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Comment by lukah | Hacker News Reader

Car panels are convex on nearly all other cars for very good reason. Flat panels are structurally susceptible to damages which wouldn’t mark a standard panel. Adding a highly reflective surface was another great move.

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There is a whole section in James May's review where he is confirming with a steel ruler that the surfaces are slightly convex :-)

https://youtu.be/CQzYhMDNLPA?t=216

This has been normal/understood since pre-demo phases. The "car youtuber" culture around shitting on this car is almost as laughable as the car itself.

Not only that, but the finish looks like trash, too. I'm seeing 10-20 Cybertrucks a day and almost all of them are weirdly splotchy and dull.

Curious what city that's in... I rarely see them.

There are TONS of them in Los Angeles.

I wonder what tests car companies generally do to predict how durable a style choice is (how scratches, corrosion, etc will impact the look). Protecting your brand is also about what people will see in the future, not just what is on the showroom now. If 5 years from now all of these vehicles look terrible that won't help sales for any of their models.

I know in the past they've looked at data from used cars, and they also have HALT/HASS (highly accelerated life/stress) testing which does things like e.g. spray the car with concentrated salt solution in a wind tunnel, things like that.

I believe many manufacturers also look at data from people like Munro & Associates who tear down cars, figure out what they're made from, and how they were made.

You ever notice how all cars look like all the other cars? There's rarely an exception, they mostly just copy each other. They seem to stick to a design, then someone makes an enormously brave move of slightly changing some small thing, and next year they all copy it.

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