Confirmed: 11,000 lbs tow rating / 2,500 lbs payload capacity (official specs)! + Shatter-resistant glass

[anionic1]

Might I suggest an airbag? Perhaps a seat belt?

Possibly driving classes too perhaps, which we could probably all use a refresher coarse. Maybe enhanced brakes could be considered.

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[anionic1]

"Payload" includes passengers

Are you saying I am fat? And no Mr., my pronoun is not payload.

 

[anionic1]

Wow this thread really shows what 4 years of unmet needs can do to people. Noon can’t come to soon! I am excited for this forum to go from speculation to realization.

 

[HaulingAss]

Sometimes I wonder how much letting the other manufacturers fail plays into Elon’s decision making. It’s not necessarily a good thing for Tesla if Ford completely fails. I would just be curios. I mean if Tesla is making 20 plus percent on every vehicle and does is making 5 you would think Tesla could easily just drop their margins and ford just couldn’t keep up. So why don’t they just crush them by dropping their margins and getting rid of the competition. I am just using Ford as an example.

Elon started Tesla to speed the transition away from fossil fuels and he wants other automakers to join him, that's why he opened up the charging network to all the rest at no charge. Tesla drops their prices just enough to continue to sell as many cars as they can make, as soon as they make them. The so-called competition doesn't even enter into the picture.

Elon would never lower prices simply to crush a competitor, only to continue to sell all the cars they can make.

 

[JBee]

My day job is the structural design and analysis of aerospace structures, specifically carbon composite wings and fuselages for small airplanes. So I've had several people in my daily life ask my opinion on the Cybertruck "exoskeleton" and I have been saying exactly what you're saying here. You must be an engineer? You're the first person I've seen using all the correct terms and showing a thorough understanding of physics and basic loads path 101.

Nice! It would be good to have more of that around here!

There are a few threads and lots of conversation on the subject if you search for exoskeleton.

If they are structurally gluing a 3mm stainless plate on anything and not integrating it into the structural model I would be extremely surprised.

I struggle to see how you can say the panels are epoxied and that they are just hanging on. Buildings are held in place by epoxy. If the panels are epoxied it’s very likely the reason for that is to transfer some load.

The point is that you can integrate anything you want to the outside of a structure, but that doesn't mean that the load is going to be carried by it. Hence understanding the loadpath is critical in identifying what actually carries load. The easiest way to understand it is to figure out where the structural loads of the body have to terminate too. In a vehicle, there are only four tyre patches that interact with the ground, through which all operational vehicle loads must be transferred.

The only way you can transfer loads otherwise, is if something else, like another vehicle or pole or tree, pushes against the outside body. But this is considered an collision or impact, and as such the skin is meant to deform and prevent ingress into the vehicle. This is what is described in the patent as exoskeleton "skin", and this function is undeniable.

But this is a failure mode, in that the skin permanently deforms to absorb and dissipate the force. It is not however, the means the CT body "structure" is held together, or supports payloads, or driving dynamics induced forces, which structure should not permanently deform whilst doing so.

All these "operational loads" are predominately carried by the interior of the car, being primarily the cabin frame, the structural pack, and the front and rear casts, that all terminate to the vehicle suspension, the airspring and eventually the tyre contact patch to the ground. They also form the dominate load path link across the vehicle, from wheel to wheel.

Note none of the openings that have hinges or locks that are capable of distributing load, rather they all rely on compression into a smaller cabin frame opening, to transfer load on impact.

The only real time that the skin can assist in this structure is if only two diagonally opposite wheels are carrying the full vehicle load, with the other two balancing in mid air. In this situation you have a torsional moment that is trying to twist the body. The question then becomes what load, be that vehicle mass or payload mass, is exerting a force to create that moment on the outside of the diagonal line between the two wheels touching the ground. At that point, one would assume without running an detailed FEA model, that the front fenders, and their placement external of any substantive load and of the internal suspension mount, bares no meaningful load.

The rear fender however, might be a little different, in that a large payload in the bed, might be placed in such a way that such a torsional load might occur. This however is the only SS panel that might have some "meaningful" operational load carrying capability. But here also, the position of the bed directly over the rear suspension would suggest that the long wheel base design of the CT was intentionally so to reduce the payload variability, which in turn would allow a larger payload capacity. The point is that the load path from payload to rear suspension componentry, that is directly underneath said load, is short and direct to where it needs to go. A diagonal load path would then go from the cast through the structural pack and cabin frame to the other cast and suspension. How much the internal part between the suspension of the vehicle would deflect would determine how much load would be transferred to the outside, and as such a detailed FEA of the rear would be required to know the extent of force exerted on the skin at all, and if said skin would in it's planar form be of any assistance to the structure, by displacing the force to other parts of the structure, for example to the cabin frame.

Now from the images of the CT rear cast sail structure it is clear there is "some" points that could provide a meaningful connection to the SS rear fender skin. But, we have not yet seen the inside of the rear fender SS skin, and as such it is hard to determine if it is rigidly attached or not. In fact rather, it could and might be bushed, in that the thermal expansion of aluminum cast and SS skin are not particularly compatible on that size material, and thermal expansion would cause the cast to visibly bend and buckle the SS skin if it were. These material expansion force could be well in excess of the forces created by the payload. Structurally bonding the skin to the cast would not reduce the expansion problem. This might be cause for concern, in that a Austin assembled vehicle in summer that is straight, could be quite wavey by winter in Colorado or Montana. Not to mention the panel gaps.

Either way, conceptually, the exoskeleton should be understood for what it is, namely as a protective structure for ingress protection, including bullets (!), but not a method predominately for supporting the vehicle mass or payload.

 

[Mr.Dee]

I struggle to see how you can say the panels are epoxied and that they are just hanging on. Buildings are held in place by epoxy. If the panels are epoxied it’s very likely the reason for that is to transfer some load.

I should rephrase that for clarity. I don't mean that IF they are epoxied then they CANT be structural. What I mean by that is that if they are epoxied then the additional structural benefit of the steel would be the shear stiffness but it would be limited to the shear strength of the adhesive. So the fact that the panels are 3mm thick stainless steel shouldn't be taken as "the truck is now as stiff and strong as 3mm stainless steel." Because any load carrying capabilities of the steel that exceed that of the adhesive are not utilized.

 

[rudedawg78]

I have a feeling like the attitude tomorrow is going to be Tesla giving us at or slightly better than promised but very much later than expected and 500,000 people are going to be pissed due to their own ignorance and faulty recollection.

I'm wondering how many people are going to get their $100 reservation back after the event.

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