Cybertruck frame / casting / chassis / body structure in plain sight outside Giga Texas 🧐

[Crissa]

Who was arguing about no unibody chassis again? Yeah, STFU.

The exoskeleton was always going to be unibody, and have an underbody.

No unibody and it would be... I don't know. But you'd have no place for doors and windows. And no underbody would mean there'd be no place for the motors, suspension, and capacity for load handling.

-Crissa

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[rizvend]

motors

Precisely. Just too many impatient naysayers around here trolling. ??

 

[CompMaster]

Looks like the frame from the rocket ship from Little Einsteins.

 

[TeslaRCs]

Looks like a well design unibody frame, with lot of gigacastings!

 

[Macgreiner]

So much for exoskeleton

 

[TheLastStarfighter]

People saying "guess no exoskeleton" have no idea what they're talking about. This unibody frame was shown on reveal night, never changed. Here it is, just without the castings but with the body panels attached:

I included the image with the Ford to demonstrate what they're talking about. The Ford is a body on frame, so everything is plopped on the ladder structure. Cybertruck is unibody. When Elon said they would push the mass to the outside, he never said there wouldn't be a frame, they showed it right there. Just stainless steel skin and seats would be ridiculous.

And this isn't new, unibody cars have been around for decades. What is new is doing it for a real truck that can carry 3000lbs or tow 15000. Getting rid of that central ladder enables much more efficient packaging and dramatically reduced overall weight which should give the Cybertruck significant competitive advantages in space, comfort and energy efficiency.

 

[TheLastStarfighter]

You can make the case for the Silverado EV and Hummer EV. GM says they're not unibody or ladder/frame. I think the approach is similar to the Cybertruck. Rivian is body on frame, but with a unified cab+bed.

 

[ColdRolledSS]

Whether it’s unibody or not, hope it can be fit with a unibrow (light-bar)!

 

[Luftpilot]

What a backdrop. Looks surreal...

 

[cvalue13]

I included the image with the Ford to demonstrate what they're talking about. The Ford is a body on frame, so everything is plopped on the ladder structure. Cybertruck is unibody. When Elon said they would push the mass to the outside, he never said there wouldn't be a frame, they showed it right there. Just stainless steel skin and seats would be ridiculous.

And this isn't new, unibody cars have been around for decades. What is new is doing it for a real truck that can carry 3000lbs or tow 15000. Getting rid of that central ladder enables much more efficient packaging and dramatically reduced overall weight which should give the Cybertruck significant competitive advantages in space, comfort and energy efficiency.

I’ve said before that *if* this is what Mysk meant at unveil, Tesla very intentionally avoided the use of the word ‘unibody’ - because it’s become a dirty word, especially in the pickup truck world.

on the other hand, all these *bleep* *bleep* discussions skip over a central point common to every view:

nobody knows what what in Musk/Tesla’s mind at unveil, because Musk’s comments were so vague and indeterminate that many interpretations are equally possible - but we’ll never know which was intended (if any at all)

the EQUALLY viable possibilities interpretations range from:

• what you’ve just described

• how Munro and other very experienced automobile designers interpreted Musk’s comments

• (the most overlooked) Musk didn’t have a concrete plan On the deep engineering, aside from the mandate to use SS panels however best would result in truck functionality, based on a half dozen engineering possibilities floating around inside Tesla at the time

regarding this last possibility, fanboi’s will fly in to say Musk is a prescient genius who never speaks without seeing the 4th dimension - but that idolization runs contrary to Musk’s history (his genius isn’t that), as well as the info about the CyberTruck gleaned from Musk’s new biography: there was an internal foam mock-up late Summer if 2019, key engineers hated it, and then early November 2019 Musk ordered that a rolling pro type be ready to be driven on stage at unveil a few weeks later (which was built on a Model X chassis).

If folks have any dilutions of certainty that in that environment the CT’s deep structural engineering was settled, they’ve not been been close enough to product development (and are ignoring the fact that it’s taken 4 years to get to manufacturing confirmation units).

Which is all to say:

• anyone saying ‘Musk never said it would be a pure exoskeleton’ is also saying professional vehicle engineers like Munro know less than you (seems a precarious and unpersuasive position)

• anyone saying ‘Musk unequivocally did say it would be a pure exoskeleton’ will not be able to find or produce any explicit support for this, and now have to contend with the reality of the vehicle in front of us that suggests otherwise

Which to me means that all these forum posts that assert things like “it’s clear what Musk meant at unveil, and no plans have changed” are way out over their skis for EITHER interpretation




That doesn’t mean we can’t now consider in which ways, and to what extent, the actual production CT turned out to have exoskeleton-like features.

Nobody could dispute that, when it comes to occupant protection, the SS continues to provide this sort of ‘structure’ to the CT.

The only arena disputable is whether the SS panels provide additional load-bearing ‘structure’ to the CT. That dispute, really won’t and can’t be settled until Munro and others do a tear down and describe exactly how and where the SS is attached to the unibody underneath.

But even before all that: here are the parts of the CT SS** that are absolutely, indisputably, unable to add load-bearing structure to the CT:

• the hood
• the tailgate
• all 4 doors
• the longitudinal trim piece above the A1/A2 and B pillars

which leave as contenders only the front two quarterpanels, and rear two quarterpanels

and when it comes to crashworthiness, anyone should be shocked to find the front twoquarterpanels are performing any (or material) load-bearing structure (nor should they really need to, from perspective of where trucks experience load stress issues).

And if the front quarterpanels don’t, we’re down to:

the rear two quarterpanel’s may or may not provide load-bearing structure, and we’ll not *really* know until Munro et al do a breakdown and determine exactly where and how they are attached to the unibody


Which means everyone here saying the SS is obviously structural are assuming information they don’t know, and glossing over that we’re now down to talking about at most the4 quarterpanels and likely only the rear two quarterpanel’s.


**glass and pack are obvious structural, but that’s true on any Tesla with a structural pack

 

[scottf200]

You can make the case for the Silverado EV and Hummer EV. GM says they're not unibody or ladder/frame. I think the approach is similar to the Cybertruck. Rivian is body on frame, but with a unified cab+bed.

True on the Silverado EV

Apparently designed to have a higher tow capacity (20,000)

The Silverado EV's maximum towing capacity is 10,000 pounds and its payload capacity is up to 1440 pounds. Chevrolet has said that a model with a 20,000-pound towing capacity will eventually join the lineup.

 

[CyberGus]

glass and pack are obvious structural, but that’s true on any Tesla with a structural pack

omg… they’re all exoskeletons ?

 

[Cybergirl]

When I compare exoskeleton picture of the Cybertruck released back in 2019 with the "as built" photo above, I don't see a contradiction. The contoured door frames on the 2019 model are present. There was always a need for structural surfaces to mount internal sub assemblies. The 2019 image doesn't show the framework to which the motors and suspension are attached. We now know they are the front and rear castings, something even Tesla didn't know at the time of the prototype reveal. So whether it should be called an "exoskeleton" or a "uni-body" is a pointless argument. What we have is the best of both worlds.

 

[cvalue13]

The contoured door frames on the 2019 model are present.

maybe more to your point:

These seams suggest a panel construction

On the other hand…

The 2019 image doesn't show the framework to which the motors and suspension are attached.

as ever, there are good reasons for sustained debates

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