Musk on Affordable Electric Truck

[anionic1]

My abiding thoughts when I first saw the Cybertruck was that its exo-skeleton design was absolute genius - frame and body in one simple piece, no paint - and would decimate the costs associated with manufacturing a 'Full-size Truck'! - If I recall correctly, Sandy Munro's conclusions stated the same. No one here seems to be considering the massive savings associated with this 'low-poly' design relative to conventional car or truck manufacture. Whilst I think that the front and rear castings plus 4680 savings were already baked in at launch, rear wheel steer and other enhancements probably weren't. I'm sure that EM has factored in some padding and that launch pricing will likely be honored.
I believe that the main reason why current S3XY prices have gone up is mostly to reduce the demand as Tesla simply cannot deliver! EM took our pre-order deposit to gauge demand and once it became insatiable, he had to remove any further CT pre-orders by removing it from the website. Thus, I consider that we will not have a significant price hike.

You have a very optimistic outlook and that's great. I am guessing you don't work in any financial or purchasing application currently, because any business buying anything in almost any market sector right now will tell you cost are significantly higher than they were 2 years ago. A quote from Elon around June 2021, "Prices increasing due to major supply chain price pressure industrywide," he tweeted. "Raw materials especially." No one could have predicted or planned for 30% to 300% price increases over 2 years. My prediction is that if the truck is made, they will get out of preorders by not offering those options and we won't ever see a CT under $60k. That's why the options are removed and the pricing is removed. They are already going to disappoint over 1M people. Why add more by leaving options up that won't be available.

The market will correct itself over the next few years and Musk is probably waiting for that.

The only thing the exoskeleton design does is eliminate the paint. They still have to put a sheet of steel in a machine to shape it and it will get attached to other body parts prior to assembly just like a painted steel unibody would. People act like the exoskeleton is just these big sheets of steel that somehow hold the whole frame together like a crab skell. That will not be the case and you can see it some of the images. There are interior body panels that will connect to the stainless exterior panels. Yes the stainless panels will likely take a lot of the load and help reduce the interior panels but its not simple slapping exterior panels together and you have a frame.

Regarding paint, according to Munro the painting is not a significant savings in the fabrication process. The stainless is also likely to get some kind of treatment to make it appear more uniform and to remove any manufacturing imperfections so I doubt it will be free of finishing as others believe.

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[Crissa]

Regarding paint, according to Munro the painting is not a significant savings in the fabrication process.

Fixed it for you.

-Crissa

 

[Ogre]

Munro said eliminating the paint shop eliminated a 500 million dollar paint shop.

Not only is it expensive, it takes a huge amount of space.

I suspect they will get a uniform finish by running the truck through a finishing machine which will polish the steel or sand it to to a uniform finish. No drying, no drips, no chips, no quality control on the paint. If there Is a problem with the truck, they might run it through the finishing machine again.

 

[charliemagpie]

Hopefully it will come pre-mudded !

 

[Ogre]

Hopefully it will come pre-mudded !

Nah… I want to give it it’s first mud bath.

 

[anionic1]

Munro said eliminating the paint shop eliminated a 500 million dollar paint shop.

Not only is it expensive, it takes a huge amount of space.

I suspect they will get a uniform finish by running the truck through a finishing machine which will polish the steel or sand it to to a uniform finish. No drying, no drips, no chips, no quality control on the paint. If there Is a problem with the truck, they might run it through the finishing machine again.

Munro has no idea what a paint shop would cost to build. Its definitely not $500M. I am building factories for 3M doing a lot of complicated stuff and its not anywhere near that. Giga Texas, per Tesla, is costing around $1.1B to build. My guess is that cost is the land and the building shell, site etc.. They will probably easily put another $1B in machinery and equipment in there. And that includes the paint shop for the model Y. No way is that paint shop 25% of the cost. Munro in one of his latest interview said painting wasn't a big deal. https://www.cybertruckownersclub.co...has-no-engineering-obstacles.4826/#post-92216

 

[Crissa]

The one billion is just the shell. It's not everything inside.

-Crissa

 

[Ogre]

You gotta love how someone can be so willing to quote the hell out of a person so long as they agree with their POV, then dismiss their comments out of hand when they don’t.

If you think Munro is a reliable source of information about the costs it would take to manufacture a product (I do, it’s kind of his specialty). This is a reasonably good article based on an interview he made (linked in the Article). That article was a long time ago and based on much lower production estimate. Since Tesla‘s production gets cheaper as they scale there is no reason to believe it will have gotten worse in the time since.

Munro estimates Cybertruck tooling will be 1/5th the cost of tooling for the F-150. He suggests **just the paintshop** is more expensive that total tooling for the Cybertruck.

If you don’t think Munro is a reliable source of pricing information. You should stop quoting him.

 

[anionic1]

The one billion is just the shell. It's not everything inside.

-Crissa

Thats definitely correct. I have been estimating large project for 10 years. Its about a 5 million sf facility. I believe it was Anning Johnson that did most of the project. I work with them in CA. They do different scope in every region they are in but it all has to do with steel. Decking, metal framing systems etc.. My best guess is that building site and shell landed around $100/gsf of building shell. Typical large warehouse space is closer to $60/sf but that shell is much beefier to handle the manufacturing weight. They will spend about another $80/gsf doing the interior improvements to get it ready for all the machinery and occupancy. When we do factory or lab work usually the interior improvements are upwards of $200-350/sf but this is a huge facility so i am giving them some economy of scale. They bought the land for around $100M or $50,000 an acre, which seem like a good deal for that area. This adds up to just over $1B. I can easily see them spending another $1B on the robotics and machinery for the production lines. I bet one of those Idra presses is in the $5M-$10M range alone.

 

[anionic1]

You gotta love how someone can be so willing to quote the hell out of a person so long as they agree with their POV, then dismiss their comments out of hand when they don’t.

If you think Munro is a reliable source of information about the costs it would take to manufacture a product (I do, it’s kind of his specialty). This is a reasonably good article based on an interview he made (linked in the Article)

Munro estimates Cybertruck tooling will be 1/5th the cost of tooling for the F-150. His estimates suggest **just the paintshop** is more expensive that total tooling for the Cybertruck.

If you don’t think Munro is a reliable source of pricing information. You should stop quoting him.

Munro is an expert and making parts and pieces more efficient and less costly to manufacture. I am an expert at building the facilities to make those parts. I seriously doubt he has ever priced a paint shop. He was throwing a number out there.

 

[rr6013]

The only thing the exoskeleton design does is eliminate the paint.

That simple assertion is debatable.

Turning body into triple use exoskeleton eliminates steel frame weight, eliminates adding structure into non-struct body-on-frame(i.e. rollover), eliminates floorpan and bonus distributes shock force suspension loads throughout the entire exoskeleton.vs. frame shock tower mounts that localize onto frame rails.

Exoskeleton negative mass provides inertial energy gains which enables the vehicle to deliver superior performance metrics as a BEV truck.
Exoskeleton provides stiffness(measure of rigidity) which enables Tesla to remove metal in Cybertuck roof sections substituting transparent acoustic structural glass. That is further weight savings which accrue to negative inertial mass, lower center of gravity and improves he ability of the vehicle to deliver traction to ground.
Exoskeleton in addition to eliminating paint, paint department processes of drying and curing also impacts other departments within Tesla GigaFactory. From memory, exoskeleton eliminates over seventy-five bodyshop stations enabling Tesla to reduce manpower, robots altogether and significant compression of the total vehicle build time. Antidotally, this time impact is an order of magnitude shorter than any known OEM(VW=30hr TSLA==10hr) on an estimated basis.
Exoskeleton design affords bullet resistance(~9mm) due to the 30x cold rolled SS which converts directly to performance when Cybertruck engages Plaid mode! Antidotally, bulletproof resistance holds above 140mph in dystopian hail of gunfire.
Exoskeleton SS patina is natural needing no UV treatment, no polishing nor handwork matching luster to adjacent panels - ever. Patina is architectural cosmetic appearances inherent in all bare metal material that lends character that changes over time. Any manipulation of the bare material, treatment or additional coating to artificially achieve uniformity approaching that of a finish is an oxymoron, futile and more expensive adding maintenance costs to the SS finish onto ownership TCO.
In closing, exoskeleton provides a single orthogonal structural passenger vehicle design that universally scales from single, dual, tri, qaud motors and 4x2,4x4 and 6x6 variants over load ranges from ½ ton to 2 ½ ton truck applications with antidotal future uses beyond terrestial to water and space applications for Tesla. No mention is even alluded to .mil interest in bullet resistant BEV platform applications with FSD autonomy.

But yeah…its true exoskeleton only eliminates the paint. Its also true that paint elimination is not the only thing an exoskeleton does.

 

[firsttruck]

Munro has no idea what a paint shop would cost to build. Its definitely not $500M.
.....

Sandy has several decades of experience vehicle manufacturing.
Munro Assoc company is not a one man operation (Sandy), he has several experts covering many relevant disciplines.

The 2020Jan Autoline Daily interview of Sandy had several other industry experts. When Sandy showed them a ICE Ford F-150 vs Tesla Cybertruck comparison, these experts who worked in ICE vehicle industry did not object to the estimate of $500m for paint shop for F-150 class vehicles.

.....
I am building factories for 3M doing a lot of complicated stuff and its not anywhere near that. Giga Texas, per Tesla, is costing around $1.1B to build. My guess is that cost is the land and the building shell, site etc.. They will probably easily put another $1B in machinery and equipment in there. And that includes the paint shop for the model Y. No way is that paint shop 25% of the cost. Munro in one of his latest interview said painting wasn't a big deal. https://www.cybertruckownersclub.co...has-no-engineering-obstacles.4826/#post-92216

I watched every Munro video. Several times over last two years Sandy has said paint & paint shop add significant costs.


Cybertruck Stainless steel exoskeleton saves
$300-450 per vehicle in direct prep & paint cost
$500M in paint shop capital expense
No large scale paint shop gives significant saving in factory floor space

Save millions of dollars in capital cost for elimination of stamping presses for exterior panels.
* there will still be some stamping presses for interior panels.

truck weighs less for similar bed load & towing capability.

All capEx ( capital equipment expense ) has to be allocated over all vehicles produced so significantly higher capex makes each vehicle measureably more expensive.


-------------------------

Matt Joyce@matty_mogul
2020 Jan 18


Sandy Munro analysis:
600k @Ford F150s
$50M Dies
$65M Body Shop
$500M Paint Shop
————————
$615M Cap Ex

600k @Tesla Cybertrucks
$30M Dies
$35M Body Shop
$60M Paint Shop
————————
$125M Cap Ex

No wonder @elonmusk doesn’t want to paint Cybertruck! ? Next auto revolution? CAP EX.


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Sandy Munro: Tesla Cybertruck SpaceX tech, bullet proof windows, crash safety, and battery magic Dec 18, 2019
Sean Mitchell

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Deconstructing The Tooling Cost on Tesla’s Cybertruck - Autoline After Hours
Jan 16, 2020
Autoline Network

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[anionic1]

That simple assertion is debatable.

Turning body into triple use exoskeleton eliminates steel frame weight, eliminates adding structure into non-struct body-on-frame(i.e. rollover), eliminates floorpan and bonus distributes shock force suspension loads throughout the entire exoskeleton.vs. frame shock tower mounts that localize onto frame rails.

Exoskeleton negative mass provides inertial energy gains which enables the vehicle to deliver superior performance metrics as a BEV truck.
Exoskeleton provides stiffness(measure of rigidity) which enables Tesla to remove metal in Cybertuck roof sections substituting transparent acoustic structural glass. That is further weight savings which accrue to negative inertial mass, lower center of gravity and improves he ability of the vehicle to deliver traction to ground.
Exoskeleton in addition to eliminating paint, paint department processes of drying and curing also impacts other departments within Tesla GigaFactory. From memory, exoskeleton eliminates over seventy-five bodyshop stations enabling Tesla to reduce manpower, robots altogether and significant compression of the total vehicle build time. Antidotally, this time impact is an order of magnitude shorter than any known OEM(VW=30hr TSLA==10hr) on an estimated basis.
Exoskeleton design affords bullet resistance(~9mm) due to the 30x cold rolled SS which converts directly to performance when Cybertruck engages Plaid mode! Antidotally, bulletproof resistance holds above 140mph in dystopian hail of gunfire.
Exoskeleton SS patina is natural needing no UV treatment, no polishing nor handwork matching luster to adjacent panels - ever. Patina is architectural cosmetic appearances inherent in all bare metal material that lends character that changes over time. Any manipulation of the bare material, treatment or additional coating to artificially achieve uniformity approaching that of a finish is an oxymoron, futile and more expensive adding maintenance costs to the SS finish onto ownership TCO.
In closing, exoskeleton provides a single orthogonal structural passenger vehicle design that universally scales from single, dual, tri, qaud motors and 4x2,4x4 and 6x6 variants over load ranges from ½ ton to 2 ½ ton truck applications with antidotal future uses beyond terrestial to water and space applications for Tesla. No mention is even alluded to .mil interest in bullet resistant BEV platform applications with FSD autonomy.

But yeah…its true exoskeleton only eliminates the paint. Its also true that paint elimination is not the only thing an exoskeleton does.

I was referring to the difference between an "exoskeleton" and a traditional unibody vehicle. The Model Y is now a unibody vehicle and it doesn't have a stainless "exoskeleton". I am saying that I believe the hype in the stainless panels doing something magical is only hype. Its a unibody truck with a thicker unnecessary exterior. I hope that exterior isn't holding up the production, because now tesla is looking like they will be years behind the competition on the electric truck market. These other automakers know how to make vehicles cheap. Tesla may have some advancements but the others will catch up. Using a body that is 6x the cost for material will be a pricing hurdle for this truck when the competition gets real.

 

[rr6013]

I was referring to the difference between an "exoskeleton" and a traditional unibody vehicle. The Model Y is now a unibody vehicle and it doesn't have a stainless "exoskeleton". I am saying that I believe the hype in the stainless panels doing something magical is only hype. Its a unibody truck with a thicker unnecessary exterior. I hope that exterior isn't holding up the production, because now tesla is looking like they will be years behind the competition on the electric truck market. These other automakers know how to make vehicles cheap. Tesla may have some advancements but the others will catch up. Using a body that is 6x the cost for material will be a pricing hurdle for this truck when the competition gets real.

Irrelevant car.v.truck strawman argument.

 

[Bill906]

Regarding paint, according to Munro the painting is not a significant savings in the fabrication process.

I'm pretty sure when he said that it was in regards to time. Meaning there's no significant time savings in a non-painted vs. painted chassis. There is definitely a savings in capital cost. I believe there is also significant cost savings per vehicle.

<I wrote this post last night but forgot to hit "Post reply" until now. while reading through this thread I kept saying "didn't I post about this..">

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