A Leaked Tesla Report Shows the Cybertruck Had Basic Design Flaws | Hacker News Reader

A Leaked Tesla Report Shows the Cybertruck Had Basic Design Flaws

wired.co.uk

43 pointsamalinovic57 comments

> Palmer says he’s surprised at the frankness of the report. “You’d be giving the engineers that wrote this stuff a good bollocking. You don’t normally write this down.”

Seems to me if Tesla internal quality reports are this harsh and engineers did feel comfortable writing these things down, that's a positive for company culture. You want engineers to point out problems.

>Andy Palmer, the former COO of Nissan and CEO of Aston Martin Lagonda

People at the executive level are detached from reality and don't want to hear their expert leadership where they handwave and speak prose on stage is leading to poor products.

They want you to tell them their ideas were the best ever, they deserve the $50 million compensation because without them saying "let it have 4 wheels", you in your millions of years as an engineer could never figure out how to make a car.

Such leaders are the hallmark of a dying company. Once the leadership gets detached from reality it’s hard to pivot back into building great things. But that’s capitalism for you and the cycle of business. Growth, stagnation, and then decline.

That does seem like a strange attitude; the problems are there whether the engineers write it down or not. Do you want to find them now, or let your customers find them?

Yep that is what you want before you spend a lot developing a product line.

I have been a huge Tesla fan - we own 2 (model 3 and Y). I think Tesla perfectly executed the barn raising of a new EV car company: (1) Build a premium roadster (2) Build a premium sedan (3) Build a mid range sedan. Each step allowed them to develop expertise and attract the right customers with the right expectations at the right $$$ amount. The design of each car has been elegant: simple, but attractive.

The Cybertruck was a huge misstep. I imagine truck people are mostly practical - so a design out of blade runner not only creates unnecessary engineering challenges, but misses most of the market.

When I look at all the Rivian's around town, I think, man, that is the truck that I expected Tesla to build. The Cybertruck is clearly at vanity project at way too early a point in Tesla's history. An embodiment of Elon's departure from reality.

Tesla - please drop the Cybertruck (and the robots, too)! And though I am no fan of mergers - maybe you should look into buying Rivian.

> I imagine truck people are mostly practical

Ha - I live in an area with a ton of these behemoths. 19 times out of 20 there's no cargo in the back, and the owner is using them as an expensive gas guzzling grocery shopper. The modern "crew cab" also takes half the cargo / tailgate space now. So you get an awkward SUV or van without any weather protection for cargo.

Modern American pickup trucks are all flash (a tough, hardworking image) and no substance.

I sold a Jeep Liberty to buy a truck (Honda Ridgeline) precisely because I wanted an open bed...but I live in the country and use the "truckness" of it at least twice a month.

The biggest problem with consumer truck ownership is that people buy them if they might need them periodically (tow a camper, get supplies for a remodeling project) and then they use them for everyday life because where they are grossly out of proportion. Perceived safety also plays into the equation.

> then they use them for everyday life because where they are grossly out of proportion. Perceived safety also plays into the equation.

They use them for everyday life because energy is so cheap that it does not make sense to inconvenience yourself and use something else.

Alternatively, buying and maintaining a second vehicle (insurance, wear and tear, etc.) is more expensive than just using your current vehicle, which you already need to use a few times a month to haul things in the bed which you'd prefer to do yourself instead of looking for outside help as that takes time.

If there were economically affordable smaller trucks that are likely more fuel efficient than the behemoth trucks - the Ford Maverick hybrid seems to be the start of that trend - then I'm sure you'd see more people purchasing these vehicles used and new.

This is completely ignoring subcultures in the US that roll coal and drive lifted trucks, etc. etc. as they just think that stuff's cool.

Buying an additional vehicle is more expensive and more wasteful than using a single vehicle even if that may not be economical

Buying a pickup truck for periodic use is more wasteful than renting one as needed.

That's only really reasonable if you use a truck only a few times a year, honestly. Otherwise it's not reasonable: renting a car isn't extremely easy, often you need the truck for a few days, etc..

But I agree: many people own trucks not because of the utility but because they like trucks.

The rental scene would become different if the incentives were to change. Currently, it is not attractive to rent, so of course the cost and convenience to rent is not optimized as much as it could be by the market.

I can name at least 5 family and friends right off the bat who have large pickup trucks that I guarantee have never used for anything that could not have also been hauled on top of a car with some ties. My neighbor has a 2020 Tundra which I have watched her use to transport her two kids back and forth from the elementary school 1.5 miles away for years now.

It just makes no sense that in the last 20 years, all of a sudden there have been huge increases in the population of the US doing hard, manual work moving heavy workloads such that they can no longer manage with cars that used to work for us in the 1980s and 1990s? I'll go with "it's 90% vanity".

I've switched to a lightweight trailer, pulled by my everyday hatchback sedan.

No fussing with rentals, I can load it up with debris for a trip to the dump while it is detached, and I can fit drywall in it and still have a backseat for car seats.

The trailer cost something like $1000, the tow package $300, plus another $400 to have someone else install it. Probably equivalent to about 30-40 short rentals in price, and far cheaper than a second or larger primary vehicle.

Yeah that can work for a lot of things!

Obviously this equation is highly dependent on the frequency of usage.

The line is probably closer to one 'truck usage's every 2 months than you might think.

It is also dependent on the cost of fuel. Given that we hardly price any externalities of fuel into the cost of fuel, the current line is probably very far from where it would be otherwise.

Well, I agree with you, but to be fair this isn't everyone that owns a truck.

If you own a truck and use it even 20% of the time for its intended use - it's probably ok. But you'll see that truck in a lot of supermarket parking lots, because what are they supposed to do? Rent a car to go get groceries? Buy a second car?

The Rivian truck has no appeal to me. I don't think its design is that appealing and the bed is too small. It's more comparable to the smaller trucks than it is to the incumbent 1/2 ton market.

The Cybertruck is a viable replacement for a 1/2 ton truck. It's design is clearly polarizing but the people who like it, really seem to like it. There isn't anything too interesting about the electric trucks from Ford and Chevy, so there seems to be a carve out for something a little wilder and I'm happy that Tesla is investing in doing something different.

Also, if you live in a place where there are lots of trucks you'll see trucks with all kinds of embellishments. The Cybertruck may not end up being that far-fetched of a design. Plus, Musk has been transforming his image to be more right-friendly politically and that's going to eliminate some friction from that demographic that has a big overlap with truck ownership.

I think the CyberTruck is hideous. Absolutely ugly. However, if I needed a truck I'd pretty heavily consider it. I know what I'm getting with Tesla, where as Rivian? Who knows, they are so new.

And Tesla in general does a very good job with their vehicles.

I think the CyberTruck is somewhere between beautiful and sexy. Other than your bad taste in aesthetics [IMHO], I completely agree with the rest of your comment.

As an owner of multiple pickups, I don't see the cybertruck as a competing product. I certainly couldn't imagine it being a suitable replacement for any of our rigs, but it's cool in its own right. I would imagine people will buy it for what it is, if it ever sees the light of day.

Ya, quirkiness wise, Cybertruck is like the EV version of a Subaru Brat. Or maybe even a PT Cruiser.

I have no idea if it'll be a successful product. Not my taste, but I'm not the target market.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaru_BRAT

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_PT_Cruiser

But from Tesla's presentations, the Cybertruck's impact on their manufacturing, designing the machine to make the machine, has been considerable. Like a demonstration platform.

Cybertruck's reduction in labor costs and part counts will be game changing. For instance, no body or paint shops, which entail 1/3rd of the production cost (IIRC).

Assuming the next two passenger vehicle models follow suit, I have zero doubt Tesla will hit their 20m/year production targets. And make a brazillian dollars doing it.

Why's that? I'm selling my Dodge Ram 2500 crew cab 8' bed Cummins Diesel as my CyberTruck reservation should be towards the top. I view the CyberTruck as a superior replacement for the Cummins Diesel. Then again I own a Model Y and really don't want to own another dino powered vehicle. I've replaced way to many engines and transmissions in my life. I have a 1 ton gantry in my garage that hopefully will never be used on gas/diesel powertrains again.

I'm honestly not sure if this is sarcasm or not? I can't imagine pulling a 28' stock trailer full of cows with a cybertruck.

> I imagine truck people are mostly practical - so a design out of blade runner not only creates unnecessary engineering challenges, but misses most of the market.

They are not practical vehicles. The waste majority of people don't use their trucks for practical things.

And the Cybertruck is not really less practical then other trucks, more in some ways.

And given how many pre order and how other metrics look, there is plenty of interest in the server truck.

> maybe you should look into buying Rivian.

Why would they buy Rivian, that's a crazy idea. Its far cheaper to just take the Cybertruck parts and design a normal looking truck.

Tesla design choices should eventually make for a high margin truck.

What? Really? You think they should merge with Rivian, a company that is severely in debt and producing cars at a loss. What do you think that buys them exactly? A traditional looking truck? They could have done that themselves.

A huge misstep? No. I think the cyber truck is hideous but there are millions of people who love it. They will not have trouble selling as many as they make.

Except that the Rivians are ungodly expensive and incredibly heavy. They might look more like a regular truck, but they’re incredibly impractical.

>The Cybertruck was a huge misstep. I imagine truck people are mostly practical - so a design out of blade runner not only creates unnecessary engineering challenges, but misses most of the market.

I really don't agree with you. I live in a rural area and make major use of my truck, and the Rivian looks to me like an urbinite's idea of a "practical truck" while looking like trash, wtf is even the point of a "truck" with a 4.5 foot bed? And I absolutely hate how many of the EV truck designs try to ape ICE limitations as aesthetics, like having some huge hood (which is now just a "frunk" not with a big engine). I want the cab moved way forward to give me better forward visibility taking advantage of what the EV platform makes possible. Whereas the Cybertruck at first unveiling looked eminently practical to me more so then anything else I'd seen yet. Actual useful truck bed. Cab forward. Design looked like it'd be good in the woods and on class 4 roads going through lots of branches. There is stuff I would have liked to see to take it even farther, I didn't like full cab required at first (I've mildly come around to it not being killer since unlike with my ICE truck an EV truck would be the most efficient vehicle I own since I have no other BEVs yet, so using it in general might make sense), there are other cool features EV might make easier I'd like to see as options at least like winches or dump. A "cyber" truck that had look-through floor or dashboard for even better visibility would also have been a far more interesting and practical "ambitious" feature then garbage like driver assist. But even so, up until recently the Cybertruck was the only truck that seemed to have form following function overall.

>When I look at all the Rivian's around town, I think, man, that is the truck that I expected Tesla to build. The Cybertruck is clearly at vanity project at way too early a point in Tesla's history. An embodiment of Elon's departure from reality. Tesla - please drop the Cybertruck (and the robots, too)! And though I am no fan of mergers - maybe you should look into buying Rivian.

Is this your opinion as someone who heavily uses trucks for work?

To me the biggest problem with the Cybertruck, and this Wired article seems to back it up, has simply been that it never came out and never got iterating and that apparently it was starved of resources at critical periods vs the Model 3 and other endeavors. The FSD has been a big stupid suck of management and economic capital. They poured everything into ramping existing areas but let their pipeline of upcoming stuff wither, and it's a lot harder to turn that around.

The whole thing smells of a the classic repeatedly screwup of underfunding and losing focus early on, failing to build the right teams and momentum, and then having it drag on non-linearly longer and resulting in something worse. And a product that would have been incredibly competitive if released on schedule ends up not being so when coming very late, plus then everything is behind in terms of iteration and real world experience etc etc. And there is pressure to try to "catch up" with iterating competitors, which then makes it all even worse.

I don't know if their effort can recover from that at this point without major organizational work. This may also be a symptom of Musk getting too spread thin, too divorced from fundamentals. And competitors are revving up fast at last, I don't know why the BEV truck market has been so far behind the car market but that's clearly changing and other players are starting to do more EV-ground up designs like the Canoo [0]. Most of these, including Canoo, are probably going to fail and go bankrupt or at best get bought, but a few will work. And Tesla certainly won't be as differentiated as they would have been 3 years ago. But none of that is because of the Cybertruck's looks. It's just seen very, very bad execution.

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0: https://www.topspeed.com/canoo-electric-pickup-truck/

> wtf is even the point of a "truck" with a 4.5 foot bed?

I mostly agree, but I've also come around to the short bed compromise.

A truck basically gives you three things: towing, hauling, and off-road.

A short bed definitely compromises the ability of a truck to haul, particularly if you need to move a lot of 4x8 sheets or couches.

But you can still haul quite a bit, and you can haul it to the middle of a field. Throw on a roof rack and you can carry 16' dimensional lumber and pipes like any other truck. Fill it up with dirt and gravel and you'll hit the bed's weight limit by the time it's full.

And if you need to haul anything bigger, you just hook up a trailer. It will be easier to load and unload anyway.

On the other end of things, when you have small children, not being able to take them with you when you run an errand in the truck is a much bigger limiter.

I would prefer a truck with a cab-forward design to allow for two rows of seating and an 8-foot bed while still being able to parallel park, but if I were to buy a truck tomorrow I'd strongly consider a 4.5 bed because the tradeoffs are there.

If Rivian is doing the right thing, why would you want the company doing the wrong thing to buy them? Seems anti-capitalistic to me and about consolidating power to fewer and fewer entities rather than letting competing products duke it out in the marketplace.

If Tesla can dig itself out of this engineering hole, let them. If they can't, let consequences be.

I think the "hole" is just imaginary. They are flush with cash and they are creating something they know they'll be selling for decades. Better to take the time and get it right. It's hugely popular too.

Being flush with cash doesn't take away from an engineering hole. They announced the Cybertruck quite a while ago, and the problems described in the report are not just a matter of fine tuning.

Maybe they will or maybe they won't fill the hole faster than expected, but the hole is clearly not imaginary.

If a company has a deficiency in one acute area, I’m not sure it’s anti-capitalistic to address that deficiency via an acquisition. If they are deficient overall though then I agree with you.

Buying your way into electric truck marketshare instead of designing and building it yourself and letting the consumer decide? Instead of a Rivian truck and a Tesla truck, consumers just get one?

I mean, it's typical US corporate behavior at this point, but I fail to see how it positively affects the market or truck buyers. Tesla stock, sure.

Interesting. I would definitely agree that it is not optimal behavior from the consumer’s perspective. I would hesitate to call it anti-capitalistic - do you think all acquisitions are anti-capitalistic? I have never heard this argued.

Antitrust enforcement—sadly out of favor compared to the 20th century—was specifically created to foster competition within the marketplace. It was rightly seen as a bulwark against a wealthy, powerful player simply buying themselves a greater share of the market.

Monopolies are a consequence of capitalism but serve to choke out the engine of capitalism. A monopolistic (or oligarchic) environment is no different from a government-sanctioned planned economy where a few (or one) players set prices, decide the pace of innovation, and restrict supply according to their own narrow interests. Arguably in a democracy it's worse since corporations tend to have an autocratic model rather than an electoral one, so the people are left with even fewer options.

If you want a better society with greater choices and opportunity, let them make a better product or at least cheaper. Buying out the competition just raises prices and reduces choice. I would definitely consider that anti-capitalistic.

Truck people are probably not what you think they are.

Frankly, this is one of those articles, where if you know anything about the subject matter being written, you realize its a nothing-burger. Every car in development produces decks that look like this, with a long list of issues, that are eventually reesolved. But i guess the narrative gets the clicks.

The Cybertruck is so far succeeding at its most important goal, giving people something to think about and talk about. In fact taking longer to get to market, with more stories about how hard it is to engineer, may actually help it better deliver against this goal.

It was always intended to be a halo product: high wow, low volume. As a brand investment, a halo product can generate returns long before it actually goes on sale. It’s like a classic “concept car” from older car manufacturers. Except the idea that it will actually be buyable makes it work even better for maintaining public interest.

I think the Cybertruck would've been successful even if they'd launched it the same week as their big presentation. People loved it or hated it the moment they saw it and it was all everybody talked about. That kind of word of mouth is hard to replicate. I can't even remember when or how the Model 3 was announced or first presented. I think not being able to launch it since then has been more of a detriment in that light and it feels like more of a joke product that people use to make fun of Tesla.

"Tesla hasn’t launched a new consumer vehicle since 2020, and it’s widely seen as falling behind other automakers"

This is so comical. They just took over the best selling car title in the world, beating out the Toyota Carolla. Ford and GM are clamoring to use their technology, but they are falling behind?

Yeah, okay.

It's an alpha, but I think what matters is what the problems are and how realistic Tesla's approach to them & the design process is. Basically are they going to actually fix enough of these important structural issues before production, or will the first batch be problem prone whilst they work out the remaining issues?

Tesla's issue is that it's delivery time line claims have often proved to be ridiculous and potentially disingenuous. Cybertruck production was meant to have started 1.5 years ago, instead they were only at alpha. Current production estimate is sometime 2024, maybe, who knows? Does Tesla actually admit to themselves and also investors what the realistic timeline is?

Tesla has deviated substantially from the classic car manufacturing processes, which reintroduces problems long ago solved by the classic car manufacturers. So when a long time engineer says "These are classic mechanical automotive engineering challenges that you have in pretty much any vehicle. I'm blown away that they would be struggling so much with the basics." I'm not too surprised. Get a car to market from design to prototype takes roughly 5+/-1 years, Tesla should be expected to take more time to reinvent the proverbial wheel, regardless of their CEO who consistently expects Tesla to be quicker than traditional manufacturers.

Worth noting that the alpha label didn't come from Tesla. According to the article, the timeline from alpha to production is roughly six years, despite what Musk has stated.

Woohoo! A pre-production alpha car has issues. What a breaking news story!

The car with a dashboard that looks like it has been explicitly engineered to smash your skull to bits with any sizeable crash [0] has basic design flaws ? The car that ignores 70 years of car safety protocols and that looks like it has been explicitly engineered to snap pedestrians in half (or straight up aim for the skull of children) in a frontal collision [1] has basic design flaws ?

Next thing you're going to tell me that Elon is completely incompetent and that Tesla is a dogshit company at building cars, with zero experience or anyone from the industry. I can't believe it.

[0] https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/truck-dash...

[1] https://preview.redd.it/tkmpwik4m7751.png?width=960&format=p...

"Next thing you're going to tell me that Elon is completely incompetent and that Tesla is a dogshit company at building cars"

Tesla is incompetent? Their cars are all rated among the most safe. They now have the best selling car in the world, electric or gas, and other automakers are adopting their standards.

They are incompetent though huh?

They are amongst the most unreliable cars in the world [0][1] (it's more likely to break down than a damn Ford, which is already unbelievably bad), has been this way for the past 5 years. The model Y is the best selling car in the world _for a single 2023 quarter_, in a context that heavily favors it (EV hype + awful economic state of the world means only expensive cars get sold), while being eaten alive by most brands the rest of the year. Their software is an active threat to pedestrians and other drivers, their behaviour is a threat to their own customers. A few American automakers are adopting their standards because the US has a non-existant EV ecosystem, and Tesla refuses to work with CCS like the rest of the world.

Yeah, I'll stick with "Tesla as a whole is incompetent", thanks.

[0] https://insideevs-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/insideevs.com/n...

[1] https://www.notebookcheck.biz/fileadmin/Notebooks/News/_nc3/...

Edit: why did I even bother, your entire post history shows you're an Elon bootlicker with a complete denial of reality.

Yeah I am really curious what they have done design-wise to make the thing street legal. It does seem like a death machine for several reasons, but I’m assuming that the obviously dangerous aspects would be illegal already so there must be some creative workarounds happening (or the regulations are much looser than I had assumed).

> “You can’t just use conventional methods of manufacturing,” [Musk] said on an earnings call in May. “We had to invent a whole new set of manufacturing techniques in order to build an exoskeleton car rather than an endoskeleton car, so it is clearly not trivial.”

Interesting that he still referred to it as an exoskeleton; I thought they'd moved away from that.

an alpha had flaws!? gasp

Note that the alpha label didn't come from Tesla, but from "Andy Palmer, the former COO of Nissan and CEO of Aston Martin Lagonda". Others are labeling it an alpha; is Musk? Would Tesla customers give them a deposit if he did?

If it isn’t the version that will be launched to end users, then it’s at least “alpha” if not “pre-alpha” by definition, isn’t it?

No problem that automatic updates cannot fix. /s

> As one veteran automotive engineer, who spoke on condition of anonymity to prevent backlash from Tesla fans

The engineers, both inside and outside the company, all seem to be doing the right thing.

The fanboy cult on the other hand…

Yeah I’d be surprised if they get that shape past EU safety rules

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