Tesla Cybertruck No Match for Car Wash | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Cybertruck No Match for Car Wash

jalopnik.com

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"After filing a ticket with Tesla to get the truck rebooted".

Filing a support ticket to reboot your own car. What a time to be alive.

Appropriate dystopia for a dystopian vehicle.

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

Sounds like pretty normal support response to me

Having to _ask support to reboot_ your thing seems a bit odd, tho.

"I tried to but support is unresponsive"

I still can’t believe cybertruck isn’t some massive joke. Like Elon one day said to his team, “make me the ugliest truck you can think of and let’s see how many people buy it.”

It looks like a prototype you would see in Popular Science 30 years ago.

I have a friend working at Tesla, and he told me a few years ago that his entire team was really impatient to be done with the cybertruck so that they could work on actual cars instead.

The "I am different" show-off effect of the owners is definitely at play here. Musk could have come up with arbitrary but unusual design and still sold it.

> I still can’t believe cybertruck isn’t some massive joke.

It is, but Elon isn't in on it

People love these ugly cars, Mercedes G class is one of the most popular models (and one of the most expensive ones), I think preorders are filled for years to come. Turns out there are tons of jerks that like big, intimidating looking cars that they can pose with.

You find g class intimidating ? Beautiful looking things?

"Ugly" is subjective. I'm sure a lot of people find it to be aesthetically pleasing.

And remember that the Cybertruck is steer by wire. The software controls the entire car, and it also happens that the software just randomly crashes.

Thankfully steer-by-wire has been crash tested by the aviation industry...

The aviation industry is also chock full of mandatory servicing requirements[1] that even lead to semi strip downs at regular intervals.

However, once purchased, one is legally allowed to drive a CyberTruck no matter how old or how many issues there are (being licensed and insured etc. aside).

[1] https://www.aopa.org/go-fly/aircraft-and-ownership/maintenan...

An unregulated disaster on the road waiting to happen, if I'm reading your comment correctly

Possibly. Possibly not. I’m no expert so I couldn’t even begin to speculate.

I’m just making a statement on the regulation requirements comparison between the auto and aviation industries really.

Mid-flight, "Hi, this is the captain. We're terribly sorry, but the plane will now be going into a 5 hour reboot mode. We flew through a rain cloud in the sun. Do not be alarmed when the lights turn off and the engines cease."

I believe almost all modern vehicles are like that.

(drive by wire, not crashing all the time)

The cybertruck doesn't just have drive-by-wire it has steer-by-wire. That's really unusual for cars.

Not sure it's still like that, but for a very long time EU required that there is a mechanical linkage between steering wheel and actual steering.

Absolutely not, the other current effort is on a few Lexus systems, I don't know its current status. Accelerate by wire, but drive by wire.

Not a fan of this vehicle at all, but this article is pretty vapid clickbait, besides the unexplained system issue.

No car should be washed in direct sunlight, you'll get spots from drying soap, water etc. And 'car wash mode' is totally normal and standard, you don't want charge ports to open, the wiper to start, or accidentally put it into gear.

I drove a Polestar 2 for a while and was extremely scared of going into a car wash, there are like 17 steps you need to take (including a warning that "the touch-sensitive doors might lock and unlock intermittently during the wash cycle").

Anecdotal counterpoint, I've owned probably 15 cars in my life. Anything from performance to trucks. I've washed them in the sun, I've washed then in car washes, I've driven them through flood waters. I've actually never had a car that I own, break down on me in my life.

There seems to be a lot of stories like this one regarding cyber trucks. I don't remember reading anything like this about Toyota trucks.

I've had fewer cars than that but my experience is similar. Mostly older, youngest was a 2007 make. Take care of fluids, tires and brakes, and they've just worked.

Worst breakdowns I've had have been flat tires, that's a half hour downtime until the spare is switched in. Unexplained five hour "reboots" sounds like a joke. That's not a car, it's a toy.

That doesn't mean your manuals did not warn against doing some of that. Manufacturers want to offload as much liability as possible. Check out the list of warnings for a Corolla: https://www.toyota.com/owners/warranty-owners-manuals/digita...

But most importantly, the story does not provide anything linking the car wash to the truck issue, that was the owner's assumption. It's just speculation / early reporting for the clicks.

Agree, it's speculation, but the car has failed, there is many documented cases of similar failures.

Like I said I've owned a lot of cars, some of them were complete bombs, driven them hard in some very harsh conditions, they just don't shut down or not work like that.

I'm talking cars I purchased for $1000 dollars in some cases. I had a Suzuki Sierra with about 114953 on the clock, I drove that thing for years before I retired it. Before that a farmer owned it and used it for ranching work.

We're talking about a car that costs > $80000 starting.

Every auto detailing product you see on the shelf has instructions to wash your car in the shade. You don’t want the product to dry out while you are applying it.

This has nothing to do with the CT specifically and it’s actually embarrassing to see this mentioned in the article and interpreted as some kind of slam against Tesla’s quality

just means you havnt read much about trucks https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1370PE/#:~:text=(Reut....

Toyota has produced almost 200 million cars...this sucks but ask nearly anyone in off road circles, Land cruiers and Hilux are considered bullet proof.

They are in fact the preferred truck of ISIS. This is worth a read: https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Wild-Blue-Yonder/Article-Di...

How do water spots cause a car to stop functioning?

First, you can absolutely wash a car in the sun and not get spots. With properly filtered water you won’t get water spots.

I wash my black car in the sun because I don’t care about water spots. It’s a car, it gets dirty and wet and clean again. It’s a piece of crap but it never stopped working because it got wet.

They don't. The point is, there's nothing in this report suggesting the water has caused the truck to stop working, despite what the headline implies.

Or alternatively people could stop buying cars that are designed in this way:

>The screen, which runs all functions of the truck, went black, and wouldn’t respond at all [...] A call with Tesla confirmed that the truck had needed a complete reboot which took over five hours of sitting to complete

It's an actual joke that this is what modern automotive engineering has become.

> Or alternatively people could stop buying cars that are designed in this way

It's hard to do in a race-to-the-bottom scenario. I'm not saying that it's the case yet with cars, but it will be eventually.

Same with TVs: I want to give money to the manufacturer who will sell me a TV without advertising malware.

> It's an actual joke that this is what modern automotive engineering has become.

I mean, there've always been cars with crap electrics; Jaguar used to be notorious, say (because of these people, a case-study in how to screw up competition regulation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_Industries).

Is this normal for an electric car ?

It sounds kind of crazy to be scary to go into a car wash.

The EV car wash experience I'm having: You drive it into the car wash, roll up the windows, put it in neutral. Don't open the doors while it is being washed. You're done.

No issues with my Hyundai Kona Electric. Although it does not have features like hidden, touch-sensitive door knobs and whatnot. It washes (and gets dirty) just like any car.

Reword that, imo: although it has features like not having hidden, touch-sensitive door handles :)

From the owners manual:

Don't wash in direct sunlight.

Do not expose to bright lights.

Do not let it get wet.

No charging after midnight.

You toke that list from "Gremlins", admit it.

Yes indeed. That's the joke.

To me it sounds pretty weird to have a “car wash mode”, I have never encountered this in most ICE cars. I guess newer cars are more fragile though due to the multitude of sensors.

I wonder if it has to do with turning off automatic wipers that misidentify the car wash as regular rain while driving.

But are you driving while washing? Why would the wipers or anything else be activated when you stepped out of the car, locked it and waited for the cycle to finish?

Your car must be running and in neutral gear while going through an automated car wash.

It depends on the style of automatic wash, but even for the ones that pull the vehicle along... why would you leave it running? Not only does that waste fuel, it seems like a good way to get carbon monoxide poisoning.

Not in my country - or any I have ever visited. Interesting discovery, I always assumed "car washes" would be a basic service running the same everywhere. Anyway, why should the engine be running for washing??? In neutral gear means it's not going to drive, so...?

The car washes here pull you by the front tire. The other wheels need to roll, which would not be possible with the car turned off - either a gear would be engaged, or the parking brake applied automatically.

It seems my Honda 2006 can survive a car wash under a direct sunlight than whatever that thing you are driving right now. I also live near the equator where El Nino is brutal.

I just wish they could make electric cars with our all the touch sensitive glossy dogshit. Just a decent make's mid-spec car circa 2010 with cruise/limit, central locking with a keyfob, Bluetooth, A/C, a decent sound system, the old button/knob console controls and maybe adaptive cruise if that's your thing. This was all a completely solved problem 15 years ago.

Just swap (yes i know it's not a straight swap, the chassis and other bits are basically completely different) the engine for battery, motors and regenerative brakes. That's the only change that needs making to the visible function of the car.

Leave out the touch screens, proprietary nav running on an underpowered shit SoC, media player junk, app control, LED strip lighting, Street sign sensitive limiters that downshift in traffic because the think they saw a sign that said 30, subscription this and integration that and anything that expects an internet connection. It's all utter dogshit.

There are a few which sit in a decent middleground. Kia and Hyundai EVs, BYD, Nio, Polestar all have a decent amount of physical controls to varying degrees. It's a shame that Volvo went in the opposite direction.

I don't think we can turn the page back on central touchscreens though, there are way too many features and settings that you cannot translate into physical buttons.

I don't really care about any features that the touchscreen enables. None. Not the crap nav, not the crap media applets, none of it. And especially not the fan controls, even if i do get a needless 3D render of a fan, slightly stuttering through a graphics processor that i could be convinced was repurposed from a vTech toy.

I literally cannot think of any that a modern car has that I sit in the 2010 and go "man I wish I had X". The little LCD in there actually has more functions that work via the steering wheel controls! Maybe the backup camera (which yes, I know will probably be a regulation so now you have to have a screen, nicely played, auto lobby), but even then I don't really want one if the cost is a car full of junk and I've never had one up to now, even in the newer cars I've also had.

I'd rather they stripped all the pointless shit out and just gave me the savings and reliability bump. And that's why they won't ever do it, they get a bump in price up front and they get to ding you for magical electronic dingleberries in 10 years and meanwhile they can slurp whatever data they can.

I was thinking of features like an audio equalizer, introduced on a screen around 1989. Or very specific settings like audible warnings, tire pressure sensor setup, interior lighting... if everything was a physical button your car would look like a 747 cockpit (not that it would be such a bad thing!).

And yes, the backup camera. Essential safety feature in a world where 2-ton SUVs and children share spaces.

Audio equaliser works just fine with a wheel and buttons. Actually, once I press "menu" on the console, I can do the whole process using the steering wheel controls.

Tire pressure monitoring doesn't need an HD display either. It's got only three real functions: low pressure detected, low battery and calibrate. You don't need a touchscreen for any of that.

And even if you have to drive an urban tank, you could still have the camera display on the dashboard: you don't have to use a touchscreen for everything just to have a camera display. Or, you know what, have the shiny bullshit if you have to, but it all had to work from the steering wheel controls. And no, voice control is not a good substitute. But even then all that junk makes the car an expensive and unreliable prospect in the short and long runs.

Huh? I’m in my mid-40s, have been washing cars since I was 10. Other than closing the windows, there is no prep procedure.

I’ve never experienced a car that opens and closes its doors when exposed to water, and I never will.

My buddy and I had an idea to buy up low mileage 2002-2005 Hondas and Toyotas to “mothball” and resell at a premium later as a business years ago. We laughed it off, but now I regret not doing it.

If your car doesn't have rain sensors, a powered charge port, automatic door handles, collision warnings, automatic emergency braking, auto parking brake, etc, then yes, nothing to worry about.

ICE higher-end models can also have a lot of assist features that need to be disabled in a car wash.

> My buddy and I had an idea to buy up low mileage 2002-2005 Hondas and Toyotas to “mothball” and resell at a premium later as a business years ago.

The industry has finally figured this out, too; it looks like we have reached Peak Touch Interface, and a number of manufacturers are either already rolling some of it back or will start in the next model year.

There's been a lot of problems with delivered cybertrucks. It going through a car wash could just be a correlation and not a causation

I have a 25-year-old car. The thing I have to do before a car wash is crank the windows closed.

Some day I'll have to buy a new car, but I'm not looking forward to the bullshit. (Cruise control will be nice.)

I will never understand why Elon decided to go all in on the Cybertruck. Did anyone, at any point, think this was a good idea besides himself?

It's a very very stupid idea. But the idea itself is not really the problem here.

If they did deliver the truck they announced, with the price they announced, I think it may sell well - only in the US, but still.

The problem is, that they delivered a truck with 1/2 the range, 2x the price and that's very clearly not yet finished.

I have this theory, that Tesla is going to need to raise a lot of capital very soon or it will go belly up, and hence Musk is trying every trick he has available to sell some kind of futuristic vision, so that investors turn a blind eye to their actual business.

I suggest reading their audited reports and understand their financials instead of guessing (a guess that is completely wrong).

https://ir.tesla.com/sec-filings

https://ir.tesla.com/_flysystem/s3/sec/000162828024002390/ts...

This website offers nice breakdowns and history of the financials:

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSLA/tesla/long-te...

It would be great if someone could summarise this or point us to some sensible summary.

Net income is the amount of money they pocket. These are obviously very big numbers trending in the right direction.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSLA/tesla/net-inc...

Net margin is profit margin, which is also already very healthy and obviously trending in the right direction:

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSLA/tesla/profit-...

Under assets and liabilities, you can also see cash on hand with very large numbers and trending in the right direction, and long term debt with relatively low numbers compared to profit and revenue.

Tesla has a lot of money and makes a lot of money.

I did read them, thanks.

I can't articulate it properly without sounding like a conspiracy theory, so I won't.

Here is a point of view that's similar to mine:

https://bradmunchen.substack.com/p/could-tesla-go-bankrupt-t...

On the first point about the "aging models," the Model Y is currently the best-selling car in the world, outselling much cheaper cars. It doesn't seem like it's in dire need of a refresh.

The Model 3 isn't far behind, and actually did just get a major refresh. The new version is much more refined. Something similar is in the works for the Y, probably about a year out. The article seems unaware of this, saying Tesla should "fully remodel the Models 3 and Y" over "the next four years."

From a glance at their financials, they have $29 billion in cash, $9.5 billion in debt, and positive cash flow of $4 billion annually. Why would they go belly up?

They are a growth company that has stopped growing. Hence the stock. So the underpaid staff will start bailing as layoffs continue and their stock compensation is worthless.

Other than the cyber truck, which is stupid, the entire lineup is aging. The cars all look like the 2024 equivalent of 2004 Camrys. Nice cars, but the competition is much more robust than it had been. Market headwinds with rates is driving costs down.

Elon lost his mojo here. He’s busy fucking around on Twitter and took eyes off ball.

Worldcom ($100bn assets at bankruptcy) have entered the chat, and are requesting someone to hold their beer…

Is there any evidence that Tesla is committing fraud in its financial statements?

If not, what is the purpose of your comment?

The point is that claiming that having billions of dollars in assets can be meaningless when there are other circumstances at play.

Worldcom was great right up until it turned out it wasn’t.

I’m not claiming that there’s any actual fraud going on at Tesla (although it’s been accused of many such things), but there wasn’t any at Worldcom either, until there was.

Elon came up with the Cybertruck when Tesla was deep in production problems. It's basically the result of Elon solving production problems at day, and dreaming of an easier to make car at night. That's why the bodywork looks like you could make it by just taking a big sheet of metal, put a couple of straight bends in it, weld like 4 seams and you're done. The rest of the car follows a similar design philosophy of making it stupid easy to manufacture and assemble, and leaving as much as possible to software.

Turns out they didn't execute that idea very well. They should have probably spent a couple more months testing prototypes. Or maybe the design philosophy just doesn't make for very good cars, it's hard to tell.

It’s not hard to tell: it’s an absolutely atrocious idea with nearly zero public (ie market) appeal.

The fact the execution is separately so awful is just icing on top.

Did they actually go all in? Or did they just execute something shoddily thrown together? Not that it wasn't waste of time and resources...

Trucks are very high margin and he has a chance to take over a top selling segment in the US. If the gen2 version hits it's stride it could be a multi-billion dollar win that pays out over decades.

I won't buy it for multiple reasons though: 1/ it's a truck, 2/ Elon Musk, 3/ build quality, 4/ UX.

It was easier to make than a new roadster and gets just as much press

Isn't the Roadster hard to make only because Elon keeps saying dumb things about it, like that it'll come with rocket boosters that maybe even allow it to fly[1]?

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1005577738332172289

Had to look for the April 1 date stamp there.

I think cars are the exception to the rule: "there's no such thing as bad press".

I have had quite a few different cars, all of which I have used automatic car wash "tunnels" regularly during all seasons of the year.

I have never experienced any problems from it.

Not long ago I read about a Tesla driver S driver who had a fight with Tesla over the paint job. It was deteriorating in a hurry. Tesla said it was due to the owner not following proper car wash procedure. With specific soap at specific temperature and so on.

The driver protested and said they had done everything by the book.

I dont find it reasonable to have so many limiting rules to washing a car .

Then again perhaps this is a common problem with luxury cars. I have never had one of those, except my first car which was a really old Cadillac. The paint was still good even after all those years, and I put it through the aut car wash many times.

Tesla’s are not really luxury cars. They charge luxury car prices but you seem to get the ride quality, interior quality, build quality, and customer service level of a cheap American domestic car. Luxury German cars of various makes have their own reliability issues and can be expensive to maintain but the quality of car overall is still in another league.

It depends a bit how fussy you are about micro scratches on the paintwork. All car washing causes some scratching due to grit on the car and the amount varies depending on how you do it. It's why new cars look shinier than older ones.

Most cars use a similar tech with a clear coat over the paint. For a bit of money you can have it polished smooth again.

The guy from the linked TikToks does mention that he also hosed the inside of the trunk after returning from the beach, that might have been it.

That's always a risky thing to do, even on "conventional" cars (or maybe it's just Volkswagen Group cars that have a habit of electrical malfunctions every time there's water in unusual places involved).

With all that said, last time a car-wash fricked up some of my car's wirings it only meant that a back-light stopped functioning for a day or two (again, maybe this is just a Volkswagen Group thing), while in this case the whole car/truck got bricked. That's not ideal.

> The guy from the linked TikToks does mention that he also hosed the inside of the trunk after returning from the beach, that might have been it.

In video[0] the story links to the owner mentions that he "vacuumed the inside". It sounds like what he hosed off was the rigid tonneau[1][2] that covers the bed of the truck. If he had hosed out the interior I'd question his judgement even more than I do for him being a Cybertruck early adopter.

[0] https://twitter.com/StonkKing4/status/1780306557538050532

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonneau

[2] https://insideevs.com/news/693899/tesla-cybertruck-tonneau-c...

I'm not familiar with the design. Does the Cybertruck have a trunk, or are you referring to the truck bed? And if the latter, is it not intended that the bed is open-weather?

Frunk. Front-trunk.

One of the more compelling things about an electric truck, TBH.

Although, as unnecessarily big as they make new ICE trucks, you could probably fit a frunk in there.

It does. It’s located at the front of the vehicle and therefore known as a “frunk”.

> The Cybertruck’s owners manual does caution against ever washing the truck in direct sunlight, and there is a section expressly mentioning that the truck has to be switched into “Car Wash Mode” before washing to avoid damage to parts of the vehicle.

"You're holding it wrong", car edition.

> Car Wash Mode closes all windows, locks the charge port, and disables windshield wipers, Sentry Mode, and walk-away door locking.

What damage would leave it frozen?

“Car wash mode”

Do others have that? Sounds like a very bad design

If you need to enable "car wash mode" then whatever you own is not a car/truck

It sounds concerning to me too, maybe it would be ok if "car wash mode" is automatically activated while doing 100 on the free way without affecting driving performance or safety, which doesn't sound very possible.

Why do people buy^1 these things.

Truly, "buy" is not the correct term. Maybe something like "license" or "support Musk's folly". It's seems like a donation to a WIP, like some overblown Kickstarter project.

Didn‘t Space Karen announce a „Boat Kit“, that turns the truck into an actual boat?

What could go wrong *lol

What has the world come to?

> A call with Tesla confirmed that the truck had needed a complete reboot which took over five hours of sitting to complete.

Apparently so far that we put so much software in a car that it takes multiple hours to boot.

Working on updates

20% complete

Don't turn off your computer

While the car definitely broke down, the suggestion that it was caused by the car wash is pretty disingenuous. Many cars have a "Car wash mode", which ensure that the automatic wipers do not turn on and that the windows stay up. It can also allow the car to be moved slowly through an automated machine I think. Either the author didn't know this, and should try driving a car built in the past 5 years, or they did know and were just chasing clicks. Either way, lazy journalism.

None of the “car wash mode” actions you mention would leave a car totally immobile.

Precisely, I agree. There is nothing to suggest that it was the car wash that bricked the car. It likely would have failed without the car wash. It's pure speculation on the writers part, but it's a nice salacious headline that strikes me as pure laziness

And as far as I understand car wash mode was used, but Cybertruck still died.

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