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.
Recall when?
Well, at least in 2025 we learned that glue does not really work for the exterior of cars.
Not trying to defend the cybertruck here, but just wanted to point out that quite a lot of exterior parts are generally held on by glue, across the whole industry. Windshields, for one.
You’d be surprised. With some chassis, especially ones from aluminum and carbon fiber glue fulfills an important structural role.
https://files.catbox.moe/u7id6p.png
The clinching is just there to fix the parts until the for glue is hardened, after that it doesn’t do anything.
It’s not that that doesn’t work. It’s just that you have to do it right.
And they’re some how approved for road use even though they’re a hazard to everyone around them
they are not approved in actually developed countries. instead of the capitalist hellscape of the USA
I hope to escape the hellscape one day to a place that’s more sensible
This guy is a legend
Never seen him. Please enlighten me
Tesla really decided to apply Agile to car manufacturing
This is just sloppy design, poor manufacturing, and insufficient testing.
An agile approach to software doesn’t mean a lack of a plan, testing, or due diligence.
Now… a lot of companies approach it that way due to lack of experience, but that’s just cowboy coding with Jira and a meeting schedule.
No amount of testing would fix this crappy design, other than if it had resulted in not doing it. The windshield is so goddamn long I’m surprised they didn’t just put the lights inside it.
Oh yeah and they aren’t wired up because unless the light is covered, it’s illegal to have those up there. Most states say they have to be less than 42 inches from the ground, or covered by an opaque cover.
I think that’s part of why Tesla doesn’t connect it.
If they had brought the car 4 years ago it might have been a good analogy. This is just incompetence.
Hope they upgrade from chewing gum this time.
Should have known their tank from the future would react poorly to being assembled using Bazooka Joe bubblegum. Tanks hate bazookas!
They are not needed anyways, are they? The car wouldn’t survive offroading anyways, so why glue them on properly? That’s smart thinking by smart engineers!
Why does it even have a light bar?
so the tow truck knows where they’re broken down.
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.
I’ve seen less glue on a damn model.
Unsafe at any speed.
