I guess I kind of feel for some of these guys, but the Cybertruck was always going to be a political statement.
Putting aside how dumb it looks, or how terrible it actually is, it’s a cultural signifier. Unlike the other Tesla cars, that can easily be separated from Musk and his “brand”, that can’t be done here.
Musk and his brand was baked into it from conception to production, so, I don’t think this is going to resolve itself anytime soon.
Let me jump back to my first point though, I feel kinda sorry for anyone who bought this simply because they have really bad taste, poor financial decision making skills, but who also genuinely weren’t aware of the political implications or cultural baggage it would carry.
Although, now that I think about it, every time I’ve seen a Cybertruck driving, I have also started laughing, but only because it looks just so dumb, and I can’t help but imagine the driver losing his finger trying to close trunk.
Someone in the Tesla forum posted that if the truck sold for 15k it wouldnt be laughed at. What do you think? It would certainly make it less ridiculous to own one. More of a peculiarity than a gigantic red flag.
“I drive the equivalent of a 2024 Yugo that is laughably poor quality sold by a huckster and I paid enough to buy 4 reasonable cars. It’s the most gaudy design of any car ever produced since the dawn of time. Why would people laugh at me?”
When I saw what community this article is posted in I almost choked.
Remove all the hype and it looks stupid
Hell, include the hype, and it looks stupid
He says “a female”, then “a guy”.
No wonder they’re laughing. This guy’s a joke.
…he’s talking about two different drivers.
We are all aware. The terminology used for the two different drivers is the problem. You don’t call a woman a female, that’s insulting. He had no problem to call a guy a guy, no “male” or such. It makes him sound like a misogynistic asshole.
Oh, gotcha.
…oh boy. I’m guessing you call women females if you missed that one.
Anytime they say female, but don’t specify the species, you get to pick.
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Kinda funny heh
I saw a white cyber truck today (a first for me). It even more hideous than the silver and black ones.
I thought they were all plain metal. I wonder if it was a custom paint job.
Many will opt to get a custom wrap because the steel could get scratched and start rusting, plus they are buying for clout and are now in too deep to stop throwing money away on making it “look” better.
Some have also opted into getting a third party service to chemically deposit a layer of gold on the surface of the steel. Making it an even bigger money sink for little benefit and basically not worth driving around almost at all except for showing off.
The only reason to get a cyber truck is because you want to make a statement
The funny thing is, it’s not the statement they think it- none of them have the introspection necessary to understand, the message is “I’m a monumental douche.”
It doesn’t rust.
Iron particles in the air land on the bare stainless steel, react with it, and rust. It’s the iron particles rusting, not the steel itself. This is called ‘fallout,’ and it mostly comes from brake rotors. It contaminates the surface of all vehicles and needs to be removed, but with paint and clearcoat in between, this reaction doesn’t happen. The ‘rust’ on Cybertrucks is just surface contamination that can be cleaned off. If you left a bunch of modern cars out in the rain for 100 years, the Cybertruck would likely be the only one with anything left of it.
There’s plenty to criticise the Cybertruck for but spreading this rusting myth is dishonest.
I used to build stainless steel farming equipment for industries like fertilizers and such. The acidic nature of which, would eat through paint. Stainless steel gas to be cleaned of that “surface rust” constantly or that rust will transfer to the stainLESS steel (note: not stainPROOF steel.) 100 years in the elements and no vehicle would be recognizable. Especially knowing the reaction of lithium to water.
The Cybertruck manual actually says you have to clean all bug splatter and bird shit off immediately or else.
To be fair, every car manual says that.
I think you’d still agree that, compared to the regular steel used in most other vehicles, one made of stainless steel would offer superior corrosion resistance, right? It may not last forever, but it sure beats the alternative.
My 17-year-old truck has its wheel arches rusting through, despite the paint and undercoating. I feel pretty confident saying this wouldn’t be the case if it were made of stainless steel.
Well that all depends. 17 years old and rusting through, I’d say you’re likely in a wet environment. Possibly near salt water. And it’s moving a lot more than one would while in a field, sitting. I bet you drive on gravel a bit, yeah? Doing that also makes wheel wells rust out faster because even minute damage to the paint will make it rust pretty fast. So from my point of view, sitting in an unprotected field, I would take the Corvette over a cybertruck. It’s a heavily painted fiberglass body over an alloy chassis. Honestly the more carbon fiber the car has, the more likely it is to be recognizable in 100 years. The point is, you’ll see badly rusted cyber trucks pretty soon because it’s actually quite a pain to maintain. Any dent or scratch will be rusted BAD if not rectified within 6 months or so in a wet environment, 18-24 if it’s dry enough.
All else being equal, stainless steel is a superior material compared to regular steel. I don’t get why that’s so difficult to admit. If my truck had been used in the exact same way but was made of stainless steel, it wouldn’t be rusting through. It might not be completely rust-free, but it would definitely be less rusty.
There are different grades with different alloys. The type of alloy of steel the CT uses is similar to kitchen grade, but reduces the chromumium to make it cheaper, but more prone to corrosion, especially around salt.
It does rust.
And you have to wash the car every time it rains? No thanks.
Left untreated, rust can form pitting and become extremely difficult to impossible to restore.
https://bssa.org.uk/bssa_articles/iron-contamination-and-rust-staining-on-stainless-steel/
The paint job on any car, especially one costing 100k+, requires an extreme level of care and maintenance if you want to keep it looking pristine. Many people who own such cars don’t even wash them themselves because they will scratch the clear coat. Personally, I have no desire to waste my time on that, but I’m also not in the market for such a car, so it doesn’t concern me. What I don’t get is why people who have no intention of buying a Cybertruck in the first place are so vocal about how difficult it is to maintain. If anything, I’d imagine these people would just be happy that Cybertruck owners have to deal with all that.
Anything with iron can rust, including stainless steel.
Stainless that gets scratched will rust, as well as if the mild steel (or whatever the dust is,) causes a galvanic reaction. Or any where that the stainless is exposed to lesser steel. (Which is why you can’t store stainless with mild.)(including, in point of fact to milde steel dust…)
Alternatively, exposure to corrosives- bug juice, road salt and other deicers, potentially a dozen kinds of automotive fluids.
There’s a reason the rest of the automotive industry doesn’t use exposed stainless anywhere. And that reason me is it rusts (and is difficult to work with, and is more likely to kill people in an impact.)(people at Tesla told musk this. He didn’t care. Musk is an idiot.)
A wired as a source talking about the issues in CA drivers (where there is a lot of salt in the air.)
I’m guessing what you describe is like some of my knives (IKEA ones iirc) getting rust on them if they don’t get dried properly and are left to dry with water left on them?
Still sounds like terrible design when no car I’ve ever seen has this sort of problem.
I have an MS in mechanical engineering focused in materials and I wrote a few papers on 3d printing of stainless tool steels. I’ve read further down the thread and you are completely wrong.
It’s rusting because it’s a low grade stainless. Its low grade because stainless steel work hardens when bent or machined. Lower grades have less issues with work hardening. They made this choice to save on tooling costs I assume.
Work hardening is when you permanently deform a material it gets more brittle. Stainless is an unbelievably stupid choice for a vehicle body because it needs to be formed into complex shapes which require lots of deformation. It’s why SS cars feature mostly large flat panels and also partially why we have been moving towards aluminum body panels.
What am I completely wrong about exactly? I haven’t made any claims about the quality of the steel.
Most of the articles I find when googling about the rusting points towards iron particles.
The lower the grade the faster it rusts. Forgot most people don’t know that. Its rusting because there is iron in steel (duh). It’s rusting quickly because it has low concentration of rust inhibitors like chromium or nickel. Increasing the concentration of these metals makes it rust slower. It also makes it harder to tool into a car body, making it a shifty choice for a car shell.
The article you linked is either uninformed or being misleading about “free iron”. That just means there are no rust inhibitors so they are leaving free energy available on the surface of an iron grain at the surface of the material. This makes it rust quickly where those grains are. There are millions of these grains at the surface where the metal interfaces with air. The iron particles are in the body panel, not on top of it.
Sure Elon let’s get you to bed
It’s only $5k to professionally wrap a vehicle. You can have rainbow pearl over pink if you want.
Nah, no option here, mirror buff or go home. It’s the only sufficiently obnoxious choice for that car.
Rainbow pearl x3, the really obnoxious one, over chrome.
I appreciate your taste, But the raw danger of driving a mirror around just wins it for me.
I saw a bedazzled BMW X3 the other day, should have followed them to get a pic
The cyber truck is the vehicle for the man who wears a fedora with a t-shirt.
Quality post. I really did think I was reading an Onion headline.
And I have to admit, the first time I saw the guy in my neighborhood who bought one driving it around, I pointed and laughed too.
Kind of reminded me of this one.
That one’s a classic.
Or the one who catered my wedding
Bitch almost made me laugh
Wow! I skimmed through the article and legitimately thought it was an onion article until I read your comment.
The only one I see regularly is owned by a sneaker shop and has a tacky vinyl wrap with their logo.
Business write off…
That’s not really how that works, just because it’s a business expense doesn’t mean it’s free money.
It does mean it’s cheaper to put a wrap on the truck than pay taxes. That’s all I was getting at.
That doesn’t really make sense, even if they’re in the 37% tax bracket if the wrap costs $100 they only save $37 on taxes.
They’re probably claiming the entire truck as a business expense because of the wrap. Therefore, they’re able to basically buy it with untaxed money, saving whatever their effective business tax rate is on the $100k or whatever. Of course, stuff like that is usually a bit of light tax fraud, because many small business owners just want a big expensive truck, but putting advertising on the car you drive for personal use doesn’t make every mile a business mile. You can deduct the wrap itself, and if you are diligent you can deduct a reasonable and justifiable amount based on the advertising value and actual business use, but especially for shop owners, this is just tacky business owners hoping they don’t get audited.
They probably think “tax deductible” means you take the entire value off your taxes or something.
Those ones we just refuse to acknowledge, corporations pay through the nose for attention, so don’t give it to them
Simple solution. Move to a town that isn’t fully of pretentious haters. You could always live around normal people. But some towns are cursed with these kinds of people.
People who hate shitty unsafe cars?
The cyber truck is, at this point, a malfunctioning status symbol. I suppose a 100K truck that sucks at being a truck is intended to communicate the driver is a successful tech guy but, whenever I see one, I think “there goes a rube”. I have a similar reaction when I see those gaudy designer bags or “luxury” branded tee shirts. I don’t think “there is someone who is successful” I think “that person is an idiot.”
There should be a catchy term for status symbols that communicate the opposite of their intention. Stupidity symbol? Status irony? Status error? None of these really roll of the tongue.
Tacky
Yes, thank you, we already have a word for this, lol.
Rube flag?
Whatever effect it has should be named after that one Indian guy who was so rich, he made an entire polo shirt woven from gold fabric just because he could.
I think the question is, why do those people not seem to react the same way to a cyber truck.
Price does matter right? I saw a comment in the original post on the Tesla forum saying people wouldnt laugh if it cost 15k. I think they are right but I dont think they realize why it would be less embarrassing if it was a budget car.
I was convinced this was satire until I followed the link in the story for the Cybertruck forum where this was actually discussed.🤦♂️
I’m sure it is and outlets are just taking the bait because they know it’ll generate clicks.
But what made you think it’s not satire?
The link to the forum discussion in the article probably
There’s no way that’s satirical, there’s too much of it
His whining at the beginning certainly had me wondering too.
And then there are the comments – “There just haters there mad cause they can’t afford one them self’s…” Like really, did you even make it beyond third grade? And this is the kind of person who is sticking up for Cybertruck owners? Maybe there are a number of reasons why we point and laugh…
Wow, did I hit that one or what? And it’s just so sad.
That’s the usual line I see. Buddy, I could buy one in cash tomorrow if I wanted. I’d rather put that money in a barrel and burn it to cook my dinner than spend it on the PS1 titty shape truck.
I don’t scowl at the guy in the white Lambo I see sometimes. I don’t frown when a Porsche flies past me on the interstate. Shit, even a brand new Corvette will get a “nice!” from me. If it were jealousy I’d hate all kinds of people.
Cybertrucks are just horribly ugly. So ugly it assaults your senses, I can’t help but think “oh that car hasn’t finished rendering” every time.
I’ve said it other places, but you don’t get a sense of just how bad they are until you see one in person. I don’t know if it’s that they’re a bit bigger than I thought, or that I’m used to seeing fake images of all sorts of things, but even though I’d seen pictures I was surprised at how bad they are in person. They’re cartoonishly awful.
Right? There’s a Countach that parks next door to my favorite bar pretty often on the weekends and I have not once pointed and laughed at it. That’s a vehicle I’ll never be able to buy but I’m not jealous. I’m jazzed to see it.
I’m not a car guy but even I think it’s cool as hell.
The difference between a Cybertruck and a Countach is the difference between a self-indulgent wiener and a connoisseur.
How dare you insult the PS1 like that?!?!
I think there is a large group of people in America who define their self worth based on how much money their family makes. For them they see the cyber truck as showing off their success.
Maybe this is just dumb rich people. What did they used to buy before this? Exotic cars that break down ever few hundred miles? Outfits that cost tens of thousands of dollars?
Putting the “dumb” in dumber. I don’t know how people can be so wasteful. I mean when I buy a car, I expect to not have to take it in for work for a very long time. Imagine my surprise today when I went to get an emissions test and found out the back end of my exhaust pipe has rusted off. The last time I had any work done on it (other than oil changes) was before COVID, when someone hit me. I drove my previous (first) vehicle for 24 years before deciding I needed to get an SUV for towing capacity. Man if I had that kind of crazy money to blow on a cheap cybertruck, I’d be using it for donations or something. I can “prove” my worth by the smiles at the children’s hospital.
Like, even ignoring Musk’s whole everything now, it’s just one of the ugliest vehicles ever designed. Regular Teslas at least look okay if you ignore Musk himself, but the cybertruck looks like they just took a particularly untalented 1st grader’s drawing of a vehicle and just went “Make that”
And that alone would be enough, but add to that the fact that they cost about 100 grand a piece, and yet they are essentially held together with bubblegum and shoestring. Bro, you paid a year’s worth of salary for the average middle class person to drive around an ugly, falling-apart piece of shit created by a fascist. Yeah. We’re gonna point and laugh at your dumb ass.
$100k is about the average household income in the US, the average single income is about $67k. So about a year and a half of the average wage. And median income is much lower (median household income is about $44k) indicating that high income households have a much larger effect on the average than low income households so the average middle class individual income should also be much lower than the average individual income.
$100k is about the average household income in the US, the average single income is about $67k
Not on Lemmy
Exactly, the stainless steel “exoskeleton” is glued to plastic and pieces are coming unglued while driving. The towing thing is attached to a cast aluminum frame and multiple people have had it break while towing. It’s a terrible car, and most owners are insufferable people.
I’m just impressed that Elon finally made something worse than the Harambe rap.
the what
For the love of god don’t look it up. If you’ve made it this far without hearing it, just count your blessings. It’s worse than you can possibly imagine.
You have no idea how much pain I’m willing to inflict on myself in order to get the reference. Your warning has been heard, but it will not be heeded
Edit: oof
Aw shucks, I’m honored to have my foolishness immortalized
This is a masterpiece
So, now that you have the benefit of hindsight, what do you think? Was the warning justified? Is your relationship with curiosity still the same?
It was pretty cringe, the lyrics were god awful and they were way too liberal with the auto tune. Thankfully Elon is so unimaginative that he couldn’t think of more than one verse for his war crime of a song so there weren’t any surprises after ~10 seconds in. I would say the warning was justified, but a little overstated. I thought we were gonna be on Angelic 2 the Core levels of bad and it was just Friday bad. My relationship with my curiosity remains the same. As long as it isn’t (real) gore, I’ll probably click on it
What is Harambe rep? I only know it is apparently “starting point of things going wrong”
Harambe rap
Apart from the S which looks good despite being too big, do people really think Teslas look good? Ok the cybertruck is the ugliest one by far but model 3 and Y are not great.
They’re inoffensive, at least. Boring is better than hideous, I suppose.
What do you mean by inoffensive? As in not dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists?
I mean that their design is conservative and does not take risks. Even pretty cars are dangerous, this is unrelated.
Got it, thanks
I actually like the general look of it, though it’s done poorly. I want SO MUCH to drive a low-poly vehicle reminiscent of some 80’s retrofuturism racing video game. But I fear the massive failure of the cyber truck will scare anyone away from taking a stab at the concept.
The Hyundai Vision N 74 concept is a much better take on 80s retrofuturism imo.
It genuinely gives the Pontiac Aztec a run for its money in terms of “holy fuck that is ugly”
Don’t devalue the Aztec for this. Yeah it was clad in tons of plastic and had a grill that was way too busy but it wasn’t shockingly ugly like the cyber truck.
That thing makes the Aztec look positively sleek by comparison
I’m laughing here because I realized that’s almost certainly what happened, Elon mocked up a picture himself or dictating to someone else of a truck that he thought would look cool and then told the poor engineers and designers “make this.”
I can easily imagine that, too. I saw an early concept render that went around a decade ago or so when I worked in a design office, and we half- joked they’d accidentally released a low-poly model by mistake. Or it was some sort of weird joke we didn’t get.
It’s so ridiculous and broken, it has Musk’s fingerprints all over it (and good luck; fingerprints are near-permanent on that ludicrous metal finish they chose.)
There was this great meme going around years ago when the truck was announced that had a crayon drawing of it and “by Elon” written shakily in big letters like a child would use. I’ll see if I can find a link.
Edit: it’s on the shitty website we all left, but: https://old.reddit.com/r/Autos/comments/e0m4sg/the_original_concept_for_cybertruck_was_a_drawing/
You can also download the image and repost it to a lemmy instance like I’m doing here … then no one has to go back to the old site
Suckers. People point and laugh at me for free.
Become a comedian. Make people pay to laugh at you.
I mean he could have bought a Lightning.
No, he bought a Cybertruck. That’s why they are laughing.
Nothing to do with the electric truck.
Why not laugh at the lightning as well? They are both silly, over priced and over sized.
Because you clearly don’t live in the rural Midwest where everyone and their grandma has plenty of towing capacity.
I don’t personally like trucks, but an electric truck is far a more environmentally friendly choice than literally every other truck.
I live in rural Alberta. If you want an electric vehicle a lighting is the same sort of silly as a cybertruck. I was not factoring in towing, I did not mention towing, I don’t think towing matters to most truck owners other then an excuse.
You should look at evs, but if you want to be environmentaly friendly buying a literal truck load of lithium batteries is not the flex you think it is.
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Ok so like serious note: you do realize when people have a conversation, typically we don’t act like assholes on purpose. I’m starting to wonder if trolling isn’t somehow related to a mental illness. I mean you put a lot of effort into simply ignoring what I said, insulting people, and finding a way to feel superior.
I hope you don’t interact like that with people you see everyday. I’m worried for you bud, there’s plenty to joke about on the internet without being a joke yourself.
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Umm, we’re talking about electric trucks here, sweetheart. They don’t guzzle gas.
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I agree with peopleproblems. Stop being a condescending dick. It doesn’t help you get your point across, it just makes it so people think that you’re a dick and stop taking you seriously.
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Guys, I just can’t figure out why my coworkers laugh at me when I show them my picture wearing a maid costume! What could possibly be funny about that?
Nothing, post pics
Very cute outfit :3
It’s probably the cat ears
Aww, but they’re supposed to be cute!
You forgot your maid bonnet. Classic blunder!
Aww heck. How do I get one of those on short notice?
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