1y ago

Leaked Email Shows Elon Musk Demanding "Sub 10 Micron Accuracy” Cybertruck Parts

jalopnik.com Leaked Email Shows Elon Musk Demanding "Sub 10 Micron Accuracy” Cybertruck Parts

Tesla is facing issues with the bare metal construction of the Cybertruck, which Elon Musk warned was as tricky to do as making Lego bricks

355 comments

It's almost like he hears about how bad the build quality of Tesla cars have become, so he thinks the solution is more accurrate, more expensive parts. Kind of like he has absolutely no clue what he's doing, and doesn't want to listen to smarter people telling him what they need.
- Elon is a masterclass in the Dunning-Kruger effect.
  
  I think we should rename that effect after the man who invented it: the Musk-Dunning-Kruger effect
  
  Seriously. He can't NOT publicly repeat every technical term that he hears, usually with next to no actual understanding.
- I think it's more likely that he is looking for excuses for the years of delays on the cyber truck.
  Now he can blame it on his "desire for perfection" instead of admitting that his timeline was never viable
  
  The design isn’t viable. They could have developed a new car in less time if it wasn’t going to be an absolute nightmare to produce reliably.

Tesla should mill the car from one solid block of steel.
- As a pedestrian and cyclist (aka Dutchman): fuck that noise
  
  TIL I'm a dutchman
- Pedestrian vaporizer 9000 coming up!

10 microns is .4 thou, about the width of a cotton fiber. Its possible to machine those tolerances, but very time consuming as machine maintainance steps up. Its also small enough that the thermal expansion of the sheets will be larger than that
- So basically elon would rather dump money into expensive equipment to improve build quality than do the thing that's actually needed to improve build quality and pay his workers what their work is worth and make their factory environment safer?
  This is the kind of petty angry bullshit you have to do to be a billionaire. Its not about being smart, it's about on some level hating everyone that isn't you
  
  Making a lot of assumptions about what he's willing to put into this.
  He's not going to get fancy expensive new equipment, he's not going to hire the best machinists, he's not going to slow the work down to allow that kind of accuracy. He's going to bluster and shout and make demands without providing any way of actually achieving those demands. That's what Elon does. He's not an Engineer, he doesn't design things, he doesn't build things, he tells people who actually know what they're doing to build something. Here, he's just saying "Do better" without anything more, and expecting that to be enough because he doesn't actually know shit about dick.
  Frankly the closest I've seen to evidence that Elon has ever actually designed anything is the eyesore that is the Cybertruck, because it absolutely looks like something that cretin would draw in crayon and demand be made a reality.
  
  You aren't going to hit that tolerance consistently on an assembly line no matter how much you pay. Can be done by a skilled machinist, but there are too many dynamical variables in an assembly line environment, like the previously mentioned thermal expansion.
  
  What I meant is that Elon has set a fairly un-achievable standard, as the sheet metal parts he is talking about will grow and shrink by more than that depending on weather. Additionaly, the small parts can be machined to that tolerance, but only by a skilled machinist and not at assembly line levels.
- Which just shows he has no idea how tolerances work. Small machined parts have different tolerances than large stamped parts. The key is setting the right tolerances for each part, designing the vehicle for desired gaps with those tolerances, and continuous improvement to fix and design out issues.
  
  None at all. He also doesn't understend that the issues tesla has faced are largely due to poor process design rather than automotive design. The plans may call for small gaps ore big gaps, but they certainly don't call for iconsistent gaps
- Imagine measuring door panels on a granite block in a climate controlled room, and sending it off to the surface grinder for rework. 🤣 Or sending the frame off to get scraped. Truly, this is the most idiotic idea on the planet and it's all because he didn't care about tolerances early on. His self own has turned into whatever the hell this crap was.
- I can confirm this
  Machinist here.
  .004 ? That is exagerated but .0004 this is insane
  This is not a airplane engine !!!!

If LEGO and soda cans, which are very low cost, can do this, so can we.
This man is a certifiable idiot, and I feel bad for anyone working for him.
- I mean, to be fair, he's not entirely wrong, you can get that accuracy on larger parts given sufficient time, materials, tools, expertise, etc.
  But a car has more parts than a Lego brick
  
  Yeah anything is possible with enough time and money, it's just that is about the most textbook example of comparing apples to oranges I've seen IRL.
  Also, I suppose Lego bricks might be considered low cost if you're a billionaire, but in the grand scheme of molded plastics they are very much a premium product.
  
  Which will balloon the cost exponentially.
  
  Maybe he can build the truck out of LEGOs - it would cost about a bajillion dollars to make something that size, but maybe less than the parts he's demanding would be.
  
  What happens when you put that large metal part in the sun? He is entirely wrong.

"All parts for this vehicle, whether internal or from suppliers, need to be designed and built to sub 10 micron accuracy."
LOL
Yeah ok.
Tell me you know nothing about manufacturing, without telling me you know nothing about manufacturing.
That one quote - assuming it is accurate - explains that Musk is even more of an idiot than everyone already knew he was. You don't make things at those tight tolerances. A couple of dimensions on a part might be (for instance the bore on a press fit sleeve), but you'd almost never, ever hold an entire part to that tight of a tolerance.
In imperial units, 10 microns is .00039". A human hair is roughly .001 to .005" thick. So he is asking for a tolerance that is 3 to 10x smaller than the thickness of a human hair. To put the absurdity of Musk's demand into perspective, most parts that go into a car are roughly an order of magnitude looser in tolerance with some dimensions being 2 orders of magnitude looser.
That difference might not sound like a lot, but holding something to +/-.0039 versus +/-.00039" could easily triple the price of an item or more. Easy. You use a tight tolerance only when you need to - that's engineering 101. Some parts could easily be +/- .039" and not affect their performance on bit. Close tolerance engine parts might be held at what Musk is demanding, but never "ALL PARTS" would be held to that.
- Not to mention the fact all the tolerances should have been determined before mass production began. You determine the dimensional requirements and develop the manufacturing process to deliver that.
  There is absolutely no way they have the systems and tools in place to properly measure every part with sub 10-micron accuracy and precision either. To control those dimensions you need to go a whole additional order of magnitude out. I pity the fool that has to manage that control plan.
  
  develop the manufacturing process to deliver that.
  Exactly. I'm sure his engineers did the right thing and know what they are doing, and now the top executive steps his foot into the mix and will muck everything up.
  I know exactly how the people that I have worked with in the past would have dealt with this - surrly engineers and quality managers who knew how to handle tough bosses. They would let the whole situation cool off for a day or two first. Then go tell him how much more expensive the truck would be if they tried to hold every dimension of every part to +/-.0004". Any sane CEO would quickly know he fucked up and issue some retract. If that still didn't sway him because of his ego, we probably would stop even listening to him altogether. He has shown that he is utterly clues, so would he even know a part held to 10 microns versus one held to 100 or even 1000?? I'm guessing no. If he asked if these new parts were held to the tighter tolerance, we'd say yes and just go on about our day.
- As someone who knows almost nothing about the topic, wouldn't some (most?) of these parts be big enough that a small change in temperature or air pressure alone would cause these parts to expand/shrink enough to go over the tolerance limit?
  
  Yes, and different materials will have different rates of thermal expansion. That's probably why the pixel 7 camera glass was cracking for no apparent reason when winter hit. Imagine coming out in the morning and finding all the glass in your car shattered because it got cold overnight. Or even worse you take it out of a heated garage on a cold day and the glass shatters while you're driving.
  
  Thermal expansion of steel is .0000072" per degree F. All you would need is a 100 degree F temp change to blow that tolerance out of the water. And 100 degrees is not that much when it comes to cars. A freezing cold day versus a boiling hot day in the summer is a temperature swing more than 100 degrees. A ICE engine runs at roughly 250 degrees F so that right there would easily expand parts way more than the tolerance he is calling for. On an EV, I don't think anything gets that hot, but the motors still get warm.
  
  We compensate for thermal expansion. The standard temperature things are measured at is 68F/20C. So if it's 72 degrees we'll compensate it back to 68 in software for the material we're measuring. We use scale bars of known length and similar material type to verify scale. (I run laser trackers and laser radars.)
  For measurement equipment that's stationary, like CMMs, you just control the environment.
- I work in semiconductor industry where machines need to have sub-micron positioning accuracy and even we don't generally design parts with 10 micron tolerances, unless it really needs to.
- engineering 101
  Mechanical engineering 101, us sparkies don't get to learn that stuff until we get into the real world. Not bitter just disappointed in my uni.
  
  Really? I'd have thought EEs would learn it in the context of something like circuit breakers using bimetallic strips or the effect of heat-cycling on soldered joints.
  
  Seems like EEs are not taught a lot of practical things in school.
  
  Damn, I'm an EE and my university wasn't too bad for having a good mix of theory vs practical. But I'm aware a lot of EE courses don't do that.
  BTW, are you Australian too?
- No customer would ever pay for that accuracy on all parts.
  
  No customer would NEED that accuracy on all parts. Just shows what kind of clown Elon is.
- When I was young I got a job at a manufacturing place that made all sorts of parts for sensitive equipment. Younger people, or people with steady hands would debur and smooth. We would have these huge magnifiers and friggin microscopes and be working with what looked like a really long tiny exacto knives that needed to be replaced every 5 minutes or a couple dozen uses to get that stuff to spec. You can spend 20 minutes on a piece, think it's perfect and then QC would send it right back because they somehow found some tiny inconsistency or groove you didn't or couldn't notice.
  There is no way you can expect that level of accuracy, unless your willing to pay for clean room level stuff. Even we weren't always quite that accurate depending on the end use and they charged like almost $50 for something that looked quite like something you get a hardware store for 50 cents.
  
  huge magnifiers
  Probably an optical comparator.
- hah historically Teslas body panels are closer to +/- .39"
- I've told many (usually new) design engineers that they're stupid for asking for 0.001" tolerance on parts when they only need 0.005 "or 0.010". The difference between 0.010" and sub-10 micron is easily a factor of 100 in most parts, ESPECIALLY when you're talking larger steel components like panels on a freaking car.
  
  ESPECIALLY when you’re talking larger steel components like panels on a freaking car.
  not just that, he said "all parts". The stitching on the seats, the floor carpets, USB ports, cupholders and the A/C vents have to be more accurate than the width of a human hair too
  
  Unless you are talking about a press fit location or some kind of high precision alignment issue, almost nothing needs anything tighter than .001" and .005 or .010" is perfectly fine for most things. I work with a lot of weldments so if we're within .030" we consider that good enough.
- Just coming in to say you are completely and absolutely correct. 🍻
- I don't see anywhere in the article where Musk says "tolerance". He specifically says "accuracy" and goes on the talk about listing more decimal places instead of rounding. Any mention of tolerance is done by the author of the article. If certain dimensions are not naturally rounded to one, or even two decimals, there is no reason not to list it to three or more on modern drawings. GD&T can specify whatever tolerance is necessary without relying on a decimal-based block tolerance. I'd be interested in seeing the original email but it seems like there is a misunderstanding by the author given the context being discussed.
  I default to three decimal places for all my basic dimensions on both in and mm drawings. One of the benefits of GD&T is that you can give provide additional dimensional accuracy, completely independent of the tolerance being specified.
  
  That's a really good point. If this is actually for the intervening calculations, that'd make a lot more sense.
  
  The linguistics of metrology is not exactly a topic I'm particularly passionate about, but if yiu look at the technical definition of accuracy, it essentially is the same as a tolerance.
  Accuracy: the degree to which the result of a measurement, calculation, or specification conforms to the correct value or a standard.
  And when it comes to decimal places, you'd never display more than you really need. If a dimension is +/- .010" there is absolutely no reason to display it to 4 decimal places. That doesn't win you anything. More importantly, I'm sure a company like Tesla doesn't even use drawings at all. I'm sure they are paperless and send out their models for machining.
- Engine parts? Tesla's don't have engines, they have electric motors which shouldn't need this level of precision. Electric motors they have today work pretty well already.

Due to the nature of Cybertruck, which is made of bright metal with mostly straight edges, any dimensional variation shows up like a sore thumb.
It sounds to me like the reasonable conclusion to draw from this would be to modify the design of the car. I'd also assume you don't need tolerances to be the same for literally all parts inside and out. I'd also think that, if the car looks that bad if things are 10 or more microns out of place, these cars are going to age terribly after regular use.
But what do I know? If I were smart, I'd be rich, right? And Elon is so rich, he must be a genius!
- Tesla is know for shoddy panel alignment correct? This is gonna look horrific.
  
  They are, and that undoubtedly gets under his sub micron thick skin, which is why he's going overboard about it with this.
- Yeah heat that mf up on a sunny day vs a cold day lol what an idiot.
  It's not like "accuracies" doesn't add up either ha ha what a genius.
  
  Usually car makers solve the expansion and contraction using glue, curves, and trim to deal with expansion and contraction.
  The cybertruck has no curves and not much trim, the glue would have to be very flexible, which would lead to separation.
  I am going to bet that we will see cybertruck with panels flying off or flapping at highway speeds not long after release.
- The awkward moment where you sit on the car watching the sunset with your sweetheart and the next day your stainless steel car is bent.

It's just marketing. Elon wants dumb tesla bros to think their truck is built to that accuracy. No need for it to be reality.
- As opposed to smart tesla bros?
- Sadly this could work, no one's gonna be verifying this shit and the ones who do won't reach enough tesla bros
- Well his paranoia was fed (rightly) by sites like Reddit who ate his lunch over panel gaps on the model 3. He wants this to be better and there’s nothing wrong with that!
  
  Will the steering wheel fall off still? We need more innovative features like that

Cybertruck, Cybertruck,
Engineers say "what the fuck"
Micron fits for auto steel?
Those are not a thing that's real
So deal! Deal with it, Cybertruck.
- I read that in the Spiderman themesong's rhythm lmao
  
  This is what the refrance

In the full email he goes on to tell the engineer what a micron is.
I guess, he just read that word somewhere and now feels cool that he knows it.
It would be cute if he was a junior manager, but this way it's just sad.
- You really think he wrote it? He has an army of engineers working for him, many of which would kill their mothers to get on Elon's good side, corporate culture is same shit different smell no matter the corporation.
  
  The leaked email has his name on it and the leak claims it was an email from Elon to employees. Can't really tell if the leak is real or fake, but if it's real then Elon is definitely the one who wrote it.
  Based on his proclivity to say dumb shit and his inability to keep his mouth shut, I'm inclined to believe it's a real leak.
  
  This 100% sounds like him. I don't see any reason to doubt it given that if someone was going to make something up it wouldn't sound like this.

Why does Space Karen still have all his fanbois? Do they really think he's some kind of software/technology/business genius, even after all that has come out about him?
- I wouldn't say I was a fanboy, but I liked him before .. I don't know, he was always crazy. These days he's even more crazy and I'm not touching anything he does.
  
  I can't stand him but Starlink is so fucking awesome. Having high speed internet fucking everywhere is a game changer.
  
  Same. I think it happens with any billionaire the longer the media focuses on them the more of their crazy comes out.
- I think they do , two of my school friends are his fanbois and even after his open goofup at twitter they be like , Elon musk , rocket boi , innovator and genius , first to invent sattelite internet ,he has enginnering degrees in making cars and rockets and should stick to it ! ( i was like no he does not have the degrees) 😏
  
  Well, he did a cameo on Big Bang Theory, so he must be an engineer, right?
- He is talented, just not at engineering or science particularly.
  His talents lie in obtaining government subsidies and trolling.
  
  Yes, agreed.
- Him and his companies have achieved some very impressive things, most notably Tesla being so far ahead of the pack with EV technology, and Space X with their reusable rockets.
  Regardless of your opinion of him as a person, he has achieved some impressive things.
  
  Which part(s) did he do, though?

If Elon would have looked back, he would have seen that Delorean has already tried bare metal, and it's nearly impossible to fix. Dent your truck? May as well paint it.
I mean, Elon obviously doesn't care about repairability, but the first few fender benders will result in a pile of articles about how unfixable the body panels actually are.
- But at least John DeLorean didn't demand that the parts be accurate to within a few microns. Maybe he was too busy making cocaine deals to do it, but still...
  
  I just realized how accurate the comparison probably is...

Elon gonna engineer the shit outta this thing. Nevermind coil steel itself varies by more than that before it goes into a die and stretches. It's almost like he doesn't have any background in automotive manufacturing. This statement makes me think Elon may not know what a micron even is. The fit and finish of Tesla's current offerings seems to evidence it anyway.

Hilarious considering the panel gaps in all his other cars, dude is fucking insane. Unattainable standards don't breed better work they breed exasperation and apathy.

Sounds like a pr campaign

Sure hun. Would you like that with a side of fries or mashed potatoes?
- Oh fries please, he gets too easily distracted and just plays with the mash potatoes all dinner
  
  So that's how this PoS vehicle was conceived in the first place? That tracks.
  
  This means something...

to build it to that accuracy the car would have to cost millions
- To build it with that accuracy would be physically impossible. Guess he forgot about thermal expansion and contraction. Guess he forgot about the weather...
  
  I mean, it says cybertruck parts, not the whole thing including assembly. Certainly possible for some manufacturing processes under given conditions to produce parts with ±0.005 tolerances like laser cutting or precision CNC machining of small dimensions. But it's obviously completely unrealistic given that most parts for a car will be of large-ish dimensions and stamped, injection molded, cast, forged, extruded... none of which lends itself to IT grades better than 10, far away from talking about microns.
  
  Musk is a scammer who has almost no practical understanding of engineering.
  He (and unfortunately many after him) forgot about thermal expansion and contraction as well with his dumbass Hyperloop idea. Have a hermetically sealed metal tube with a vacuum run exposed for 200km and let's just ignore thermal expansion. One station would have to move left and right for several meters throughout the day, every day for that, the 200km pipe somehow would need to be able to move about... His "designs" and "ideas" are engineering nightmares
  
  Nah, not impossible people build stellarator type Fusion reactors with large freeform metal parts in that tolerance region that are exposed to liquid helium.
- Indeed, that's about 10 to 100 times more accuracy than other automakers. Those tolerances just aren't necessary so no supplier is going to have the tools or infrastructure in place to make parts to such a high degree. Body shop alone sees fluctuations in millimeters because industrial robots can't do any better than half millimeter accuracy, if they're brand new.
  
  If you can even get something like +/-3 or 4 mm with say a cpk of 1,33 you are doing pretty well for a whole body.
  It's probably a pr stunt. If this is real then they are doomed because they have not yet understood that you need to compensate tolerances and design a robust assembly that can handle this. If you are trying to get crazy high part precision you have not understood how big scale manufacturing works. This is why the Japanese are often so highly regarded in this and might be the true art of car (or large scale) engineering.

Two things, not necessarily related.
The cybertronk looks highly regarded when put together correctly. Imagine if it has the panel gaps of other cars TSLA makes.
My tinfoil hat theory on why Elon is acting all right wing all of the sudden is to get those idiots to buy electric bare metal Pontiac Aztecs with "unbreakable" windows instead of F-150's
- My theory is he's a wealthy dude, so he's going to have right wing tendencies since the right wing benefits wealthy dudes.
  Also, one of his kids came out as trans, he went nuts, blamed social media for making his kid a "degenerate". Then bought twitter to destroy it out of revenge.
  He's kinda like a James Bond villain, but so much dumber.
- My tinfoil hat theory on why Elon is acting all right wing all of the sudden is to get those idiots to buy electric bare metal Pontiac Aztecs with “unbreakable” windows instead of F-150’s
  can he recoup $44 billion tho....? it's a bold move.meme
  wouldn't it be nice to have some kind of logical explanation for his demented thrashings?
  
  I don't think he actually cares about the money he blew on Twitter. Money is a construct and that is even more true for rich people. If he cared about the money, he wouldn't have tossed Twitter down the shitter.
  I think he cares more about the impression he is making, whether it be good or bad. People are talking about Elon and that's all that matters.
  
  While I don't know the cost to develop the cyber truck assuming it was 0 dollars to make the cost of the Twitter deal from cyber truck alone, it would take 88 thousand of them at elon getting 100% of the money from the sales. ( how he expects to sell an electric truck for 50k is beyond me)
- 100% everyone is making fun of teslas already, so imagine how the people feel who pre-ordered some garbage years ago. Now with their "leaked" email they can tell people how their future car will have toleraces that are on an qtomic level. These are also the prople who believed that teslas can fly in 3 years. Which was in 2016 i believe
- highly regarded
  Did you mean highly retar...? Is this a mistake or are you avoiding the r-word?
  
  Regarded is a common meme substitute for removed, indeed.
  
  This seriously got me 😂. Thank you!
- I had exactly the same theory for 2. He seems to genuinely want to save humanity (reusable rockets, electric vehicles etc) and so converting right wingers to electric would fit the goal
  
  You people still exist?
  
  Dumbest comment I've seen on lemmy to date
  
  I'm sorry but that's utterly delusional. That's the same logic as saying that Trump was playing chess with everytime and covfefe was on purpose.
  
  “Elon desperately wants the world to be saved. But only if he can be the one to save it.”
  
  You can't be serious
  
  Here is a video showing why tech billionaires are idiots. They only care about $$$, not the world.
  
  Electric vehicles aren't meant to save humanity. They are meant to save the car. If we removed all gas vehicles off the road right that wouldn't even stop 30 percent of emissions. The only way to save humanity at this point is to stop capitalism. As long as we continue to expect the market to find a solution to a problem that has no profit motivator we will never save humanity. Elon included.
  
  Lmao

They've had five years to figure that stuff out. If they haven't done it by now, they never will.
- And they won't, because that level of precision is stupid for this application, and not required. They can't even come close to matching the quality and precision of larger auto makers, how and why would they require levels many times what those manufacturers have deemed necessary?
  Classic example of an exec understanding on a high level that they have fit and finish issues with parts, and pulling a completely inane statement out of his ass to make it sound like he has any real understanding or power whatsoever to address the issue.
  It's Musk, so everyone immediately knows he's full of shit. But it's a good reminder to not entirely trust CEOs when they make statements related to specific technical details because the fact of the matter is they are not engineers and for large companies they are nowhere near close enough to the design and manufacturing process to be able to make statements like this that are actually informed. It's just PR bullshit.
  
  It’s Musk, so everyone immediately knows he’s full of shit.
  Sadly, not everyone got the memo so we will see this statement repeated as 100% fact by fanboys.

Jesus that thing just remind me of Lara Croft's boobs in the first tombraider game.
- Comparing that thing to her is an insult to her polygons
- This has made rounds around the interwebs as cybertruck origin story
- Looks more reminiscent of the warthog from Halo 1

While holding this tight of a tolerance is standard for small sinple injection molded plastic part like Lego blocks (0.01mm tol. usually need some really good tooling though), it's not really possible to hold this tight of a tolerance for large sheet metal construction such as the Cybertruck body (Standard tolerance should probably be in the milimeter range at most. )
So, guess the Cybertruck is never coming out.
- Not a loss for humanity if that pedestrian killer doesn't come out.
  
  This thing is going to be just as dangerous for the drivers too, won't be legal to sell in many jurisdictions.
- I mean, just putting it into the sunlight will probably introduce larger variances than these tolerances from heat expansion alone.
  And if dave holds a sheet slightly wrong, it's going to be slightly bent anyway.
  
  Exactly the gaps between the panels that account for the heat expansion are gigantic compared to micron level tolerances.
  
  On the other side, one may be able to fry an egg on the hood
- Also, there is no way to actually measure this tight of a tolerance on large parts such as a car, since the standard methods for this tight of a tolerance measurement is... using a caliper, as using automated optical inspection for every dimension isn't really feasible.
  So, I guess they'll probably just coddle Musk and make some fake drawings for his eyes only or something, which would only be more useless work for Tesla people.
  
  That's been their modus operandi from the start.
  And if Musk gets too involved somewhere, they just drop a couple of cool words and get him to go on a wild goose chase about shooting people through a massive vacuum canon or something stupid like that.
  
  Also, there is no way to actually measure this tight of a tolerance on large parts such as a car, since the standard methods for this tight of a tolerance measurement is... using a caliper, as using automated optical inspection for every dimension isn't really feasible.
  We definitely have lasers that can measure this tolereance.
- Maybe all this is on purpose so he can blame the factory workers on why the product never materialize and he can avoid the shame of having unsold inventory as people realize the car is fugly
- Even the heat of the day would make a panel warp more than is being stated. It is just sales BS to make him look good.
  No two cars are ever the same. Even with robots panels move in jigs. There is usually a guy at the end of a line who has the job of body adjust. Paint shops warp the crap out of a car body in the baking phase.

"Bad news guys... We're gonna have to delay production for just TWO MORE YEARS because of these woke microns! The good news though, you can get re-premium upgraded waitlist VIP positioning with a renewal deposit of only $500"

Guarantee he has no understanding of metalwork. It's not tricky, it's an exact science.
- Ummm excuse you, Elon is a ROCKET SCIENTIST CHIEF ENGINEER GENIUS PROGRAMMER QUINTUPLE CEO EXPERT EPOXY USER.
  I X'd this at him and he's gonna ratio you with a super sweet meme.

Wait, I thought he was just bullshitting his fans with that. He's actually serious? XD
Also, I don't understand what this has to do with bare metal construction of the Cybertruck and why that should present exceptional difficulties. DeLorean figured out how to make bare metal cars more than forty years ago, so it can't be that hard.
- DeLorean also didn't use flat panels on the body. Though it might look like it at first glance, none of the DeLorean panels were flat, they all had a slight curve.
  All metal panels are gonna flex a bit in the changing temperatures.
  
  Yes, it's almost as if making a car with completely flat body panels is an idea so completely idiotic even John DeLorean wouldn't do it...
- Your mistake was actually assuming that there is any discernible difference between a Musk statement he considers serious, and bullshit. They are the same.

That's an idea I would have supported when I was taking high school physics. My astronomy calculations I put to the nearest centimetre (something like 20 significant digits sometimes) for no good reason. Just writing down all the numbers from the calculator.
Then I took engineering and grew out of it. Sure some crucial parts need very tight tolerancing, but you also have to have it relative to the size of the part. And if your design is bad, better tolerancing isn't going to save you from stuff like the steering wheel popping out.
- My grandpa once published an article where he turned a tree circumference (obtained using a tape measure) into a "diameter estimate" with 6 significant figures. Turns out, he was wrong on the 4^th digit because he used π=3.14...
  
  My high-school chemistry teacher would dock a point for each extra digit past the calculation's actual precision. We learned quickly not to overstate our sig figs.
  An answer written as "3" means that the true value is somewhere between 2½ and 3½. If you write "3.19142" when what you actually know is "3", you're incorrectly excluding the vast majority of the possible true values.
  
  The difference between accuracy and precision.
- Just writing down all the numbers from the calculator.
  Please tell me you actually had that many digits of significant figures and weren't just copying down overly-specific figures from your calculator...
  
  He most certainly didn't. Other than physical constants, very few measurements were ever taken to more than 15 significant figures. It's just not practical as no instrument will get 1m precision over a light year. A spacecraft travelling anywhere near that far will just get an order of magnitude closer and then recalculate with one more digit of precision.
  
  Prof here...it's always the latter.
- Yeah it’s one thing to spit out numbers. But as an engineer I have to understand what’s going to happen with thermal expansion, wear and tear, and what can actually be produced consistently by an apathetic worker on their 60th hour of work that week
- Wait until you hear about what CS does to run-time complexity. Throw away the constants and small factors, nobody cares!

No amount of accuracy is going to fix the ugly of that thing.

So just use Lego bricks.
- It'd look better. Even with the struts out.
  
  *studs.
  And yes, I agree with you - today's LEGO sets that hide the studs are saddening.
  
  It will probably be safer as well.

I know it's supposed to make them sound good and might indeed be meant for leaking, but all I can think of is the demands on quality assurance and risks of failures down the road if such precision is paramount for the operation of the vehicle and assumed by the teams building it.
So give me a less finicky vehicle, please, and leave that precision for devices not subject to highly varying road conditions at very high speeds and housing people.
- Tolerance/precision is all about choosing an appropriate one for the task, to achieve the desired results.
  I'm not an automotive engineer, but nothing immediately jumps to mind on an automobile where this level of precision would be necessary, or indeed even desirable.
  This just makes me think about the Vietnam war, where the far more precision engineered M16A1 was widely criticized for its unreliable performance in the harsh jungle environment, while the AK-47... built to whatever is the opposite of high precision and tight tolerance, was an absolute workhorse. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if there were still caches of dozens or even hundreds of AK-47s buried in the jungle since the mid 70s, that could be dug up and immediately used today.
- I hear you but warranty clearly states that it only covers use on completely level, dry surfaces at speeds below 29 km/h.
  
  ...with a max load of 40 kg including the driver.

Every time I see it I can't get past how hideous it looks. I just don't get it...who's the target demo for this thing? They've already been beaten to market by non-absurd looking trucks, how big could their market actually be?
- Entrepreneurs that miss playing the Sega Saturn?
  
  People whose first love was Lara Croft on the PSX?
  
  Bro, Sega Saturn is was an amazing console. It still holds its own. It was arcade games at home. To this day, if you don't want to drop the cash on a Capcom CPS2 or Neo Geo MVS. Just get some nice HORI fighting controllers and you have the next best thing.

High accuracy, low precision.

Machining parts to that precision would exponentially increase the cost of the individual parts. This is something that will never ever ever happen and I'd be willing to bet my entire fortune on it. No Cybertruck will ever be mass produced with all it's components within 10 microns of tolerance. Elon might roll one off the line like that to prove that it can be done, but nobody other than his billionaire buddies would be able to afford one.
- And if he manages to get one off the line, it'll go for 20 meters and then break down due to bearings and bushings being fouled.
  
  Or just sieze up when its been in the sun for 20 seconds
- It would probably cost tens or hundreds of millions to produce an entire car to those tolerances.
  Like that tolerance is literally insane.
- It is not possible to build car parts to that level of precision. They will warp more than that in the heat of the day. It is just a marketing pitch to the idiots who buy his crap.
- Cybertruck Pro - for when you really need to burn some money

Kind of wish we would just get away from cars. I'm in a car centric neighborhood and miss the days of when I didn't live in one.
- I'm in a neighborhood where nobody drives and everything is a 15 minute walk away. It's fucking fantastic!

Isn't the metal body going to expand depending on the temperature? This is so unhinged.
- What happens to the tollerences of the panel gaps if you park it half in the shade and half in the sun,
  
  On a Tesla? If you do it just right the gaps will even out.

There are companies making bricks in much better quality than LEGO, and they are cheaper than LEGO. What kind of a margin is this supposed to be?
- My guy, you can't drop these claims without telling us who! Lego are so expensive, I'd love some supposedly higher quality alternatives.
  
  Apologies, I would recommend checking out https://www.bluebrixx.com/en/ to get an impression of what other vendors offer. You can look up the brands and models on your local Amazon, Alibaba, your local brick dealer, ... These prices are a lot lower that LEGO sets, so you might be able to try different vendors and see what's on the market.
- cheaper than lego
  I'm listening. Please do share.
  
  My kid got a non Lego set as a gift and what a letdown that was. It's a frustrating excersise as the construction simply doesn't holds up like the real thing.
  We had to give up building the damn thing.
  
  I have a Mould King 13112 RC Excavator. All parts are on par and compatible with Lego bricks. Excellent quality, a bit tighter fit than regular Lego and the model itself is way more interesting and fun to build than anything Lego has produced in the Technic line in the past years. On top it is much cheaper than a comparable Lego set and it has an excellent building manual.
- Any brands you would recommend?
  
  Try looking for Mould King or Cada - those are usually the ones that are considered to deliver great quality for a reasonable price.
  It should be mentioned that both companies are gearing their products much more towards an older audience - so they aren’t really an alternative when talking about kids playsets.
  
  Bluebrix is nice
  
  I usually shop around on https://www.bluebrixx.com/en/ Their Specials didn't disappoint so far. They carry other vendors too, but you might want to browse reviews on the web to see what's really good. Quality does vary between vendors, but LEGO bricks aren't as perfect as people believe either.
- Doubt.
- Im a lego enthusiast and. having Lego brick is a bragging right !!!
  
  I know, and I have loved Lego since getting that 8880 for Christmas that one year! But that is in the past, and spending 500€ on a LEGO set, when I can get a much more enjoyable experience from another vendor at a fraction of the cost, just doesn't feel right to me these days. But to each their own, and I still love the LEGO sets I do have.
- My homemade 3D printer that makes one of these rackus just because it's not very good can make lego tolerance. It can't cut metal though so I don't know wtf he's dreaming about lol.
- I seriously doubt it. People buy LEGO because the alternatives are shit and they don't know how to accurately manufacture them.
  
  Yeah maybe 5 years ago. Just get any brand using GoBricks and it's 99,99% there

This man is like an unintelligent P.T. Barnum.
- Like an inverse Barnum: a sucker who understands how smart people operate. Or sound, at least.
  
  TP Barnum

He really is a moron 🙈

I'm not even sure the Space Shuttle was built with those ridiculous tolerances. Maybe some internal engine parts like turbopump rotors and shafts. Does he know what he's saying?
- 10 micron (0.01mm) is pretty reasonable tolerance for a lot of stuff. The laminations in Tesla's motors will be held to somewhere around that, possibly even tighter. Things like motor winding insulation coatings will be far tighter.
  For something like body panels or plastic interior pieces it's utter overkill and a waste of resources.
  
  Something like a body panel is going to expand/contract a couple of orders of magnitude more than 10 microns just from the weather changing day-to-day.

eNgInEeRiNg

Just like Steve Jobs and every other "visionary" all he does is demand things, have his engineers and factory slaves do their thing, and then go on stage and act like he personally minted every single cybertruck by hand. Any asshole can do the job of a visionary, actually, being an asshole is the only required skill.

Truck is machine dedicated for transportation of goods. Not art from museum.
- Da.

Six sigmas of deviation. Stuff is so figured out by u dustrial engineers. What a clueless idiot.

(people frantically selling tesla stock)

Like Trump demands being King of the USA or something.
Just don't take those idiots seriously. They are Trolls.

LOL. At the same price as the Lightning, there's no way this could compete with Ford. I thought the point of the sharp angles was to make the truck super cheap. If it was $25k, I'd consider getting it not caring about what it looked like (as long as it was warrantied for mechanical failures). Just for a cheap new truck to haul shit and not worry about getting beat up.

A Saturday morning lemmy comment section has more engineering skill than a $1T automaker, apparently.
- $1T means nothing if the CEO has mush for a brain lol
- Name one other auto industry CEO that makes engineering demands of this nature and lambasts employees on social media for not meeting them.
  Without relying on Google etc. you probably couldn’t even name the CEO of Toyota, Honda, Ford, etc. And I seriously doubt they are making technical decisions for their cars. They rely on knowledgeable managers whose teams have decades of technical experience, and likely defer to those experts when they say something isn’t feasible.
  Musk is acting like Homer Simpson when given the chance to design his own car. Screw the experts! He wants what he demands and won’t take “no” for an answer, no matter how bad his decisions are.
  
  Hes been doing this since the first roadster, its the way Tesla operates. You can not argue with the success up to this point.
- I don't have to be in the space program to know that Pluto is pretty far away and I don't have to be a mechanical engineer to know the implementing exacting tolerances like this both in house and from external suppliers is going to drive costs through the roof just so his truck can look like a 90s wireframe model driving a literal information superhighway. With that being said, if you have better info I'd love to hear it. I just don't think you do. I think you started with the assumption that Musk is some sort of gigagenius and then tried to make the inference from there that anything he says and does must be the right thing to say and do, and that anyone who criticizes him just isn't following his hyperdimensional chess gambit.
  
  lol
- Musk isn't an auto maker. He's an idiot who owns a company.
- Why would that not be the case?

I hate Elon as much as the next guy, but I have to admit that that car looks pretty good and aesthetic. Damn.
- It looks like something from the PS1
  
  Agreed! Or maybe a 90's Hot Wheels toy... Maybe that was the point though 🤔
  
  It looks like what people in the 80s thought the 2000s would look like
- Are you five?
  
  This person might be one of the characters from Goldeneye 007 or the original Lara Croft. Or maybe this version of Solid Snake. The Cybertruck would be one of the sexiest things ever in those kinds of worlds.
- Can I ask a question that may sound snarky and snobby over internet text, but I'm genuinely and non-judgmentally curious about?
  Where did this use of "aesthetic" come from? From context it appears to mean something different in your sentence (good "look" or style that is on trend and I like) than I understood it to mean ("look" or style referring to an encompassing cohesion instead of a qualitative assessment).
  This language enthusiast is curious. Language changes and that's cool, but this seems to confuse the term rather than disambiguate. Can you explain what you mean by it, and do you remember where you learned to use the word that way? Is it a regionalism?
- LMFAO
- He's overcompensating after the shit tolerances of the fist Model S units.

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