Amazing - people actually schedule their car washing?

Mine gets at least one a year, whether it needs it or not.

I just drive fast in the rain... problem solved.

Cant be used off road.

Cant go up hills.

Cant be used in the rain.

Cant handle a little bird poop.

Clearly this is the ultimate American All Terrain Vehicle...

I'm beginning to feel like calling Musk a Snakeoil Salesman is being unnecessarily insulting to Snakeoil Salesmen...

Wash your Cybertruck with genuine Musk guaranteed Tesla brand Snake Oil. Knocks the spots off ... ah, well, maybe not.

Even British Leyland cars from 70s were better than this. Oh well, they better get some Waxoyl then.

I'd be more worried about what's going on with the steel chassis. Dissimilar metals in contact with each other in water, especially water that contains ionic solutes, will result in galvanic action. And one metal will corrode at the expense of the other, usually the steel in the case of SS and non-SS steels in contact with each other. Given how Musk has a reality distorion field problem like Steve Job's, it would not a big surprise if the chassis rust out from under these cars.

https://www.appmfg.com/blog/how-to-prevent-galvanic-corrosion-between-carbon-and-stainless-steel

" immediately remove corrosive substances (such as grease, oil, bird droppings, tree resin, dead insects, tar spots, road salt, industrial fallout, etc.) "

Bird droppings, road salt and (some) industrial fallout -- OK, these are known to be corrosive, but grease, oil, resin and dead insects?

"Stainless" steel is a rust resistant alloy by virtue of containing chromium among other constituents (in some cases, molybdenum), resulting in a surface that's highly reactive with atmospheric oxygen, rapidly forming molecular scale impervious barrier of oxide on the surface. Corrosion resistance depends to a great extent on the composition of the alloy. So "stainless" is a term without real meaning unless qualified. Standard alloys include 301, 302, 303, 304, 316, each of which has different properties including resistance to corrosion. The lower grades are (obviously) cheaper, so there's something to think about if the grade is not mentioned.

My non-materials scientist understanding is that the corrosion resistance varies inversely with the strength of the steel. The more stainless, the weaker.

" corrosion resistance varies inversely with the strength of the steel "

Not quite as simple as that, There's a very informative set of [1]data sheets on stainless steels here.

[1] https://www.smithmetal.com/datasheets.htm

At least 316 is pretty hard material. And the one that can deal with chemicals etc pretty well.

Quick Google:

301: 41 HRC

304: 22 HRC

316: 56 HRC

It rains like shit here but stainless exterior fittings remain remarkably unblemished. This really shouldn't be happening. I'd suggest there is some less corrosion resistant material around there that's happy to form a circuit with the steel. If that's the case, pretty much anything will corrode.

I'd suggest there is some less corrosion resistant material around there that's happy to form a circuit with the steel. If that's the case, pretty much anything will corrode.

That's what I was just wondering, ie using the chassis/body as ground and maybe increasing the voltage. Not sure if the latter would make galvanic corrosion issues worse or not. If it does, then I guess it'll manifest where there are dissimilar metals. Watching a video about restoring a flooded Maclaren made me wonder about this given the amount of corrosion on fastenings. A very expensive car let down by maybe some cheap fasteners instead of 'marine grade' stainless ones.

A good pint. Or to point out what I was told asking the question as a child - Stainless is two words. It doesn't mean that it will be stain free, rather that it will Stain Less than normal steel and other materials. But it will still stain (and corrode depending on how it is composed. handled, used, what it comes into contact with, etc.).

Well, lifeless means you are dead. Stainless shouldn’t develop stains. What about my stainless steal cutlery that goes in the dishwasher all the time?

Me and my wife are in the iron and steal business. She does the ironing and I do the stealing.

A very expensive car ruined by the lack of a sacrificial anode? Those who don't learn from history.....

Also very weird, there are magnetic and non-magnetic in the sense of will a magnet stick to it versions.

Austenitic stainless steel is non-magnetic.

There are five basic families of "stainless steel" and without a proper description and specification "stainless steel" on its own means very little. All kinds rust. At least it's less stupid than the DeLorean, which was an under-powered fibreglass body sports car with a dangerous door design that only had a stainless steel skin. That would come loose with vibration. So the only thing the DeLorean was any good for was as a film prop in "Back to the Future".

I wonder is the Cybertruck also a bit of a gimmick?

But it is not as if rain is pure, de-ionised water. I remember the scares ages ago about 'acid rain'. Just wondering who thought that an untreated metal body shell would be fine in an industrialised country's atmosphere, with all that sulphur in the atmosphere. In any case just your own fingerprints and hand prints will be slightly corrosive, so whatever you do, Don't Touch It!

Oh well, I haven't have the space for one anyway.

Why stainless steel? I'd have thought that it would make the vehicle very heavy compared to, say. Al or composite - or is the weight of the body small in comparison to the battery?

It sounds like a pretty shonky stainless, whatever the case. My knives and forks don't go "rusty". I've been camping and diving with both my penknife and my watch and neither are showing any signs of corrosion in spite of never getting anything other than a cursory wipe with whatever rag is to hand. Is there some trade off between structural performance and corrosion resistance?

Or why not just apply a clear coat at the factory?

This is one of the reasons why airlines stopped using 'naked' liveries for their planes. Even aluminium corrodes too fast if unprotected, so they needed a clear coat to protect them. But the clear coats actually weigh more than white paint.

But they, and a stainless steel kitchen sink, will suffer staining if they are left in contact with rust.

I sometimes used to work on a shipyard and they had a quarantine area for stainless parts so they'd never come into contact with mild steel. If they did the mild would contaminate the stainless with rust, and then once started it would spread and make the part useless.

Yeah if corrosion resistance is required using same tools and working area for regular steel and stainless is absolutely forbidden.

>Yeah if corrosion resistance is required using same tools and working area for regular steel and stainless is absolutely forbidden.

What would happen if someone chucked one of those 4 quid bags of atomised black iron (magnetite?) powder offa eBay over it?

It started with Starship. The first concepts of starship were going to be made from composite materials. They got as far as pressure testing a 9m diameter liquid oxygen tank to destruction and taking delivery of a 9m diameter mandrill to wrap fibres around. Then they worked out that they could cut the weight be switching to stainless steel. Composites have difficulty at cryogenic temperatures and the maximum useful temperature is much lower than steel. Using steel allows a much lighter heat shield and is much less difficult to modify.

Curving stainless in one axis like a cylinder is possible with a large radius. Curves in two axes (sphere or saddle) are hard. Welds are normally weaker than the parts welded. SpaceX had to learn a large amount about working with stainless and Musk was listening. Musk took the idea of a stainless car to Tesla where he does more talking and less listening compared to SpaceX. Cyber truck's flat panels come from the difficulty of curving stainless. SpaceX can now weld two axis curved sheets of stainless really well.

Tesla should have kept cyber truck as a concept for the future until they worked out the issues. Instead they committed to mass production in a material that was known to be troublesome before they had solutions.

Because Musk thought it sounded neat and sexy, and worth the extra weight and manufacturing headaches. BTW, it's 3mm stainless. And "bulletproof", so long as your antagonist doesn't have anything more powerful than a 9mm pistol, and doesn't just shoot you through the side window, where they could actually see you. Anyone at Tesla who took a different position probably got fired (Musk's customary management style).

Staggering to think that the American space program relies heavily on this goof.

Fortunately, not directly on the goof. Yes, he owns SpaceX, but the folks that do the actual work are experts. Although he's apparently constantly butting in, they probably to a great extent ignore him, not least because the aerospace industry has established standards that have to be met. The US auto industry, on the other hand, is largely self regulating.

Upvote the above.

SpaceX doesn't just ignore Musk's loonier spur-of-the-moment notions; they have a dedicated team of Musk minders specifically tasked with steering him away from anything he might break, and mitigating his worst excesses. Let him push the shiny buttons, preside at major launch events, and name the drone ships, but keep him away from the actual engineering.

The dead bird site lacks any such mechanism, which goes some distance to explain how he managed to do so much damage to it so fast.

That may be the case, but Musk has sufficient control of the general direction of SpaceX (committing to contracts, general process of development, business direction), that he still appears quite capable of introducing uncertainty, if not complete rabbit holes.

Certainly the solution they have committed to for Artemis appears to be extremely poorly architected and planned, and the payments for development are... interesting. Regardless of how clever the folks are at SpaceX, they've been put in a position where they may be regarded as the single point of failure for a hugely (and possibly unnecessarily) complex mission, required to solve too many novel problems to meet the deadlines and without sufficient budget to complete the development process without huge losses.

Musk is not just a figurehead at SpaceX - he controls the money, and with it their obligations and overall direction. I'm pretty sure Starship would not have the current architecture (or even exist) without his direct influence.

There seems to be an inverse relationship between "Musk's direct involvement in an enterprise" and "success of said enterprise"

Staggering to think there isn't anyone better!

I mean, it's not like NASA relies on Musk by choice.

Fire a water pistol at it, however, and the thing just dissolves.

That'll be the new trend! Fire (salt-)water pistols at the CyberTruck and see it dissolve. Can't wait for the (a)social media to post the challenges.

And very soon afterwards you'll be imprisoned for firing your soaker!

Just find a spot where a puddle can be formed. Then all you need is salt water and couple months time (reaction speed depends on temperature) and the sheet might have already tiny spot rusted through and any time water is introduced corrosion continues.

Presumably 'off-road' or even 'on road' does not mean the sea-side, all that salty spray and sea air and you'll be wiping it down every half hour to stop it becoming a 'convertible'.

They chose something that's the least corrosion resistant 30X grade. Just wait until they see what road salt does to it...

And being Tesla it's a fair bet they skipped any cleaning and passivation steps during manufacture which will make it even worse; they like to 'optimise' out anything they think they can get away with.

Customers will be have been thinking it'll be like 316 when really it'll end up looking really rough without care.

Exactly my own thinking: what about road salt?

I guess, if you're located in one of the warmer parts of the US, you don't get much salt applied to your roads in the winter, but the US consists of much more than always sunny California.

Cars in Cornwall (SW England) tend to rust quickly because of the sea spray being blown inland...

(Pirates of Penzance icon)

"...not to wait until the Cybertruck is scheduled for a full wash"

Erm scheduling a what now?

Pretty sure dirt is a protective layer.

[1]DumpsterFire said :

Yup. It’s Teslas world. We’re all just Beta Testers in it.

'Fanboi' icon because...you know

[1] https://www.cybertruckownersclub.com/forum/threads/rust-spots-corrosion-is-the-norm.11988/post-243244

Self-crashing cars marketed as self-driving, terrible product quality built under dangerous, awful working conditions, hiring whole teams to dissuade the owners from using their warranty, selling domestic-use flamethrowers, touting mass-transit vaporware, the list goes on.

It's hardly surprising that he'd sell a flashy, expensive, basically useless truck that rusts in the rain.

I had a disagreement with a newspaper tech reporter who insists that Musk is an amazingly successful, innovative entrepreneur. You need a pretty narrow field of view to see him that way.

Well, to be fair he has, despite all his major flaws been extremely successful, whether or not that success was personally earned or entirely off the back of some smart people around him. He has, or those he hires have, been pretty innovative too.

Note: It's still possible to be 'innovative' even if the products you innovate are complete crap - in fact it's much easier to be innovative if you're not actually concerned with improving on what came before ...

Of course 'successful and innovative' is not all that can be used to describe Musk - there are many, many less flattering adjectives that come to mind. You're right it would be a narrow view to suggest that he's only these things, but it would also be narrow view to argue that he's not.

All this means is they used the cheapest grade of stainless possible vs actual quality stuff that is truly corrosion-resistant. I wondered if something like this would happen, and simply laughing that yes, like most cheap Chinese "stainless" things you get from amazon or wish with low-grade metals, they corrode/rust about as bad as steel.

There are trade-offs. DeLorean used 304 steel, according to the mighty Google - whereas Tesla are using 301. 301 is less good at resisting corrosion, but stronger and more impact resistant. 316 would be better still at not rusting - also more expensive - I'm pretty sure it's harder, but not sure if it's as flexible.

Personally I suspect there's a good reason only one company has gone the stainless route with car building - a company that also went bust.

What exactly is the cybertruck for?

Demonstrating that the owner has far more money than sense.

It's for making cash for Elon.

A bet.

The initial idea was advertised with big promises. Tesla are famous for being slow at starting mass production. Back in the early days putting down a deposit to get a place near the start of the queue looked like a safe opportunity to scalp people who did not have such foresight. Back then, Musk was a clandestine transphobic Nazi. Later, after spending too much time in Texas he thought it would be a good idea to boast of these qualities. In the mean time Tesla has strengthened its litigation team with people selected for their ability as [1]street fighters and prepared for [2]scalpers competing against Tesla for early sales.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/elon-musk-is-recruiting-hardcore-streetfighters-for-a-new-tesla-litigation-department/articleshow/91706129.cms

[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-sue-cybertruck-buyers-they-resell-in-first-year-2023-11