Tesla Cybertruck turns into world's most expensive brick after car wash

EdibleFriend@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 738 points – Tesla Cybertruck bricked after car wash, claims user
theregister.com

Bulletproof? Is it waterproof? Ts&Cs say: 'Failure to put Cybertruck in Car Wash Mode may result in damage'

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"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.),"

Not washing it could fuck it up. Got it.

"CAUTION Failure to put Cybertruck in Car Wash Mode may result in damage (for example, to the charge port or windshield wipers). Damage caused by car washes is not covered by the warranty."

Also washing it could fuck it up.

What does car wash mode do?

I don't know about the Cybertruck or its charging port, but cars do have rain sensors to activate the wipers automatically when it rains. Car wash mode likely turns those sensors off to prevent damage to the wipers.

It must be something more substantial in this case, tearing the windshield wiper off wouldn't brick the truck

Or maybe it does, who knows. It's the Cybertruck afterall

CRITICAL FAILURE. WINDSHIELD WIPER DETACHMENT DETECTED. PLEASE CONTACT ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE IMMEDIATELY. DRIVING HAS BEEN DISABLED FOR SAFETY REASONS.

FOR ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE PLEASE DRINK VERIFICATION CAN

If I saw that on my car, I'm not sure I could restrain the urge to take a baseball bat to it

Water gets into the body, which lacks fluid drains and accumulates water, which can potentially reach wiring.

I seriously don't understand how this could be possible. How does the car manage rain water?

I don't think it's meant to be driven in the rain

I don't think it's meant to be driven.

I mean... It's not even meant to be a vehicle, tbh. It's an ego trip, status symbol, or virtue signal (pick up to 3) in the form of a vehicle.

The part where it can propel itself and it's occupants from place to place is, in fact, a bonus feature.

It folds the mirrors in and puts the car in neutral. Stuff like that.

So things normal people do to normal cars but with extra steps and Elon.

Have you seen other people in a car wash? Park, reverse, drive but they start holding the brakes when the track pulls them along, leaving antennas up, not closing windows, opening fucking doors... A vast majority of the human population is some level of braindead.

Fuck me, I've seen someone pull up into a manual car wash bay, open all their doors, and wash the INSIDE of their car. This was not a washable interior like a Jeep Wrangler or something, it was a typical sedan with carpeted floors and cloth seats.

And these people (theoretically) are licensed to drive, right next to you.

Yeah, but the car still ran afterwards.

So did this one, but if you include irrelevant details like that, the headline wouldn't get as many clicks.

Doesn't it say that the vehicle was bricked, meaning it wouldn't run after going through the car wash? Isn't that what happened?

Yeah, that's what the headline says. In the article it states that it worked again after a service request and a (redidulously long) reboot.

So then it didn't run after the car wash -- unless we're ignoring the mandatory steps needed to get it working again, the headline is pretty accurate. Or are you considering "bricked" a permanent condition?

That’s what I think of when I say something is bricked- that’s it fubar, irreparable, fukt, yaknow that kind of thing

Other people have already addressed the main issue here, so I think you're sorted there.

But yeah, I consider "bricked" a permanent condition - something broken beyond repair, so it's as useful as a brick. See also "paperweight".

What do you think it means? Temporarily unavailable?

Yeah I got the impression it was a recoverable condition after a search found a bunch of guides for "unbricking" (Android phones). Semantics are the true enemy it seems

Bricked is a permanent condition. And if they were able to get it working again, I wouldn't say it was bricked. More like broken or crashed in the software sense.

Still, it wouldn't run after the car wash either.

I meant more like, even if you wash a car with the doors open and water goes in everywhere and damages the car, you can still turn the key and it will start.

Also locks the charging port, turns off the AC, locks the doors and windows. Still nothing that should prevent the car from breaking in a car wash....

Also, upon reading the article, seems like the car was fine after a reset, it just took 5 hours. Didn't have anything to do with the car wash it seems.

But what if there is heavy rain? Are you supposed to put the car in car wash mode then? Why wouldn't those things be sealed all the time?

It's worse than that, washing the car even in wash mode will damage the car because the fucking thing is made out aluminum stainless steel, you know, a mineral that corrodes if exposed to water long enough. It's mind boggling how badly designed this car is.

Edit: sorry, confused my minerals there.

jesus christ marie, they're alloys!

I'll pretend I understand there's a difference. :)

Breaking Bad. Macho man starts collecting minerals. His wife (Marie) refers to them as rocks. He ends up shouting something similar.

I think Macho man’s ends up shouting “snap in to a slim jim” but I could be wrong

There's a few things wrong here. First, it's made of steel, which is iron and not aluminum. Second, neither of those is as mineral. Third, aluminum has pretty good corrosion resistance in terms of metals.

None of that is to say that Tesla had any idea what they were doing when designing this monstrosity.

They could have solved this with a layer of clear coat.

Without that, every single one will eventually patina.

To be fair patina looks cool on certain things, I just wouldn't feel comfortable with it on any loving object, who knows what it could damage.

Edit: err um I meant moving not loving. Unless?

... with it on any loving object

Come again?

I bet they meant "moving" but it is a funny typo.

FYI you're supposed to remove all that from normal cars too, it's not good for the clear coat/ paint

Telsa’s designers have weird history with water. I get the sense that they just don’t do a lot of proper testing in wet environments.

For example, it’s not uncommon for a lot of Teslas to actually grow mold in their air filtration system because they don’t properly drain water.

For example: https://youtu.be/vQxP6PaSmLc

Maybe that happens if you design a car like an iPod with a bunch of engineers living in California and Texas.

TX and CA do get plenty of rain. In fact, TX gets hit with hurricanes all the time.

It's worse: they are not doing sufficient testing. This is why the larger manufacturers are passing Tesla by - they already have the standards and procedures in place.

Not to mention the other companies don't have a volatile man child solely responsible for decision making.

Texas has plenty of rain and car washes. This is just bad overall design.

True, and GM makes plenty of cars that rust at the drop of a hat. My old truck had its brake lines sandwiched between the bed and the frame, and they weren't non-corrosive, so these things regularly fail if you don't keep them dry.

California has had it's share of rain too

People forget California is pretty big. Northern counties get plenty of rain.

Carwash mode? U wot M8?

🤣😂.... God bless these clowns for making me laugh.

Probably prevents auto engagement of the parking lock and emergency breaking which would result in damage when the car gets dragged along the chain drive in the car wash. At least that's what that does in my car.

....so carwash mode is just fancy neutral?

Dunno, for my car it is a bit more. No automatic wipers, no automatic braking and it prevents the parking lock and the parking brake from engaging.

While that explanation of yours is helpful and comprehensible, the whole thing seems stupid to me. But then again, my 1999 Golf has none of those features and I wouldn't want them either.

"world's most expensive brick"

Even this insult gives the Cybertruck too much credit. That piece of shit isn't worth anywhere near as much as the actual world's most expensive brick: a standard 400-troy-ounce gold brick, for instance, is worth about $930K today.

Those are called "bars" and not bricks, it even says so in your link. So technically it cannot qualify as the world's most expensive brick since it isn't a brick at all.

But gold-pressed latinum comes in bricks so I think they would win.

Not even a water issue.

The advisor said that "it is a known issue in the Cybertruck that when you do a screen reset, instead of resetting in the standard two minutes, it takes five hours."

This is crappy and lax software testing and verification testing.

What even is a screen reset supposed to be here and why would you have to do it? Asking as a pleb conventional car driver whose screen just turns on and off with the car automatically.

It's just like in my model 3 or my wife's Teluride, the info screen/software can lock up or get stuck in a weird state and both have a way to reset it.

Normally neither would be a big deal, I push a button(s) and the screen goes black, it comes back up, again no big deal but at least with the Teluride, there's a the instrument cluster and heads up display to show your speed. I'm assuming the cyber truck is like my model 3 where the speed is only shown on the center screen. If it take's five hours over the minute of downtime, well that's going to be a problem. That said, in my model 3, I've only had to do this a handful of times on my model 3, mostly because the radio isn't working and only once on the newer Teluride because the map was stupid.

Jesus I thought the software on my ford was bad. And it is bad but it doesn't randomly stop working for no reason and have a reset button to fix it. It just doesn't break.

Oh, so an actual reset button like on a PC! Its existence alone is admitting that the firmware is shit. An embedded system should never freeze.

But admittedly, most car infotainment systems freeze/crash occasionally nowadays. Mine as well but it went with the Microsoft BSOD "solution" and restarts automatically.

Yeah, most infotainment systems hide their memory leaks behind the fact that when you turn the car off, you reset the computer. Not so in an always on EV.

So I'll push back and state that infotainment systems aren't embedded systems, more akin to a phone OS with the wide array of UX applications.

But yeah these infotainment systems are often left running on newer cars for connectivity and other features and just like any other OS, leaving it up and running is going to slow and get unstable over time for to memory usage.

Like I said, mostly not a big deal unless you're a Tesla and critical information is there and you didn't regression test properly.

Which is incredible considering Tesla's software is typically considered their strong point. This is just a train wreck.

Can we just say that Cybertruck is basically a sum of everything wrong with right wing wackos?

"Look at me, I'm a badass, driving around in a badass vehicle, unlike you filthy libruls. ... Aww shucks! There's road salt! And my accelerator pedal just fell off wtf. ...OH NO! A LITTLE WATER TOO! Anything but that!"

I'm amused that liberals bash Tesla for being a conservative virtue signaler by extension of Elon, while conservatives bash Tesla for being an EV virtue signal for liberal tree huggers.

And this, right here, is why Tesla's stock price is down 50% from its all time high.

The craziest thing is it was already overvalued, Elon got "forced" into selling at peak, and then tanked the company he bought with it too. Just unreal clown behavior.

It's still massively overvalued now. Just compare their market cap to any other major car manufacturer.

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How are there so many things wrong with this vehicle? Like a total recall for the accelerator pedal sounds like the least of their concerns when the car can be bricked by a reboot and the exterior isn’t allowed to have bird shit on it unless it’s removed immediately.

I mean, I know why. But how? Aren’t vehicles massively regulated? How did any of these make it off the production line?

Depends on the local laws. It's not road legal in the EU, for example

Even if it were, it weighs 3,4 tons empty. Most EU Citizens have drivers licenses that allow cars up to 3,5 tons max. weight, including driver, passengers and cargo.

It's impossible to use in the EU without an actual truck driving license.

"Truck driving licence" is rather simplifying it.

There are carious degrees of licences between B (up to 3500kg) and a "proper" truck driving licence, CE, which allows you to operate actual full combination trucks.

C1, one above B is basically a van licence, and that's up to 7500 kg and up to eight people. This is a fairly common licence.

I myself have a C licence, which was also very common to drive when I went through driving school, and it has no weight limit. I can drive a truck of any size, but I don't have an "actual truck licence" in the sense that I don't have the CE licence nor do I have the professional licence for a C sized truck. (And I can't drive buses, those call for a D licence instead)

So basically something that exceeds 3500kg but isn't a professional vehicle is the only thing my C would be useful for. B class licence is certainly more common, but C and especially C1 are still plenty common.

That'll change when EVs begin to dominate the market, they all weigh considerably more than their ICE counterparts.

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Thank god. At least I won't die of cringe after seeing this on the streets.

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Vehicle regulations are typically only for emission standards or exhaust loudness. For the most part as long as the vehicle can do the speed limit there's very little regulation on the matter.

You're forgetting the annual safety inspection required in most US states. That'll catch stuff like brakes wearing out, taillights and headlights that need to be replaced, and other stuff.

That's never happened to me in my life. The only time the state ever "inspects" my vehicle is if I've already been pulled over for something like my exhaust

I did say "most" states. I used to work at a car dealer's service department, and I've seen some cars come in where they don't have a state inspection sticker because the owner just moved from a state that doesn't do state inspections.

Because of that job, I've also seen stickers from other states that do do state inspections. Most of them will be on the windshield either in the bottom corner on the driver's side or in the bottom center. They'll list a month and year as numbers (ex. 8 and 24 for August 2024) for when the inspection sticker expires.

So, at least in my state, someone with 8/24 on their sticker would at least need to drop their vehicle off at a mechanic (not necessarily the car dealer, just a mechanic authorized to do state inspections) by the last day of the month. If the mechanic doesn't do the inspection until the the beginning of the next month, that's fine. You'd just get a sticker that says 9/25 on it when they're done.

I mean conceptually that sounds fine like our vehicles should be inspected to ensure proper maintenance. The only problem I can see with that is poor people like myself.

I've gotten ticketed for having a loud exhaust because I was a pizza delivery driver and our cities roads are so bad doing the speed limit will total your car. I didn't have the money to fix my exhaust which is what I told the officer who basically said "Now you'll have even less money" before handing me the $150 ticket.

I need a car for work (I don't work pizza anymore but still have a 30 minute drive) just because one aspect of my car isn't up to code doesn't mean I don't still need my car to get to work.

The only problem I can see with that is poor people like myself.

The state inspection in my state costs a set, predetermined amount. The mechanic legally cannot charge more than that amount. (I think it's about $10, but I could be misremembering. It's somewhere around there, though.) If anything doesn't pass inspection, that's where the cost can come in. How much it costs depends on where you get the thing fixed.

In my state, if you car doesn't pass inspection and you choose not to get the thing repaired right away so it does pass (maybe you don't have the money right away, or maybe you want to bring it someplace cheaper to get it fixed), you're given 30 days to fix it, regardless of the original expiration date in the sticker. They replace the inspection sticker with a special "state inspection rejection" sticker that says by what date the inspection is due. At my old job, I used to see plenty of people come in on the last day of the month knowing their car would fail inspection. They came in to get that 30 day extension.

just because one aspect of my car isn't up to code doesn't mean I don't still need my car to get to work.

Generally, inspections don't take too long to do, though that can vary depending on where you bring your car. They usually won't take longer than 24 hours, though. For me, they're usually done either within a couple hours of bringing the car in (if I bring it in early enough) or by mid-morning the next day (if I bring it in in the later afternoon or evening). So I could bring my car in after work on the day before my day off, and it's pretty much guaranteed that it'll be ready by about 10am the next day the next day (or end of day if they find something wrong, depending on what it is).

When I was working at the car dealer, customers waiting in the lobby would typically have their car ready within a couple hours, and customers who had alternative transportation would usually have them done by the end of the day with enough time for us to call the customer and for the customer to come by and pick up their car.

This definitely isn't the case everywhere, but the dealer I worked at also gave out free loaner cars for customers to use depending on the circumstances (ex. did the customer have an appointment) and availability (ex. do we have any loaner cars available right now). Customers just coming in for a state inspection wouldn't typically get one, but, if there was something that didn't pass inspection, then we might set them up with one if we had one available and if the customer wasn't able to wait any longer.

Tl;dr: In my state, getting a state inspection is usually relatively painless. The inspection itself doesn't cost much, but the cost of fixing something so it passes inspection depends on where you go. There are also ways to get extensions if you need them, and, if you plan ahead, you can usually get your state inspection done on your day off without any problems. Even if there's something that'd cause it to fail inspection, it's usually still done the same day.

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Just to play devil's advocate: throughout the history of capitalism someone surely must have made a more expensive brick (adjusted for inflation).

That's the best defense I can give.

The Vasa comes to mind. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)

USSRs space shuttle, although technically that didnt fail on its own.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)

The failed Chinese attempts to use stolen SpaceX plans that resulted in at least one town that we know of being destroyed with toxic smoke and fire.

Virgin's space program.

Boeing's space program. Increasingly, the 737-MAX too.

Amazon's space program.

Musk and the stupid decisions made around Starship, that resulted in over a year of setbacks since the launchpad had a woefully inadequate flame trench that everyone called out long before the first two failed launches.

The Titanic.

Related to the last one: OceanGate and the Titan.

When the Athenians starts the Peloponnesian War by invading a different city state than Sparta(to ostensibly use that city's military against Sparta), but screwed it up, creating the conditions for them to lose said war.

The Buran was actually quite technologically advanced. It was able to fly to orbit and land itself completely autonomously.

It also just got crushed in a collapsing hangar? 4 years after the test flight? That doesn't sound like a failure, it sounds like it got mothballed and forgotten

And they were smart enough to recognize it as a huge boondoggle and cancel it, before killing a bunch of astronauts.

It was canceled because of budget issues and also the fall of the USSR itself. USSR wasn't really doing too hot at the time, economically. Not because it was dangerous. It was obviously proven space-worthy.

The only boondoggle was not iterating on the design, especially when they couldn't launch intelligence payloads to polar orbits. They should have kept the original fleet and been given funding to develop another one - a "space car" for the Shuttle's "space truck" - that could ferry lighter payloads and a smaller crew to more varied orbits.

I used to think like you but I've grown to like the Shuttle. Without it things like the final Hubble repair and building the ISS would have been a lot more complicated. Yes, it was a very ambitious design with more fatal flaws than we'll ever really know about - what if it had had a major issue in orbit - it kept the dream of manned spaceflight alive, and built a ton of experience at NASA for managing manned spaceflight.

The biggest downside I see to the shuttle is how it blocked anything better. Spaceflight got stuck in a local maximum for 30 years, possibly solely to enrich certain congressional districts and well connected contractors. True reuse is needed to make manned space travel possible to more than a few elite astronauts, and the shuttle never had that.

I think we're seeing two sides of the same coin: The fact that we didn't keep designing new spacecraft is the problem. And I wouldn't blame the shuttle for that, just the American people for losing their zeal.

I blame the politicians like Richard Shelby actively preventing any other technology from being used or even considered. The lack of zeal was from the people in charge of the money, who clearly had no interest in space beyond its ability to get them and their pals larger McMansions on a golf course somewhere. Myopic, stupid and corrupt assholes.

Casa definitely was worth it, just in a different way the king envisioned at the time

Tesla made good cars before. It is reasonable to assume that they would continue to do that. The people that have a cyberteuck today are people that paid for it years ago, so they wouldn't have known how shitty it actually turned out to be.

I can't account for Tesla's continuing and worsenin quality control though as well as their cost saving measures that make the cars less safe. I don't know how you see those trends and not cancel your pre order.

so they wouldn’t have known how shitty it actually turned out to be.

Hard disagree here. A) I knew from the first moment they showed a picture of it how bad it would be. You could tell it was a car a 7 year old would design and have all the faults that come with that. B) Those people have had years to cancel those deposits, during which we've seen how shitty it was going to be.

Standard "Good Delivery" 400-oz gold bricks are worth about $930k today.

To all the chuds that bought this...

Insert Nelson HAAAA HAAAA

I really wonder if this is just an average shitty car and dumb people buying it ir something historically stupid. Like in 10 years. Youtubers make top ten videos about the dumbest car ever and on number one they are all like: well, we all know what that is, so we might as well skip it.

Historical stupid.

My 2 unprofessional cents, I think the way this vehicle was executed wrong. Everybody understands metal rust even if it's stainless steel, if you don't take care of it correctly it will rust. Second, sharp angles on vehicles that will be used by family's is by far reckless, videos show how sharp they are and how the front trunk can do some real damage to body parts. Lastly, we moved away from strong body structure to prevent deaths when accidents happen. Why are we going back to the 60's car body structure? Yes we might have better safety equipment in vehicles now, but we still have vehicles that just have 1 airbag, seatbelts, and bad body structure safety.

The 21st century DeLorean, only no one bothered making a time machine out of it.

I have zero sympathy for any of the 3878 chumps who wasted their money on this vehicle. They knew exactly what they were getting

Quite a few really didn't.

It's incredible how delusional some of these people are, like Twitch Moderator being 100% convinced Amouranth is going to bang them if they spend enough in her Onlyfans tier delusional.

They are entirely convinced he shits gold and everything he touches is Star Trek tier tech.

He chased away the brilliant people to bounce ideas of and that made that stuff work. Now he's left with a lot of sycophants who just run with every whim. It's the common story for any authoritarian leader.

convinced Amouranth is going to bang them if they spend enough in her Onlyfans tier

Escort services were invented for people like this

TIL Amouranth is not a obscure metal.band as I assumed.

That's Amaranthe you're thinking of. If you're a fan of the Swedish metal 'soprano and gravel' sound they're well worth a listen.

This is unrelated, but for the longest time i thought thatwhen people talked about amouranth, i thought they talked about that mmo streamer with the filthy room and similar name. I was very confused why everyone wanted to bang him and drink his bathwater.

That's Asmongold. And the bathwater afaik was Belle Delphine. But maybe I missed some stuff, I'm not into that whole Twitch shit.

That’s a whole other can of worms, that isn’t even worth discussing. People like that need urgent psychiatric evaluations

You never know. Someone could make a time travel movie with it one day and then collectors will pay an arm and a leg for the left door.

"Tell me Future Boy, who's President of the United States in 2017?"

"Donald Trump."

"Donald Trump? The fraudster? Ha!"

This is nothing new from Tesla. My parents have a Model 3 and they can't use a car wash at all with it. Hand wash only.

Appropriate, since I always reflexively start doing the Hand Wash gesture every time I see one.

This is definitely not true. Teslas can absolutely go through a car wash. They do recommend touchless ones, but pretty much every manufacturer does.

There's gotta be some misinformation going around.

I rented a Mach-E recently and drove it a ton around Texas. I was warned at the desk not to take it in a car wash, but I also drove it through the craziest rainstorm my Yankee eyes have ever seen.

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Gold bricks are worth like $750k so its definitely not the most expensive brick.

Yeah, but someone is gonna buy that gold off you as it holds value , not sure who they'll be able to trick into taking it off their hands as it'll be worth a sack of potatoes.

You’re telling me gold doesn’t immediately diminish in value after you move it a few feet from where you purchased it?

I'm going to blow your mind: it's also capable of being run through a car wash.

Woah. Move over, Mercedes, Audi…other luxury car companies…FERRARI! That’s one.

From now on, I only drive Gold.

People pay money for actual bricks, I say we stop this brick-shaming.

Wait, so Car Wash mode has to be on while driving in the rain also?

How hard does it have to be raining to require car wash mode?

Car washing mode prevents the automatic wipers from triggering and the charging port from opening, so neither get damaged from the spinning brushes of an automatic car wash. It has nothing to do with whatever caused this issue.

So Tesla says they will have the Full Self Driving very soon now for real, but the car can't figure out by itself it's in a car wash.

Many different brands have a car wash mode for the very same reason. This is not a Tesla thing exclusively.

So, it would block the exit of that car wash because it's playing dead and sulking?

Then you need to ask some random people to help you push it away to the side, and everyone gets a good laugh ...😅

Would you even be able to move it? You'd have to put it in neutral first so you can attempt to push it but good luck with that if it's bricked. I know electric cars generally shouldn't really be towed either (a few meters might be okay but I'm not sure).

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The screen in the central console, which is absolutely essential to operating the Cybertruck because it hosts critical information like speed and rear view, went black as pitch and wouldn't respond.

Meanwhile, the story was also picked up on Tesla CEO Elon Musk's other business empire, where an X user plumbed the depths of the Cybertruck owner's manual, which routinely turns up comedy gold.

In this instance, attention was drawn to a line saying: "CAUTION Failure to put Cybertruck in Car Wash Mode may result in damage (for example, to the charge port or windshield wipers).

Despite the commonly held belief that the stainless steel body would be immune to corrosion, Tesla's documentation once again served only to highlight the Cybertruck's weaknesses, such as the lack of a clear coat.

"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.

Yesterday the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recalled all Cybertrucks due to faulty accelerator pedals, a problem that first emerged earlier in the week.

The original article contains 820 words, the summary contains 181 words. Saved 78%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Reminds me when foldable smartphones first came out. If you touched them wrong the screen got fucked.

This is literally an article about nothing happening at all.

I would call a car that can be knocked out of commission for half a day because you washed it worth a story.

Read the article though. All that really happened was a delay in reboot. The headline is nothing like what actually happened, which was consumer mishap, essentially.

It needed to be rebooted because he washed it 'wrong'. and its a known issue that after the car gets too wet reboots can take hours upon hours like this.

The advisor said that "it is a known issue in the Cybertruck that when you do a screen reset, instead of resetting in the standard two minutes, it takes five hours."

Yeah but you'd actually have to read the article to discover that. For most people a headline about something bad related to Elon is all they need.