Yep ok so not the vault cover patent drawing that shows the z shaped midgate.Silhouette is superimposed on this. Don't know where I got it.
They don't actually. Rear seat backrest is behind rear door gap and midgate wall is behind that.
I currently have an electric cover on my 350. I can’t speak to how the CT will be designed but I can tell you how mine is and it looks much like the one on the CT. The slats are aluminum and the cover doesn‘t leak, MUCH. The slats have a track they ride in along each side, sort of sandwiched between two other pieces of aluminum fairly tight so the slats don’t buckle, I guess you would call this a channel. Water is collected in these channels. That water drains down the channels toward the cab. There is a small rubber hose at the end of each channel on each side that runs through the back side of the bed (under the back glass area) and hangs in the small open space between the cab and bed where it can drain freely. I haven’t had a real problem with leaking. There has been only a few times where a small amount of water intruded after a serious downpour and I remember once specifically when snow was melting. Even then it was only on the tailgate end where a rubber seal similar to a door seal on the last slat butts up against the tailgate. It has never leaked on the sides at all. This cover is several years old now so I’m sure the Tesla design will be even better. I wouldn’t expect any appreciable leaking. As far as sand and dirt, I have never had the slightest issue with any type of debris giving it trouble.
They do, actually.
I thought Tesla said early on, before the mid-gate request, that there would be a pass-through from the cab to the bed. If Tesla always intended that, then the tonneau would have to at least go past that opening. If that were the case then there is still an argument for some kind of mid-gate.
EM never confirmed that the bed would be climate controlled. He said there might be some climate control in the bed. At least, that is what I recall. "Might" is not a confirmation that something will happen.
I remember someone posting that drawing. It wasn't Tesla.
The window is there. Making an existing window into a slider is pretty straight forward. The mid-gate requires a lot more change. Plus the wall between the vault and the cabin may be structural.
The view issue could be partially mitigated by having the Tesla app on a large iPad. That way you can stream what the external cameras see. No more surprise bears when you blindly open the tonneau to get out for a bio break.
Nice idea. But to be truly usable, there would need to be 2 separate rollers for the tonneau. The first would be for the bed roof that keeps out the rain. The second would be for the cabin/bed separator wall. If there is only one single long tonneau as you have described, then anyone sleeping in the bed is still in a vault and can only get to the cabin after fully opening the tonneau over the bed and down past the separator wall area. Instead, the separator wall would need to be opened and closed separately from the tonneau over the bed.I was rethinking about the pass through/midgate thing lately and I came up with this option: remove the rear wall and its window. Just make the tonneau be the rear wall, so that whe it's 100% rolled under the bed, the back seats have nothing behind them (and folding them gives you 100% access to the bed from the cabin.
This way, the tonneau can have 3 positions: 100% closed (and this is exactly the same as it is now). 100% open (and you have the cabin and the bed as one single huge space with seats). And a half-rolled position, that exposes the bed but still closes the cabin, with the tonneau stopped at the top of the roof. This removes the rear window (but with 2 cameras in the back you simply do not need a window: the screen is all you need).
Finally, if the first segments of the tonneau are not full bars but 2 lateral "chains", when the tonneau is 100% closed you could even have the famous midgate. But it would be permanently open, and I don't think this is what Musk wants.
I hope I explained myself... English is not my tongue and sometimes it's hard to write down ideas!
EDIT: I added a quick picture with 100% closed, partially closed an 100% open tonneau
as I wrote, the last segments of the tonneau (those from the roller under the bed to the ceiling of the truck) could be split, leaving a space in the middle. Imagine the tonneau being like a big blanket only from the roof to the tail of the veichle, being pulled from its top sides by 2 "tank treads" like chains
Having them split but still in one full roller would mean that every time the tonneau was closed, the separator wall would be open. The two parts need to move independently. Now it could be possible to have the second roller at the top of the truck just above the separator area. Then as the tonneau was rolled up and out, it would get caught in the tines of the second roller. From there the top roller could control the tonneau independently of the separator. The problem there though is that it forces the separator wall to be moving every time the tonneau opens or closes. This could be a problem if the bed is fully loaded with material up against the separator wall. Especially imagine a load of sand. The separator wall needs to move completely individually from the tonneau.
