Tesla engineers don't have engineering degrees or even common sense apparently | Hacker News Reader

Tesla engineers don't have engineering degrees or even common sense apparently

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65 pointskelthuzad43 comments

There's no risk of pinching—the panel gaps will spare your fingers.

I laughed way harder than I should have at this. Touted as the absolute cutting edge of automotive design by fans and yet even the Soviets did a better job with basic fitment.

> cutting edge of automotive design

Uh-huh.

Someone replied to this video by sticking his hand in his cybertruck trunk with the same result (his hand got caught). Luckily, it looked like he could bend the body panels enough for his fingers to fit in the ungodly large gaps without getting cut off.

I think this was a fanboy's attempt to say exactly what you said, but without the sarcasm.

The tweet in question: https://twitter.com/pitdesi/status/1773468956009074702

Still not a good thing. There could be one where the gaps are smaller, or you're stuck and can't reach anything to open the trunk again.

It even cuts up to four carrots. Crazy. Shown here: https://youtu.be/xNE-NyaYBcg?si=j2nZpMCsmos_b2vB&t=1742

I mean them heavy hatches need them big powerful motors. Them heavy motors ain’t stopping easily.

Well heavy motors actually do stop easily, but issue is just that detecting when to stop becomes harder. It is something that can be solved by measuring more precisely or adding extra sensors, but somewhere costs were cut and some part of the stack wasn't implemented. Worst case it is hardware side and cannot be fixed by firmware update

Other brands don't seem to have this problem even though they also have heavy hatches? And in the video with the 4 carrots, you can clearly see the hatch stopping, yet it keeps powering the motors and eventually cut the carrots. Even a simple current limit cutoff would have prevented this, so either the limit is set way too high or there's no limit at all.

Oh, so it’s a _kitchen appliance_. Makes more sense than it being a car, I suppose.

I get the feeling that non-premium brands (especially Kia) implemented this better.

There's no crunching noise present (like with the Mercedes) or bits falling off (BMW).

Tesla is in its own league in terms of safety hazard here of course.

Is this a “sensor present, software error” or a “sensor absent, this needs a hw retrofit” issue? It seems like a pretty big bug.

From the comments on that Xit it appears that the sensor doesn't go all the way up to the top.

From what I've seen in YouTube reviews, it's the sensor.

The other, though likely more expensive place where pennies were pinched, is the lack of video on the rear-view mirror. Instead the rear-view camera is shown on the main display when shifted into reverse. The physical mirror itself is blocked by the tonneau cover. Personally, I enjoy the situational awareness of always being able to use the rear-view mirror, even when moving forward.

Both of these things feel inappropriate in a $100,000 vehicle in 2024.

This car feels like the car equivalent of the Tu-144 (the Soviet Concorde clone which, on an early flight, blared a warning siren in the cabin for the _entire flight_ because no-one could figure out how to turn it off) just _comically_ unready for launch but launched anyway to stroke egos.

Or Tesla engineers do have engineering degrees, but Tesla management pared down the list of requirements.

I'm not a close follower of Elon Musk, but apparently he believes in aggressively trimming requirements. According to this, at least: https://mondaynote.com/what-makes-elon-musk-move-so-fast-8e7...

Another example at Tesla was removing the ultrasonic sensors, which many argued was for margins.[0] This led to existing features like Park Assist, Smart Summon, etc no longer working on new Teslas.[1]

[0] According to Tesla, there were 12 USS sensors on each vehicle. Costs for each sensor appear to be around $50, when purchased on the after-market.

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/tesla-removed-its-ultrasonic-s...

Safe cars don't appeal to all the alpha males that the cyber truck is marketed to.

It only appeals to rich alpha hipsters because alphas drive diesel trucks with massive aftermarket vertical stacks because they scoff at EVs as some sort of feminine or substandard "imposter."

This is certainly a hazard. But is it such a big one that it overshadows every other cool aspect of the car? I am a Tesla fan, and hence may be biased. Tesla cars certifiably are one of the safest out there. This should have an OTA fix.

This is sarcasm, right?

Which part?

I can appreciate being a fan, but we need to move fandom into the realm of "While I like this, I don't need to defend every single thing that goes wrong with a brand I'm a fan of."

I bought a Tesla a few years ago. I get it, they're cool electric cars. Would I ever buy one again? No.

We don't need to defend every safety issue that Tesla creates. This is better than running FSD into children. But it's still a major safety issue. Tesla should apologize fix it, and then we can move on. We don't need to defend it. We also don't need to linger on it. It's not the most problematic thing Tesla is doing (please see FSD running into children).

Also, the car has more issues than this. This is just one of a bunch. (please see the 'rusting' comments in this article's threads.

You are absolutely right! I haven't ever defended FSD or this finger cutting issue. But I do think media is overly critical of Tesla compared to legacy auto.

This has nothing to do with degrees or the lack thereof. If you needed a formal engineering education to know not to design a mechanism like this one for a consumer application, then engineering was never the right career choice for you... and no school was ever going to turn you into a good one.

Failure to say 'no' to Elon Musk is an ethics shortcoming, not a matter of engineering. In accounting, you'd play fast and loose with the books and run afoul of the IRS. In medicine, you'd harm your own patients with careless prescribing practices. In law, you'd take orders from someone like Trump and lose your license. And so on. If you did this, you suck, and somewhere a Wal-Mart is missing a cashier.

He did say FSD would be crushingly good

Are fingers actually needed to supervise the full self driving? And how much of stump you need for using touch screen.

The cybertruck, as a kitchen appliance rather than a car, does not have FSD.

In our Cyberpunk future, finger safety is optional. All limbs and body parts are optional replaceable addons and accessories for our Neuralink(TM) implants. /s

I lost (fortunately, only) the tip of my finger to a car door.

I winced at this. I once got my finger caught in a zipper.

Could have been much worse...

Wow ... literally until this instant I had never considered the possibility that it could have been my entire finger, or damage to my hand. (I was three years old. This was a long time ago.)

We might be thinking of different zippers.

My manual encounter was with the door of a VW Beetle, not a zipper.

"finger", "trouser zipper"... many of us have been there..

Move fast and break things. Move fast and blow up rockets. Move fast and chop off bits.

Is this the usual Tesla derangement syndrome or is cybertruck uniquely dangerous in this way? I wouldn’t want to put my fingers inside of any trunk/hood and close it.

The only derangement here is not recognizing the tragicomedy of this entire vehicle’s existence. Now we are seeing the super fans touting plastic wrapping it to prevent rusting. ROFL

It is like Musk got the idea and it had to be made... One way or an other... I'm not sure how long will they keep making it...

In the linked ~30 second video clip they do indeed test multiple vehicles, starting about 5 seconds in.

lol basically every other car manages to not chop carrots this way

noticing the sheer number of incredibly stupid Tesla problems (where are the turn signals? wtf happens to people who buy FSD and then sell their car years later, never having received it? why is the car programmed to lie about its remaining range and CS given a script to make sure anyone who notices gets the runaround?) is not "derangement syndrome."

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