Who really cares all that much what such a functional and durable vehicles looks like? The CT isn't for everyone, only those that appreciate true engineering genius.
DITTO! He doesn’t understand why the CT is shaped this way, functionality, buildability and it makes those who don’t understand jealous.
Odd comparison of apples and oranges. No mention of functionality because there is no comparison. Neither of the saloons could carry a load of lumber, go off road, house a full sized bed, or tow anything. My feeling just with regard to design is that the enduring design of the ultra futuristic car he shows (Careem sp?) is the true heritage of the CT that will look futuristic in decades to come. The other car he shows is ignorably predictable.
I couldn't care less about his design pedigree or what he designed in the past. The Cybertruck was love at first sight for me and I know exactly where my 80k will be spent approximately a year from now ?
Well if you've ever driven a Chevrolet Lumina APV or Pontiac Trans Sport, you would know that GM cares not about the front distance viewing. The company I worked for in the 90s bought those POS's and they were all around terrible(except maybe the seats).
This is perfect!Elon had me at Exoskeleton! No further explanations needed nor wants unfulfilled.
Admittedly I did go through the 7 stages of acceptance and delayed ordering until day 2.5.
Thank you Juliana for this gem from the past.?
(First post here). I'm thinking that the issue of torsion, as well as compression, extension, flexion and shear, forced the use of exoskeleton. Then, they leaned into it. This is backwards from a car designer's perspective. A car designer can say unibody and let's make something. Tesla has to say, "How do we insure the battery pack doesn't take large quantities of force while carrying a load in the bed or towing???".For me, the most worrisome design feature is the exoskeleton. Lotus tried a lightweight fiberglass exoskeleton in 1966 with the Europa S1 and they quickly ran away from it for the S2:
" The most significant change was the switch from fully bonded construction to the use of bolt fasteners to attach the fibreglass body to the backbone steel frame. While reducing the torsional and flexural stiffneses somewhat, the use of a separable body was welcomed by the automotive insurance industry as it greatly reduced the complexity and cost of making repairs to the vehicle.[3] " You could easily total an S1 in a minor accident.
However, I believe that if Lotus had been using 3mm stainless steel, the design would have succeeded. It would have been many times stronger, although much heavier. Perfect for a truck, maybe not for a sportscar. Note the Cybertruck has sail pillars just like the Europa S1.
An interesting side note is that the other mass market stainless car design (DeLorean) had to be rescued by Lotus. In order to stamp the body panels, the stainless had to be very thin, too thin in fact for a car. Lotus helped DeLorean reinforce the panels with fiberglass just to make them strong enough. Since Tesla has had a long relationship with Lotus, all this history must have been well known and informed the Cybertuck design. Hence origami.
OK one more side note: The Europa S2 got rid of the sail pillars, as did the 1977 Lancia Montecarlo, because of rearward visibility concerns.
1976 Montecarlo:
1977 Montecarlo with glass sail pillars/flying buttresses:
Europa S2:
