Elon Musk says ‘we dug our own grave’ with the Cybertruck as he warns Tesla faces enormous production challenges::Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Wednesday that the Cybertruck’s unique design means the company faces immense challenges in scaling production.
does it have new technology? i thought it was just like, shockingly ugly?
It took a lot of work to make windows that shatter so easily.
First you have to mass produce a lot of cannon balls, hire people and train them to throw the cannon ball perfectly so the broken window looks perfect.
How else are you going to get it on a shirt if it doesn’t look perfect?
It’s got a lot of new things to them
800v power train
Newer 4680 cells
~85% custom chip controllers (up from 60s on Y)
48v power electronics instead of 12v, which is fairly new to everyone and the supply chain isn’t as robust as the 12v one, but long term it’s good for industry. (Edit I’ve heard talk of how they connect everything is going to be very different too, but nothing I’ve seen confirmed)
Folding the stainless steel at scale
9000T press, biggest one made
The wheels that can turn on front and back
New assembly method (excluding stainless steel part)
I’m sure there’s more they didn’t tell us.
It went from being a weird vehicle (love or hate it) to a new technology platform.
4 wheel steering isn’t really new. (but your point is still taken)
I did say “to them”
800v isn’t new either, others use it
Edit: stainless steel aside, I have a suspicion that the 48v stuff will cause the most problems. That seems like a lot of suppliers where 1 problem halts the line.
In telecommunications at least, -48V is the standard. It will still be a massive issue but not impossible for suppliers to adapt (with delays). The biggest problem I see is the high cost associated with such low demand, unless more manufacturers start switching over.
That will be a big issue. I think the entire industry will switch, but it’s not going to be immediate.
Once the CT is fully ramped, they’ll probably start to see some of those costs come down a little, but 250k a year pales in comparison to the whole industry using something.
Teslas Gen 3 platform will add to that scale and help too, but it’ll still be smaller than the industry.
An example of a thing which has been tried so many times, but which ultimately only increases complexity, expense, and rate of failure for very little gain.
“Ah yes, let us take one of the most finicky vehicular systems outside of the engine itself and make it literally twice as complex!”
And in return you get… slightly reduced turning radius.
Pretty much the entire list seems like features that have existed for industrial applications.
Which, sure, is challenging to transition to a new company and scale up to consumer levels of production and down to consumer levels of cost. But I agree everything about this truck seems iterative.
What would you ever consider new in any vehicle if you look at it like that?
Solid state batteries? Not new, it’s just changing the anode but a battery is a battery so it’s just an iteration.
… Not much.
I’m not really looking to the automotive industry for completely new innovation like that. If I’m going to spend tens of thousands of dollars for a car, I’m probably going to keep it for at least a decade and I value it being reliable and easy to repair. Mature technologies have a lot of advantages over new innovations there.
I’m not the one claiming that these features are new or innovate, and I’m not the one claiming that being on the cutting-edge of technology is a good thing. Musk is.
For a company with already terrible QC that’s a lot more things to go wrong for buyers unfortunately
I don’t think a lot of those things are where Tesla really struggles with quality that’ll impact the customer. Just production delays and cost.
I’d be pretty surprised if the power train is a problem as that’s their specialty.
Same with the electronics, those don’t usually have problems except the electronic door handles that the Cybertruck won’t have.
I’ll be pretty surprised if the steel doesn’t cause QC problems, and I’m half expecting that massive windshield wiper to be a problem somehow.
Maybe the air suspension will be problematic, and probably the powered tonneau cover.