Cybertruck Body Prototype Casting spied uncovered!! 😲

[JBee]

No need to apologise! I would have thought by now you’d know not to take anything I say too seriously.

Yours is the sort of response that gives me faith in humanity.

Aw shucks, thanks!

I must be hitting my mid life peak after all, I fear its all downhill from here though....

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[Cayenne11]

I never anticipated either one of those things. Personally I think a midgate is a terrible idea for a truck used for work.

I agree. a midgate would be just one more thing to rattle.

 

[TyPope]

Aw shucks, thanks!

I must be hitting my mid life peak after all, I fear its all downhill from here though....

You shouldn't fear that downhill though... Look at it as "Easy pedaling from here"

 

[anionic1]

So I was thinking about how some folks are saying that they think the main giga casting is still missing in this photo on the rear and I think I solved it.

Tesla is probably coming up with some cool composite decking design to use for the bed of the truck. You can tell in previous images that the bed looks panelized. The company I work for has a sister company that engineers and fabricates thin, high strength, composite decks. Tesla will use something like that for the truck bed to minimize supports and parts I would bet. If that bed diaphragm is designed to hold thousands of pounds of material it very likely can take the torque of the motors with minimal additional support. Why would Tesla add another huge casting under the truck when they have a very sturdy truck bed right there. If that bed is made of the same 3mm material or another composite panel of some type they would naturally exploit its strength and just mount the motors to it underneath. Just my guess, but it seems simpler to do that then add another large casting. My bet is they will exploit the bed strength and attach the motors to the underside of the bed. The suspension will mount to the casting that we already see.

I was seeing some odd cavities in the casting near the wheel well and I bet those are for mounting servos or motors for the 4 way steering.

I can’t think of anything else you would need to mount back there. I already discussed where the crash rail will mount in a previous post on this thread.

 

[Ogre]

So I was thinking about how some folks are saying that they think the main giga casting is still missing in this photo on the rear and I think I solved it.

Tesla is probably coming up with some cool composite decking design to use for the bed of the truck. You can tell in previous images that the bed looks panelized. The company I work for has a sister company that engineers and fabricates thin, high strength, composite decks. Tesla will use something like that for the truck bed to minimize supports and parts I would bet. If that bed diaphragm is designed to hold thousands of pounds of material it very likely can take the torque of the motors with minimal additional support. Why would Tesla add another huge casting under the truck when they have a very sturdy truck bed right there. If that bed is made of the same 3mm material or another composite panel of some type they would naturally exploit its strength and just mount the motors to it underneath. Just my guess, but it seems simpler to do that then add another large casting. My bet is they will exploit the bed strength and attach the motors to the underside of the bed. The suspension will mount to the casting that we already see.

I was seeing some odd cavities in the casting near the wheel well and I bet those are for mounting servos or motors for the 4 way steering.

I can’t think of anything else you would need to mount back there. I already discussed where the crash rail will mount in a previous post on this thread.

I think using the bed would be consistent with the whole concept.

I’m personally not engaging too much brain power trying to figure out how the prototype is put together myself. Without the big gigacast pieces it’s going to be different from the final one way or the other. There are bound to be steps and parts which are added which won’t be needed in the final. As others have mentioned, we’re not even certain this is intended to be an actual functioning truck versus a blank to test other equipment.

 

[Jhodgesatmb]

See Sandy’s video posted at #363. He pretty clearly disagrees with “ONE BIG ASS CASTING,” at least as represented in this widely-discussed photo.

One cannot forget that this is a tooling exercise. It is intended to get parts in the right place, position, and orientation for assembly into a BIW. It is doubtful whether this pic shows anything that would ever be built up into a vehicle, so why would anyone think this casting (or multi-piece casting) is the final design except for aligning the components that comprise the BIW?

 

[Jhodgesatmb]

Sandy doesn’t have a whole lot of go on either. He said as much on the video.

He was looking for another angle to see if it was one casting or multiple.

Honestly the big shocker about this is the sheer verticality of it. I think we all expected the casting to be limited to the area below the bed height. That’s why I suggested it’s likely 2-4 castings. If it’s one giant casting, that would be huge (figuratively and literally). It didn’t even occur to me that this would be one casting which seems to be Munro’s immediate takeaway.

I am still not convinced that these extra pieces will be in the real rear castings. It is easy for me to imagine them as part of an alignment jig and I am sticking with that until I see evidence to the contrary.

 

[Jhodgesatmb]

FYI I’m pretty sure the molds are at Texas. They appear larger than 6k presses. This is a very good sign, also the crane is on site to unload press deliveries. So boots be soon!

I looked closely at those items and I think they are dies and not platens. The platens would probably be painted red by the way, and would be much larger than these.

 

[anionic1]

I think using the bed would be consistent with the whole concept.

I’m personally not engaging too much brain power trying to figure out how the prototype is put together myself. Without the big gigacast pieces it’s going to be different from the final one way or the other. There are bound to be steps and parts which are added which won’t be needed in the final. As others have mentioned, we’re not even certain this is intended to be an actual functioning truck versus a blank to test other equipment.

If this were a blank why would they go through such elaborate efforts on the casting. I think what we are looking at is the giga casting. Even though Munroe said that it was likely welded together at this point. The final casting could be one large one very similar to what we are seeing. I don't expect to see any additional cast pieces in the final product.

 

[Ogre]

One cannot forget that this is a tooling exercise. It is intended to get parts in the right place, position, and orientation for assembly into a BIW. It is doubtful whether this pic shows anything that would ever be built up into a vehicle, so why would anyone think this casting (or multi-piece casting) is the final design except for aligning the components that comprise the BIW?

I am still not convinced that these extra pieces will be in the real rear castings. It is easy for me to imagine them as part of an alignment jig and I am sticking with that until I see evidence to the contrary.

I largely agree. Likely some of these parts are the same as final or correspond to the final layout. Some are probably completely different.

Even if this is meant to be a finished truck, it’s not put together the same.

It’s neat to see progress, but hard to say what it means in the long run.

 

[anionic1]

I was looking at the scale of the giga press just for reference and I know the image below is heavily photoshopped but looking at other images its probably pretty close in scale. The point is that I can totally see them casting the rear as one large piece.

 

[Jhodgesatmb]

I was looking at the scale of the giga press just for reference and I know the image below is heavily photoshopped but looking at other images its probably pretty close in scale. The point is that I can totally see them casting the rear as one large piece.

Of course they will with the 9K ton gigapress. Elon said so. What we don’t know is how much of what was shown in the ‘tooling’ photo will be in the production rear end.

 

[Ogre]

If this were a blank why would they go through such elaborate efforts on the casting. I think what we are looking at is the giga casting. Even though Munroe said that it was likely welded together at this point. The final casting could be one large one very similar to what we are seeing. I don't expect to see any additional cast pieces in the final product.

It’s almost certainly not a single cast piece. Munro certainly didn’t give that impression.

The shape of the part is extremely complex for a cast piece. They need to be able to remove the form from the cast piece and that does not look possible with those tall sides and complex interior pieces.

I’d guess the final is at least 3 major pieces. Either 2 big side pieces and something for the base, or a big single casting for the base with 2 pieces welded to the top for the vault walls.

 

[Crissa]

The roof hasn't changed, it's still sloped. The B pillar is longer in the image than the C pillar despite foreshortening.

The tailgate mount looks bigger because there's no bumper, frame, or deck to compare it to. It would reach down into the deck to connect to the exoskeleton underneath the deck.

-Crissa

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