Tesla Cybertruck

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Looks like something designed for an eighties sci-fi film as to what they’d imagine we’d be driving in the twenty twenties. That said modern motor vehicle design is very generic.

 
Not to go out on a limb for the man, but unlike what you might have seen in TV shows like "Airwolf" or "Viper," outer layers of bulletproof glass do often shatter when impacted.
 
This is what happens when you legalize the bud.
Just don’t rely on its ‘bulletproof’ windows.

Did they say they were bulletproof? If so, why would you doubt them?
LOL
 
Not to go out on a limb for the man, but unlike what you might have seen in TV shows like "Airwolf" or "Viper," outer layers of bulletproof glass do often shatter when impacted.

Yep. The notion that it would just bounce off, without making a scratch, isn't realistic. (Although I do recall reading of them shooting granite pebbles and a 3/8" nut at the window of a Sniper pod without scratching it.)
 
My first impression was that it was ugly AF. It's growing on me a bit though.
 
So we don't get flying DeLoreans powered by trash, we do get supersized pickup DeLoreans powered by electricity...
 
Stick a couple of hexagonal solar panels on the side and you have the car Darth Vader would drive.
 
Looks like something designed for an eighties sci-fi film as to what they’d imagine we’d be driving in the twenty twenties...

Well, the man did say it would be a "futuristic-like cyberpunk, Blade Runner pickup truck". ;)

Personally, I thought Syd Mead's Spinner flying car design from the 1982 Blade Runner were way more interesting visually than this folded-paper exercise in suburban compensation ;p
 
Elon Musk must have been playing too much Halo lately:

EJ9Fv0qXYAArvd1.jpg
 
Just don’t rely on its ‘bulletproof’ windows.
Did they say they were bulletproof? If so, why would you doubt them?
To be pedantic; the RHA steel body panels were tested against 9mm rounds, the windows were just meant to be general impact resistant. They've also put out footage of an earlier test: I know some with business / marketing backgrounds believe the windows were probably deliberately weakened or replaced with conventional glass just so that they'd create more controversy and get more out of the media cycle, including follow-ups later on when they achieve their 'improvements to make before production'.
 
In my heart though being an eighties child he’s really creating the future that the films and television of the time told me I should expect. It’s everyone else who is wrong.;)

More seriously one approach to selling electric vehicles is to make them look very different to what’s gone before, why should they look like petrol cars.
 
It's performing and then a lot of early buyer will go for it. People will then get used with the shape.

One though however, they might have some lawability concerns with all those pointy and sharp corners in Europe. They are supposed to be forbidden although a lot of car makers (luxury often) have gone through.

Now tell me that it can evade public road radar with its stealthy look ;)
 
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I just hope they did not pay the two year old stylist too much. Sweeties cause tooth decay after all. However, I imagine it is rather difficult to sculpt stainless steel very far so straight lines are pretty much the limit. I'll wait until it is properly road tested.
 

 
I just hope they did not pay the two year old stylist too much. Sweeties cause tooth decay after all. However, I imagine it is rather difficult to sculpt stainless steel very far so straight lines are pretty much the limit. I'll wait until it is properly road tested.

Uhm, what?


If Syd Mead loves it you can't get a much higher compliment than that.
 
Simply pointing out that stainless steel is a difficult material to create complex curves with. The DeLorean also had simpler forms. It does however have something missing, like style.
 
I'm not a fan of pickup trucks, and when Tesla announced it was going to build one I wasn't expecting much. Then, the cybertruck put a big smile on my face. Love it.
 
This design has poor aerodynamics, below military-standard styling and limited utility compared to other pickup trucks. The windows do not require armor, especially for safety reasons. I suspect Mr. Tesla's preferences won out as far as 'style' is concerned. With that much money I suppose you can get what you want. On a side note, I wonder if Tesla is installing the latest battery technology or allowing for a future swap-out. Charge-discharge cycles are improving and all the customer cares about is how long a full recharge will take.

A previous design by Tesla/Musk called the "Blade Runner" truck.

 
I sort of appreciate where Tesla is going with this. The minimalist "Syd Mead" aesthetic is a design exercise worth pursuing but also that much harder to get altogether right than organic, typically human scale and more self-ornate (often in nature, emergent fractal) shapes. As it is, the Cybertruck is an outlier and that amplifies its stark proportions. To me some of the lines and shapes work OK, some not so much.

There's also our cultural backdrop, our defining imagery of the age to consider. Therein on twitter @fab_hinz painted an image I've found hard to shake: "Change the color of the Cybertruck a little and it looks like Abu 'Ilun al-Afriqi is taking a last prayer in front of his SVBIED before heading out to level some SAA base in Deir ez-Zor. "
 
Some precedents. Musk references Blade Runner of course, and also Giorgetto Giugiaro's Lotus Esprit (the submarine conversion for The Spy Who Loved Me was on show at the Cybrtrk launch). Its lineage goes back at least to his 1971 Maserati Boomerang concept, which started the 70s trend for wedge-shaped supercars. At a meeting with Lotus, their designer, Oliver Winterbottom suggested that their new car be based on the Boomerang and Esprit appeared in concept form in 1972, reaching production in 1976.

British designer William Towns worked for Aston Martin Lagonda in and both his Lagonda saloon in 1976 and Bulldog of 1979 concept supercar had uncompromising angular designs. The Bulldog's now 40 years old, would you believe? One of the Lagondas I've attached below is a second-series version, which is even cleaner than the original. In recent years it's become very collectible and is sometimes in fashion shots, if the photographer can borrow one. New Lagonda concepts still hint at Towns' design, but are more fluid.

Citroen, always one to try something weird, created the Karin pyramidal three-seater in 1980.

In 2018, Rem D Koolhaas (his father is a famous architect, also known for his radical and challenging work) collaborated with United Nude to produce the Lo Res concept.

Of course most of these cars are concepts and all adopted the angular look primarily for stylistic reasons (and the pressings were also cheaper than compound curves). However, the Cybrtrk's shape is determined by structure. The battery pack takes up space that would be used for the beefy chassis of a conventional truck and the body itself is therefore the primary structure - it uses 3mm steel and can be thought of as a box beam. Musk says that it uses the same steel as Starship. EDIT: hat tip to Grey Havoc.
 

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Design and function decisions require a full understanding of internal parts arrangement, load distribution and aerodynamics to reduce drag. Even wheels and wheel wells are part of the equation. Aston Martin got it right. This design fails on several levels.

Reducing the RCS could be as simple as bolt-on sections but I doubt many people would be driving it off a cliff or out one building and into the next.
 
Some precedents. Musk references Blade Runner of course, and also Giorgetto Giugiaro's Lotus Esprit (the submarine conversion for The Spy Who Loved Me was on show at the Cybrtrk launch). Its lineage goes back at least to his 1971 Maserati Boomerang concept, which started the 70s trend for wedge-shaped supercars. At a meeting with Lotus, their designer, Oliver Winterbottom suggested that their new car be based on the Boomerang and Esprit appeared in concept form in 1972, reaching production in 1976.

First thing I thought of was that Aston Martin Bulldog but I can never remember the name of that damn thing. Love that Maserati Boomerang. That and the Bertone Stratus are two of my favorite supercars of the past.

Bertone-Lancia-Stratos-HF-Zero-Concept-1024x768.jpg

lancia_stratos_zero_1.jpeg
 
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3mm thick body panel is a lot of material. Stainless. This thing is gonna last for centuries.
 
Is it shaped to evade speed radars ?
And armored to survive mass shootings ?


Seriously tho, yes , very "Syd Mead". Like it.
But , am I the only one who prefer old cars ?
 
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Why he’s buying a Cybertruck. Interesting that it has already picked up 146k pre-orders. As it says pickup truck design hasn’t really changed much in years. And to me they are one of the most boring looking motor vehicles you can see on the roads.

 
@JFC Fuller :
It seems to me like the new Mustang E-Trash (to fast haul family garbage to your closest trash disposal & recycling container) doesn't have any appeal. Ford built the (Mustang) Probe in the late 80's that had the finest Cx in the world for any mass production car until Testla came. They could have done much better with their first proposal to the electrical car community, especially rebranding the Mustang name.

The E-Tron doesn't have any of the performance advantages of what Tesla offers, nor in price or specs.

Focusing on the Tesla design, you have here a unibody design (a monocoque chassis) that is still rare in the pickup truck segment to make it a weird choice for a PR stunt. It's a lot of design work and production tuning to get to there where a simple body on frame would have done it faster and cheaper.
Given also that they test drive the thing with civilian passengers,reaching scarcely seen acceleration value (equal or better than Lambo specs) I very much doubt that they would have taken the risk and the pain to reach that level only for their marketing division.
The lack of wipers and side view mirror might only reflect a search for new technology. This pickup is built to offer damage & degradation tolerance and this might be part of that philosophy.

There is also the fact already mentioned that this is a market already saturated with owners that tend to stick to the same brand/ same model. So the economical risk are higher than their previous endeavor. If they can past the test with a cheaper to build model (tooling with a drastic drop in body panel number), something that seems to be a new focus for Musk, then it will open the door for new opportunities to build cheaper to make models for a clientele only looking for the specificity unique to Tesla: high power battery, quality built, specs and cost. We might even see a Tesla model competing with entry model (an Austin Mini wedged like?).
 
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The rear view mirror problem could be solved by mirrors that move outward from behind sliding panels. This way, the uh... aesthetics of the design remain wherever it is parked. Windshield wipers could be hidden until needed.

People prefer some style over faster and cheaper. "Boring" is not a design choice. Talk to anyone working in auto body design. Today, a new design can be projected on a screen, in full 3D with very realistic lighting, and average car buyers are brought in. They are asked for their honest opinions. If the front end "looks wrong," they hope someone can articulate that thought a bit further. One design was criticized in this manner, and after suggested fixes, that same group was asked to come back. They approved any changes and the truck went into production. It's a little sad that car designers cannot design the cars of their imagination but perhaps a few can drive something close.

According to Business Insider, while the Tesla Cybertruck has advantages over the Ford F-150, there is the issue of price: "The 2020 F-150 starts at $28,496, while the Cybertruck starts at $39,900."
 
Panels are large to absorb the energy of an impact. It's converging with low part number.

Traditional design use a lot of smaller stamped parts that have to be welded to get to the same results with much thinner sheet metal and complex shapes. 3mm thick flat body panels can fold easily under the weight (without even any acceleration) of a pedestrian given the span b/w two restraining point is large enough ;)

(the deformation is correlated with energy dissipation)
 
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