This Is Why Tesla’s Stainless Steel Cybertrucks May Be Rusting

hedge@beehaw.org to Technology@beehaw.org – 140 points –
This Is Why Tesla’s Stainless Steel Cybertrucks May Be Rusting
wired.com
93

It's [stainless steel] also stiff, which makes it potentially more lethal to anybody unlucky enough to be struck by a vehicle built with the stuff.

Of course they picked a more deadly option.

The documentation says: “To prevent damage to the exterior, immediately remove corrosive substances (such as grease, oil, bird droppings, tree resin, dead insects, tar spots, road salt, industrial fallout, etc.). Do not wait until Cybertruck is due for a complete wash. If necessary use denatured alcohol to remove tar spots and stubborn grease stains, then immediately wash the area with water and a mild, non-detergent soap to remove the alcohol.”

Loooool. That's pathetic. A truck you have to baby or it stains and discolors.

Not just more stiff, the sharp angles on the body are also much more likely to cause serious injury to pedestrians and cyclists (there's a reason modern vehicles have rounded edges). Unfortunately the lack of regulations in North America on safety features vis a vis anyone but the vehicle occupants means these death machines remain street legal.

there's a reason modern vehicles have rounded edges

Rounded edges and soft panels that crumple easily yes.

I'm glad these things aren't permitted here in Europe.

the whole point of a truck is to get shit done.

this truck destroys itself if you try to get shit done with it.

how they fucked up so badly, i have no idea.

Easy, the guy who wanted to make this truck has never worked a day in his life.

No the whole point of a truck in America is for men who have self confidence issues to feel better about themselves. You think people are hauling shit on the reg in a cyber truck or those other lifted shiny shits people drive around?

What is the escalade for? Not getting shit done just like this POS

It's a typical status symbol, nothing else.

Usually defended with excuses like "I have kids so I must protect them with a 2 tonne tank"

"If I get to an accident I want to make sure I live!"

But what happened when you hit a vehicle the same size or a semi?

Never thought of that, time to get me a semi! - some American most likely

Oil is corrosive? Doesn't it usually prevent steel from rusting?

Refined oil yes. But crude oil can be because it has impurities. Honestly in unsure about that sentence. They might have conflated all of the substances and effects together to save space. I imagine oils cooked definitely stain unprotected metal though.

Crude oil isn't really something you'd find outside the shipping or refining industry though.

I think they're just covering their assess with the oil thing.

Of course they picked a more deadly option.

Elon specifically said that if a CT gets into an accident with another vehicle, the CT "wins". Which is such a fucking horrifying way to think about automotive safety. Same thing from people who bitch about how "your car gets totaled in even the lowest speed crash nowadays" when doing so is precisely what saves your life. Totalling a car and allowing you to walk away with only minor injuries or none at all, it is the point, but people like him have this idea that it's more manly to die in easily avoidable ways than it is to observe safety measures that we've known about for decades.

Exactly. Cars that didn't deform from damage were death traps. I think there was a Mass Men episode with this in it too.

Loooool. That's pathetic. A truck you have to baby or it stains and discolors.

Every car has a similar disclaimer.

Maybe. I read my manual cover to cover and nowhere did it say you had to immediately wash off bird shit. And I haven't and it hasn't stained or rusted. This car is pathetic.

Bird shit will damage the paint of any car. Your ignorance doesn't make this a bad vehicle. A simple web search will clear this up for you.

There was a time when yes it did. Back when the manufacturers switched to more environmentally safe paints in the late 90s/early 00s.

But they got their ducks in a row quickly, these days it's fine. Similar to the many solder ball cracking issues caused by lead free solder when it first appeared.

Ten years of bird shit and no stains. 2 days of water and it rusted. Lol.

Or you could just continue on being ignorant, that's a choice too 🤷

How are they being ignorant? The Tesla is clearly built like Swiss cheese.

I've been very clear about why they're ignorant: they don't understand that bird shit damages the paint on all vehicles.

Lmaoooo, it's the severity and how fast it happens people are shitting on.

ROFLCOPTER What severity are you referring to? Damage only takes a few hours in either case.

You get you can treat damaged paint, right? Like have you ever buffed and polished a vehicle? Yes paint may get damaged, but there are things you can do to make it look good again. You simply cannot do this on the Cybertruck.

You simply cannot do this on the Cybertruck.

...of course you can?

Why would you think you can't?

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The next one should be matte black teflon as an exterior. Or some other non-stick surface.

Stainless steel is good for kitchens I guess. It always takes a special spray to get clean. Unless you want to scrub at it all day.

Teflon aka PFAS that we now know we really don't want crumbling off into the environment. Please no

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Haven't read the article, but I am going to say it's a bad alloy combined with salt in the air, salt on the roads combined with galvanic corrosion. I'll edit my post after I read this....

Edit: It's the deadly chromium layer not being wrapped in a $5000 clear coat.

not being wrapped in a $5000 clear coat.

This is such bullshit though. Deloreans were built with uncoated 304 stainless steel (think, same as in food grade stainless stuff), and with all their other issues, rust is not one of them.

If Teslas rust, they chose the wrong steel, the end.

We don't even know if they're rusting. All these articles are based off a couple pictures posted in a forum from a guy who doesn't even know what the actual issue is. These articles are just filling in the blanks with speculation.

The damn maintenance manual tells owners to carefully remove anything remotely corrosive (including, among other things, tree sap). Given Tesla knows the material is subject to rust, I think it's a bit more than just some confused owners.

Pretty sure that list applies to paint as well, and can be found in most car manuals.

I just searched the most recent manual for my model car, and it said this:

Washing

To help protect your vehicle's finish from rust and deterioration, wash it thoroughly and frequently at least once amonth with lukewarm or cold water. If you use your vehicle for off-road driving, you should wash it after each off-road trip. Pay special attention to the removal of any accumulation of salt, dirt, mud, and other foreign materials. Make sure the drain holes in the lower edges of the doors and rocker panels are kept clear and clean. Insects, tar, tree sap, bird droppings, industrial pollution and similar deposits can damage your vehicle's finish if not removed immediately.

Please try to keep your criticisms of Musk fair and unbiased. Otherwise, you risk weakening your point.

Yes, but you see the difference is my car is expected to rust because it's not made of supposedly stainless steel.

So I fully expect to have to protect my car's finish. That's why it's painted. The Cybertruck doesn't even have a clear coat. One would naturally thus expect that, unlike my regular non-stainless steel car, the Cybertruck wouldn't in fact rust.

Please try to keep your criticisms of Musk fair and unbiased. Otherwise, you risk weakening your point.

Thank you for your unsolicited advice. I'm sure next time I'll keep it in mind while having meaningless arguments with anonymous internet strangers.

Oh, I thought this was a social media platform, where people don't need to be solicited to post their comments. If you don't want responses, start a blog. If you dont want responses from me, use the block function. If you want to engage in mostly baseless complaining, expect that people might call you out in a semi-anonymous forum.

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Them telling drivers to meticulously clean the vehicles doesn't necessarily mean they're afraid its going to rust. They're probably concerned with staining and junk getting embedded into the panels. In the forum post, you can actually see a little bit of staining circling some of the debris on the panels. Furthermore, iron particles can get on the panel and rust themselves even though the actual panel itself isn't rusting. This is why they make iron decontamination spray for auto detailing.

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@FiskFisk33 @remotelove Yeah, I find it rather interesting, that DMC was able to built a car that had none of the issues more than 40 years ago - which means that it is a doable task. So Tesla simply ignored it.

And they were built in Ireland where rain is not exactly rare. During a time when acid rain was a thing (unlike some people claim these days, acid rain was not a hoax, it was just pretty easy to solve with things like cat converters and regulations on industry and it was solved pretty quickly)

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They didn't do a clear coat like everything else ever made lol.

Except the DeLorean. Which doesn't rust at all.

Tesla's idea wasn't even bad, they just cheaped out enough to ruin it.

To clarify, it was still a very bad idea because of added mass, it just wasn't necessarily a bad idea for rust since they could have mitigated risk of rust in one of several ways.

The added mass is really bad for battery performance/range, pedestrian safety, safety of other motorists, and total greenhouse gas emissions in production (and added fuel costs for the marginal power increase, of course).

When your customer base has main character syndrome, none of that matters, go hog wild

Lulz. I was updating my post when you responded.

People don't understand that stainless steel just "stains" slower than pure iron or regular steel.

And differently depending on which stainless grade alloy. (308, 316 ,15-5 ,18-10 etc)

I can understand other more specific problems, but something like this for a car manufacturer...

That was musks selling point for production, he said by skipping the paint booth they saved X amount of time, materials and money by going with plain untreated stainless

They could have saved even more by not putting batteries in them, or motors... Man, these things coulda had a way bigger profit margin!

Say you're only running off 100 of them and charge $1,000,000. They'll all be sold. Ferrari perfected this business model long ago.

Who would have thought that their truck would need a $5000 extra to be usable outdoors? Who buys a truck to keep it indoors?

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because tesla is a rubbish company that sells poorly made cars at expensive markups because there's no dealer showroom to try before you buy

I think this is actually what Tesla's biggest contribution to cars has been thus far. Dealerships need to die, the stone ages are over.

You can test drive the car before you buy though. I did some months ago, though I didn't end up buying it.

Granted, you don't try the exact vehicle that you'll be buying. You used to be able to return the vehicle within 7 days, but it looks like they canceled that policy.

Is it because they’re shitty overpriced pieces of junk hawked by a known con artist? Or some other reason?

Congrats to Tesla for making the worst truck imaginable. Shit's hilarious, too bad it's not a joke.

I don't have a lot of sympathy for any of the idiots that buy these idiotic things.

Tesla: for another five grand we will rainproof the metal on your vehicle

How much is a wind-proof windshield? And do they also offer air-proof tires?

What I haven’t seen mentioned is that the structure of the vehicle depends on the integrity of the exterior, if Tesla’s own marketing was true. So, if it rusts easily, isn’t it more likely to be structurally unstable during impact?

The headline says it may be rusting. Nobody would be saying “may be rusting” if it was known they were rusting.

I think they dropped their original plan for a unibody design, and there is a regular chassis underneith. That also could be rusting, but invisibly :)

Because its not actually stainless.

Someone brought up an important point about stainless steal that i forgot until they mentioned it.. It's called stain-less, not stain-free.

FDA approved stainless steel (316L) doesn't actually rust. Otherwise you'd have sprinkles of rust in your food and drink from production, and you'd have to buy new utensils and a kitchen sink because they've rusted.

There are different grades of stainless steel with their varying properties.

316L is perfectly capable of rusting especially under pitting corrosion. I don't know who told you it is physically incapable. It is just unlikely under normal food conditions.

316L absolutely can corrode. Add a bit of acid in the water and it will start showing rust soon enough. Typically you can find chemical compatibility charts for various metal grades to see what does and doesn't work with a metal.

Rust is just iron oxide, it's not a big deal in food in small quantities.

Though alloys containing chromium might be a different story.

Should have used rust-free steel instead, classic Dusk mistake 🙄

elon's gonna bring back rusty jones into popularity.

which ironically would be the first time elon brought a company OUT of bankruptcy

All "stainless" means is that the alloy contains at least 10.5% chromium. It's not a guarantee that it won't corrode or oxidize.

Every time I hear about this problem, I get that one part from the song Love Shack stuck in my head.

🎵 Your what?!?!
TEEEEEEEEEEES-LAAA!
...rusted

Love shack,
Baby love shack 🎵

Ooo, I know this one! Is it because of Elon's massive ego and refusal to listen to experts?

If anyone needs one reason to avoid the stupidtruck, it's the sheer ugliness of that abomination. I don't understand how people can worship such a petulant egomaniac enough to adore such a travesty from him.

Stainless steel also stains. "Stainless" does not mean "never stains," just that it stains less than other steels.

Endless Spotless Stainless Steel is a steel that stains, has fewer spots, and ends a bit later. The logic of English is all but senseless. Which means it has everything except a bit less sense.

I found out way too late that "all but" means exactly the same thing as "almost". If "all but X" is taken literally, it should mean "you can describe this thing in lots of ways, but it's definitely not X".

(I am not a native English speaker but I use English more then my native tongue due to being online so much)

Look, we all know the only thing stainless steel is good for is the temporal flux dispersion. In all other ways it's a PITA.

What the washing alcohol off fleck? Do they not know that alcohol evaporates without a trace?

Alcohol evaporates, but the stuff you were trying to clean off does not.

One would think that this is gone too after changing towel. But anyway, that us not what's written in the manual...