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It's just bare, raw stainless steel without even a clearcoat? Who could possibly think that's a good idea?
by calamari4065 3y ago
It's just bare, raw stainless steel without even a clearcoat?
Who could possibly think that's a good idea?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- llm_nerd 3y agoI was under the impression that stainless steel didn't rust, albeit obviously depending upon the grade. Like my kitchen sink is made of stainless steel and doesn't have a clearcoat. Has never rusted and won't over decades. And to be clear, I think the CT is an incredibly ugly monstrosity that is Tesla's jump the shark moment, so I'm not saying this defensively.
- nullindividual 3y agoPut a scratch in your sink. It'll rust.
- KeplerBoy 3y agoProper stainless steal doesn't rust. It's not even coated. Source: Worked as a mechanical engineer designing industrial meat grinders and cutters. Folks throw in bones, meat, ice, salt and then heat it and grind it to a pulp but it never rusts.
- nullindividual 3y agoThank you for bringing your experience to the thread! How many "improper" varieties of stainless steel are there? Are the fully stainless steels that will not rust under any circumstances exceptionally expensive compared to their less-than-ideal counterparts? I would assume given my experience with "stainless" steel sinks must mean they're less than ideal quality which is not a shocking surprise.
- elil17 3y agoDepends on the stainless alloy used. Meat grinders would be designed to stand up to salt - they use 304 or 316. Cybertruck's aren't, because they use a 301, which is less corrosion resistant. Meanwhile, 316 will gladly rust if put in a strong enough salt solution for long enough.
- arcticbull 3y agoWhy would a car body not be designed to stand up to salt? You know they put that stuff on roads right? Driving it in winter in much of these here United States (let alone Canada) is equivalent to bathing it in a saline solution and whipping salt nuggets at it. That would be quite the oversight.
- kube-system 3y agoAll cars are "designed to stand up to salt", including the cybertruck, just in different ways. Most auto manufacturers use mild steels which are highly susceptible to rust, but mitigate rust by using various types of coatings. This has significant drawbacks because coatings can be compromised by wear, causing the underlying steel to fail to corrosion. As my engineering professor always said, if you're willing to spend a few million dollars on a car, you can get one that will last a lifetime!
- elil17 3y ago>including the cybertruck Apparently not, though - it's obviously rusting
- kube-system 3y agoYes, including the cybertruck. Tesla chose 301 stainless to mitigate rust. It is not a perfect choice. Neither are coatings on mild steel. All cars are designed to resist corrosion but can and will under the right (wrong?) circumstances. There is no perfect material that does everything. All have pros-and-cons.
- turtlesdown11 3y ago> Proper stainless steal doesn't rust. It's not even coated. No. Stainless steel comes in many varieties and levels of corrosion resistance. In order to get increased corrosion resistance you trade other mechanical properties. Every choice of steel balances the level of corrosion resistance with the tradeoffs of loss of other properties. There is no truly corrosion proof steel, just various grades of resistance.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ceejayoz 3y agoMy stainless steel sink is like all scratches. Still no rust.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- klodolph 3y agoStainless steel does rust and does stain. It is much more resistant to rust or staining than ordinary carbon steel. Think of it as “stain-resistant” and “rust-resistant”.
- JR1427 3y agoThat's why it's called stain-less. It stains less. (But still stains.)
- lesuorac 3y agoI guess that's just in line with "Full Self Driving". All of yourself needs to do the driving in your stain less vehicle.
- aaronbrethorst 3y agoIt’s called the “No Homers” club, we’re allowed to have one.
- JR1427 3y agoSuch a great line!
- JR1427 3y agoI wonder why this innocuous light-hearted comment in appreciation of someone else's joke is getting downvoted? I don't think I'll ever understand why people downvote on HN...
- mrguyorama 3y agoIt's pointless noise. Twenty other readers likely also laughed to themselves about the line, upvoted and moved on. The commenter will know if their joke was appreciated with upvotes. Nobody needed an extra comment from the peanut gallery. HN polices noise very hard, because the alternative is half the site is just the first comment thread from reddit that continuously circle jerks the same damn jokes.
- idontwantthis 3y agoIf you kept the truck in your kitchen it probably wouldn’t rust, but if you scratched your dishwasher and subjected it to water and salt I bet it would.
- mynameisvlad 3y agoDo you think that sinks and dishwashers don’t get exposed to salt, water and other things all the time?
- idontwantthis 3y agoTo the extent that cars do on the road no not at all. A dishwasher is not getting hit with gravel at 60mph and splashed with mud.
- mynameisvlad 3y agoBut it is being exposed to harsh cleaning agents all the time. The wear might be different, but let’s not pretend they’re sitting there in the middle of a kitchen unused. Your claim was also, explicitly: > but if you scratched your dishwasher and subjected it to water and salt I bet it would. That is literally what happens every day. All the time.
- idontwantthis 3y agoYou win you win you win
- calamari4065 3y agoDishwashers work by spraying high pressure jets of water filled with abrasives. Water which is usually also full of organic compounds of many varieties. I'd say the conditions are not dissimilar.
- KeplerBoy 3y agoYes, that's how it works with stainless steel. It needs a certain amount of chromium (around 10% by weight) to not rust.
- convolvatron 3y agooh yeah, it does. its just pretty stubborn about it. I have the same sink in my shop, and because there are acids and iron dust in play we get spotting all the time. the main thing you need to do with stainless is 'passivate' it by putting it in an acid solution that removes as much of the iron from the surface layer as you can, leaving just the chromium and other alloyed elements. particularly on any welds you may have made.
- fastball 3y agoNew business idea: Mobile "Cybertruck Passivating" Service! Possible tagline: "An acid a day keeps the cyberrust away"
- kuon 3y agoThere are dozen of alloys and also many different way to process them. I have no clue what they used, as I did not find any real specification sheet. But it looks more like a purity problem than the "wrong" alloy, but many alloys will rust, in different ways. I have no experience in such large object as I work on micro mechanic. I would love to have an expert share a more informed comment.
- filleduchaos 3y agoStainless steel is corrosion-resistant, not corrosion-immune.
- Arech 3y agoMany kinds of stainless steel alloys are totally immune to corrosion under a normal conditions. For example, everything used in the food industry are a such grade. Some of it doesn't rust even at temperatures much higher than 100degC in a much more corrosive atmosphere, than water vapors.
- turtlesdown11 3y agoDo they have mechanical properties and costs that make them acceptable as car parts? No steel is totally immune to corrosion.
- filleduchaos 3y agoWhat are "normal conditions"? Because for instance plenty of stainless steel alloys are very much not totally immune to the accelerated corrosion caused by saltwater...and think of how many people live and drive beside seas and oceans.
- csmpltn 3y agoDifferent compositions of stainless steel have different grades of corrosion resistance. Road salt can contribute the corrosion of stainless steel.
- quickthrowman 3y ago> I was under the impression that stainless steel didn't rust, albeit obviously depending upon the grade. Like my kitchen sink is made of stainless steel and doesn't have a clearcoat. Has never rusted and won't over decades. Is your kitchen sink installed outside where it can rain, snow, etc?
- DennisP 3y agoAre you thinking a sink doesn't get exposed to water?
- woodruffw 3y agoA kitchen sink isn't usually exposed to road salt. It's also probably made with a different grade of stainless steel. (As others have noted, it looks like Tesla intentionally chose a less-resistant alloy for price reasons. This would be consistent with other consumer complaints about their build quality.)
- quickthrowman 3y agoTo the extent that a truck parked outside does? No, not really. Consider the that a kitchen is typically climate controlled so lower RH means the water left in the sink will evaporate quickly. It’s not just water either, being outside exposed material to sunlight, dirt, dust, acid rain, temperature extremes, road salt, etc.
- monkey_monkey 3y agoAre you aware that kitchen sinks are typically subject to frequent and prolonged encounters with water and other substances?
- quickthrowman 3y agoA kitchen is a climate controlled space. The water left in a sink evaporates quickly. There is no acid rain or road salt in a kitchen, etc. Being outside is damaging to materials, moreso than just water exposure.
- brudgers 3y agoThere are grades of stainless steel and specifying the optimum grade for a specific application is an ordinary engineering problem of cost, performance, availability, and anticipated fabrication methods. https://www.unifiedalloys.com/blog/stainless-grades-families https://www.unifiedalloys.com/blog/stainless-grades-families
- jeffbee 3y agoStainless is fairly reactive. The only reason it can appear to be corrosion resistant is "passivation", a surface treatment. If you pierce the passivated layer on a stainless item, it will promptly corrode.
- elil17 3y agoWell the passivization is corrosion. Stainless steel is covered by rusted chromium, which prevents further rust. If you scratch it, you should get another layer of passivization. They Cybertruck's problem (oversimplifying here, there's a bit more chemistry going on) is that it has too low of a chromium content (as a cost cutting measure). There isn't enough chromium to protect the underlying steel from the conditions it's being exposed to. Or, to put it another way, the steel is corroding faster than the chromium rust/passivization layer can form.
- globular-toast 3y agoDon't ask me how I know but if something like a fork grows mould on it in a dishwasher then you run the dishwasher it goes rusty in that spot. I've never found out why this is despite seeing it reproduced on several occasions (again, don't ask for details please).
- sdflhasjd 3y agoI've seen this without mould too. I've left stainless cutlery in a stainless sink with just a little bit of water, and seen run form between the two.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tialaramex 3y ago> I was under the impression that stainless steel didn't rust Nope. "Stainless" steels are just resistant. They're not magically impossible to tarnish, if you want a metal which will not tarnish you need pure (not Jewellery grade) Gold or Platinum. One thing about your sink: You probably clean it. That's all Tesla advises for these cars. Drove to the store to buy groceries? Now clean your Cybertruck. Took kids to soccer practice? Now clean your Cybertruck. A "weekly" trip to a car wash which might turn out to happen once a month isn't good enough, these vehicles will stain permanently if left. And that's fine for Elon, he can assign a junior assistant to go wash his Cybertruck. Do you have a junior assistant? No? Then maybe the Cybertruck isn't for you.
- kergonath 3y ago> if you want a metal which will not tarnish you need pure (not Jewellery grade) Gold or Platinum That’s taking things a bit far. These don’t oxidise but there are other metals that won’t corrode (in normal conditions) because they form a protective passive layer like titanium, chromium or aluminium. Stainless steel behaves like that and some grade are almost impossible to corrode under normal conditions. Getting the right steel for the kind of conditions a car would see is not a new problem and we’ve had good solutions for decades. There were stainless steel train carriages in the 1960s, for example. These were pristine after much more than a couple of months and were not washed every other day. > One thing about your sink: You probably clean it. The kitchen sink is a good example. It should not rust if you leave water in it for a month, even though a stainless steel knife might get pitted after a couple of times in a dishwasher. The alloys are not the same, and the conditions are different. The knife requires some mechanical properties whilst corrosion resistance is more important for the sink. The number of times you wash your sink does not matter.
- tialaramex 3y agoAll the train cars I can think of were painted, except for some bulk carriers, and usually the bulk carriers I've seen were brown with rust (is that what Cybertruck customers were looking for?) except for the parts covered in graffiti (i.e. paint although not methodically applied). The Cybertruck deliberately isn't painted, presumably this makes it look more "Cyber". And passenger trains are washed pretty often, it might be as infrequently as once or twice a week (?), but they get washed, that's why they have automated train washing, the train driver just drives through at a slow pace and the machine does the work. I live next to an ocean, I reckon if "We can use just a steel grade which avoids corrosion" was even an option some the vessels here would just be made of that steel, instead of painted, and yet every single metal vessel I've seen here (the sailing boats and speedboats are often fibreglass) was painted. So if the right grade of steel exists apparently you can't use it to make boats.
- dghughes 3y agoThere are a few types of stainless steel Elon probably chose the cheapest.
- xedeon 3y agoLoud and wrong: https://www.capitalone.com/cars/learn/finding-the-right-car/at-tesla-hfs-is-short-for-stainless-steel/2977 https://www.capitalone.com/cars/learn/finding-the-right-car/...
- brewdad 3y agoOf course they developed a proprietary steel and then shipped it for customers to test in production.
- xedeon 3y agoI think in this case, SpaceX engineers know more about material science than a rando HN user.
- defrost 3y agoWhat about Tesla engineers? How about HN users that took actual Engineering and specialised in material sciences and are familar with the austenitic stainless steel family? Meh, forget all that - are you stating that the steel cladding on current Cybertrucks is not showing pitting and corrosion despite claims to the contrary?
- 12_throw_away 3y agoYou've just linked to a fluff piece on a credit card site, and it doesn't even address the original statement.
- fecal_henge 3y agoEasily discredited.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- throw0101b 3y ago> I was under the impression that stainless steel didn't rust They call it stainless (as in, fewer stains) and not stainfree steel for a reason. /s
- brudgers 3y agoSomeone maximizing profit.
- globular-toast 3y agoDeLoreans were raw stainless without a clearcoat. I wonder if they suffered from rust too. Even if they didn't, the Cybertruck is at least nominally supposed to be a "tough" "work vehicle" "man" type thing, not a sports car (although I'm sure many will have an easier life than a DeLorean).
- rtkwe 3y agoThere are additional treatments you can apply to stainless steel to make it more resistant to rusting. There's the passivation process that forms a very corrosion resistant (nearly impervious) film on the surface by depleting the iron in the top layers. It's expensive to do well though and the best methods produce some fairly toxic byproducts because it's done with nitric acid to get the best results.
- jtriangle 3y agoNitric acid is just faster, the passivation layer isn't better than you get with plain old citrc acid. Passivation isn't really enough for a car though, they basically get sand blasted while driving on the road, and every little pit is an area where the material would have to repassivate without rusting. SS301 isn't nearly as good at that game as some other alloys.
- CoastalCoder 3y ago> DeLoreans were raw stainless without a clearcoat. I wonder if they suffered from rust too. Well, they were designed to handle a lot of snow.
- EricE 3y agoAh, the 80's!
- jeffbee 3y agoNobody's DeLorean ran long enough to discover if it would rust.
- 3y ago
- fullshark 3y agoSomeone trying to show how bold and revolutionary their vision is, unwilling to hear the word "no." I'll give you one guess.
- sonicanatidae 3y agoI wonder if he's a No Rust absolutist, as well.
- concordDance 3y agoAre you making the assumption this will be a universal problem rather than being a manufacturing defect or specific to some types of environments?
- calamari4065 3y agoThe assertion is that raw untreated stainless is a bad idea for a car, so yes.
- bilsbie 3y agoMy silverware?
- numbsafari 3y agoWay too cutting edge.
- ijhuygft776 3y agoGood quality stainless steel doesnt rust... it's a great idea. I wish my car didn't need paint...
- HumblyTossed 3y agoMusk. He makes every design and engineering decision. (To hear him talk, you would think this, at least.)