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Comment by CommieBobDole | Hacker News Reader

Those look a lot like the rust spots my stainless steel table knives get in the dishwasher (or used to get, before I started hand-washing them) - it's like a little bubble of rust that you can remove with Barkeeper's Friend or similar, but it leaves a tiny black pit that will rust again when exposed to the same environment.

I don't know if it's an inclusion in the steel that's rusting, or if the act of rusting creates the pit in the regular steel that's then susceptible to rusting again.

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Weather got you down?

Introducing Tesla Edition Car Keepers Friend. It’s buffs out those stubborn Cybertruck stains!

Couldn’t Tesla could clear coat their panels like every manufacturer ever? I feel like this company is forever struggling to solve kind of obvious shortfalls of its own making.

They made a truck that can’t get dirty. "But we told you in the manual." How precious. How insane.

Of course I could be leaping to conclusions and it turns out to be rail dust. That’s still possible I guess, to be fair. But most manufacturers actually watch their cars before they sell it.

Well, from the article it seems that Tesla is aware of this.

> Just picked up my Cybertruck today. The advisor specifically mentioned the cybertrucks develop orange rust marks in the rain and that required the vehicle to be buffed out. I know I heard the story of never take out your Delorean in the rain but I just never read anything about rust and Cybertrucks.

I honestly can't imagine what they were thinking, shipping this turkey.

They were thinking the guy at the top is a rockstar and everything he says must be correct; otherwise, the board wouldn't have approved his insane pay package... right?

I was told by someone on this very board that Tesla attracts the best automotive engineers and designers, because they don't have the bureaucracy and red tape that increases go-to-market time.

Customers: The ultimate QA department. Most of 'em won't even report the issues back. No reports, no issues!

If you can, it’s good business to sell to a cult

> I honestly can't imagine what they were thinking, shipping this turkey.

What's bizarre is they could've just clear coated it.

They surely didn't omit this to save costs, since the thing is a luxury item.

The only answer I can imagine is that omitting the clearcoat was supposed to be a flex about how it doesn't need any lame paint like the plebe cars use, which makes it especially funny if you have to go in for routine buffing to remove the discoloration and get it back to its original appearance.

They offer the clear coat for several thousand dollars extra, so it seems to have been to save costs.

If you buy higher quality stainless steel (18/10, or 304), those spots don't form, or take many more years to show up.

Wonder if tesla is using 304, or have cheeped out with 430. If it's pitting already, makes me think it's the cheaper option.

They claim to have developed their own alloy.

> According to matmatch.com, “The Cybertruck exoskeleton is made from Tesla’s own stainless steel alloy, referred to as the Ultra-hard 30X Cold-rolled Stainless Steel. While the blend is proprietary, Elon mentioned during the product launch that the exoskeleton material of the vehicle is the same as the SpaceX Starship shell.”

[1] https://www.worldautosteel.org/why-steel/steel-muscle-in-new...

I read whole paragraph as "yeah, cheap"

Good thing the 304L (etc) comprising Starship's shell won't be subjected to repeated heatings. https://app.aws.org/forum/topic_show.pl?tid=7585

> is the same as the SpaceX Starship shell

No wonder it's rusting, they're recycling all the exploded Starship shells.

I can't find anything more than hearsay about this, but I've now encountered the idea several times that Tesla chose or developed an unusual alloy to mitigate oilcanning, a phenomenon where large, flat pieces of sheet metal tend to cup or bow.

Here's some anecdata that is probably the most coherent read I can find on the topic of Cybertruck oilcanning: http://livingstingy.blogspot.com/2023/08/dude-wheres-my-cybe...

Seems the alloy is probably less rust resistant than more common alloys, and also can't take a clearcoat without losing some valuable properties? More hearsay: https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/197sivs/tesla_...

There are many different stainless alloys. The ones that don't rust make for terrible knifes - it isn't possible to get them sharp. Of course if this is a butter knife you don't need much an edge and so they might be sharp enough.

I wouldn't be surprised if the rust resistant stainless alloys have other properties that are not desireable in a truck.

You can get just about anything decently hard to be sharp, any stainless can be sharpened. I've sharpened Teflon enough to cut paper before. Getting it to stay sharp is the hard part.

>The ones that don't rust make for terrible knifes

LC200N and Vanax are steels that are used on corrosive resistant knives, and they make great blades. Magnacut is a newer steel that also displays very good corrosion resistance and has very good knife qualities.

> Wonder if tesla is using 304, or have cheeped out with 430.

301 according to post #50[1].

[1] https://www.cybertruckownersclub.com/forum/threads/rust-spot...

> I don't know if it's an inclusion in the steel that's rusting, or if the act of rusting creates the pit in the regular steel that's then susceptible to rusting again.

Well, they call it stainless and not stainfree steel for a reason. /s

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