 miles back to a camp site at 80 mph? Then turn around and do it all again in few hours? Day after day?
Can it when the job is done, load up a 5th wheel trailer added to its already 12,000 lb weight, and climb up a mountain pass at 80 mph and keep on going for 5 more hours back home to the wife and kids?
Now we are talking real toughness, not fake toughness.
Batteries don’t function well at extreme temperatures or loads, so no the Tesla truck could not meet the challenges you describe, notwithstanding the lack of infrastructure in remote locations.
KT66
I suspect that your example is pretty extreme.
More realistically would it be able to cope with the ‘average’ work load for this size of vehicle and does it cost an ‘average’ sort of price and have ‘average’ running costs/life span/maintenance costs?
tonyb
These type of challenges are not really out of the ordinary for getting the job done on any given work day throughout N. America. Meeting these types of challenges are within the capabilities of the Ford, Ram, and Chevy, competition right now. Even today’s 1/2 tons are more capable than 10 years ago.
3/4 ton + trucks are not inexpensive but they are actually only a bit more expensive than most traditional 1/2 ton trucks. I’m going to buy an F350 or equivalent for only few dollars more instead of an F150 or equivalent.
Perhaps Tesla hopes to under cut the 1/2 ton grocery gitter market with their less capable and lesser expensive options, but considering a very capable Cummins diesel powered Nissan now is challenging command of that market segment, already undercutting traditional Chevy or Ford 1/2 tons for price, what is the point?
“. . . but considering a very capable Cummins diesel powered Nissan now is challenging command of that market segment . . . ”
Looks like that option from Nissan may be no more:
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a28625175/nissan-titan-xd-diesel-dead/
That’s too bad. I think that will be a mistake, as Nissan will have nothing to distinguish itself in market place. However, it could be that American diesel truck buyers will opt for a heavier duty truck anyway.
Ford has a nice diesel for the F-150 now looks pretty good.
I we are to talk “realistic”, how realistic is it to think that people will avidly buy a vehicle that will only do “average” tasks and not everything you want it to?
My average use may be around the farm, but I ALSO want the same vehicle to climb mountains when I’m hunting, or do thousands of kilometres in remote country on holiday trips.
Similar situations face urban commuters whose daily trips are short, but who do inter-state drives several times per year.
Not everyone is wealth enough to have a specific vehicle for each purpose.
Ruling out 10, 20 or 30% of useage is not a clever design feature.
If your “non-average” uses are few, you don’t need “a specific vehicle” for each purpose, you can rent the specific vehicle for the few days out of the year that you need it. Not everyone is wealthy enough to own a car, an RV/camper and a u-haul type van (for example), so most people opt to buy the one that they use on a daily basis (for most that would be a car) and rent the others (the RV/camper or the u-haul type van) on the rare occasions when they need them.
Every vehicle rules out the “10, 20 or 30% of usage”, if they didn’t there’d only be one vehicle design that does everything and that’s the only design that would be available for purchase.
If Musk’s pickup truck is actually workable, then the only drawback would be the design of that ugly body. That ugly body might start up a cottage industry with people swapping out regular pickup bodies for the ugly one. You could have yourself a Tesla pickup truck that looked like a 1953 Chevy, or my favorite, the 1965 Chevy pickup, longbed or shortbed.
I get the Motor Trend channel on my satellite service and it’s just amazing to see what these extraordinarily talented people can do with a vehicle. Pretty soon I’ll be watchig them swap out Tesla pickup bodies. I bet they could do it in a day or two.
The truck is unibody construction not body on frame, swapping out wont be possible.
“The truck is unibody construction not body on frame, swapping out wont be possible.”
After watching these automobile specialists manipulate metal with their cutters and welders, I wouldn’t bet money on them not being able to put another body on a Tesla pickup truck. In fact, one group did a project just recently where they worked on a unibody-type vehicle and they decided to change all that and gave the vehicle a full conventional frame. They can do the same to a Tesla if they wanted to do so.
Try palladium glass.
Another stunt to get people talking about him
I’m just tired of him.
OMFG? Puts me in mind of CBGB/OMFUG which was a music club in the East Greenwich Village area of NYC.
The owner of the club. Hilly Kristal, opened the venue in December 73. He claimed that the name meant “Country, BlueGrass, Blues” and “Other Music For Uplifting Gourmandizers”.
Acts such as The Ramones, Patti Smith, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Talking Heads, Blondie, The Police, Beastie Boys, and Guns N’ Roses played there. When the lease expired in ‘06, it wasn’t renewed because of skyrocketing rents.
I am pretty sure I know what OMFUG meant, but I don’t have a clue about CBGB.
Glass aside, any EV will have a challenge of energy density. Just a brief review of the chart in this article shows that batteries have the worst energy density of any energy source.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
Simple physics says that EVs are a failure from the start. And with crude oil at a reasonable prices and abundant supply, there is no need to change energy sources. One also has to consider the efficiency of conversion of different primary energy sources into energy available for transportation uses. Here electricity has multiply losses along the pathway whereas crude to fuels is a very efficient process, about 90% energy efficient. So there is no driving need to go to EVs.
It makes sense to use EV’s to avoid real air pollution at point of use, e.g. wharehouses, mines, large polluted cities.
It doesn’t make much sense to use EVs where conditions might be extreme or electrical infrastructure is limited. Several times in recent snow storms in Colorado, I’ve seen Telsa’s at the side of the road or limping along. I think to myself, by AWD gas powered Subaru is half the price and actually works for my intended use.
In the early 1980s, I was stationed in Germany at a ammunition-storage site. The main guard tower had windows made of bullet-resistant glass. One of the MPs tested a window by throwing a rock at it. The window cracked vertically along the whole length of the window. (I don’t know if the MP had to pay for the damage).
Why would I want shatterproof side glass?
Any of you ever been involved in a rollover accident or driven into a body of water by accident?
Given the non-zero probability of Musk’s acolytes doing something idiotic with their vehicles, it wouldn’t be long before someone died while trapped in one of these ugly toasters.
If it was going to be built, that is. But it’s not. Look at it. You can’t fit adults in the back seat! The roof plunges WAY too low. And stainless steel isn’t that great of a finish. Ask anyone with stainless appliances. Or a DeLorean.
Some of you think you’ve found the lady! Suckers! She’ll be in his palm next time you look.
That’s a good point. Over here in the UK motoring organisations sell a combined torch with a seat belt cutter and a sharp point to break windows. In effect shatterproof glass of the type described would seal you inside the vehicle in the event of an accident
tonyb
Peter
I’ve often wondered if one could expect the electric windows to operate properly if the vehicle was submerged.
It is always best to wind down the windows before submerging the car./SARC
The electric is likely to work for a while, but in a case of an emergency it may be difficult to find the contact. The issue may be important. In Amsterdam, The Netherlands, about one car a week enters one of the countless canals. You get help here fast, but if you are unlucky to enter a canal outside town, you may be really out of luck.
How does BEVs work when submerged? It has a lot of electronics in it! Will all power be switched of if submerged, will water shorten or ignite the batteries and so on? Is such a scenario standard safety test for certificate of approval?
The electrics in cars are, usually, 12v/DC, and can operate in water without an issue for sometime, even with a typical lead/acid battery under water too. The issue in passenger compartments would be pressure isn’t equalised before you can get the door/window open before you run out of air. The Tesla battery packs are a whole other issue.
Watch the video, 5 full sized adults got out of the truck. The optional 6th seat was not installed in the truck shown. Instead a very large armrest was between the front seats.
The Big question is “Does the toast toast on the first try?”
You can’t fit adults in the back seat!
5 adults exited the vehicle during the demonstration (two from the front and, three *from the back*). In future you might want to avoid making statements about things you clearly know nothing about and that anyone can easily see is untrue with a simple google.
As an avid participant in the shooting sports, I wondered how a steel ball thrown at moderate (soft ball) pitcher speed would compare to that touted “9 mm stopping” glass.
A standard 9mm bullet is 115 grains, and leaves the muzzle at ~1200 ft/sec, yielding about 360 ft/lbs energy.
I assume the stage “pitcher” (given his lazy windup) achieved a steel ball speed of 50 mph (approx 75 ft/sec). That steel ball would have to weigh 27,600 grains to match the energy of a 9mm round. That’s nearly 1.8 kgs of steel ball.
That guy in the video didn’t throw a 1.8 kg steel ball.
Ha!
“Tesla stock sinks after unveiling of $39,900 electric pickup”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/tesla-stock-sinks-after-unveiling-of-dollar39900-electric-pickup/ar-BBX9nxi?ocid=spartanntp
So much for those here that thought the unveiling was a success.
Pessimists could be overlooking an important point. It’s inevitable that after the Tesla pickup is available, at least one journalist from the NY Times will eventually know someone that actually drives a pickup. So they will be able to tell everyone how much better they understand voters in fly-over country.
No self respecting person would trade their F-150, Ram, or Silverado for this
No, but urban virtue signalers might (assuming they actually had a F-150, Ram, or Silverado to trade)
Here is an interesting turn of events. … https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/23/elon-musk-says-tesla-has-received-146000-orders-for-its-cybertruck.html
Tesla Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Saturday that there have been about 150,000 orders thus far for the electric carmaker’s Cybertruck, which was unveiled late on Thursday.
I think there will be 500,000 orders within a few months.
This truck will be highly competitive with other cult vehicles, such as Jeeps, Hummers, etc, and it will cost much less.
“146k Cybertruck orders so far, with 42% choosing dual, 41% tri & 17% single motor”, Musk said in a tweet, adding separately that the orders were achieved without any advertising or paid endorsements.
Some Wall Street analysts praised the launch, but others doubted the futuristic design’s mass appeal.
With a starting price of $39,900, the Cybertruck’s angular body in gun-metal gray resembles an armored vehicle. Its website shows that an immediate payment of $100 is required to reserve an order for the Cybertruck.
Tesla plans to start manufacturing the truck around late 2021.
The $40k model is useless. The version that has a slime chance of being competetive with real trucks and Jeeps is the $70k version…
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/11/22/oh-my-fcking-god-tesla-cybertruck-fractures-during-demo/
A Jeep Gladiator starts out at $33k. A totally maxed out Jeep Gladiator Rubicon is about $61k…
The Jeep’s range is only limited by the proximity of gas stations and/or how many Jerry cans of gasoline it’s carrying.
https://www.jeep.com/bmo.gladiator.2020.html#/build/exterior/75218/CUJ202011JTJS98A/2TR/ERC,DFT,DMF,TW2,WFJ,AL,SDD,UAQ,AEK,ALP,AM2,AD6,AJ1,CWA,RC4,HT1,AEN,CMD,CHD,XNY,GXD,XBM,CWJ,XMF,MC6,RSJ,CSU,TV,PSC,24R,APA
Ford F250 Super Duty with about 21,000 lb towing capacity range from $30-50k.
The Ford F Series outsells all EV’s of every make & model in the US by a wide margin. At best, the Tesla POS will be a niche within a niche vehicle.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/24/20980141/tesla-cybertruck-preorder-deposit-elon-musk
The cash-strapped automaker eked out a $143 million profit last quarter through layoffs and accounting gimmicks.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/23/20928982/tesla-q4-earnings-profit-model-3-china-gigafactory
I read that just under 200,000 orders had been places after the announcement, so $20m for sowing of something that does not exist, and probably won’t not in the form shown. 2021 is not a long time in the auto industry. Given all the flat steel in that unibody, I’d be interested in how it’s put together to support that carrying capacity as spec’d.
I own a dinky little Think City 24kWh EV and a Ram 3500 diesel pickup truck. I like both of them quite a bit, but they are vehicles and not causes. I therefore feel qualified to be pretty objective about all this, and lend a perspective and some information not yet seen in this thread.
The biggest show-stopper is range. Tesla says the base model will have a 250-mile range, and the top-end one will have a 500-mile range. Let’s have a closer look. For starters, you must subtract 20% from the claims; if you habitually use more than 80% of a lithium battery, you’d better plan on much more frequent, and expensive, replacements than you expected. Every EV maker tells its customers to use 80% of the charge to preserve battery life; some advise as low as 60%. Moving on, I submit this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhX3BmhJXc8&
That video is long and daunting. For those who don’t want to torture themselves with the nerd-level demonstration and explanation, I will summarize presently. The video shows a Tesla “extended range” Model X towing a trailer. This is done in ideal battery weather, yet they managed to drive it only 195 miles of the claimed 325-mile range before ran out of juice — and only that far by disabling the A/C, slowing down to ridiculously low highway speeds, and finally positioning it in the slipstream of a truck to reduce drag and save fuel.
So the Model X got 60% of the claimed range. Why? The answer is that, for 65 of those 195 miles, they towed a 4,500-pound trailer, which is within the Model X’s 4,960 lb. towing ability. During the towing segment, the Model X got roughly one-third the fuel economy that it did when unloaded. While towing, the Model X used almost 1 kWh per mile. And that’s a 4,500 lb load; Tesla claims that its “Cybertruck” will tow 14,000 pounds. Why did they pick 14,000 pounds? Because that’s what a Ford F-150 truck will tow.
Electric motors have plenty of torque, so I have no doubt that the “Cybertruck” will be able to tow a 14,000-pound trailer. The question is: How far? Around the block? If you use that vehicle for normal truck stuff, like towing and hauling, your range will be utterly abysmal. The 250-mile range on the base model will be very lucky to hit 50 miles if it’s towing, say, 10,000 pounds, and a lot less if that tow is happening in cold weather or uphill or both.
Now to truck features. The demo “Cybertruck” had no side mirrors. (Just wait until they put those on and see what it does to fuel economy.) Here’s another simple stupid one: Where does the spare tire go? In a conventional pickup, it tucks up into a space in the frame near the back of the box and the back seat, depending on the configuration. You fish a jack extension into a slot, then turn it to lower the spare. The “Cybertruck” has a “skateboard” pan that holds the battery. Put the tire below that, and you’ll materially reduce fuel economy due to drag.
When I mentioned this on a forum dominated by Tesloids who’d obviously never owned a truck, someone said, in effect, you fool the spare goes below the truck bed but above the skateboard. Hmm. Where do we start? How about with the fact that the vast majority of trucks are sold with fiberglas bed liners? If Tesla were to finesse that by designing a liner with a removable section over the spare, then there’s the reality that people haul stuff in their trucks. So to change the tire, you get to remove everything in the bed? Oh, and my truck has a Mopar rail system to which bed dividers are attached. I’m going to remove everything in the bed, and reposition the dividers to change a tire?
Moving along, where does one put a a toolbox, a contractor rack, a winch, a camper shell, a winch, or a fifth-wheel attachment? How about a grille guard or a plow blade? Better forget about those last two, because the Cybertruck is a unibody. Any grille guard (which, by the way, is usually where a winch is mounted) that doesn’t attach to a separate frame is mere truck jewelry. Forget about putting a plow blade on a unibody. Kids, there’s a reason that full-size pickup trucks are body-on-frame. And where are the bed steps? And how about those high sides? Kids, there’s a reason why Honda redesigned the Ridgeline.
You’ll note that I have not yet mentioned the aesthetics. To put it mildly, I don’t care for the brutalist look. I quite highly doubt that the prototypical full-sized truck buyer will either. But that’s neither here nor there.
What really matters is that the “Cybertruck” isn’t a truck at all. It’s a California hipster toy masquerading as a truck. Tesla’s mistake was to enter the full-size pickup market, which is characterized by a highly demanding core customer base. They should have started with a compact truck, which for all kinds of reasons would have been a far easier and more forgiving market.
Don’t bet on incidents!
This accident can not be reversed.
https://www.google.com/search?lr=lang_en&client=ms-android-huawei&biw=360&bih=518&tbs=lr%3Alang_1en&sxsrf=ACYBGNQAi8lC4JV4qS8U_PhKKoJE1ICc1g%3A1575057951881&ei=H3rhXZ-yNYX1qwHS6LnADQ&q=wetten+dass+accident&oq=wetten+dass+unfall&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.
Car glass safety requirement approval –
snippet from the webb:
Safety glass is used in all automobile glass. It is manufactured to reduce the likelihood of injury, if it breaks. Windshields are made from a lamination process. … When a small object strikes a piece of safety glass, typically only the outer layer of the windshield that is struck breaks.
____________________________________
Are car side windows safety glass?
Car and truck side windows are made of tempered glass, while others are laminated. … It is called this because the glass is designed to shatter into tiny, harmless glass balls instead of shattering into shards that can cut or injure passengers.
My comment: in an accident it is better when the rescue team has access to the passenger compartment.
In case of a fall into water trapped in the car this can be lifesaving.
____________________________________
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-huawei&sxsrf=ACYBGNTSddLofmHjxujTSyK_DRLkx9t8ew:1575058663364&q=safety+glass+in+cars&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjTgIXhnpDmAhXBmIsKHeONCsIQ1QIwCHoECA0QBg&biw=360&bih=574&dpr=3