We’re seeing another sticky situation develop, after Tesla recalled 46,096 Cybertrucks to stop them from falling apart because the stainless steel panels are held on with the wrong glue. This time, it’s the Cybertruck’s off-road light bar that’s flinging itself off at highway speeds. Incredibly, the light bar is also glued in place.
Don’t they still teach that mechanical fasteners are almost always better than adhesives in school? Especially if it’s an object going at high speeds and over bumps. I’m having a hard time blaming the designers and not Musk suddenly being excited about this great new glue from a presentation.
engineer: “Here’s the new glue we’re looking at”
Musk: (puts bag over head and inhales deeply)
Musk: (inhales again)
Musk:
Musk: “It’s great. Disruptive innovation! Delete the mechanical attachments and use it!”
engineer: “Are you sure? The mechanical tolerances…”
Musk: “That’s an order.”
"that hits different. " - Elon Musk stumbling out of the Tesla adhesives research lab.
I’m sure it all comes down to cost. Probably a lot easier to get a robot to place a panel on glue than to manage attaching fasteners all over.
I think the overall margins on Teslas, prior to this monstrosity, was something like 20%. Most ICE cars, on the other hand, have profit margins in the low to mid single digits. They could certainly lose out on a tiny bit of profit to switch from glue to fasteners…
Mighty bold of you to assume Optimus can do anything of economic value XD
Look at the article, it shows the install process. They glue that shit on by hand. Direct plastic-to-glass bonding, quality stuff there.
They didn’t do fasteners because stainless steel is tough/expensive to machine… machinists are expensive and gluers are minimum wage.
These are very expensive cars made for cheap, I agree.
It’s Dr Jekyl’s truck.
Looks? Cheap. Price? Expensive. Build quality? Cheap. Depreciation rate? Expensive.
They really ought to have picked one, anybody can run this scam once, but consumer sentiment builds fast and rebuilds slow.