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Tesla to recall more than 46,000 Cybertrucks due to exterior panel issue
- yabones 2y agoIt boggles my mind that anybody thought gluing exterior panels to the car was a good idea. Not just trim, entire body panels. Any other vehicle has the body as part of the actual structure, but for some reason on this one they're just decorative cladding. Is there any good reason for this?
- alistairSH 2y agoProbably cost savings. Or being different for the sake of being different. Who know. I still can't believe people continue to pay a premium to a brand that has (one of?) the highest recall rates in the industry.
- latentcall 2y agoIt’s funny because the Ford Pinto is thought of as an example of an unreliable death trap but the deaths from Tesla’s poor craftsmanship and design heavily outweigh the Pinto by a wide margin. Teslas marketing is genius though, preventing them from being known as death traps by regular people.
- daghamm 2y agoDo you know where to find statistics on accidents and fatalities per vehicle or brand? Do for example insurance companies provide such data?
- enoch_r 2y ago> It’s funny because the Ford Pinto is thought of as an example of an unreliable death trap but the deaths from Tesla’s poor craftsmanship and design heavily outweigh the Pinto by a wide margin. What are the stats you're referencing here? I find this difficult to believe, as modern cars are generally much safer than cars from the 1970s and Teslas seem to perform well in crash tests. They'd need to be incredibly dangerous relative to other modern cars to be as dangerous as a typical car from the 1970s.
- ceejayoz 2y agohttps://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/report-cybertruck-safety-ford-pinto/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/report-cybertru... > An analysis published Thursday by the auto news website FuelArc found that, in their one year of existence, the approximately 34,000 Cybertrucks on the roads had five fire fatalities, giving them a fatality rate of 14.5 per 100,000 units. That’s 17 times the fatality rate of the Ford Pintos, whose famously flawed gas tank design on the car’s rear end led to 27 reported fire fatalities in its nine years on the road, resulting in a fatality rate of 0.85 per 100,000 units, according to FuelArc.
- rsynnott 2y agoThere probably aren't enough of these in the wild to have very much confidence, mind you.
- enoch_r 2y agoThis is really, really bad. The Ford Pinto number is the total number of deaths that the NHTSA found to have occurred between 1970 and mid-1977 (so not the full 9-year period) in rear-impact crashes that resulted in a fire. This is not comparable to the total number of fatalities involving fire and a Cybertruck (regardless of the impact type, or lack thereof, e.g. the Las Vegas fatality was due to the guy shooting himself in the head). Not a single one of the three Cybertruck incidents would have been included in the Ford Pinto statistic because none of them were rear-impact crashes that resulted in a fire. According to the Wikipedia article about the Pinto: > At the time only 1% of automobile crashes would result in fire and only 4% of fatal accidents involved fire, and only 15% of fatal fire crashes are the result of rear-end collisions. So we'd expect the total fire fatality rate to be about 6.5x the fatality rate specific to rear-end collisions that resulted in fire. And of course, saying "Teslas are more dangerous than Ford Pintos" is very different than saying "the Tesla Cybertruck has a higher rate of fire fatalities than the Ford Pinto." Even the latter statement would be incorrect but the former is simply absurd.
- reitzensteinm 2y ago
- lesuorac 2y agoFord Pino is just thought of that because it had a very famous book written singling it out. The unsafe practices were just common for the time and it wasn't Ford being uniquely dumb.
- slashdev 2y agoModel Y has a fantastic safety record. I find this hard to believe. Do you have a source for your claim? NHTSA gives a 1-5 star rating for vehicle safety and both the Model 3 and Model Y score 5 stars in all 3 categories: Frontal Crash: 5 stars Side Crash: 5 stars Rollover: 5 stars A 2023 Toyota Prius gets: Frontal Crash: 4 stars Side Crash: 5 stars Rollover: 4 stars Chevy Bolt: Frontal Crash: 5 stars Side Crash: 5 stars Rollover: 4 stars Mercedes E Class: Frontal Crash: 5 stars Side Crash: 5 stars Rollover: 4 stars
- lotsofpulp 2y agoNot that this is hard data, but I always remember this event when Model Y’s safety is brought up: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wife-radiologist-drove-tesla-ca-cliff-family-said-purpose-unsealed-doc-rcna85033 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wife-radiologist-drove-...
- slashdev 2y agoI cannot believe they all survived driving off the cliff like that. Amazing. Also it's super twisted that he drove his family off the cliff on purpose to kill them all. Yeesh.
- maximinus_thrax 2y agoDon't confuse safety rating with safety record. The real world numbers say otherwise for the Cybertruck https://fuelarc.com/evs/its-official-the-cybertruck-is-more-explosive-than-the-ford-pinto/ https://fuelarc.com/evs/its-official-the-cybertruck-is-more-... And we're talking about the cybertruck here, the Model Y is irrelevant to this conversation.
- enoch_r 2y agoThis article is a great example of motivated reasoning. It's comparing two wildly different numbers: the Ford Pinto number is the total number of deaths that the NHTSA found to have occurred in rear-impact crashes that resulted in a fire. The Cybertruck number is the total number of deaths from all incidents involving fire and a Cybertruck. According to the Wikipedia article about the Pinto: > At the time only 1% of automobile crashes would result in fire and only 4% of fatal accidents involved fire, and only 15% of fatal fire crashes are the result of rear-end collisions. So as a back of the envelope calculation, we'd expect the total number of Pinto fire fatalities to be about 6.5x the fire fatality rate specific to rear-end collisions. Even then, I doubt that statistic would include incidents like the Las Vegas case where the man shot himself in the head while detonating an improvised explosive in his Cybertruck. This doesn't even get into sample size - the Tesla numbers are based on only 3 incidents and 5 fatalities: - one, a single-car accident in which 3 people died, - two, a single-car accident in which 1 person died, and - three, the driver shot himself in the head If, say, the first driver hadn't had any passengers and the third driver had not been included in the sample (because it's not a collision), the Cybertruck's rate would be 60% lower. With such a small sample, it's very silly to make confident assertions about the relative risks here. Finally, both articles are only talking about fire risks, not overall safety record. I would definitely bet that the Cybertruck has a significantly lower fatality rate per mile than a 1975 Pinto purely based on changes in vehicle safety testing and engineering since the 1970s.
- jejeyyy77 2y agothey are mostly "software recalls"
- lotsofpulp 2y agoBecause the recalls on 95% of the cars Tesla has sold (Model 3 and Y) are basically all software updates that users never notice, and evidently don’t cause tons of car crashes. When millions of people use a car day in and day out and don’t even notice a recall, I wouldn’t expect them to care. As an example of why recalls are not the end all-be all either, Subaru lost a phantom power draw class action lawsuit due to faulty design of their Starlink head unit, and they didn’t even have to do a recall, even though it cost me thousands to fix. And because I fixed it myself before the lawsuit, I’m not eligible for any compensation, even though Subaru knows every VIN with the faulty design. https://www.subarubatterysettlement.com/ https://www.subarubatterysettlement.com/
- brk 2y agoNot an entirely new concept really. Many cars over the years have had what are basically adhesive attached panels and components. Saturn had vehicles with composite panels attached similarly iirc. And I believe the weird GM minivan of the early 90’s did as well.
- ceejayoz 2y agoI'd presume most of those weren't marketed as bulletproof, though.
- itsoktocry 2y agoThis looks like a pretty standard recall, no? I see it referenced as a "trim piece", in which case gluing or taping is pretty standard. But I don't know what a "cant rail" is. What I find funny is that, historically, the Tesla fans would laugh at every other car company's recalls, when Tesla only had a relatively small number of cars on the road. Now they recall just like everyone else.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- sho_hn 2y agoThe "cant rail" in question here is the exterior cladding of the A pillar and along the panoramic roof, adjacent to the windshield. Noting that sharp-edged, robust stainless steel trim pieces falling of cars can be a pretty significant safety risk to the traffic around the affected car.
- cjbgkagh 2y agoWelding would show up as heat marks since it’s not painted
- SteveNuts 2y agoTrue, I wonder if the cladding could have flanges on the backside that could be bolted/welded though, which would by invisible from the outside of the vehicle
- cjbgkagh 2y agoI think the surfaces are mated on the edges, there would be a bend on the edges if you were to install a flange there. That would probably look weird. It's cold rolled steel which has nice properties but makes it difficult to install flanges. It's a hard look to achieve which makes it technically impressive but does require such compromises such as using glue. While I don't like the Cyber Truck design aesthetically or technically the manufacturing techniques used to create it are impressive. I do wonder if the manufacturing was done this way to have an option to make cheap military vehicles at scale, like how VW factories are now considering being repurposed to produce military vehicles. Personally the Toyota Hilux Champ 2.4L diesel is more my speed.
- rsynnott 2y ago> I do wonder if the manufacturing was done this way to have an option to make cheap military vehicles at scale ... I mean, while it would be very _funny_, I'm not sure that there's much market for self-disassembling tanks.
- cjbgkagh 2y agoI think due to drones there will be a trend towards very lightly armored vehicles that spend most of their time loitering with short periods of shoot-and-scoot. When even tanks can be destroyed by drones it doesn't make much sense to keep pursing stronger, heavier, and more expensive armor. The versatility of the CyberTruck manufacturing chain would make it pretty easy to pump out many variants for different roles and easily change the variants as tactics progress.
- sidewndr46 2y agoThe Saturn product line was made this way for a long time, it worked really well. You could go buy a new "skin" and just glue it on.
- mdshw5 2y agoSaturn had polyurethane body panels that were mounted using bolts and washers similarly to steel bodywork.
- rich_sasha 2y agoMeta; as a non-engineer I'm always fascinated by all the seemingly arbitrary, though surely well thought through design choices that go into anything mechanical. For example, panels can be screwed in, welded, glued, riveted, snugly fitted, attached with some kind of retaining bolt... And so on. When assembling IKEA furniture, someone clearly though some bits require dowels, other screws or nails, other still those weird round spirally things that, when twisted, pull the metal bit in. I guess car panels obviously (???) need to be removable for repairs, but still. In an alternative universe, I'd love to be an engineer and understand some of those things.
- digdugdirk 2y agoThink of different manufacturing techniques as software frameworks - different frameworks (manufacturing techniques) have a niche that they can do well, but they all have their impacts on development (manufacturing/assembly/shipping) and operational costs (long term reliability in the field). Sometimes developers swear by a framework and know it inside and out, but ask them to work in a different framework and they'll be slow to get up to speed and potentially make mistakes that experienced developers wouldn't. The main breakdown in this analogy is that the differences between manufacturing techniques can be immense, so the range of "good" techniques for any specific application is much narrower. Using one manufacturing technique vs another might result in not being able to ship your product in separate parts, making your shipping costs 20% higher and reducing your profit margin into the "bankruptcy" range.
- rich_sasha 2y agoThis seems like a decent analogy. Still, one product might use lots of different processes in different places. It's a bit like mixing many different web frameworks within one web app, for example.
- unsnap_biceps 2y agoI'd say the better analogy is different libraries rather than frameworks.
- Lanolderen 2y agoYou have glue on Lotus chassis for example so glue can be structural in automotive. AFAIK it's just unrepairable. Feel free to correct me.. Edit: For non car peeps, Lotus build essentially track day cars with a light chassis and as many parts from popular manufacturers as possible to keep maintenance cheap. They see a lot of abuse.
- chneu 2y agoLotus doesn't make cars to last. They make them for the track and it's assumed the owners will be doing more than normal maintenance.
- Lanolderen 2y agoEh.. Kinda? There are plenty of running 25 y/o elises with over 100k km on them. Definitely with more maintenance than normal but it'd be mostly consumables and those 100k km won't be gentle. I doubt under the same conditions even a Toyota or Honda would wear better (and they don't have to).
- dagw 2y agoLotus build essentially track day cars They used to at least. These days they seem to mostly be focusing on electric SUVs and GT cars.
- Suppafly 2y agoEvery car on the road today has tons of stuff held together with glue, most people commenting here don't realize that though.
- priced_in 2y agohttps://www.legaldive.com/news/tesla-twitter-mass-arbitration-contract-clause-musk-liss-riordan/639224/ https://www.legaldive.com/news/tesla-twitter-mass-arbitratio... Tesla is using customer as guinea pigs. They don't care if you die, the paperwork says they are not liable for whatever happens. Rest assured they'll learn from your demise and they'll update their software with another experiment that might be less lethal this time, who knows!
- tiahura 2y agoLinux and my tv both have paperwork that says they aren’t responsible. Nobody cares.
- priced_in 2y agoPoint is Tesla doesn't sell cars, they sell an experiment. Your TV doesn't propel you at 70mph with brakes not responding (https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/tesla-cybertruck-malfunction-driver-reports-brake-airbag-issues-1724220 https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/tesla-cybertruck-malfunction-drive...), or brakeing whenever it feels like it (https://www.cdr-news.com/categories/litigation/tesla-hit-with-phantom-braking-class-action/ https://www.cdr-news.com/categories/litigation/tesla-hit-wit...) or runs you into a wall (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/26/tesla-autopilot-fatal-crash https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/26/tesla-aut...), the list goes on. When my TV glitches, nobody dies... ever...
- cgannett 2y agoThat implies they are actually trying to learn anything from their failed rollouts.
- lazide 2y agoMost trucks have ‘body on frame’ construction. Not clear on Cybertruck stuff, but for normal ICE trucks, the towing and payload requirements, plus large engines just make it easier. They tend to be less sensitive to the need for optimizing strength-weight ratio like modern emission controlled cars too, or precisely engineered crumple zones, which is a large part of why modern cars are unibody construction.
- klysm 2y agoI don’t think it’s inherently a bad idea. Industrial adhesives can be incredibly strong and perform better than fasteners in many use cases. They are tricky though and there’s many ways things can go wrong.
- parsimo2010 2y agoI used to own a plane that had metal wings glued together. The Grumman Tiger literally had aluminum wing skins bonded onto the plane. No rivets or screws. They had some early issues with the glue they picked, but after picking a different glue it was a really reliable method. There are some of these planes flying still and are getting almost 50 years old. Many modern cars use the body panels as structural members because it is weight efficient, but trucks were probably the last category of automobile to adopt this trend. It is not necessarily bad design to have a separate frame, you just pay a weight penalty. Engineers may choose to do this because they have other design priorities than weight. Tl;dr: Glue is an okay design choice. Non-structural panels are an okay design choice. The Tesla engineers just didn’t get the details right.
- Suppafly 2y ago>Tl;dr: Glue is an okay design choice. Non-structural panels are an okay design choice. The Tesla engineers just didn’t get the details right. I think a lot of people commenting on this have no idea how much of their car is held together with glue. The interesting thing here is that the glue failed, not that glue was used in the first place.
- pjc50 2y agoOnly "monocoque" designs use the panels as part of the structure. But normally they're bolted on. If you look at, say, https://www.paintedcarpanels.co.uk/ford%2Dfocus%2D2008%2D2011%2Dn%2Fs%2D%28left%29%2Dfront%2Dwing%2Dpainted%2Dpanther%2Dblack%2D%2D%2Dnew%7E854 https://www.paintedcarpanels.co.uk/ford%2Dfocus%2D2008%2D201... - left of photo you can see a "tab" extending from the panel with bolt holes, and top you can see a semi-circular pair of prongs. The panels are bolted on, and the bolts hide inside the engine bay or under other bits of trim. The Cybertruck deliberately uses flat panels for its "aesthetic", and I believe their material is harder to bend for purposes of making these little fixing points. Combine that with the polygonal structure and there's probably no other way to do it other than welding mounts to the back. Still a bizarre decision, though: what happens when you need to change a panel? How do you get them unglued only at the right time? How heat-sensitive is it?
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoIt was originally supposed to be an exoskeleton of folded metal. This informed the whole design, it would lead to a lightweight, low cost truck that could be delivered with the battery tech available at the time. They highlighted not painting it as a cost saving move at the reveal. Then they gave up on that idea as unworkable, but kept the look, so it's like designing a bit of furniture around some fancy solid wood steam bending technique then trying to fake it with wood laminate. It was also delayed so long that other truck manufacturers just used the cheaper batteries available by then to make competitive trucks based don standard truck bodies.
- disqard 2y agoI have never heard this until just now, and it explains so much! (from 2019) > The terminology Rickard used for this process was "to score" the sheet. Musk talked about how deep a score the Cybertruck needed for bends via Twitter. He said, “Even bending it requires a deep score on inside of bend, which is how the prototype was made.” After the design is drawn out, the corners and edges are cut out with either a laser cutter or a water jet, while the sheet lays flat. Next, the stainless steel sheet is folded, like origami, and welded into shape. “You basically take one or two sheets and fold them up into a truck, which is a huge cost-saving,” said Rickard. According to him, the whole process makes stamping machines unnecessary and lends itself well to robot laser assembly. https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/elon-musk-explains-cybertrucks-angular-steel-design https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/elon-musk-exp...
- tmaly 2y agoI found out that the door on my honda civic is glued to the door frame. The dent I got in it cannot easily be pulled out due to the glue. Gluing makes things harder to fix.
- itbeho 2y agoSearch for something called "panel bond adhesive". It's commonly used in modern automotive manufacturing and repair.
- rsynnott 2y agoThat’s not very typical, I’d like to make that point.
- magicalhippo 2y agoReference for those who haven't seen it yet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- myrmidon 2y ago[flagged]
- pc86 2y ago> In Comments > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- myrmidon 2y agoI know the guidelines. But downvoting without comment would not have helped get my point across in any way. I also hope of making other people scrutinise their own voting behavior, and be more mindful/conscious in those interactions and their outcome. I personally love HN for the fact that you often have interesting insights in comments from the people actually involved; meme-like comments like the above drown those out, and I would rather try and prevent that.
- qwertytyyuu 2y agoI’m surprised they managed to sell that many
- solfox 2y agoI wouldn't be surprised to learn that many were given away at deep discounts or for free to help grow "awareness" and make it look more popular than it is.
- sidcool 2y ago[flagged]
- firefax 2y ago>honestly, any Tesla news coming from CNN, I take it with a pinch of salt. What specific facts in the article do you question? Edit: Please don't silently downvote me without answering my question, it shows a lack of capacity for critical thought.
- xurias 2y agoHow about Reuters and some others? https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-recall-over-46000-cybertrucks-nhtsa-says-2025-03-20/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-... https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/tesla-to-recall-over-46000-cybertrucks-nhtsa-says-3938595 https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/tesla-to-re... https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-recall-over-46-000-091416435.html https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-recall-over-46-000-0... https://www.cnbctv18.com/auto/tesla-recalls-46096-cybertrucks-as-panels-risk-flying-off-on-the-road-19576677.htm https://www.cnbctv18.com/auto/tesla-recalls-46096-cybertruck... I think it's weird to dismiss an article without engaging with it at all and not making any arguments as to why it should be dismissed beyond "it's CNN". What news sites would you believe?
- jghn 2y ago>coming from CNN, I take it with a pinch of salt We can't all get our news from OANN and Joe Rogan
- cantrecallmypwd 2y agoI call him Joe Rogaine.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- burkaman 2y agoThis is a Reuters story, and if you doubt it for some reason you can find the actual NHTSA notice in 10 seconds.
- meristohm 2y agoThose are actual functioning vehicles, and not just props from Bladerunner? A bicycle is by far more attractive that these oddities.
- cbm-vic-20 2y agoIgnoring its engineering faults (and those of its current CEO), I appreciate that a car company went way off script and designed something that's really out there, design-wise.
- latentcall 2y agoI agree with this. It definitely is out there, and futuristic looking. It’s also totally in cyberpunk standards that it’s just a giant hunk of crap.
- qwerpy 2y agoIt’s very functional! Where else can you get a self driving truck that protects its occupants extremely well and automatically powers the house during an outage? It has been a great vehicle for family ski trips and camping. Don’t just listen to the haters, there are a bunch of us that actually enjoy our cybertrucks :)
- tencentshill 2y agoYou can use those detached steel panels as skis, or as a tent frame! Elon truly is the smartest man on earth.
- croes 2y agoWhat about pedestrians? There is a reason why modern cars aren’t that stiff.
- tim333 2y agoI'm not a Musk fan but I actually think they are kind of cool. Though opinions differ - Onion: https://theonion.com/am-i-ugly/ https://theonion.com/am-i-ugly/
- ChoGGi 2y agoIt's a bit worse than that article makes it out to be. Other panels are falling off as well. https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F5zdqfqs1o20d1.jpeg https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F5... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bjatlUkM0ng https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bjatlUkM0ng
- jejeyyy77 2y agothe youtube video is clearly AI voice lol
- ChoGGi 2y agoDid the AI voice make the panel come loose?
- criddell 2y agoThe guy in this video pulled it a bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK_EJ3DyiiA&t=1110s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK_EJ3DyiiA&t=1110s But still it came off a lot easier than I would have expected. I kind of hate linking to this channel because in some ways I think it's the worst of YouTube.
- alamortsubite 2y agoI'm very curious as to what the remedy will be. Other panels seem to be detaching, as well. Will they have to remove and reattach all panels from every vehicle? Also, does the 46000 include every Cybertruck sold to-date?
- Suppafly 2y ago>Also, does the 46000 include every Cybertruck sold to-date? I suspect it includes all the unsold ones sitting in storage lots, but who knows.
- xyst 2y agoTSLA honestly feels like the next Enron. Stock is overvalued to hell. Leadership continues to sell (AI, self driving vehicles, tesla pays for itself via taxi service, …) investors on new projects but ultimately failing to deliver to market. The “Cybertruck” flop is just the most recent example. Did you also catch the gaudy sales pitch Elon and Orange Man had on the _White House_ lawn? This company is a failure. Its leadership is clueless. It’s all built on a house of cards.
- techpineapple 2y agoWon't be the next Enron until we get an administration that isn't owned by Elon.
- disqard 2y agoThe administration is owned by many different bosses: Elon, Putin, Saudis, ... (dunno if there's eight).
- bearjaws 2y agoJust remember, your Model 3, Y and X could have been significantly better for the same price had Tesla not built this piece of trash due to a ketamine addicted CEO, that streams playing video games for hours at a time. Also lol @ this post instantly being forced off the front page.
- spwa4 2y ago... on a "boosted" account. Which means you pay a good player to play on your account to it gets better stats, and then he pulled an Elon ... in other words, he lied about someone else's performance really being his own. He does that a lot.
- aredox 2y agoTesla managed to fumble attaching flat metallic panels to a frame. What a joke of a company. They survive on battery tech, and software, but the rest of their engineering is dismal.
- albertgoeswoof 2y agoLuckily I paid 8k extra for Full Self Driving, so my car can just drive itself to the dealership for the fix while I'm at work. right?
- techpineapple 2y agoI hate when they used the word “recall” on issues that can be fixed with an OTA update!
- disqard 2y agoOwner Touch-up Adhesive update, right? /s
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y agoThe flaggings will continue until morale improves.
- bandrami 2y ago"The body panels are glued to the frame?!" "Well, I mean, not for very long..."