6 ms·

Tesla Has a Design Problem

35 points by elsewhen 3y ago

staflow 3y ago
Some stuff looks good to some people and bad to other people u know
- andreareina 3y ago
  The article is about function being overridden in favour of aesthetic considerations.
- emmelaich 3y ago
  Indeed. de gustibus non est disputandum
bamboozled 3y ago
my real issue is that I believe it's trying to solve problems that don't exist. The entire project, at its heart, seems like design self-indulgence, a masturbatory creation for one, rather than the practical application of vehicle design for the many. There are a lot of practical issues with the car which I find just dumb and I personally love the way it looks so I find these issue really disappointing. Need a replacement wiper? Can't be towed. A screen is required to see out the back window. Regular tires look like shit, how do I get winter tires? It's bullet proof, but it's not really bullet proof... It feels a lot like "The Homer" on The Simpsons.
- millzy 3y ago
  [flagged]
- gardenhedge 3y ago
  Is the back window not see through? I've never been in a Tesla
  - Vecr 3y ago
    Many cars (crossovers and SUVs, really) have screens as their rear view "mirror" now, because you can't see out the back well enough with an actual mirror. The old "aerodynamic" streamlined cars got it wrong, you really want the front of the car to be blunter than the rear, so I assume that's something to do with it.
  - cogman10 3y ago
    For cyber truck, it's blocked by the bed cover so you can't see out it 99% of the time.
  - kcplate 3y ago
    Just bought a new vehicle a few months ago, the rear view mirror can also act as a “rear view screen”. My first inclination was to just use it as a mirror, but after a few months I use the screen most of the time now and prefer it. Wider angle view and if the back is packed to the roof, I still have unobstructed view. So where I probably would have been negative on this a few months ago, I don’t think this would be a deal killer for me now.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  > It feels a lot like "The Homer" on The Simpsons. You've just hit the nail on the head with that.
not_your_vase 3y ago
Meta: I wanted to point out some bad UX-element on this website just for fun, but the more I look, the more I like it. No pop-ups, no pop-overs no tooltips, no request to sign up for newsletter and it loads fast. Scrolling is not hijacked, text is readable. The only thing I'm not a fan of is this shade of pink, but I must concede that it is subjective. I guess I give up on this one. Anyway... personally I'm happy for the CT's design. All other cars look exactly the same. Which I'm not a huge fan of CT, but I'm a fan of change, finally. We haven't had such a brave design since the Fiat Multipla. But this one doesn't look like the new car of Mr Bean.
- kiba 3y ago
  I like the departure of the design, but I am definitely not a fan of the visual style. I prefer something less polygonal.
  - readthenotes1 3y ago
    When you are driving it, how much time do you spend outside looking at it?
- 6510 3y ago
  I always see tons of hilarious UI mistakes on all websites. They are often hilarious because of how difficult the css solution is. I started looking at the left top, zoomed a bit and the 3rd menu entry (game design) dropped into a ... sub menu with a single entry long before the space ran out. Hyperlinks in black on a white background? The name of the website is to small and the font is boring. The advertisement at the top is huge and has lots of white space around it. Everything above the fold, except from the article title is clutter/garbage. That is, under the assumption the idea for me to read their article. It seems more like I'm visiting to view as many ads as humanly possible? The rant about the car is just collateral damage?
  - 6510 3y ago
    A funny one would be the height of the advertisement slots not always matching the height of the advertisements creating a large gap above the text under it while the text above is very close to it. You could make the space around the banner much larger so that above and below look more similar. If one does that, it still design tho?
kiba 3y ago
Door handle hadn't confused me once I figured it out on my Tesla. Also, I wouldn't judged a car's or a truck's safety without a crash test report. I like the big touchscreen, but I must admit that I also like buttons. That said, I prefer using buttons on the steering wheel if possible. The yoke design is probably not a problem if you don't ever need to rotate it like 180 degree or something. I think the simplicity and minimalism stems from Elon Musk's drive to reduce the amount of parts and weight in a car. I agree that some functionality is lost, and maybe a little bit of safety as well, since it's hard to do certain tasks without physical buttons.
- zemvpferreira 3y ago
  Never did I think I'd hear someone describe a 7000lb luxury vehicle as simple, minimalist and an exercise in weight reduction. Are you an oil tanker captain perhaps?
  - kiba 3y ago
    There's no need to be rude calling someone an oil tanker captain. I am talking from a manufacturing standpoint as well, not just making sure that the truck doesn't weigh too much. To be fair, EV just weigh a lot, but you can do a lot worse. The cybertruck is a luxury vehicle, but it also weigh less than the Ford Lightning F-150.
    - zemvpferreira 3y ago
      Sorry friend, didn't mean it as an insult, just a jest.
- mattacular 3y ago
  The problem with the yoke is you DO need to rotate it by 180 degree, frequently. It's any situation you would need to turn a normal steering wheel by that much. When this design is used in eg. Formula 1 cars, they have an extremely tight lock to lock so you would never need to turn it upside down. They tune it to the exact specifications of the turns of whatever course they're running. Tesla by contrast said "yoke look cool !!!" and shoved it onto the same stalk as a normal wheel without bothering to do any of that other tuning and engineering to make the design work, much less work safely. It's a theme that echoes throughout many if not all of their "innovations"
Vecr 3y ago
Did Tesla end up going with steer by wire? I support fly by wire on any aircraft that can be flown by instruments and can carry passengers, as the cost of getting to right is worth it in those cases, and can help pilots in a lot of situations. However, how is steer by wire going to help you while driving on a 2D plane, more or less? You can't "fly" a car by instruments, and if the horizon is not more or less horizontal across your windshield and/or the ground is not right under your wheels, steering is not going to help you much anyway. For airplanes, the bottom of the U curve often suggests fly by wire, but for road cars I doubt it would almost ever. How many people are going to inspect and maintain the system correctly anyway? I know people who have totaled cars by driving them on check engine lights, so if this can cause someone to crash it will cause someone to crash.
- kiba 3y ago
  Cybertruck is doing steer by wire and they also transitioned to 48V away from 12V. So much of the technology showcased in the cybertruck will be coming to a new Tesla vehicle sometime in the future as they work out the supply issue.
- pptr 3y ago
  I think one of the advantages of steer by wire is that rear steering gets a lot easier to add (which the cybertruck has).
seydor 3y ago
It's not that bad. i ve seen uglier trashcans
olivermuty 3y ago
It is clear that the car is designed in a country with essentially zero roundabouts. It is very hard to blink «out» of a roundabout when your steering wheel (or yoke) is upside down. The lack of handle for blinkers and handle for cruise is why my next car will be a mercedes. I have the older X with physical handles now. Or maybe I should say part of why, it’s almost embarassing to drive a Tesla these days with Commander Dunnig-Kruger at the helm of the company :(
- Vecr 3y ago
  I'm not sure the steering wheel even flips over, if it's steer by wire like the comment says, you could easily program a law that changes the response of the steering depending on the vehicle's speed, preventing it from getting too twitchy at highway speeds while still allowing parking, even with only a 180 degree (for example) rotation from lock to lock. Toyota/Lexus has already done so.
  - PartiallyTyped 3y ago
    IIRC from Marquez Brown Lee's review, the steering changes at different speeds exactly to avoid it being twitchy.
    - demondemidi 3y ago
      Power steering has been doing that since the 1950s. It has always been differential.
      - emmelaich 3y ago
        By-wire makes it tuneable in the field.
        demondemidi 3y ago
        And unpredictable.
- 3y ago
pavlov 3y ago
I think Tesla’s chief designer Franz von Holzhausen doesn’t get nearly enough credit for the company’s success. He created a look in 2012 for the Model S that’s still in use with only minor variations across the company’s range. The best-selling Model Y is instantly recognizable as a cousin of the original S. The design doesn’t look like most American cars from the same era. It eliminated grilles and other aggressively masculine elements. It has a sophisticated softness that would pass for European, yet it also has an edge that communicates the hidden power of the full-electric system. It’s pretty unique that one design manages to hold desirability for a decade. Other car makers would have revamped a design several times already. So Tesla is clearly taking a risk that their signature look grows tired and commonplace. The Cybertruck seems like overcorrection in the other direction. It also smells of the CEO’s influence overriding the car industry experience of von Holzhausen. Musk’s companies seem to do best when he’s focusing on fundraising and hiring, leaving product and operations to others.
- kiba 3y ago
  The Cybertruck seems like overcorrection in the other direction. It also smells of the CEO’s influence overriding the car industry experience of von Holzhausen. Musk’s companies seem to do best when he’s focusing on fundraising and hiring, leaving product and operations to others. It would be a mistake to think that Elon Musk don't have a hand in the Model S design. He's that kind of person who obsess every little details, regardless of his expertise or how ill advised his choices is. Musk is a product person, not a fundraising and hiring person.
  - turquoisevar 3y ago
    > He's that kind of person who obsess every little details People said the same thing about Steve Jobs. This was in part because he would even focus on design details on the inside of devices that most would never see, the iMac G3 would be the first example of this. Somehow I suspect that Jobs would have an aneurism if he’d be heading Tesla and saw the paneling issues and the welds his cars would be delivered with. Perhaps Musk should do some more obsessing.
- demondemidi 3y ago
fabian2k 3y ago
Regarding the lack of crumple zones, what regulations on passenger safety exist in the US that would apply to the Cybertruck? My understanding is that because it's classified as a light truck that not all rules apply to it. But if there are any passenger safety rules left that it has to meet, shouldn't there be information available by now on how the passengers inside would fare in case of a crash?
- mnd999 3y ago
  It likely won’t meet European safety standards so there’s a whole market it will just miss. But maybe it’s too big to be practical in European cities anyway.
  - piva00 3y ago
    I see people driving Dodge RAM 1500s inside Prague and Paris, it's absolutely impractical but some do it.
  - emmelaich 3y ago
    Why would it not meant European safety standards? The S,3,Y are very safe. Do you think they've forgotten safety for the cybertruck?
    - orwin 3y ago
      Because European do not only test the vehicle crashing by itself, but vehicle crashing into other vehicles (frontal crash and side crash), and vehicle crashing into pedestrians/bikes. S,3,Y are sedan and would do well on those tests.
      - emmelaich 3y ago
        But do you think the cybertruck would do worse that other similar sized vehicles?
        orwin 3y ago
ghusto 3y ago
> But what Elon wants, Tesla customers get Had to laugh at that bit, and then sigh :( On the one hand, it's great that he takes nothing for granted, and does his own thing. On the other hand, it's sad (for everyone) that he can't listen to reason at the same time.
- deleted 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
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blagie 3y ago
I agree, and I disagree. Personally, I'd like a variety of cars on the road. Right now, the industry has converged on about a half-dozen types of cars: SUV, sedan, pickup truck with an oversized cab, sub-compact, (rapidly disappearing) van, ... and that's all. There's also the pricey sports car, which varies a bit more. I can buy a subcompact from any company, and it will be almost identical except for the brand logo (and to some extent, reliability). I'd like to see much more variety, including bringing back classics like the classic pickup truck (designed to be maintainable, modifiable, and good at hauling stuff), the classic station wagon (designed to fit a family at the cost of a sedan and better fuel efficiency than a SUV or van), as well as a variety of new cars which look different. We used to have things like the VW Bug. Yes, I think the Cybertruck is a horrible, horrible car which I'd never buy and which I'd never recommend to anyone, but personally, I'm glad for some innovation, for someone trying something new, and for someone as Apple put it, Thinking Different.
- guruz 3y ago
  Come to Germany if you want station wagons :-) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombinationskraftwagen https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombinationskraftwagen
- demondemidi 3y ago
  > I'd like a variety of cars on the road I agree it’s like housing everything is just cookie cutter and just gets boring to look at. The constant exposure to unchanging uninteresting uniformity I think subconsciously cumulatively adds to dread. Only diff is bad car design can kill bystanders more than bad house design or bland fashion choices.
  - blagie 3y ago
    There's also a question of timescales. * Cookie-cutter designs mean better safety and reliability in the short-term. We learn a lot about those designs, have volume to optimize them, etc. However, innovation stagnates. * Diverse design means we try new things. 95% will be bad ideas, but 5% will be good ideas which can then disseminate. We make much more rapid progress, and learn more. As much as I'm convinced the Cybertruck (and cars like it) will result in more deaths in the short term than if we all drove sedans, I'm not sure that it won't result in fewer deaths in the timespan of a few decades, simply by virtue of seeing what works and what doesn't. I'm not sure it's a fundamentally worse design, so much as one which hasn't had 50 years of safety (and other) optimizations like the current cookie cutter ones.
emmelaich 3y ago
> On certain early versions of the truck Yeah, early versions. So what. > pedestrian safety Far better than other equivalent size vehicles. > apparent lack of crumple zones. Apparent? What!? > a fear of saying no to Musk Zero evidence. The only valid point in this silly article is on the design of the door handles.
- fabian2k 3y ago
  Please point out your evidence for better pedestrian safety compared to similar vehicles.
  - emmelaich 3y ago
    The lidar/cameras that are on every Tesla vehicle. I can attest that it is very alert to pedestrians and cyclists. Also, the front of the cybertruck is smooth compared to the bits on similar size truck / pickups. [edit - whatever it is - it works]
    - fabian2k 3y ago
      No Tesla has LIDAR. And many new ones even had some radar sensors removed and their function "replaced" by the cameras. Certain types of trucks are probably very dangerous to pedestrians because they have very high grills. But that is really more of an indictment of the lacking US safety standards here than any praise for the Cybertruck.
KaiserPro 3y ago
So, I personally hate the tesla truck. Its pure canyonero. However, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be made, or tesla shouldn't have tried. I do like that it tries something (old) new. What I don't like is that other designers then copy the obviously shit parts (I'm looking at you touchscreen buttons, and really poor fucking visibility from the back) because its "new" and "fresh"
thriftwy 3y ago
I wonder if anbody did steering wheels with angle magnifier, so that at small angles it will behave identically to conventional ones, but will require way less rotation to get into parallel parking position
- belltaco 3y ago
  That's exactly what the Cybertruck has. https://youtu.be/XxOh12Uhg08?t=1759 https://youtu.be/XxOh12Uhg08?t=1759 Timestamp 29:19 The article is an ignorant hitpiece and spreads misinformation.
hefferbub 3y ago
Wow, so much willful misinformation. Let’s cover a few! - Steering: indeed the CT uses an innovative, triple-redundant steer by wire system. The steering wheel, which is a squared circle, not a yoke, turns 380 degrees lock to lock, so you never need to reposition your hands. It adjusts steering ratios dynamically according to speed and other factors. - Crash safety: The 4 other Tesla models all had record-breaking safety scores, each the highest ever tested at the time of release on both European and U.S. standards. CT will undoubtedly continue and likely exceed that record. In any case, it would not be on the road if it had not passed U.S. safety standards. - Pedestrian safety: This one is Bizarre. The CT front profile is about 2 feet lower than every other full size pickup sold in the U.S., yet not a peep heard about any of them being dangerous to pedestrians. “But no crumple zones!!” —- pedestrian safety is not primarily achieved through crumple zones, rather by the shape of the vehicle and how impact is likely to move someone who was hit. The CT is infinitely better on this metric. - No crumple zones: See the crash test videos of the CT to see what an absurd assumption this is. The front deforms beautifully and the passenger compartment is fully intact. Same for the 30 MPH side impact test. - Not mentioned: the first full-car 48 volt architecture in history, which paves the way for this much-needed innovation for the rest of the industry. - Further extension of Tesla’s astonishing electrical architecture, where all functions in the car are performed by a few high-density PC boards running industrial PowerPC processors rather than having 100+ “ECUs” bought off the shelf. This architecture is what makes it possible to control (and fix and refine) nearly all aspects of the vehicle THROUGH SOFTWARE (and explains why no other car makers can do this). - The CT pushes this forward by making nearly every electrical device a peer on a redundant gigabit ethernet bus (greatly enhanced CANBus). Each device then has a single power lead—-as short as possible from any convenient location—and activates itself by commands on the bus. 48 volts plus this reduced the weight of the wiring harness by 80% over a typical vehicle. - Looks: I thought this site audience was made up of engineers or those who appreciate engineering. The look of the CT follows its function. Using castings, a structural battery pack and durable, paint-free stainless steel, it makes one of the toughest, most durable and most structurally rigid vehicles ever made. Yet, compared to an F150 Lightning, it has more interior space, a bigger bed while weighing significantly less. - Economics: Ford in recent quarters is losing around $36,000 per EV they sell, despite the prices charged being quite high. CT is designed for manufacturing simplicity and architectural efficiency. This difference means that Ford is stuck at high prices and big losses while Tesla has ample price flexibility. As they have with their other vehicles, they can bring down prices as market conditions warrant and as materials and economies of scale make possible. No other EV maker has ever been profitable, and none have ever dropped prices as aggressively as Tesla has this last year or so. There is every reason to assume this will continue with the CT, once the first early-adopter wave subsides. I get that Elon Musk infuriates many people (as he frequently does me). But it’s just dumb to disparage the achievements of the most talented and innovative team of automotive engineers since Henry Ford just because you don’t like the boss.
k310 3y ago
Auto styles have "personality". The Teslas we commonly see have a prominent upper lip, like someone we know. The Cybertruck resembles an armored fighting vehicle. sample here: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/98/76/de/9876de62de664087f06b8be345a54c13--boxer.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/98/76/de/9876de62de664087f06b8be34...

35 points by elsewhen 3y ago

staflow 3y ago

Some stuff looks good to some people and bad to other people u know

andreareina 3y ago
The article is about function being overridden in favour of aesthetic considerations.
emmelaich 3y ago
Indeed. de gustibus non est disputandum

bamboozled 3y ago

my real issue is that I believe it's trying to solve problems that don't exist. The entire project, at its heart, seems like design self-indulgence, a masturbatory creation for one, rather than the practical application of vehicle design for the many. There are a lot of practical issues with the car which I find just dumb and I personally love the way it looks so I find these issue really disappointing. Need a replacement wiper? Can't be towed. A screen is required to see out the back window. Regular tires look like shit, how do I get winter tires? It's bullet proof, but it's not really bullet proof... It feels a lot like "The Homer" on The Simpsons.

millzy 3y ago
[flagged]
gardenhedge 3y ago
Is the back window not see through? I've never been in a Tesla
- Vecr 3y ago
  Many cars (crossovers and SUVs, really) have screens as their rear view "mirror" now, because you can't see out the back well enough with an actual mirror. The old "aerodynamic" streamlined cars got it wrong, you really want the front of the car to be blunter than the rear, so I assume that's something to do with it.
- cogman10 3y ago
  For cyber truck, it's blocked by the bed cover so you can't see out it 99% of the time.
- kcplate 3y ago
  Just bought a new vehicle a few months ago, the rear view mirror can also act as a “rear view screen”. My first inclination was to just use it as a mirror, but after a few months I use the screen most of the time now and prefer it. Wider angle view and if the back is packed to the roof, I still have unobstructed view. So where I probably would have been negative on this a few months ago, I don’t think this would be a deal killer for me now.
ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
> It feels a lot like "The Homer" on The Simpsons. You've just hit the nail on the head with that.

not_your_vase 3y ago

Meta: I wanted to point out some bad UX-element on this website just for fun, but the more I look, the more I like it. No pop-ups, no pop-overs no tooltips, no request to sign up for newsletter and it loads fast. Scrolling is not hijacked, text is readable. The only thing I'm not a fan of is this shade of pink, but I must concede that it is subjective. I guess I give up on this one. Anyway... personally I'm happy for the CT's design. All other cars look exactly the same. Which I'm not a huge fan of CT, but I'm a fan of change, finally. We haven't had such a brave design since the Fiat Multipla. But this one doesn't look like the new car of Mr Bean.

kiba 3y ago
I like the departure of the design, but I am definitely not a fan of the visual style. I prefer something less polygonal.
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  When you are driving it, how much time do you spend outside looking at it?
6510 3y ago
I always see tons of hilarious UI mistakes on all websites. They are often hilarious because of how difficult the css solution is. I started looking at the left top, zoomed a bit and the 3rd menu entry (game design) dropped into a ... sub menu with a single entry long before the space ran out. Hyperlinks in black on a white background? The name of the website is to small and the font is boring. The advertisement at the top is huge and has lots of white space around it. Everything above the fold, except from the article title is clutter/garbage. That is, under the assumption the idea for me to read their article. It seems more like I'm visiting to view as many ads as humanly possible? The rant about the car is just collateral damage?
- 6510 3y ago
  A funny one would be the height of the advertisement slots not always matching the height of the advertisements creating a large gap above the text under it while the text above is very close to it. You could make the space around the banner much larger so that above and below look more similar. If one does that, it still design tho?

kiba 3y ago

Door handle hadn't confused me once I figured it out on my Tesla. Also, I wouldn't judged a car's or a truck's safety without a crash test report. I like the big touchscreen, but I must admit that I also like buttons. That said, I prefer using buttons on the steering wheel if possible. The yoke design is probably not a problem if you don't ever need to rotate it like 180 degree or something. I think the simplicity and minimalism stems from Elon Musk's drive to reduce the amount of parts and weight in a car. I agree that some functionality is lost, and maybe a little bit of safety as well, since it's hard to do certain tasks without physical buttons.

zemvpferreira 3y ago
Never did I think I'd hear someone describe a 7000lb luxury vehicle as simple, minimalist and an exercise in weight reduction. Are you an oil tanker captain perhaps?
- kiba 3y ago
  There's no need to be rude calling someone an oil tanker captain. I am talking from a manufacturing standpoint as well, not just making sure that the truck doesn't weigh too much. To be fair, EV just weigh a lot, but you can do a lot worse. The cybertruck is a luxury vehicle, but it also weigh less than the Ford Lightning F-150.
  - zemvpferreira 3y ago
    Sorry friend, didn't mean it as an insult, just a jest.
mattacular 3y ago
The problem with the yoke is you DO need to rotate it by 180 degree, frequently. It's any situation you would need to turn a normal steering wheel by that much. When this design is used in eg. Formula 1 cars, they have an extremely tight lock to lock so you would never need to turn it upside down. They tune it to the exact specifications of the turns of whatever course they're running. Tesla by contrast said "yoke look cool !!!" and shoved it onto the same stalk as a normal wheel without bothering to do any of that other tuning and engineering to make the design work, much less work safely. It's a theme that echoes throughout many if not all of their "innovations"

Vecr 3y ago

Did Tesla end up going with steer by wire? I support fly by wire on any aircraft that can be flown by instruments and can carry passengers, as the cost of getting to right is worth it in those cases, and can help pilots in a lot of situations. However, how is steer by wire going to help you while driving on a 2D plane, more or less? You can't "fly" a car by instruments, and if the horizon is not more or less horizontal across your windshield and/or the ground is not right under your wheels, steering is not going to help you much anyway. For airplanes, the bottom of the U curve often suggests fly by wire, but for road cars I doubt it would almost ever. How many people are going to inspect and maintain the system correctly anyway? I know people who have totaled cars by driving them on check engine lights, so if this can cause someone to crash it will cause someone to crash.

kiba 3y ago
Cybertruck is doing steer by wire and they also transitioned to 48V away from 12V. So much of the technology showcased in the cybertruck will be coming to a new Tesla vehicle sometime in the future as they work out the supply issue.
pptr 3y ago
I think one of the advantages of steer by wire is that rear steering gets a lot easier to add (which the cybertruck has).

seydor 3y ago

It's not that bad. i ve seen uglier trashcans

olivermuty 3y ago

It is clear that the car is designed in a country with essentially zero roundabouts. It is very hard to blink «out» of a roundabout when your steering wheel (or yoke) is upside down. The lack of handle for blinkers and handle for cruise is why my next car will be a mercedes. I have the older X with physical handles now. Or maybe I should say part of why, it’s almost embarassing to drive a Tesla these days with Commander Dunnig-Kruger at the helm of the company :(

Vecr 3y ago
I'm not sure the steering wheel even flips over, if it's steer by wire like the comment says, you could easily program a law that changes the response of the steering depending on the vehicle's speed, preventing it from getting too twitchy at highway speeds while still allowing parking, even with only a 180 degree (for example) rotation from lock to lock. Toyota/Lexus has already done so.
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  IIRC from Marquez Brown Lee's review, the steering changes at different speeds exactly to avoid it being twitchy.
  - demondemidi 3y ago
    Power steering has been doing that since the 1950s. It has always been differential.
    - emmelaich 3y ago
      By-wire makes it tuneable in the field.
      - demondemidi 3y ago
        And unpredictable.
3y ago

pavlov 3y ago

I think Tesla’s chief designer Franz von Holzhausen doesn’t get nearly enough credit for the company’s success. He created a look in 2012 for the Model S that’s still in use with only minor variations across the company’s range. The best-selling Model Y is instantly recognizable as a cousin of the original S. The design doesn’t look like most American cars from the same era. It eliminated grilles and other aggressively masculine elements. It has a sophisticated softness that would pass for European, yet it also has an edge that communicates the hidden power of the full-electric system. It’s pretty unique that one design manages to hold desirability for a decade. Other car makers would have revamped a design several times already. So Tesla is clearly taking a risk that their signature look grows tired and commonplace. The Cybertruck seems like overcorrection in the other direction. It also smells of the CEO’s influence overriding the car industry experience of von Holzhausen. Musk’s companies seem to do best when he’s focusing on fundraising and hiring, leaving product and operations to others.

kiba 3y ago
The Cybertruck seems like overcorrection in the other direction. It also smells of the CEO’s influence overriding the car industry experience of von Holzhausen. Musk’s companies seem to do best when he’s focusing on fundraising and hiring, leaving product and operations to others. It would be a mistake to think that Elon Musk don't have a hand in the Model S design. He's that kind of person who obsess every little details, regardless of his expertise or how ill advised his choices is. Musk is a product person, not a fundraising and hiring person.
- turquoisevar 3y ago
  > He's that kind of person who obsess every little details People said the same thing about Steve Jobs. This was in part because he would even focus on design details on the inside of devices that most would never see, the iMac G3 would be the first example of this. Somehow I suspect that Jobs would have an aneurism if he’d be heading Tesla and saw the paneling issues and the welds his cars would be delivered with. Perhaps Musk should do some more obsessing.
demondemidi 3y ago

fabian2k 3y ago

Regarding the lack of crumple zones, what regulations on passenger safety exist in the US that would apply to the Cybertruck? My understanding is that because it's classified as a light truck that not all rules apply to it. But if there are any passenger safety rules left that it has to meet, shouldn't there be information available by now on how the passengers inside would fare in case of a crash?

mnd999 3y ago
It likely won’t meet European safety standards so there’s a whole market it will just miss. But maybe it’s too big to be practical in European cities anyway.
- piva00 3y ago
  I see people driving Dodge RAM 1500s inside Prague and Paris, it's absolutely impractical but some do it.
- emmelaich 3y ago
  Why would it not meant European safety standards? The S,3,Y are very safe. Do you think they've forgotten safety for the cybertruck?
  - orwin 3y ago
    Because European do not only test the vehicle crashing by itself, but vehicle crashing into other vehicles (frontal crash and side crash), and vehicle crashing into pedestrians/bikes. S,3,Y are sedan and would do well on those tests.
    - emmelaich 3y ago
      But do you think the cybertruck would do worse that other similar sized vehicles?
      - orwin 3y ago

ghusto 3y ago

> But what Elon wants, Tesla customers get Had to laugh at that bit, and then sigh :( On the one hand, it's great that he takes nothing for granted, and does his own thing. On the other hand, it's sad (for everyone) that he can't listen to reason at the same time.

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blagie 3y ago

I agree, and I disagree. Personally, I'd like a variety of cars on the road. Right now, the industry has converged on about a half-dozen types of cars: SUV, sedan, pickup truck with an oversized cab, sub-compact, (rapidly disappearing) van, ... and that's all. There's also the pricey sports car, which varies a bit more. I can buy a subcompact from any company, and it will be almost identical except for the brand logo (and to some extent, reliability). I'd like to see much more variety, including bringing back classics like the classic pickup truck (designed to be maintainable, modifiable, and good at hauling stuff), the classic station wagon (designed to fit a family at the cost of a sedan and better fuel efficiency than a SUV or van), as well as a variety of new cars which look different. We used to have things like the VW Bug. Yes, I think the Cybertruck is a horrible, horrible car which I'd never buy and which I'd never recommend to anyone, but personally, I'm glad for some innovation, for someone trying something new, and for someone as Apple put it, Thinking Different.

guruz 3y ago
Come to Germany if you want station wagons :-) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombinationskraftwagen https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombinationskraftwagen
demondemidi 3y ago
> I'd like a variety of cars on the road I agree it’s like housing everything is just cookie cutter and just gets boring to look at. The constant exposure to unchanging uninteresting uniformity I think subconsciously cumulatively adds to dread. Only diff is bad car design can kill bystanders more than bad house design or bland fashion choices.
- blagie 3y ago
  There's also a question of timescales. * Cookie-cutter designs mean better safety and reliability in the short-term. We learn a lot about those designs, have volume to optimize them, etc. However, innovation stagnates. * Diverse design means we try new things. 95% will be bad ideas, but 5% will be good ideas which can then disseminate. We make much more rapid progress, and learn more. As much as I'm convinced the Cybertruck (and cars like it) will result in more deaths in the short term than if we all drove sedans, I'm not sure that it won't result in fewer deaths in the timespan of a few decades, simply by virtue of seeing what works and what doesn't. I'm not sure it's a fundamentally worse design, so much as one which hasn't had 50 years of safety (and other) optimizations like the current cookie cutter ones.

emmelaich 3y ago

> On certain early versions of the truck Yeah, early versions. So what. > pedestrian safety Far better than other equivalent size vehicles. > apparent lack of crumple zones. Apparent? What!? > a fear of saying no to Musk Zero evidence. The only valid point in this silly article is on the design of the door handles.

fabian2k 3y ago
Please point out your evidence for better pedestrian safety compared to similar vehicles.
- emmelaich 3y ago
  The lidar/cameras that are on every Tesla vehicle. I can attest that it is very alert to pedestrians and cyclists. Also, the front of the cybertruck is smooth compared to the bits on similar size truck / pickups. [edit - whatever it is - it works]
  - fabian2k 3y ago
    No Tesla has LIDAR. And many new ones even had some radar sensors removed and their function "replaced" by the cameras. Certain types of trucks are probably very dangerous to pedestrians because they have very high grills. But that is really more of an indictment of the lacking US safety standards here than any praise for the Cybertruck.

KaiserPro 3y ago

So, I personally hate the tesla truck. Its pure canyonero. However, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be made, or tesla shouldn't have tried. I do like that it tries something (old) new. What I don't like is that other designers then copy the obviously shit parts (I'm looking at you touchscreen buttons, and really poor fucking visibility from the back) because its "new" and "fresh"

thriftwy 3y ago

I wonder if anbody did steering wheels with angle magnifier, so that at small angles it will behave identically to conventional ones, but will require way less rotation to get into parallel parking position

belltaco 3y ago
That's exactly what the Cybertruck has. https://youtu.be/XxOh12Uhg08?t=1759 https://youtu.be/XxOh12Uhg08?t=1759 Timestamp 29:19 The article is an ignorant hitpiece and spreads misinformation.

hefferbub 3y ago

Wow, so much willful misinformation. Let’s cover a few! - Steering: indeed the CT uses an innovative, triple-redundant steer by wire system. The steering wheel, which is a squared circle, not a yoke, turns 380 degrees lock to lock, so you never need to reposition your hands. It adjusts steering ratios dynamically according to speed and other factors. - Crash safety: The 4 other Tesla models all had record-breaking safety scores, each the highest ever tested at the time of release on both European and U.S. standards. CT will undoubtedly continue and likely exceed that record. In any case, it would not be on the road if it had not passed U.S. safety standards. - Pedestrian safety: This one is Bizarre. The CT front profile is about 2 feet lower than every other full size pickup sold in the U.S., yet not a peep heard about any of them being dangerous to pedestrians. “But no crumple zones!!” —- pedestrian safety is not primarily achieved through crumple zones, rather by the shape of the vehicle and how impact is likely to move someone who was hit. The CT is infinitely better on this metric. - No crumple zones: See the crash test videos of the CT to see what an absurd assumption this is. The front deforms beautifully and the passenger compartment is fully intact. Same for the 30 MPH side impact test. - Not mentioned: the first full-car 48 volt architecture in history, which paves the way for this much-needed innovation for the rest of the industry. - Further extension of Tesla’s astonishing electrical architecture, where all functions in the car are performed by a few high-density PC boards running industrial PowerPC processors rather than having 100+ “ECUs” bought off the shelf. This architecture is what makes it possible to control (and fix and refine) nearly all aspects of the vehicle THROUGH SOFTWARE (and explains why no other car makers can do this). - The CT pushes this forward by making nearly every electrical device a peer on a redundant gigabit ethernet bus (greatly enhanced CANBus). Each device then has a single power lead—-as short as possible from any convenient location—and activates itself by commands on the bus. 48 volts plus this reduced the weight of the wiring harness by 80% over a typical vehicle. - Looks: I thought this site audience was made up of engineers or those who appreciate engineering. The look of the CT follows its function. Using castings, a structural battery pack and durable, paint-free stainless steel, it makes one of the toughest, most durable and most structurally rigid vehicles ever made. Yet, compared to an F150 Lightning, it has more interior space, a bigger bed while weighing significantly less. - Economics: Ford in recent quarters is losing around $36,000 per EV they sell, despite the prices charged being quite high. CT is designed for manufacturing simplicity and architectural efficiency. This difference means that Ford is stuck at high prices and big losses while Tesla has ample price flexibility. As they have with their other vehicles, they can bring down prices as market conditions warrant and as materials and economies of scale make possible. No other EV maker has ever been profitable, and none have ever dropped prices as aggressively as Tesla has this last year or so. There is every reason to assume this will continue with the CT, once the first early-adopter wave subsides. I get that Elon Musk infuriates many people (as he frequently does me). But it’s just dumb to disparage the achievements of the most talented and innovative team of automotive engineers since Henry Ford just because you don’t like the boss.

k310 3y ago

Auto styles have "personality". The Teslas we commonly see have a prominent upper lip, like someone we know. The Cybertruck resembles an armored fighting vehicle. sample here: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/98/76/de/9876de62de664087f06b8be345a54c13--boxer.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/98/76/de/9876de62de664087f06b8be34...