6 ms·

Oil-Canning

133 points by CHB0403085482 3y ago

voisin 3y ago
The author certainly thinks highly of himself.
- YouSuck2 3y ago
  And???
  - CHB0403085482 3y ago
    Sometimes you gotta seperate the man form his work, ja? ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio
  - voisin 3y ago
    And it’s hard to take him seriously when he presents his arguments as how stupid Arlin and his must be and how they must not have done basic research and how anyone with half a brain could’ve warned them. He essentially straw man’s an argument and the fills the post with how much smarter he is to see things a guy who has built multiple billion dollar manufacturing businesses must’ve just been too stupid to think about.
    - lazide 3y ago
      When the evidence is obvious, the obvious is evidence?
    - V_Terranova_Jr 3y ago
      Elon is well-known for firing or sidelining technical staff with whom his intuition disagrees, regardless of his own technical depth in any of those matters. His companies have a lot of success for reasons other than his making the wisest technical and programmatic decisions. He sets his own standard for what he considers acceptable, even if those standards fly in the face of existing norms. That's not unalloyed awesomeness - there are sacrifices. The author, in an admittedly ranty way, levels basic criticisms that are hard to individually disqualify. With the truck, it seems like Elon did Elon things, and his team is struggling to make his vision real in a mass-producible design with acceptable quality.
      - voisin 3y ago
        I don’t disagree with anything you’ve written, but the idea that Musk hasn’t considered oil panning and should’ve just asked an engineer is ludicrous. The author assumes Musk must be an idiot despite all of the evidence to the contrary.
        V_Terranova_Jr 3y ago
        > ... the idea that Musk hasn’t considered oil panning and should’ve just asked an engineer is ludicrous. The author assumes Musk must be an idiot despite all of the evidence to the contrary. I don't see anything ludicrous in the author's article, even if it sneers at times. Though unquestionably successful overall, since Elon has a history of bad technical or PR/appearance-driven moves, I'm not sure what's wrong with mocking him for some of those things. He is successful despite doing some idiotic things, it's not that everything he does is brilliant and correct. The article doesn't provide any internal Tesla evidence as to whether Elon considered it and disregarded oil canning (for whatever reason), or if people on his team told him about this likely issue and he blew them off, thinking he could just keep demanding his team bring him solutions instead of telling him about problems with his vision. Under the circumstances, either could validly be criticized as idiotic, in which case mocking him seems like fair game. This would hardly be the first such issue ("Falcon Wing" doors, display screens on the Model S, the incredibly ill-advised 'Full Self-Driving' labeling, etc.).
      - Zigurd 3y ago
        Elon's lead designer has been interviewed about Cybertruck, saying words to the effect of: Really, boss?
- cassepipe 3y ago
  Is there some kind of discount on ad hominem attacks ?
GenerWork 3y ago
This really is quite a biased article. That being said, I will agree with the core premise that the Cybertruck could've been made slightly differently that would've prevented oil canning.
- jszymborski 3y ago
  I likely characterize it as "opinionated".
- ta8645 3y ago
  > ... oil canning. This isn't likely to happen, but we could learn to just not care. We have bigger problems than worrying about our car's cosmetics. A lot of a car's cost is due to the high cost of perfect finishes. I'd love a car that was cheap to repair, even if it meant leaving some obvious welding showing up on the surface; especially if it was more socially acceptable. Reminds me of the NHL goalie Gerry Cheevers* who painted stitches on his face mask every time it got damaged by a puck that would have damaged his face instead. Maybe we should celebrate our car's service dings, instead of spending the money to hide them. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Cheevers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Cheevers
  - ljlolel 3y ago
    The key difference is that in one case the goalie did his job well of stopping the puck (and the mask did of saving his face). In this other case I have a mark of me being an idiot backing into a telephone pole or another lower car I didn’t see or getting keyed by neighbors.
  - lgleason 3y ago
    Go to some developing countries and that is the norm. The cars look like crap but.... Personally I prefer a pristine car and spend hours polishing mine, but to each their own.
  - m463 3y ago
    > Maybe we should celebrate our car's service dings, instead of spending the money to hide them. My aunt lived in the city. Her car would get dinged all the time. She made peace with it by putting two crossed bandaids on a ding.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Gave this story a "tentative upvote", because I feel the tone and some of the other topics the author mentioned have the potential to steer any discussion into a political mess, but I am genuinely interested in the real engineering concerns regarding the Cybertruck. The author is basically arguing "large, completely flat metal panels that join in long, angular seams is a fatal design flaw that is unfixable." I.e. they say this design will lead to major problems ("oil-canning", seam gaps, and making repairs even more of a non-starter), and the possible fixes will either be gargantuanly expensive or have other problems (lots of added weight). Can someone versed in this area comment on this? At first glance he does appear to make great points, so I'd like to know if there is something I'm missing. I think automakers are really going to have to come to terms with repairability costs or else people will start balking at insane insurance costs. There have been a bunch of articles on HN recently about how minor impacts on EVs are leading to crazy repair bills, like the 41k Rivian repair. If it costs 15k to fix a minor door ding on a Cybertruck, I can't fathom what insurers will charge for comprehensive or collision coverage.
- CHB0403085482 3y ago
  Imagine the repair cost on a EV sports car like the Rimac Nevara ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsVtnvmmzlQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsVtnvmmzlQ
- stouset 3y ago
  Honestly, I wish there was an insurance option that wouldn’t cover cosmetic damage. If your car has some cracks in the plastic body panels, repairing it is completely unnecessary. Desirable, maybe, but irrelevant to whether or not a car is still drivable vs. salvage.
  - ajb 3y ago
    You can just not claim those and keep your no-claim bonus. In fact, it's probably cheaper to not claim anything you can afford to pay yourself, if your no claims bonus is intact.
  - jstanley 3y ago
aorloff 3y ago
He’s right about a couple things 1. Cybertruck is hella late. Lapped even by other makers 2. Cybertrucks don’t look great. The videos of them driving around just don’t quite live up to the hype. If the excitement for the car will be less after launch, why launch it ?
- koonsolo 3y ago
  I think they already sold them, and people are now waiting on their car.
  - aorloff 3y ago
    Non trivial fractions of automaker ad spend are targeting recent buyers to feel good about their purchase.
- manonthewall 3y ago
  2) They look different, great is in the eye of the beholder tho. I would still buy one if they were priced reasonably AND they've been out for a while. I never buy a 1st edition of any car. every car needs a while to work out the gotchas, and I don't like being a beta tester for a billionaire while paying him to give me a shoddy experience.
xcdzvyn 3y ago
> MAGA-hats think that Donald Trump is some sort of financial genius who will "save America" by turning it into a totalitarian State ("FREE-DUM!" - ironic, isn't it?). Ugh, are we still doing this?
- forgetfreeman 3y ago
  Yes, yes we are.
fundad 3y ago
My favorite part is his economic indicator is the volume of promotional emails.
KineticLensman 3y ago
For the benefit of those like me who had never heard of oil-canning before: "Oil canning, a common inherent trait of flat sheet material, is a moderately visible deformation. This is can usually be seen as a ripple or buckle along with the broad flat areas of the material. Oil canning is an aesthetic complaint and does not have any effect on the integrity and strength of the material." [0] [0] https://stampingsimulation.com/effects-of-oil-canning/ https://stampingsimulation.com/effects-of-oil-canning/
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ianbicking 3y ago
I think it was in a comment thread here that there was some debate about Tesla and novelty, and someone noted that Tesla didn't actually design the cars but licensed the body designs from Lotus. (All of this was in the context of some "does Elon Musk actually deserve credit" debate.) Some Tesla/Musk fans replied that it probably didn't even help them get to market faster, and now that Tesla was FINALLY using their own design for the Cybertruck they could really create a vehicle that was fully met the electric vehicle and Tesla's potential. I kind of bookmarked that discussion in my mind, the notion that the Cybertruck represents a new design process, a kind of unleashing of the process, and perhaps represents a fully Elon Musk version of Tesla. The result has not disappointed! Without using conventional body designs as the basis of this new vehicle they've instead made bizarre and cringy choices that can't be justified aesthetically or functionally. I honestly thought the original Cybertruck design was just going to be a placeholder to attract attention before they made something reasonable... and without Musk maybe it would have been. Everyone else didn't come upon the conventional designs by accident; there's a lot of hubris in making such a big change, especially since it's not a meaningful part of Tesla's unique value.
- Zigurd 3y ago
  You skipped directly from the Lotus-derived Roadster to Cybertruck. That misses that a notable auto industry designer led the design of Model S, Model 3, Model X and Model Y. These are the models that made Tesla a long-term viable vehicle OEM. There is no diminishing that accomplishment. You are probably right that Cybertruck is Elon's personal project to revolutionize car design. It will probably go about as well as most attempts to revolutionize car design.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Oil-Canning

133 points by CHB0403085482 3y ago

voisin 3y ago

The author certainly thinks highly of himself.

YouSuck2 3y ago
And???
- CHB0403085482 3y ago
  Sometimes you gotta seperate the man form his work, ja? ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio
- voisin 3y ago
  And it’s hard to take him seriously when he presents his arguments as how stupid Arlin and his must be and how they must not have done basic research and how anyone with half a brain could’ve warned them. He essentially straw man’s an argument and the fills the post with how much smarter he is to see things a guy who has built multiple billion dollar manufacturing businesses must’ve just been too stupid to think about.
  - lazide 3y ago
    When the evidence is obvious, the obvious is evidence?
  - V_Terranova_Jr 3y ago
    Elon is well-known for firing or sidelining technical staff with whom his intuition disagrees, regardless of his own technical depth in any of those matters. His companies have a lot of success for reasons other than his making the wisest technical and programmatic decisions. He sets his own standard for what he considers acceptable, even if those standards fly in the face of existing norms. That's not unalloyed awesomeness - there are sacrifices. The author, in an admittedly ranty way, levels basic criticisms that are hard to individually disqualify. With the truck, it seems like Elon did Elon things, and his team is struggling to make his vision real in a mass-producible design with acceptable quality.
    - voisin 3y ago
      I don’t disagree with anything you’ve written, but the idea that Musk hasn’t considered oil panning and should’ve just asked an engineer is ludicrous. The author assumes Musk must be an idiot despite all of the evidence to the contrary.
      - V_Terranova_Jr 3y ago
        > ... the idea that Musk hasn’t considered oil panning and should’ve just asked an engineer is ludicrous. The author assumes Musk must be an idiot despite all of the evidence to the contrary. I don't see anything ludicrous in the author's article, even if it sneers at times. Though unquestionably successful overall, since Elon has a history of bad technical or PR/appearance-driven moves, I'm not sure what's wrong with mocking him for some of those things. He is successful despite doing some idiotic things, it's not that everything he does is brilliant and correct. The article doesn't provide any internal Tesla evidence as to whether Elon considered it and disregarded oil canning (for whatever reason), or if people on his team told him about this likely issue and he blew them off, thinking he could just keep demanding his team bring him solutions instead of telling him about problems with his vision. Under the circumstances, either could validly be criticized as idiotic, in which case mocking him seems like fair game. This would hardly be the first such issue ("Falcon Wing" doors, display screens on the Model S, the incredibly ill-advised 'Full Self-Driving' labeling, etc.).
    - Zigurd 3y ago
      Elon's lead designer has been interviewed about Cybertruck, saying words to the effect of: Really, boss?
cassepipe 3y ago
Is there some kind of discount on ad hominem attacks ?

GenerWork 3y ago

This really is quite a biased article. That being said, I will agree with the core premise that the Cybertruck could've been made slightly differently that would've prevented oil canning.

jszymborski 3y ago
I likely characterize it as "opinionated".
ta8645 3y ago
> ... oil canning. This isn't likely to happen, but we could learn to just not care. We have bigger problems than worrying about our car's cosmetics. A lot of a car's cost is due to the high cost of perfect finishes. I'd love a car that was cheap to repair, even if it meant leaving some obvious welding showing up on the surface; especially if it was more socially acceptable. Reminds me of the NHL goalie Gerry Cheevers* who painted stitches on his face mask every time it got damaged by a puck that would have damaged his face instead. Maybe we should celebrate our car's service dings, instead of spending the money to hide them. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Cheevers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Cheevers
- ljlolel 3y ago
  The key difference is that in one case the goalie did his job well of stopping the puck (and the mask did of saving his face). In this other case I have a mark of me being an idiot backing into a telephone pole or another lower car I didn’t see or getting keyed by neighbors.
- lgleason 3y ago
  Go to some developing countries and that is the norm. The cars look like crap but.... Personally I prefer a pristine car and spend hours polishing mine, but to each their own.
- m463 3y ago
  > Maybe we should celebrate our car's service dings, instead of spending the money to hide them. My aunt lived in the city. Her car would get dinged all the time. She made peace with it by putting two crossed bandaids on a ding.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

Gave this story a "tentative upvote", because I feel the tone and some of the other topics the author mentioned have the potential to steer any discussion into a political mess, but I am genuinely interested in the real engineering concerns regarding the Cybertruck. The author is basically arguing "large, completely flat metal panels that join in long, angular seams is a fatal design flaw that is unfixable." I.e. they say this design will lead to major problems ("oil-canning", seam gaps, and making repairs even more of a non-starter), and the possible fixes will either be gargantuanly expensive or have other problems (lots of added weight). Can someone versed in this area comment on this? At first glance he does appear to make great points, so I'd like to know if there is something I'm missing. I think automakers are really going to have to come to terms with repairability costs or else people will start balking at insane insurance costs. There have been a bunch of articles on HN recently about how minor impacts on EVs are leading to crazy repair bills, like the 41k Rivian repair. If it costs 15k to fix a minor door ding on a Cybertruck, I can't fathom what insurers will charge for comprehensive or collision coverage.

CHB0403085482 3y ago
Imagine the repair cost on a EV sports car like the Rimac Nevara ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsVtnvmmzlQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsVtnvmmzlQ
stouset 3y ago
Honestly, I wish there was an insurance option that wouldn’t cover cosmetic damage. If your car has some cracks in the plastic body panels, repairing it is completely unnecessary. Desirable, maybe, but irrelevant to whether or not a car is still drivable vs. salvage.
- ajb 3y ago
  You can just not claim those and keep your no-claim bonus. In fact, it's probably cheaper to not claim anything you can afford to pay yourself, if your no claims bonus is intact.
- jstanley 3y ago

aorloff 3y ago

He’s right about a couple things 1. Cybertruck is hella late. Lapped even by other makers 2. Cybertrucks don’t look great. The videos of them driving around just don’t quite live up to the hype. If the excitement for the car will be less after launch, why launch it ?

koonsolo 3y ago
I think they already sold them, and people are now waiting on their car.
- aorloff 3y ago
  Non trivial fractions of automaker ad spend are targeting recent buyers to feel good about their purchase.
manonthewall 3y ago
2) They look different, great is in the eye of the beholder tho. I would still buy one if they were priced reasonably AND they've been out for a while. I never buy a 1st edition of any car. every car needs a while to work out the gotchas, and I don't like being a beta tester for a billionaire while paying him to give me a shoddy experience.

xcdzvyn 3y ago

> MAGA-hats think that Donald Trump is some sort of financial genius who will "save America" by turning it into a totalitarian State ("FREE-DUM!" - ironic, isn't it?). Ugh, are we still doing this?

forgetfreeman 3y ago
Yes, yes we are.

fundad 3y ago

My favorite part is his economic indicator is the volume of promotional emails.

KineticLensman 3y ago

For the benefit of those like me who had never heard of oil-canning before: "Oil canning, a common inherent trait of flat sheet material, is a moderately visible deformation. This is can usually be seen as a ripple or buckle along with the broad flat areas of the material. Oil canning is an aesthetic complaint and does not have any effect on the integrity and strength of the material." [0] [0] https://stampingsimulation.com/effects-of-oil-canning/ https://stampingsimulation.com/effects-of-oil-canning/

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ianbicking 3y ago

I think it was in a comment thread here that there was some debate about Tesla and novelty, and someone noted that Tesla didn't actually design the cars but licensed the body designs from Lotus. (All of this was in the context of some "does Elon Musk actually deserve credit" debate.) Some Tesla/Musk fans replied that it probably didn't even help them get to market faster, and now that Tesla was FINALLY using their own design for the Cybertruck they could really create a vehicle that was fully met the electric vehicle and Tesla's potential. I kind of bookmarked that discussion in my mind, the notion that the Cybertruck represents a new design process, a kind of unleashing of the process, and perhaps represents a fully Elon Musk version of Tesla. The result has not disappointed! Without using conventional body designs as the basis of this new vehicle they've instead made bizarre and cringy choices that can't be justified aesthetically or functionally. I honestly thought the original Cybertruck design was just going to be a placeholder to attract attention before they made something reasonable... and without Musk maybe it would have been. Everyone else didn't come upon the conventional designs by accident; there's a lot of hubris in making such a big change, especially since it's not a meaningful part of Tesla's unique value.

Zigurd 3y ago
You skipped directly from the Lotus-derived Roadster to Cybertruck. That misses that a notable auto industry designer led the design of Model S, Model 3, Model X and Model Y. These are the models that made Tesla a long-term viable vehicle OEM. There is no diminishing that accomplishment. You are probably right that Cybertruck is Elon's personal project to revolutionize car design. It will probably go about as well as most attempts to revolutionize car design.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]