This looks like a concept car that would never come to market. I hope it sells really well and convinces others to bring actually-creative designs to market.
The trend of increasingly larger vehicles, like SUVs and trucks, has already raised issues regarding pedestrian safety. The Cybertruck, being notably larger than most contemporary cars in the same category, could exacerbate this problem, especially if it opens the door to similar designs in new market segments IMO.
With a lower, sharper front, the Cybertruck should behave more like a car than a full size truck.
But we really don't know yet. It's a real failure of regulators that we it's not a standard part of testing and that their aren't good standards in this area.
https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-v...
https://www.travelers.com/resources/auto/safe-driving/how-cr...
Even when I had to take a break from running due to injury and started cycling, my doctor looked me stone cold in the eyes and asked me to please not risk my life like that.
Like, what the hell
On a more serious note though, because sarcasm is weak person's weapon, the US do have a teen formation issue imho, among them driving lessons. I think the average US citizen born post 70s lack some basis, and I'm also afraid that this seemingly lack of competency feed insecurities. And it's not anybody's fault, the country is made around driving, you can't afford to give 20 to 40 hours of driving lesson to everybody who wants to drive, because everybody _need_ to drive, and for the same reason, you cannot make the driving exam too difficult.
I don't like you.
Just because Elon used a bunch of puffery to play up the exoskeleton doesn’t mean it acts like a boulder when it hits another vehicle.
Crumple zones aren’t even relevant to pedestrian crashes.
Normal automotive skin by comparison is made from 0.65mm steel or aluminum.
> The greatest impact on overall US pedestrian mortality will result from reducing the risk from the light truck category.
https://www.cybertruckownersclub.com/forum/threads/model-s-v...
And even that is second fiddle to people using their phones while driving, which is an absolute plague in general, not just for pedestrian safety, but safety overall.
I’m not sure what the evidence for huge A-pillars as a threat is, but if it’s worse than larger vehicles it does not in any way change the fact that larger vehicles are indeed a massive threat.
All roof pillars have increased in size in order for the occupants to survive rollover crashes, but the side effect is blind spots. Further compounded by interior trim containing airbags and audio gear.
And they've had to get bigger to be stronger, and need to be stronger due to increased size and weight of modern vehicles. I'm not saying it's not an issue. But I am saying "Thanks, Obama" for the CAFE regulations passed under him that pushed OEMs to make larger and larger vehicles - because a larger footprint leads to less stringent fuel consumption requirements.
The CAFE regulations favoring trucks and SUVs have been around since the 1970s.
The Obama era regulations extended those rules to heavy-duty trucks and commercial vehicles, which were not previously subject to fuel economy rules.
From [0] (first) or wikipedia [1] (second), if you prefer. From mobile, so I hope you'll pardon any formatting issues
> In 2006, CAFE altered the formula for its 2011 fuel economy targets, by calculating a vehicle’s “footprint”, which is the vehicle’s wheelbase multiplied by its wheel track. The footprint is expressed in square feet, and calculating this value is probably the most transparent part of the regulations. Fuel economy targets are a function of a vehicle’s footprint; the smaller the footprint, the tougher the standards are. A car such as the Honda Fit, with its footprint of 40 square feet, has to achieve 61 mpg CAFE, or 43 mpg IRL by 2025 to comply with regulations. At the opposite end of the spectrum, a full-size truck like the Ford F-150, with a footprint of 75 square feet, only needs to hit 30 mpg CAFE, or 23 mpg IRL, by the same timeframe.
> Starting in 2011, the CAFE standards are newly expressed as mathematical functions depending on vehicle footprint, a measure of vehicle size determined by multiplying the vehicle's wheelbase by its average track width. A complicated 2011 mathematical formula was replaced starting in 2012 with a simpler inverse-linear formula with cutoff values.[9] CAFE footprint requirements are set up such that a vehicle with a larger footprint has a lower fuel economy requirement than a vehicle with a smaller footprint
[0] https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2012/10/how-cafe-killed-co...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_econo...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpgpE6wjF30
As a motorcyclist, I hide in people's A-pillar blind spots all the time. It's quite unnerving.
For example: Many rural towns put a giant unnecessary corner on the road entering the town. Forcing you to slow down and obey the speed limit. Or the road splits in two just to go around a pretty sculpture someone decided to put in the middle of the road. Again to force you to slow down naturally.
Worse for whom? If it has the intended effect (and apparently it does), it's certainly not worse for the cyclists who were getting hurt.
> Why not install a red light or a roundabout?
Tom Scott explains the reasons for not installing traffic lights or speed bumps in the original video.
On top of those, if drivers are not even reducing their speed at the stop sign, what would make them do that for a red light?
I'm not sure how a roundabout is better for anyone than the staggered junction.
It's certainly worse for the cyclist on the main road, who would have to pay a lot more attention to a lot more places, and also reduce speed.
It's certainly worse for drivers on the main road, who lose their right-of-way.
It's unlikely to be (much?) better to the drivers on the side road, who still have to go through junctions - only this time they're between the road and the roundabout and vice-versa.
I know I sometimes find myself in positions that I know well to avoid, but sometimes it takes a second for it to be realized. My favorite is being aligned next to a semi's trailer wheels. I will slow down to avoid sitting in that spot when moving, not during stop-n-go. So I understand it's sometimes obvious after the fact.
Because you believe the driver has no incentive to change lanes, and so there is low probability they will change lanes unexpectedly?
I'm not saying you should hang out next to cars all the time, but it's better than in a car, where you might have 3 feet of buffer.
Whereas, when there's heavier traffic, you can't help being in someone's blind spot. In this case, I will usually speed up to being at least next to them, so I'm sure they can see me, and then I'll let the driver pass me, so the last idea they have is, _I just passed that moto/where is that moto I just passed?_
Overall, being in someone's blind spot is by definition, risky. And it serves no purpose, and has a clear remedy. Whatever. Ride you ride.
Good luck. Keep your head up.
How is that ever safer than being behind someone? You can control the following distance if you're behind someone. You can't make someone behind you pay attention or stop, and you can't make someone beside you not change lanes without looking. Why would you ever want to be in their direction of travel?
Seriously, please explain your logic on this. I'm flabbergasted.
You can accelerate or decelerate to solve the problem, or maybe do a little swerve. But you don't know when you're in the blind spot.
Another problem are cars merging onto the road from a stand-still. Driver looks left, sees empty road. Starts merging and whoops they just cut you off. You were hiding behind the pillar in the moment they looked. You can't know this happened until it's too late.
This is why as a car driver I always take one last look at the road while already starting to move but before blocking the road. Most drivers don't do this.
Between the forward-facing camera (usually running some version of Mobileye EyeQ) and forward-facing radar, the odds of running over a pedestrian directly like you're thinking on a 2023+ vehicle is quite low. Even cross-traffic/bicycle/cutoff scenarios are pretty extensively covered if you read up on Mobileye's website.
Personally, I'd be more concerned with older cars without AEB hitting pedestrians than the "let's make it more enjoyable when pedestrians do get hit" sentiment that seems so common in these discussions here.
[0] https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/automatic-emergency-bra...
Why can’t we have a pillowy airbag pincer on the front of cars that snatches pedestrians up and hugs them if it makes contact?
> ...has received criticism from automotive safety groups, including the Australasian New Car Assessment Program and the Euro NCAP, for not conforming to standards for pedestrian and cyclist safety. In its December 2019 form, the truck would likely not be street-legal in either Australia or the European Union.
If the rules were sensible, we would have a taxes on carbon and dangerous features at amounts that reflected their actual negative impact, and the consumer could choose how much they were willing to pay for style. Instead we have a march toward uniform blandness and 99% of consumers don't know why because they never interact with the regulations.
> CAFE footprint requirements are set up such that a vehicle with a larger footprint has a lower fuel economy requirement than a vehicle with a smaller footprint
The source for wikipedia is a finger-in-the-wind opinion.
Why wouldn't you expect this sort of convergence? A bunch of companies trying to solve the same problems with the same constraints are likely to find very similar solutions. We saw it with aviation - over time, jet aircraft look more and more like each other, because certain solutions, once they become available (twinjets demonstrating enough reliability for extended overwater operations) are simply better in about every metric you'd possibly care about.
A vehicle that I'm much more excited about than cybertruck in terms of shape is aptera [1], with a drag co-efficient of 0.13 (model 3: 0.23, toyota corolla: 0.29). They're giving things up in exchange for this (most notably back seats), but if you don't need the things you're giving up it's a huge win.
E.g., as gas mileage requirements increase, you'd expect things to become more aerodynamic. Separate from that, the Ford Escape was reworked to look like a knock off Subaru and the Ford Explorer was reworked to look like a knock off Range Rover. If it were just a matter of convergent evolution to fit the constraints of US gas mileage regulations, why did the Ford Explorer also copy the Range Rover's hood lettering?
Take the new Toyota Prius, for example. The updated model almost looks like a concept car but still has a similar shape to other cars. There's no constraint reason Toyota couldn't have styled the car similarly in previous generations. I'm guessing they made the car look like this because Prius sales were falling and they decided they needed to be aggressive with styling for sales. They may have also decided that consumers that want a car with lots of cargo space are going for SUVs and crossovers anyways, so they could make the new Prius sleeker.
There are also tons of examples of automakers intentionally reserving nicer looking features as more expensive options or for more expensive luxury models. Fabric is not really cheaper than fake leather (both of these materials are just plastic). But automakers always charge more for fake leather.
You can do some astounding things with laser cutting (etc) now. This is some steel panels bolted together to make a child's drawing with wheels.
It is almost like all other car makers know something Tesla does not. Maybe that big reflective flat surfaces are not safe for other drivers on sunny days.
Edit: In case this is a thread you might want to link the exact post/picture we're supposed to see because threads aren't accessible without login.
https://twitter.com/DavidKasmanArt/status/172922332301007291...
Stainless steel isn’t even reflective. Shine a bright flashlight into your refrigerator and tell me what happens.
i too would buy the crap out of it. it's glorious.
Although seeing how pathetic that company (Hyundai/Kia) handled security with the Kiaboyz incident (which they to this day have never remedied, let alone made anyone whole for) I harbor a lot of scorn for their ethics. They directly enabled a massive wave of car thefts, just to maybe $80 a car on immobilizer chips that literally every other carmaker has had as standard for 2 decades.
It’s almost like the entire automotive industry converged on that shape for specific reasons… aerodynamics and crash resistance.
When things become price optimized, there really is little left to differ on because of the physics of cars, much like the physics of hammers and wrenches.
Steel comes in many shapes. Are you saying they used hot versus cold-rolled steel?
Its fun to say space man bad, but don't equate complex production cycles to teams of competent engineers not knowing basics.
Look at the differences between production & preproduction models and you'll see way less issues.
I am pretty sure the guy is making shit up.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/31/elon-musk-has-pulled-more-th...
I don't think it's that unusual for companies to collaborate with each other on projects. And some of the sharing happens by default when you just encourage employees to migrate between the companies and take their knowledge with them.
(Source: Isaacson's Musk bio)
2. Musk has had lots of plans. Plans that he dumps the minute he changes his mind.
In any case, it was widely believed in the investor community that the Mexico plant was where the next-gen vehicle would be produced. I don't think California was ever really considered.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/22/21334860/tesla-cybertruck...
(But based on "Cyberfridge" I can see this conversation isn't going to go anywhere productive, so I'll just wish you a nice weekend. Throw in a last word if you want.)
The Bronco and Wrangler being utter pieces of shit doesn’t make them unpopular.
Electric cars don't need ICE engine layouts. It will take a few years until the designers realise they can have cars looking much different as they have more flexibility.
I also have hope this truck on the roads will get manufacturers doing something different. Concept cars at car shows should be where we should look first.
I’m thinking about it and even with EVs you’d still want four wheels, want to put the battery flat on the bottom for various reasons. So the base seems like it’s four wheels with a flat platform.
Building space for 1-6 people on top thought and I seem to arrive at the same designs that already exist. Thoughts?
The reality is the current designs (tear shaped, front engine, forward facing seats with belts) are result of slow incremental perfections. Safety, fuel efficiency being two biggest drivers (pun intended!). The biggest external factor being the infrastructure (you might have the greatest idea for next personal transportation vehicle) but if it doesnt use roads its pretty much dead .
So people complaining have no idea what they really want. Like Ford said “If I would have asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”.
I recommend anyone interested in the reshaping of EVs for the future take a look at Volvo's "Future of design" video from a couple years back:
But what else would you change?
I'm not sure there's as much scope for flexibility as you think. Maybe when self-driving cars are common and very safe, internal seat layouts could change a bit. That seems a long way off though.