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Comment by maxdo | Hacker News Reader

politics aside, Cybertuck is/was an engineering breakthrough.

48 volts, steering wheel, no paint ( better durability), trunk, wipers etc. the car pushed the boundaries. If you compare level of creative thinking of cybertruck vs lets say electric ford, it's not even comparable. I respect that despite one person behind it. I don't care how it looks. It's polarizing. oh well.

My 11 y.o. relative from abroad asked me to take rl pictures of the truck, after he heard my neighbor bought it.

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I think Tesla did some cool things with it, but I think it's a little too early to label it as an engineering breakthrough. I'm not convinced some of the things they did and decisions they made (one large wiper, the stainless steel is susceptible to surface corrosion, various pinch points, weak control arms) will hold up over time

It's not very durable though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK_EJ3DyiiA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn4XzbMf9nY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey0ZAaF2L4E

It's a hulking pile of shit built to be hostile to the people and things it shares an environment with. The middle fingers and thumbs downs people aim at them are fully deserved by the buyer and driver. They don't fit in parking spaces and are driven by people who think they're the main character of earth. I look forward to the day when the last one melts from a faulty battery fire.

That's an interesting take on other people's property.

You want people who spent monies on an item they like, to suffer, and incur loss.

That is not very humane of you. No kindness there.

They show as much kindness to the cybertruck owners as the cybertruck shows to pedestrians. That car is built to hurt people around it, even if is by accident

The lack of paint is the only cool part

And Delorean did that 40 years earlier.

Stainless steel without paint, yeah. It's cool that the Cybertruck is a thicker and more rigid kind of steel, so it's not just lack of paint.

> no paint ( better durability)

And yet there were still durability issues with the truck? My understanding is that there were many manufacturing issues, and it also experienced several recalls.

The etherloop between zone controllers and the resulting reduction in wiring is pretty cool.

Maybe through a very specific engineering perspective it was interesting. From a broader engineering perspective it was embarrassing. It is called a truck, very much not a truck. Nearly no actual utility. No hauling capability. No durability. Falls apart because it is glued together. Shows every place where someone brushed up against it. Poor fit to the operating environment.

I'll give you that it was a unique design. But if we're talking about engineering... it could not have promised more or delivered less.

> no paint ( better durability)

instead of paint/clearcoat getting scratched you can pit / etch / scar the raw metal!

And you can do that without even being near the vehicle, because the panels fall off.

Its made from hard steel, which is much harder to scratch and damage than ordinary car paint (or indeed ordinary car bodies, which are made of softer steel).

The paint is sacrificial and add essential barrier between the environment and the panel material. The panels are not sacrificial.

Thinking that paint is for... looking cool? People here need to try to get a grip on reality.

Yes, paint is for protection, because ordinary cars aren't made from stainless steel. They would rust without paint. They still scratch more easily, with or without paint, than a car with harder stainless steel.

So you think stainless steel is hard and doesn't rust?

>48 volts

Questionable choice, 12v works just fine OEMS just need to stop putting it in stupid locations.

>Steering wheel

??? the weird actual steering wheel or the terrible steer by wire?

>No paint

It's ok the panels just fall off their weak plastic attachment points instead

>Trunk

The one that would crush your fingers?

>Wipers

The singular poorly thought out wiper?

The only boundary the cybertruck pushed was NHTSA safety regulations and recalls

It was an engineering break something, for sure.

Is that a joke?

How are any of those things engineering breakthroughs??? What?!

They demonstrate what's possible when we throw all engineering principles out the window and let a child's sketch turn into a product. Truly revolutionary.

Yea now THAT sounds more like it!

I think the main breakthrough was cost-engineering: glued on panels, cast-aluminum frame, "metal" accelerator pedal glued onto a plastic component. Which is ironic considering how expensive the thing was.

I blame Tesla and their "giant iPad" interiors for many of the cost-cutting trends we see in cars today.

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