Yea I started watching the MKBHD video on it and turned it off at the part where he was kinda justifying how sophisticated the metal pressing process had to be because it has some elasticity or something and was hard to get consistent … the upshot of which was, as MKBHD admitted, that the panels were inconsistent and you were going to get random gaps in the plating. He kinda showed some examples, and to me, even over YouTube, it just felt cheap and I no longer understood how someone could feel ok spending the money.
Because Elon is a god king genius emerald boy who can do no wrong and you’d be a fool to ever doubt his perfection. It would be an honor to go into crippling debt to support him.
The original idea, as I understand it, was that it would be made of the same stainless alloy that SpaceX was developing for Starship. This steel was too hard to form using stamping, as the tools used would wear down much faster. So, they had to limit themselves to bending the sheet metal with a press brake, which really can’t do compound curves, hence the need for straight lines. Whether any of this was ever the real reason I have no idea, but one tidbit is that for Starship, they were using 304L (same mixture as some of my pans) and may never have switched to their own alloy. So, the design may at one point have been necessary for practical considerations, but that may have been mooted without bothering to change the design.
Wait was it really 100k I thought the whole idea was it was super cheap to produce and buy because flat metal plates are way easier to manufacture
Because everyone knows 90% of the manufacturing cost of a car is bending the bodywork panels.
Got me on that one ahah
One of Musks pitches for selling the car at 40k was that bending the steel panels is cheaper then making curved and painted ones.
Of course, the cars lowest trim is 60k because Musk is a liar, but that was part of the hype he was selling.
It’s a special alloy and it turns out it doesn’t like to make big flat parts, or something like that.
Yea I started watching the MKBHD video on it and turned it off at the part where he was kinda justifying how sophisticated the metal pressing process had to be because it has some elasticity or something and was hard to get consistent … the upshot of which was, as MKBHD admitted, that the panels were inconsistent and you were going to get random gaps in the plating. He kinda showed some examples, and to me, even over YouTube, it just felt cheap and I no longer understood how someone could feel ok spending the money.
Because Elon is a god king genius emerald boy who can do no wrong and you’d be a fool to ever doubt his perfection. It would be an honor to go into crippling debt to support him.
The original idea, as I understand it, was that it would be made of the same stainless alloy that SpaceX was developing for Starship. This steel was too hard to form using stamping, as the tools used would wear down much faster. So, they had to limit themselves to bending the sheet metal with a press brake, which really can’t do compound curves, hence the need for straight lines. Whether any of this was ever the real reason I have no idea, but one tidbit is that for Starship, they were using 304L (same mixture as some of my pans) and may never have switched to their own alloy. So, the design may at one point have been necessary for practical considerations, but that may have been mooted without bothering to change the design.
Just think how much more expensive it would be.
This is the largest battery, three motor version of the vehicle, the performance model.
The smaller battery/single motor version will be cheaper, it will also be the last one produced