Cybercar and the future of Tesla

[doghousePVD]

I was thinking the exact same idea described in this post. Also made a rendering of it:

View attachment 481941

Structurally that design would fall apart. No D column, so it is body on frame and heavy. It totally misses on air resistance, Looks like some wannabe designer from GM would make, with wretched range, poor practicality, and a high price.

Think Hummer H2, but worse. H1 was an amazing vehicle, H2 was a bastard Suburban imitating a H1 poorly. H3 further descended into stupid me-too-ism.

If/when Tesla makes a SUV, it will be very different. Might even be called X or X 2.0..

 

[shiakas]

The idea is to build an ID3 rival out of stainless steel that costs less (to tool up and per unit) and last longer. Imagine a 25000 car with a million mile powertrain and a body that lasts decades.

 

[JBee]

ID3 rival? What on earth for? Wouldn't that be a downgrade? The smaller you make it the harder it gets to make with SS and flat panels and glass. A smaller vehicle is easier to do with a compound press and aluminium. Theres nothing wrong with that solution, even from a manufacturing perspective because its small and can be made in 1 or two main peices like the Y will be. Not everything has to be SS, you need the right scale to make it work.

I don't understand the logic at work here. What benefits are there to making a smaller car if the main cost stays the same and you end up with less performance than the CT? If anything make it longer and it will likely go further without any extra batteries.

What benefits does a smaller car have if it uses more energy for less useful load? So that it can be parked easier? So we need to engineer cars for parking in a FSD world? Parking is the period of time the vehicle is making a loss...and you have to pay for it to do nothing. :-/

FSD solves the urban parking problem as well. Either it parks itself (which heaps of cars already do) or it drives off and parks somewhere else, or picks up the next ride to make a quick buck.

 

[shiakas]

Stainless steel has two advantages.
First, no need to have multiple multi-million dollar machines for stamping every panel, which reduces initial investment in the factory and cost per unit.
Two, no need to paint the vehicles, the paint process takes up a huge chunk of a factory's footprint and is energy intensive so removing that part reduces initial cost and cost per unit to a great extend.
Small cars may not have a large market share in the US but its a different story in the rest of the world.

 

[doghousePVD]

Stainless steel has two advantages.
First, no need to have multiple multi-million dollar machines for stamping every panel, which reduces initial investment in the factory and cost per unit.
Two, no need to paint the vehicles, the paint process takes up a huge chunk of a factory's footprint and is energy intensive so removing that part reduces initial cost and cost per unit to a great extend.
Small cars may not have a large market share in the US but its a different story in the rest of the world.

Every panel has to be stamped (blanked.) They are not cut out by hand with a hacksaw. Blanking takes seconds per piece. Linear cutting (EDM, waterjet, torch, grinding, saw, etc.,) takes minutes to hours per piece. Laser cutting stainless is challenging because of its reflectivity.

There have to be many large brakes with custom jigs to bend the sheets. Not cheap.

Paint is cheaper than stainless. That is why all cars are painted steel.

The cost advantage for Cybrtrck is no frame, but then the design has to be compatible. The wannabe designs in this thread are pretty incompatible with an exoskeleton.

 

[30seconds]

Plus they will likely be moving to 48V architecture and machine installed electric cabling which will both speed up production and reduce production costs.