Tesla is facing issues with the bare metal construction of the Cybertruck, which Elon Musk warned was as tricky to do as making Lego bricks

  • Dettweiler@lemmyonline.com
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    2 years ago

    It’s almost like he hears about how bad the build quality of Tesla cars have become, so he thinks the solution is more accurrate, more expensive parts. Kind of like he has absolutely no clue what he’s doing, and doesn’t want to listen to smarter people telling him what they need.

    • 4lan@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I think it’s more likely that he is looking for excuses for the years of delays on the cyber truck.

      Now he can blame it on his “desire for perfection” instead of admitting that his timeline was never viable

      • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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        2 years ago

        The design isn’t viable. They could have developed a new car in less time if it wasn’t going to be an absolute nightmare to produce reliably.

        • 4lan@lemmy.world
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          Let’s not forget about the new Roadster that was due to enter production 3 years ago.
          Everyone that bought one gave Tesla a $250k interest-free loan.

          This is all starting to seem intentional.

          • Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works
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            2 years ago

            At some point, once consumer rights are eroded enough , the straightest path to profits is just downright theft. Take money now, worry about product later. It’s literally inevitable and the video game industry is really fuckin good at it.

  • uniqueid198x@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 years ago

    10 microns is .4 thou, about the width of a cotton fiber. Its possible to machine those tolerances, but very time consuming as machine maintainance steps up. Its also small enough that the thermal expansion of the sheets will be larger than that

    • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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      So basically elon would rather dump money into expensive equipment to improve build quality than do the thing that’s actually needed to improve build quality and pay his workers what their work is worth and make their factory environment safer?

      This is the kind of petty angry bullshit you have to do to be a billionaire. Its not about being smart, it’s about on some level hating everyone that isn’t you

      • Red_October@lemmy.world
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        Making a lot of assumptions about what he’s willing to put into this.

        He’s not going to get fancy expensive new equipment, he’s not going to hire the best machinists, he’s not going to slow the work down to allow that kind of accuracy. He’s going to bluster and shout and make demands without providing any way of actually achieving those demands. That’s what Elon does. He’s not an Engineer, he doesn’t design things, he doesn’t build things, he tells people who actually know what they’re doing to build something. Here, he’s just saying “Do better” without anything more, and expecting that to be enough because he doesn’t actually know shit about dick.

        Frankly the closest I’ve seen to evidence that Elon has ever actually designed anything is the eyesore that is the Cybertruck, because it absolutely looks like something that cretin would draw in crayon and demand be made a reality.

      • blargerer@kbin.social
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        You aren’t going to hit that tolerance consistently on an assembly line no matter how much you pay. Can be done by a skilled machinist, but there are too many dynamical variables in an assembly line environment, like the previously mentioned thermal expansion.

          • Maalus@lemmy.worldBanned
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            2 years ago

            It’s not even about that. You absolutely don’t need those tolerances for a cup holder. An assembly line will fuck it up regardless. You use tolerances like that when needed - in jet engines or turbines. Insisting on those numbers on a car is plain stupid - it isn’t better (other than the ego boosting “my car has high tolerances where nobody cares”) than just doing it like every other manufacturer does it. It’s a waste of money plain and simple.

        • stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca
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          For reference, in working with parts that interface directly with optical components about the tightest I’m ever comfortable specifying at production volumes is 0.05mm and that is for very specific dimensions and not entire parts yet he is demanding 5 times lower tolerances here.

      • uniqueid198x@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        What I meant is that Elon has set a fairly un-achievable standard, as the sheet metal parts he is talking about will grow and shrink by more than that depending on weather. Additionaly, the small parts can be machined to that tolerance, but only by a skilled machinist and not at assembly line levels.

        • brygphilomena@lemmy.world
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          Besides just thermal expansion, which will totally happen by driving on the road, the rotation of the motors and the use of brakes.

          It will also flex as it hits bumps and takes turns.

          And these will be different metals. With different thicknesses which will expand and contract at different rates.

    • TenderfootGungi@lemmy.world
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      Which just shows he has no idea how tolerances work. Small machined parts have different tolerances than large stamped parts. The key is setting the right tolerances for each part, designing the vehicle for desired gaps with those tolerances, and continuous improvement to fix and design out issues.

      • uniqueid198x@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        None at all. He also doesn’t understend that the issues tesla has faced are largely due to poor process design rather than automotive design. The plans may call for small gaps ore big gaps, but they certainly don’t call for iconsistent gaps

    • Dr. Dabbles@lemmy.world
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      Imagine measuring door panels on a granite block in a climate controlled room, and sending it off to the surface grinder for rework. 🤣 Or sending the frame off to get scraped. Truly, this is the most idiotic idea on the planet and it’s all because he didn’t care about tolerances early on. His self own has turned into whatever the hell this crap was.

    • coco@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I can confirm this

      Machinist here.

      .004 ? That is exagerated but .0004 this is insane

      This is not a airplane engine !!!

  • dmention7@lemm.ee
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    2 years ago

    If LEGO and soda cans, which are very low cost, can do this, so can we.

    This man is a certifiable idiot, and I feel bad for anyone working for him.

    • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I mean, to be fair, he’s not entirely wrong, you can get that accuracy on larger parts given sufficient time, materials, tools, expertise, etc.

      But a car has more parts than a Lego brick

      • dmention7@lemm.ee
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        Yeah anything is possible with enough time and money, it’s just that is about the most textbook example of comparing apples to oranges I’ve seen IRL.

        Also, I suppose Lego bricks might be considered low cost if you’re a billionaire, but in the grand scheme of molded plastics they are very much a premium product.

      • frickineh@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Maybe he can build the truck out of LEGOs - it would cost about a bajillion dollars to make something that size, but maybe less than the parts he’s demanding would be.

        • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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          Well, of course. It doesn’t change my statement though.

          And the guys down the lab could go “well, we don’t have to make it out of metal.” And then it starts a rabbit hole of further insane requests that are technically possible, but to people unfamiliar with engineering (Elon) say “damn the cost” betting (incorrectly) that the time or financial cost to fulfill the requests is still profitable.

          Happens to a lot of products, unfortunately. People making demands are better off knowing what the demand entails. When they do not, this is what we get.

          He’s also probably confusing his experience with Space-X too. He can’t think critically, and it’s going to be his undoing. I hope at least.

    • barsoap@lemm.ee
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      He’s probably hyper self conscious about people ripping into Teslas over their clearances (with inconsistencies measured in millimetres). But, no, instead of saying “VW can produce stuff that doesn’t look like it fell from a truck and you will figure it out, too” he’s going overboard.

    • Death_Equity@lemmy.world
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      Elon: “Stacking” tolerances? No, we will not tolerate anything less than micron precision on every aspect of the design.

        • curiousPJ@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          The total tolerance is .0004". In equally disposed bilateral tolerancing it will be ±.0002".

          • AlDente@sh.itjust.works
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            Eh, if someone tells me to reduce a tolerance from 5 to 10 thou at work, it’s understood that it’s +/-5 and 10. I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone use the full range of a tolerance in conversation. If the tolerance isn’t bilateral, it would be said like plus 5, minus zero. Anyways, +/- .0005" is our standard tolerance on the span of all dowel hole pairs.

            • curiousPJ@lemmy.world
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              Bilateral tolerancing is a Machinist’s first introduction to tolerancing so it’s no surprise to run that as default. And I suppose GD&T is not heavily used where you are.

              If you’re given a parallelism tolerance of 10 micron are you assuming that to be ±10 micron? True position? Angularity of 5 thou? Etc… The only feature control that could be interpreted as bilateral by default is profile and it’s still communicated by its total tolerance.

              Simple ± tolerancing isn’t the industry standard anymore. And if Tesla prints are anything like spaceX ones… It’s basically all GD&T and minimal title block tolerances.

              • AlDente@sh.itjust.works
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                I use GD&T on all my drawings, including 100% of my hole callouts. However I’m one of the more enthusiastic adopters of ASME Y14.5 at the place I work. Therefore, I get what your saying regarding the tolerance range, but since most of my coworkers are still relying on block tolerances, I’ll refer to a .010" positional tolerance as a “+/- .005” equivalent" in conversation so there is no miscommunication. I can see how this is not the norm.

    • Pogbom@lemmy.world
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      Ethically I agree completely but this should only be done if you’re past your warranty (or don’t care about it).

      • nucleative@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        I agree. And be ready for the insurance company to deny all claims related to the vehicle once they discover the “modification”.

          • rog@lemmy.one
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            Sure. But you cant pretend that its some super secret that only non corpos know about and be surprised when the tech who makes the inspection knows what to look for

        • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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          People do car modifications all the time, and the car is still covered under warranty.

          Since the vehicles don’t burn any gas and don’t have any emission standards to comply with, the issue here is even less important.

  • Lianodel@ttrpg.network
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    Due to the nature of Cybertruck, which is made of bright metal with mostly straight edges, any dimensional variation shows up like a sore thumb.​

    It sounds to me like the reasonable conclusion to draw from this would be to modify the design of the car. I’d also assume you don’t need tolerances to be the same for literally all parts inside and out. I’d also think that, if the car looks that bad if things are 10 or more microns out of place, these cars are going to age terribly after regular use.

    But what do I know? If I were smart, I’d be rich, right? And Elon is so rich, he must be a genius!

      • Raxiel@lemmy.world
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        They are, and that undoubtedly gets under his sub micron thick skin, which is why he’s going overboard about it with this.

    • Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow@lemmy.world
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      The awkward moment where you sit on the car watching the sunset with your sweetheart and the next day your stainless steel car is bent.

  • Nakedmole@lemmy.world
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    This just shows how dumb he is and that he doesn’t know shit. Unnecessary, unreasonable and unrealistic tolerances will not result in a better car!

  • iamdisillusioned@lemmy.world
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    It’s just marketing. Elon wants dumb tesla bros to think their truck is built to that accuracy. No need for it to be reality.

    • And009@reddthat.com
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      Sadly this could work, no one’s gonna be verifying this shit and the ones who do won’t reach enough tesla bros

    • rusticus@lemm.ee
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      Well his paranoia was fed (rightly) by sites like Reddit who ate his lunch over panel gaps on the model 3. He wants this to be better and there’s nothing wrong with that!

  • fubo@lemmy.world
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    Cybertruck, Cybertruck,
    Engineers say “what the fuck”
    Micron fits for auto steel?
    Those are not a thing that’s real
    So deal! Deal with it, Cybertruck.

  • Square Singer@feddit.de
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    In the full email he goes on to tell the engineer what a micron is.

    I guess, he just read that word somewhere and now feels cool that he knows it.

    It would be cute if he was a junior manager, but this way it’s just sad.

      • whats_a_refoogee@sh.itjust.works
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        The leaked email has his name on it and the leak claims it was an email from Elon to employees. Can’t really tell if the leak is real or fake, but if it’s real then Elon is definitely the one who wrote it.

        Based on his proclivity to say dumb shit and his inability to keep his mouth shut, I’m inclined to believe it’s a real leak.

      • blady_blah@lemmy.world
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        This 100% sounds like him. I don’t see any reason to doubt it given that if someone was going to make something up it wouldn’t sound like this.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    Why does Space Karen still have all his fanbois? Do they really think he’s some kind of software/technology/business genius, even after all that has come out about him?

    • EtzBetz@feddit.de
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      I wouldn’t say I was a fanboy, but I liked him before … I don’t know, he was always crazy. These days he’s even more crazy and I’m not touching anything he does.

      • SHOW_ME_YOUR_ASSHOLE@lemm.ee
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        I can’t stand him but Starlink is so fucking awesome. Having high speed internet fucking everywhere is a game changer.

        • flucksy_bango@lemmy.world
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          Eh, not saying starlink isn’t good, but it’s not exactly novel. It didn’t take a genius to come up with the idea, which I very much doubt musk did, but the work that needed to be done and the service provided is impressive.

          Musk did very little in that effort beyond paying the bill. I don’t really think that’s something to be commended for. Bill Gates could’ve paid for it and the result would have been identical.

          • SHOW_ME_YOUR_ASSHOLE@lemm.ee
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            I’m definitely not praising Musk, I’m just saying that I’ve been really happy with my Starlink dish. I don’t like that I’m supporting him financially in this small way but it fits my needs too well.

            • flucksy_bango@lemmy.world
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              I didn’t think you were. The dude is so mind bogglingly rich that the concept of currency starts to unravel.

          • reddithalation@sopuli.xyz
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            2 years ago

            wow that was a really interesting article. the only thing impressive thing elon musk has done is getting the smart people together to form spacex, and i sure hope its out of his hands at this point so he cant drive it into the ground.

              • reddithalation@sopuli.xyz
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                yeah not adding a water deluge system like every other launchpad ever was an obvious mistake. the pad (and tower) were mostly fine though, it just destroyed the concrete directly under the engines.

                personally i find it interesting to watch them messing around, but i dont really support them. if starship doesnt work out, oh well, it was cool to see them try (and fail) anyway.

                and elon musk is clearly a bad person.

        • Liz@midwest.social
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          It’s not gonna be high bandwidth though, just low latency over long distances. It’s primarily for stock exchange information.

          • ApolloTanuki@lemmy.world
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            Mate, it’s the opposite that’s true. Satellite communications are high latency, low (ish, Starlink is actually not that bad in this respect) throughput.

            • Liz@midwest.social
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              I did more digging and:

              1. Starlink bandwidth is better than I was expecting.
              2. I can’t find the video that did all the math, but basically by using a low Earth orbit network you can get information long distances faster than you can with cell towers and fiber because you’re significantly reducing the number of repeaters you need without significantly increasing the distance the information has to travel.
                “Traditional” satellite internet uses satellites that are much higher up, which is where the high latency comes from. The LEO means comparatively lower latency, though the advantage over ground-based networks only works over significant distances. It also means you need more satellites to make a functional network and you need to replace them more often.
                The higher cost to orbit made the old model the correct way to do satellite internet, and now a bunch of billionaires are betting they can replace satellites cheaply enough to make money off a LEO network. Rural customers might be a happy accidental revenue stream, but the most enthusiastic customers will be people sending market information between servers on opposite sides of the globe. To them, billions of dollars can be made by getting information a millisecond before everyone else, so they’re the ones who have the biggest interest in using the network.
              • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.caBanned
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                I also think signals travel faster through a vacuum (speed of light) than through a medium like copper or even fiber optic cables.

                But I’m not a physics dude, so I don’t know how much that impacts latency. But from I know about it, seems plausible.

                I think there’s a bit of a bandwagon kind of thing where everyone wants to say anything that Musk is associated with is a dumb idea. Starlink isn’t a new idea, I remember reading about the idea of a LEO satellite constellation concept in Popular Mechanics back in the 90s. I think it was Microsoft that was considering getting in on that back then, but it never happened.

                The “genius” of Elon Musk is that he simply has the resources to implement ideas found in old Popular Mechanics magazines. Just didn’t really look into Hyperloop enough (not feasible) before going on about how great an idea it is. Starlink does make sense though.

            • bugieman@lemmy.world
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              Umm, high latency means slow reactions. I think you and OP meant the same thing, but you have the terms mixed up

      • AustralianSimon@lemmy.world
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        Same. I think it happens with any billionaire the longer the media focuses on them the more of their crazy comes out.

            • eee@lemm.ee
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              I think everyone just has a tiny bit of crazy in them, but they meet enough people to realise they need to temper their worst instincts.

              The more rich/powerful you get, the more yes men you meet, and the more you think “hey i’m actually right all the time after all”, and the more you start justifying your own craziness.

    • panCatQ@lib.lgbt
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      I think they do , two of my school friends are his fanbois and even after his open goofup at twitter they be like , Elon musk , rocket boi , innovator and genius , first to invent sattelite internet ,he has enginnering degrees in making cars and rockets and should stick to it ! ( i was like no he does not have the degrees) 😏

    • eestileib@sh.itjust.works
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      He is talented, just not at engineering or science particularly.

      His talents lie in obtaining government subsidies and trolling.

  • Raiderkev@lemmy.worldBanned
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    2 years ago

    Two things, not necessarily related.

    1. The cybertronk looks highly regarded when put together correctly. Imagine if it has the panel gaps of other cars TSLA makes.

    2. My tinfoil hat theory on why Elon is acting all right wing all of the sudden is to get those idiots to buy electric bare metal Pontiac Aztecs with “unbreakable” windows instead of F-150’s

  • nomecks@lemmy.world
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    If Elon would have looked back, he would have seen that Delorean has already tried bare metal, and it’s nearly impossible to fix. Dent your truck? May as well paint it.

    I mean, Elon obviously doesn’t care about repairability, but the first few fender benders will result in a pile of articles about how unfixable the body panels actually are.

  • Im14abeer@midwest.social
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    Elon gonna engineer the shit outta this thing. Nevermind coil steel itself varies by more than that before it goes into a die and stretches. It’s almost like he doesn’t have any background in automotive manufacturing. This statement makes me think Elon may not know what a micron even is. The fit and finish of Tesla’s current offerings seems to evidence it anyway.