Exactly! 2/2 can't just be an accident. The "rehearsal" Elon posted a day later seems to keep room for the door to move back a little. I guess they forgot to leave the doors a little bit open during the real demo. Even if we accept the excuse, this shows that hits on the door panels have consequences. Instead of denting, the panels just pass the stress to other parts of the car. Who knows, the head lamp glass or something else may be stressed and break next. If the glass isn't even 9 mm bullet proof, then the bullet proof panels aren't that useful. God forbid, windows are where anyone will shoot first. IIRC,armored Mercedes S classes cost somewhere around $300k. It they rehearsed it many times, as Elon said, then it was planned. Right?
The door panels were only made bullet proof as a side effect of the unibody/exoskeleton chassis design, that pushed all the structural elements of the vehicle into it's skin. The intention was not to make a bullet proof vehicle as such. rather that the vehicle was better designed for low cost mass production. Likewise the "amoured" transparent metal is not bulletproof, it's only hand thrown ball proof (barely!). Although an actual bullet proof version might become available. There most definitely was some showmanship involved, not from a place of being disingenuous, rather from being a bit too excited about the technical solutions they achieved with the CT design. Technically, even a F150 "chassis" is bullet proof, it's just unlikely you'd be trying to shoot at it through the floor of the car...
It seems this passing of stress to glass if true) can be really challenging for insurance claims. Say, some other car hits your door. The insurance rep finds no damage to the door to repair so you get nothing. But he can't do a heath check on everything else to see if they became structurally weak. After 1 month, your windows and roof glass shatter when you go over a pot hole or a big bump. I guess you will be out of luck? After seeing some of ELon's new tweets, I am really wondering now, the need for this exoskeleton stuff. The prototype didn't have windshield wipers, side mirrors, nothing. Looks like SpaceX is still developing this alloy of steel. it is looking like these are in the research phase. I am not sure this truck will be produced before 2023 unless there are substantial changes made. ELon : "Haha true! New manufacturing methods are certainly needed, but then I’m confident it will actually cost less, because of its simplicity & lower part count." Elon: "We’re creating this alloy at Tesla. Not a problem to create a lot of it, but we’ll need to come up with new body manufacturing methods, as it can’t be made using standard methods."
The exoskeleton is necessary to get the production costs for the truck down as it makes better use out of the materials and makes it lighter. EM said "it's the same size and weight as a F150" in the presentation. The mirrors are likely to be left off as they'll be chasing the same regs as in the EU. Aerodynamically, mirrors are about 3-5x their actual size when visualized as drag. The wiper will likely use their new patented design, which still needs to be made production ready. I don't think either of these will slow down its release. As for the insurance, I'd expect this CT design will considerably lower the risk for insurers and therefore the customers. Especially so if Tesla insurance does it's own risk assessments, and less serious but more likely, and costly, minor claims can be avoided. Consequential claims are already handled in risk profiles, typically they have a low likelihood, and end up with a low additional consequential cost. I'm not sure of the cost of the Tesla windows themselves, or if at all they will be standard or an option. I'd expect it will be an option atm, if it's based on the transparent aluminium material. I also note that one of the primary reasons for both the glass and the stainless steel is to streamline and lower costs of manufacturing of these items to allow for more cost effective Starship flights.
Time at 00:38 for the actual quote. Elon: The functionality I'm going to describe is within a space that is less than the most popular pickup truck in the United States, the F150, so we didn't cheat in either width, height, or length. And we're able to achieve much greater capability in the same SAME DIMENSION, SAME WEIGHT.
As @HankLloydRight mentioned a couple of times, they swapped out the windows. We were waiting at the front of the line and Pete from Abstract Ocean got a video of some Tesla employees walking by with several replacement windows: Abstract Ocean on Twitter
Seriously, the cybertruck has 220, 110v or close to that Can it be considered essentially a mobile powerwall? $40,000, 5.5 powerwalls $50,000, 7.1 powerwalls Plus a “free” vehicle Is this how folks view it? Solar in, house power out,
The world is ready for this.....everyone is tired of the same old same old has been trucks that basically haven't changed for many years. Had an 89 Silverado, rode in a new GMC recently, nothing more than more pieces and parts to break....
I sincerely hope the capability to do this is in the works. Another great selling feature to add to the list!
Is there a comparison like this vs the F-150 (250/350 because why not!) which it's up against? Thanks
The cab of the150, 250, 350 are the same. The floor height varies by trim and 4wd Someone did an overlay that showed nearly the same overall height with an F150. The length is some what questionable, there is no indication of bumpers on the cybertruck. As it sits now the cybertruck is about ten inches shorter
This image overlays them to show a comparison of shape but I think the scale is off to show comparison of size. I think the Tesla needs to be enlarged a few percent or the F150 shrunk a few percent to make the scales match. I think whoever did this just shrunk the Tesla until it fit inside the F150, without any real effort to make it accurate.