I guess I kind of feel for some of these guys, but the Cybertruck was always going to be a political statement.
Putting aside how dumb it looks, or how terrible it actually is, it’s a cultural signifier. Unlike the other Tesla cars, that can easily be separated from Musk and his “brand”, that can’t be done here.
Musk and his brand was baked into it from conception to production, so, I don’t think this is going to resolve itself anytime soon.
Let me jump back to my first point though, I feel kinda sorry for anyone who bought this simply because they have really bad taste, poor financial decision making skills, but who also genuinely weren’t aware of the political implications or cultural baggage it would carry.
Although, now that I think about it, every time I’ve seen a Cybertruck driving, I have also started laughing, but only because it looks just so dumb, and I can’t help but imagine the driver losing his finger trying to close trunk.
Someone in the Tesla forum posted that if the truck sold for 15k it wouldnt be laughed at. What do you think? It would certainly make it less ridiculous to own one. More of a peculiarity than a gigantic red flag.
The cyber truck is, at this point, a malfunctioning status symbol. I suppose a 100K truck that sucks at being a truck is intended to communicate the driver is a successful tech guy but, whenever I see one, I think “there goes a rube”. I have a similar reaction when I see those gaudy designer bags or “luxury” branded tee shirts. I don’t think “there is someone who is successful” I think “that person is an idiot.”
There should be a catchy term for status symbols that communicate the opposite of their intention. Stupidity symbol? Status irony? Status error? None of these really roll of the tongue.
Tacky
Yes, thank you, we already have a word for this, lol.
I think the question is, why do those people not seem to react the same way to a cyber truck.
Price does matter right? I saw a comment in the original post on the Tesla forum saying people wouldnt laugh if it cost 15k. I think they are right but I dont think they realize why it would be less embarrassing if it was a budget car.
Rube flag?
Whatever effect it has should be named after that one Indian guy who was so rich, he made an entire polo shirt woven from gold fabric just because he could.
Ok @Charly™, did ya farm enough internet points? That site is a bigger pile of dogshit than the truck thing.
Simple solution. Move to a town that isn’t fully of pretentious haters. You could always live around normal people. But some towns are cursed with these kinds of people.
People who hate shitty unsafe cars?
lol, imagine buying a fkn tesla.
I used to want one. They were super cool, but much like Volkswagen(sp) the era where Nazis owned them sucked.
Now I want a Rivian.
Rivians are silly. Much less silly than the Cybertruck but still excessively large and heavy with pedestrian-murdering front ends, among other gripes like not having a glovebox or a power button
People who own pickup trucks but don’t need them for work should be sent to live on the pacific garbage patch.
+1 for the creative punishment of idiots.
I don’t know why there aren’t any small pickups. I used to have a proton jumbuck, little two seater pickup. You could get a ton of wood in the back and it was the same size as a car so you could park it easily. Really useful little thing, but you don’t seem to get them anymore.
All I want is a LHD Kei truck.
Ford Maverick and Hyundai Santa Cruz are the closest things available in the US now.
IIRC it is due to how taxes are related to size and weight classes of trucks in the US
I’d love something the size of a 90s S10
When they only made the S, and they were super rare space age tech, Tesla was kinda cool. Now they make road going appliances, and the owner is a terrible person.
Even back then, they were shitty, closed-source spyware-boxes.
Yes, but most people don’t give a shit about that.
what car from the last 15 years isn’t, though?
I abhor Tesla and their nazi CEO but to think any other automaker is any better with regard to privacy or openness?
There’s a reason all of my cars are more than 15 years old.
I don’t blame you at all, though there are definitely some tradeoffs
I’m ok with needing to keep an 8track collection instead of CDs if it means that my car won’t report my every sneeze to Ford or whothefuckever.
Yeah but that isn’t/wasn’t really unique to them
They seem neat, but I’d like to experience their UI first. If it’s as awful as the Teslas I’ve ridden in, then nah.
Also, want a front-end winch.
From “Keith” in the comments, “You bought a Cyber truck because you wanted attention. You’re getting attention. What’s your beef?”
Couldn’t agree more
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“I drive the equivalent of a 2024 Yugo that is laughably poor quality sold by a huckster and I paid enough to buy 4 reasonable cars. It’s the most gaudy design of any car ever produced since the dawn of time. Why would people laugh at me?”
Guys, I just can’t figure out why my coworkers laugh at me when I show them my picture wearing a maid costume! What could possibly be funny about that?
Nothing, post pics
Very cute outfit :3
You forgot your maid bonnet. Classic blunder!
Aww heck. How do I get one of those on short notice?
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It’s probably the cat ears
Aww, but they’re supposed to be cute!
aluminum frame, steel skin. they put the horse in the cart and had the fare-payers pull the whole thing lolol
I swear most of you are just assholes looking for manufacturer moral justification to bully people.
The cyber truck is the vehicle for the man who wears a fedora with a t-shirt.
When I saw what community this article is posted in I almost choked.
Remove all the hype and it looks stupid
Hell, include the hype, and it looks stupid
Fascism mobile
I saw a white cyber truck today (a first for me). It even more hideous than the silver and black ones.
I thought they were all plain metal. I wonder if it was a custom paint job.
Many will opt to get a custom wrap because the steel could get scratched and start rusting, plus they are buying for clout and are now in too deep to stop throwing money away on making it “look” better.
Some have also opted into getting a third party service to chemically deposit a layer of gold on the surface of the steel. Making it an even bigger money sink for little benefit and basically not worth driving around almost at all except for showing off.
The only reason to get a cyber truck is because you want to make a statement
The funny thing is, it’s not the statement they think it- none of them have the introspection necessary to understand, the message is “I’m a monumental douche.”
It doesn’t rust.
Iron particles in the air land on the bare stainless steel, react with it, and rust. It’s the iron particles rusting, not the steel itself. This is called ‘fallout,’ and it mostly comes from brake rotors. It contaminates the surface of all vehicles and needs to be removed, but with paint and clearcoat in between, this reaction doesn’t happen. The ‘rust’ on Cybertrucks is just surface contamination that can be cleaned off. If you left a bunch of modern cars out in the rain for 100 years, the Cybertruck would likely be the only one with anything left of it.
There’s plenty to criticise the Cybertruck for but spreading this rusting myth is dishonest.
Anything with iron can rust, including stainless steel.
Stainless that gets scratched will rust, as well as if the mild steel (or whatever the dust is,) causes a galvanic reaction. Or any where that the stainless is exposed to lesser steel. (Which is why you can’t store stainless with mild.)(including, in point of fact to milde steel dust…)
Alternatively, exposure to corrosives- bug juice, road salt and other deicers, potentially a dozen kinds of automotive fluids.
There’s a reason the rest of the automotive industry doesn’t use exposed stainless anywhere. And that reason me is it rusts (and is difficult to work with, and is more likely to kill people in an impact.)(people at Tesla told musk this. He didn’t care. Musk is an idiot.)
A wired as a source talking about the issues in CA drivers (where there is a lot of salt in the air.)
I used to build stainless steel farming equipment for industries like fertilizers and such. The acidic nature of which, would eat through paint. Stainless steel gas to be cleaned of that “surface rust” constantly or that rust will transfer to the stainLESS steel (note: not stainPROOF steel.) 100 years in the elements and no vehicle would be recognizable. Especially knowing the reaction of lithium to water.
The Cybertruck manual actually says you have to clean all bug splatter and bird shit off immediately or else.
To be fair, every car manual says that.
I think you’d still agree that, compared to the regular steel used in most other vehicles, one made of stainless steel would offer superior corrosion resistance, right? It may not last forever, but it sure beats the alternative.
My 17-year-old truck has its wheel arches rusting through, despite the paint and undercoating. I feel pretty confident saying this wouldn’t be the case if it were made of stainless steel.
Well that all depends. 17 years old and rusting through, I’d say you’re likely in a wet environment. Possibly near salt water. And it’s moving a lot more than one would while in a field, sitting. I bet you drive on gravel a bit, yeah? Doing that also makes wheel wells rust out faster because even minute damage to the paint will make it rust pretty fast. So from my point of view, sitting in an unprotected field, I would take the Corvette over a cybertruck. It’s a heavily painted fiberglass body over an alloy chassis. Honestly the more carbon fiber the car has, the more likely it is to be recognizable in 100 years. The point is, you’ll see badly rusted cyber trucks pretty soon because it’s actually quite a pain to maintain. Any dent or scratch will be rusted BAD if not rectified within 6 months or so in a wet environment, 18-24 if it’s dry enough.
All else being equal, stainless steel is a superior material compared to regular steel. I don’t get why that’s so difficult to admit. If my truck had been used in the exact same way but was made of stainless steel, it wouldn’t be rusting through. It might not be completely rust-free, but it would definitely be less rusty.
There are different grades with different alloys. The type of alloy of steel the CT uses is similar to kitchen grade, but reduces the chromumium to make it cheaper, but more prone to corrosion, especially around salt.
It does rust.
And you have to wash the car every time it rains? No thanks.
Left untreated, rust can form pitting and become extremely difficult to impossible to restore.
https://bssa.org.uk/bssa_articles/iron-contamination-and-rust-staining-on-stainless-steel/
The paint job on any car, especially one costing 100k+, requires an extreme level of care and maintenance if you want to keep it looking pristine. Many people who own such cars don’t even wash them themselves because they will scratch the clear coat. Personally, I have no desire to waste my time on that, but I’m also not in the market for such a car, so it doesn’t concern me. What I don’t get is why people who have no intention of buying a Cybertruck in the first place are so vocal about how difficult it is to maintain. If anything, I’d imagine these people would just be happy that Cybertruck owners have to deal with all that.
I have an MS in mechanical engineering focused in materials and I wrote a few papers on 3d printing of stainless tool steels. I’ve read further down the thread and you are completely wrong.
It’s rusting because it’s a low grade stainless. Its low grade because stainless steel work hardens when bent or machined. Lower grades have less issues with work hardening. They made this choice to save on tooling costs I assume.
Work hardening is when you permanently deform a material it gets more brittle. Stainless is an unbelievably stupid choice for a vehicle body because it needs to be formed into complex shapes which require lots of deformation. It’s why SS cars feature mostly large flat panels and also partially why we have been moving towards aluminum body panels.
What am I completely wrong about exactly? I haven’t made any claims about the quality of the steel.
Most of the articles I find when googling about the rusting points towards iron particles.
The lower the grade the faster it rusts. Forgot most people don’t know that. Its rusting because there is iron in steel (duh). It’s rusting quickly because it has low concentration of rust inhibitors like chromium or nickel. Increasing the concentration of these metals makes it rust slower. It also makes it harder to tool into a car body, making it a shifty choice for a car shell.
The article you linked is either uninformed or being misleading about “free iron”. That just means there are no rust inhibitors so they are leaving free energy available on the surface of an iron grain at the surface of the material. This makes it rust quickly where those grains are. There are millions of these grains at the surface where the metal interfaces with air. The iron particles are in the body panel, not on top of it.
I’m guessing what you describe is like some of my knives (IKEA ones iirc) getting rust on them if they don’t get dried properly and are left to dry with water left on them?
Still sounds like terrible design when no car I’ve ever seen has this sort of problem.
Sure Elon let’s get you to bed
It’s only $5k to professionally wrap a vehicle. You can have rainbow pearl over pink if you want.
Nah, no option here, mirror buff or go home. It’s the only sufficiently obnoxious choice for that car.
Rainbow pearl x3, the really obnoxious one, over chrome.
I appreciate your taste, But the raw danger of driving a mirror around just wins it for me.
I saw a bedazzled BMW X3 the other day, should have followed them to get a pic
