And it’s hard to take him seriously when he presents his arguments as how stupid Arlin and his must be and how they must not have done basic research and how anyone with half a brain could’ve warned them. He essentially straw man’s an argument and the fills the post with how much smarter he is to see things a guy who has built multiple billion dollar manufacturing businesses must’ve just been too stupid to think about.
Elon is well-known for firing or sidelining technical staff with whom his intuition disagrees, regardless of his own technical depth in any of those matters. His companies have a lot of success for reasons other than his making the wisest technical and programmatic decisions. He sets his own standard for what he considers acceptable, even if those standards fly in the face of existing norms. That's not unalloyed awesomeness - there are sacrifices.
The author, in an admittedly ranty way, levels basic criticisms that are hard to individually disqualify. With the truck, it seems like Elon did Elon things, and his team is struggling to make his vision real in a mass-producible design with acceptable quality.
I don’t disagree with anything you’ve written, but the idea that Musk hasn’t considered oil panning and should’ve just asked an engineer is ludicrous. The author assumes Musk must be an idiot despite all of the evidence to the contrary.
> ... the idea that Musk hasn’t considered oil panning and should’ve just asked an engineer is ludicrous. The author assumes Musk must be an idiot despite all of the evidence to the contrary.
I don't see anything ludicrous in the author's article, even if it sneers at times. Though unquestionably successful overall, since Elon has a history of bad technical or PR/appearance-driven moves, I'm not sure what's wrong with mocking him for some of those things. He is successful despite doing some idiotic things, it's not that everything he does is brilliant and correct.
The article doesn't provide any internal Tesla evidence as to whether Elon considered it and disregarded oil canning (for whatever reason), or if people on his team told him about this likely issue and he blew them off, thinking he could just keep demanding his team bring him solutions instead of telling him about problems with his vision. Under the circumstances, either could validly be criticized as idiotic, in which case mocking him seems like fair game. This would hardly be the first such issue ("Falcon Wing" doors, display screens on the Model S, the incredibly ill-advised 'Full Self-Driving' labeling, etc.).
This really is quite a biased article. That being said, I will agree with the core premise that the Cybertruck could've been made slightly differently that would've prevented oil canning.
This isn't likely to happen, but we could learn to just not care. We have bigger problems than worrying about our car's cosmetics. A lot of a car's cost is due to the high cost of perfect finishes. I'd love a car that was cheap to repair, even if it meant leaving some obvious welding showing up on the surface; especially if it was more socially acceptable.
Reminds me of the NHL goalie Gerry Cheevers* who painted stitches on his face mask every time it got damaged by a puck that would have damaged his face instead. Maybe we should celebrate our car's service dings, instead of spending the money to hide them.
Go to some developing countries and that is the norm. The cars look like crap but.... Personally I prefer a pristine car and spend hours polishing mine, but to each their own.
For the amount of money being paid and the degree of hype, this is roughly the amount of cope required for someone to be happy if the iPhone 16 came pre-cracked.
Gave this story a "tentative upvote", because I feel the tone and some of the other topics the author mentioned have the potential to steer any discussion into a political mess, but I am genuinely interested in the real engineering concerns regarding the Cybertruck.
The author is basically arguing "large, completely flat metal panels that join in long, angular seams is a fatal design flaw that is unfixable." I.e. they say this design will lead to major problems ("oil-canning", seam gaps, and making repairs even more of a non-starter), and the possible fixes will either be gargantuanly expensive or have other problems (lots of added weight). Can someone versed in this area comment on this? At first glance he does appear to make great points, so I'd like to know if there is something I'm missing.
I think automakers are really going to have to come to terms with repairability costs or else people will start balking at insane insurance costs. There have been a bunch of articles on HN recently about how minor impacts on EVs are leading to crazy repair bills, like the 41k Rivian repair. If it costs 15k to fix a minor door ding on a Cybertruck, I can't fathom what insurers will charge for comprehensive or collision coverage.
Honestly, I wish there was an insurance option that wouldn’t cover cosmetic damage. If your car has some cracks in the plastic body panels, repairing it is completely unnecessary. Desirable, maybe, but irrelevant to whether or not a car is still drivable vs. salvage.
You can just not claim those and keep your no-claim bonus.
In fact, it's probably cheaper to not claim anything you can afford to pay yourself, if your no claims bonus is intact.
The purpose of your insurance is to pay for damage caused by you to other people's cars, so it's not really up to you whether you think cosmetic damage is important or not.
(Personally, I think this is quite "regressive", in that the poor have to pay to cover potential damage to cars much more expensive than their own. It would work better if insurance was completely optional and only paid for damage to your own car, whether caused by yourself or others. That way you would have a lot more control over how much you want to pay and how much risk you want to take on).
> The purpose of your insurance is to pay for damage caused by you to other people's cars
Liability insurance’s purpose is to pay for damage caused by you and your car to other people’s bodies and property due to your negligence. Cars damage other things beyond simply other cars.
> Personally, I think this is quite "regressive", in that the poor have to pay to cover potential damage to cars much more expensive than their own.
Only damage that they have been found responsible for having caused. People of any income level who make a habit of causing extensive damage to expensive cars belonging to other drivers probably should pay increased insurance rates to cover the damages they cause (or become functionally uninsurable).
> It would work better if insurance was completely optional and only paid for damage to your own car, whether caused by yourself or others. That way you would have a lot more control over how much you want to pay and how much risk you want to take on).
Again, that does nothing to cover the damage your car does to, for example, pedestrians, passengers in other vehicles, signs, mailboxes, or any of the other variety of things cars can damage.
While the post you are replying to is completely wrong (as someone else pointed out they appear to never have heard of comprehensive or collision insurance), I think it's fair to have a debate about whether property damage liability should be capped on the roads.
That is, if I decide to drive a car where the bumper is made of Fabergé eggs, and someone dings my bumper, why should they have to pay me a couple million to replace my couple broken Fabergé eggs? Obviously that's a fake example, but is that really much different from having to pay extreme amounts to fix someone's Lamborghini or Bugatti? It seems more rational to me to conclude that people driving insanely expensive cars on public roads are taking ill-advised risks and should need to shoulder more of that risk.
I know you’re saying it’s a fake example, but it seems perfectly reasonable as an equivalence.
Especially when you discover that many super cars are actually using commodity components but then literally just charging 10x for them (I recall someone showing Lamborghini or Ferrari parts that literally had other brands stamped on them).
In general the legal mandatory insurance is to cover damage you cause to other cars.
But many people have insurance for their vehicles to cover damage done where the culprit is uninsured, under insured, or simply can’t be found. Third party insurance leaves you out of pocket in those cases, and even if you do find the culprit if they have no assets either you can’t even use a lawsuit to reclaim the damages.
Dude managed to work seven distinct flamebait tangents into one article. It’s really something. Throw climate change and bicycles into the mix and you’ve basically completed HN flame war bingo.
1. Cybertruck is hella late. Lapped even by other makers
2. Cybertrucks don’t look great. The videos of them driving around just don’t quite live up to the hype. If the excitement for the car will be less after launch, why launch it ?
2) They look different, great is in the eye of the beholder tho. I would still buy one if they were priced reasonably AND they've been out for a while. I never buy a 1st edition of any car. every car needs a while to work out the gotchas, and I don't like being a beta tester for a billionaire while paying him to give me a shoddy experience.
> MAGA-hats think that Donald Trump is some sort of financial genius who will "save America" by turning it into a totalitarian State ("FREE-DUM!" - ironic, isn't it?).
For the benefit of those like me who had never heard of oil-canning before: "Oil canning, a common inherent trait of flat sheet material, is a moderately visible deformation. This is can usually be seen as a ripple or buckle along with the broad flat areas of the material. Oil canning is an aesthetic complaint and does not have any effect on the integrity and strength of the material." [0]
I think it was in a comment thread here that there was some debate about Tesla and novelty, and someone noted that Tesla didn't actually design the cars but licensed the body designs from Lotus. (All of this was in the context of some "does Elon Musk actually deserve credit" debate.)
Some Tesla/Musk fans replied that it probably didn't even help them get to market faster, and now that Tesla was FINALLY using their own design for the Cybertruck they could really create a vehicle that was fully met the electric vehicle and Tesla's potential.
I kind of bookmarked that discussion in my mind, the notion that the Cybertruck represents a new design process, a kind of unleashing of the process, and perhaps represents a fully Elon Musk version of Tesla.
The result has not disappointed! Without using conventional body designs as the basis of this new vehicle they've instead made bizarre and cringy choices that can't be justified aesthetically or functionally. I honestly thought the original Cybertruck design was just going to be a placeholder to attract attention before they made something reasonable... and without Musk maybe it would have been.
Everyone else didn't come upon the conventional designs by accident; there's a lot of hubris in making such a big change, especially since it's not a meaningful part of Tesla's unique value.
You skipped directly from the Lotus-derived Roadster to Cybertruck. That misses that a notable auto industry designer led the design of Model S, Model 3, Model X and Model Y. These are the models that made Tesla a long-term viable vehicle OEM. There is no diminishing that accomplishment.
You are probably right that Cybertruck is Elon's personal project to revolutionize car design. It will probably go about as well as most attempts to revolutionize car design.
44 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 90.0 ms ] threadThe author, in an admittedly ranty way, levels basic criticisms that are hard to individually disqualify. With the truck, it seems like Elon did Elon things, and his team is struggling to make his vision real in a mass-producible design with acceptable quality.
I don't see anything ludicrous in the author's article, even if it sneers at times. Though unquestionably successful overall, since Elon has a history of bad technical or PR/appearance-driven moves, I'm not sure what's wrong with mocking him for some of those things. He is successful despite doing some idiotic things, it's not that everything he does is brilliant and correct.
The article doesn't provide any internal Tesla evidence as to whether Elon considered it and disregarded oil canning (for whatever reason), or if people on his team told him about this likely issue and he blew them off, thinking he could just keep demanding his team bring him solutions instead of telling him about problems with his vision. Under the circumstances, either could validly be criticized as idiotic, in which case mocking him seems like fair game. This would hardly be the first such issue ("Falcon Wing" doors, display screens on the Model S, the incredibly ill-advised 'Full Self-Driving' labeling, etc.).
This isn't likely to happen, but we could learn to just not care. We have bigger problems than worrying about our car's cosmetics. A lot of a car's cost is due to the high cost of perfect finishes. I'd love a car that was cheap to repair, even if it meant leaving some obvious welding showing up on the surface; especially if it was more socially acceptable.
Reminds me of the NHL goalie Gerry Cheevers* who painted stitches on his face mask every time it got damaged by a puck that would have damaged his face instead. Maybe we should celebrate our car's service dings, instead of spending the money to hide them.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Cheevers
In this other case I have a mark of me being an idiot backing into a telephone pole or another lower car I didn’t see or getting keyed by neighbors.
My aunt lived in the city. Her car would get dinged all the time.
She made peace with it by putting two crossed bandaids on a ding.
The author is basically arguing "large, completely flat metal panels that join in long, angular seams is a fatal design flaw that is unfixable." I.e. they say this design will lead to major problems ("oil-canning", seam gaps, and making repairs even more of a non-starter), and the possible fixes will either be gargantuanly expensive or have other problems (lots of added weight). Can someone versed in this area comment on this? At first glance he does appear to make great points, so I'd like to know if there is something I'm missing.
I think automakers are really going to have to come to terms with repairability costs or else people will start balking at insane insurance costs. There have been a bunch of articles on HN recently about how minor impacts on EVs are leading to crazy repair bills, like the 41k Rivian repair. If it costs 15k to fix a minor door ding on a Cybertruck, I can't fathom what insurers will charge for comprehensive or collision coverage.
(Personally, I think this is quite "regressive", in that the poor have to pay to cover potential damage to cars much more expensive than their own. It would work better if insurance was completely optional and only paid for damage to your own car, whether caused by yourself or others. That way you would have a lot more control over how much you want to pay and how much risk you want to take on).
Liability insurance’s purpose is to pay for damage caused by you and your car to other people’s bodies and property due to your negligence. Cars damage other things beyond simply other cars.
> Personally, I think this is quite "regressive", in that the poor have to pay to cover potential damage to cars much more expensive than their own.
Only damage that they have been found responsible for having caused. People of any income level who make a habit of causing extensive damage to expensive cars belonging to other drivers probably should pay increased insurance rates to cover the damages they cause (or become functionally uninsurable).
> It would work better if insurance was completely optional and only paid for damage to your own car, whether caused by yourself or others. That way you would have a lot more control over how much you want to pay and how much risk you want to take on).
Again, that does nothing to cover the damage your car does to, for example, pedestrians, passengers in other vehicles, signs, mailboxes, or any of the other variety of things cars can damage.
That is, if I decide to drive a car where the bumper is made of Fabergé eggs, and someone dings my bumper, why should they have to pay me a couple million to replace my couple broken Fabergé eggs? Obviously that's a fake example, but is that really much different from having to pay extreme amounts to fix someone's Lamborghini or Bugatti? It seems more rational to me to conclude that people driving insanely expensive cars on public roads are taking ill-advised risks and should need to shoulder more of that risk.
Especially when you discover that many super cars are actually using commodity components but then literally just charging 10x for them (I recall someone showing Lamborghini or Ferrari parts that literally had other brands stamped on them).
But many people have insurance for their vehicles to cover damage done where the culprit is uninsured, under insured, or simply can’t be found. Third party insurance leaves you out of pocket in those cases, and even if you do find the culprit if they have no assets either you can’t even use a lawsuit to reclaim the damages.
1. Cybertruck is hella late. Lapped even by other makers
2. Cybertrucks don’t look great. The videos of them driving around just don’t quite live up to the hype. If the excitement for the car will be less after launch, why launch it ?
Ugh, are we still doing this?
[0] https://stampingsimulation.com/effects-of-oil-canning/
Some Tesla/Musk fans replied that it probably didn't even help them get to market faster, and now that Tesla was FINALLY using their own design for the Cybertruck they could really create a vehicle that was fully met the electric vehicle and Tesla's potential.
I kind of bookmarked that discussion in my mind, the notion that the Cybertruck represents a new design process, a kind of unleashing of the process, and perhaps represents a fully Elon Musk version of Tesla.
The result has not disappointed! Without using conventional body designs as the basis of this new vehicle they've instead made bizarre and cringy choices that can't be justified aesthetically or functionally. I honestly thought the original Cybertruck design was just going to be a placeholder to attract attention before they made something reasonable... and without Musk maybe it would have been.
Everyone else didn't come upon the conventional designs by accident; there's a lot of hubris in making such a big change, especially since it's not a meaningful part of Tesla's unique value.
You are probably right that Cybertruck is Elon's personal project to revolutionize car design. It will probably go about as well as most attempts to revolutionize car design.