Tesla Cybertruck

Moose said:
Small offset tests are often more challenging than wall tests, the passenger cell will distort more as the un-blocked mass of the vehicle tries to go past the obstacle. But the real issue here is the Tesla's seemingly terrible crumple zone performance. There's not much crumple, and so much of the impact gets transmitted through the solid structure that a rear wheel is nearly torn off. At 35 miles per hour! That's going to be...rough on passengers.
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Obviously needs more triangles in the interstage crumple zone
 
 
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Moose said:
Small offset tests are often more challenging than wall tests, the passenger cell will distort more as the un-blocked mass of the vehicle tries to go past the obstacle. But the real issue here is the Tesla's seemingly terrible crumple zone performance. There's not much crumple, and so much of the impact gets transmitted through the solid structure that a rear wheel is nearly torn off. At 35 miles per hour! That's going to be...rough on passengers.
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I strongly doubt that Tesla did this, but there was a european concept for electric vehicles, where the passenger compartment 'floats' in an interior crumple zone, with a rigid exoskeleton. its supposed to solve the problem with heavy battery powered vehicles requiring large crumple zones
 
zevets said:
I strongly doubt that Tesla did this, but there was a european concept for electric vehicles, where the passenger compartment 'floats' in an interior crumple zone, with a rigid exoskeleton. its supposed to solve the problem with heavy battery powered vehicles requiring large crumple zones
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In the USA, NHTSA as a government agency and IIHS as a nonprofit organization attend to these vehicle safety matters, but as an EU expat living in the USA, I have no clue nor interest whatsoever in what the current European equivalents might be.
 
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martinbayer said:
In the USA, NHTSA as a government agency and IIHS as a nonprofit organization attend to these vehicle safety matters, but as an EU expat living in the USA, I have no clue nor interest whatsoever in what the current European equivalents might be.
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I believe the regulation are about 1:1 - but beyond that, you should interested - its a tough engineering problem!
 
Moose said:
But the real issue here is the Tesla's seemingly terrible crumple zone performance. There's not much crumple,
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Nobody ever won a demolition derby with crumple zones…you win by crumpling the other guy’s crumple zones :)

Really, you should be sitting in the ‘bed’ in a rear facing capsule…that slides forward into where the cab used to be.
 
Arjen said:
Euro NCAP
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Hello Arjen, your point is of course somewhat well taken, but as a Western (Germany still counts as Western, right?) European guest worker/expat living on the Pacific Rim in Coastal Southern California, I'm not familiar with the just googled (the acronym, not the actual program[me]) European New Car Assessment Programme. My ideal car would have all the power train technologies and efficiencies of 2023 combined with all the onboard (voluntary as well as involuntary) communications and diagnostics electronics (or rather lack thereof) of 2003.
 
zevets said:
I believe the regulation are about 1:1 - but beyond that, you should interested - its a tough engineering problem!
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As a natural born rocket man, I'd go H2 all the way - living in sunny Southern SoCal, the nearest hydrogen car refueling station is two and a half miles from my abode.
 
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A very poor Star Trek pun but, "Scott me up Beamy".

I believe the DeLorean thing was the first motor to use stainless steel but I might be wrong there, hardly something for the whatever it is to have bragged about.
 
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martinbayer said:
My ideal car would have all the power train technologies and efficiencies of 2023 combined with all the onboard (voluntary as well as involuntary) communications and diagnostics electronics (or rather lack thereof) of 2003.
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If it exists, I probably can't afford it.
Our current car is a 2002 saab 9-3. At 1300 kg, sfc is equal to / better than the newest road-going behemoths. It's also deaf, dumb and blind on the 'connectedness'-front.
 
I gave up my ideal car. Not fast and more than thirty years old but I felt eveything there was to feel through the steering wheel.

I had to drive the car. It felt really good to get the gear changes right and steer precisely so she did not wobble round corners, thing is this would probably be 'streng verboten' in anything new.

A regal pain in the throne cushion.
 
sferrin said:
My first impression was that it was ugly AF. It's growing on me a bit though.
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You might want to see your doctor about that...



TomcatViP said:
@JFC Fuller :
It seems to me like the new Mustang E-Trash (to fast haul family garbage to your closest trash disposal & recycling container) doesn't have any appeal. Ford built the (Mustang) Probe in the late 80's that had the finest Cx in the world for any mass production car until Testla came. They could have done much better with their first proposal to the electrical car community, especially rebranding the Mustang name.

The E-Tron doesn't have any of the performance advantages of what Tesla offers, nor in price or specs.

Focusing on the Tesla design, you have here a unibody design (a monocoque chassis) that is still rare in the pickup truck segment to make it a weird choice for a PR stunt. It's a lot of design work and production tuning to get to there where a simple body on frame would have done it faster and cheaper.
Given also that they test drive the thing with civilian passengers,reaching scarcely seen acceleration value (equal or better than Lambo specs) I very much doubt that they would have taken the risk and the pain to reach that level only for their marketing division.
The lack of wipers and side view mirror might only reflect a search for new technology. This pickup is built to offer damage & degradation tolerance and this might be part of that philosophy.

There is also the fact already mentioned that this is a market already saturated with owners that tend to stick to the same brand/ same model. So the economical risk are higher than their previous endeavor. If they can past the test with a cheaper to build model (tooling with a drastic drop in body panel number), something that seems to be a new focus for Musk, then it will open the door for new opportunities to build cheaper to make models for a clientele only looking for the specificity unique to Tesla: high power battery, quality built, specs and cost. We might even see a Tesla model competing with entry model (an Austin Mini wedged like?).
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Are we talking about the same Tesla that puts $30k interiors into $100k cars? And can't keep even panel gaps on a brand new vehicle?



Archibald said:
Don't know for the USA, but as an European I can't see any need for a bulletproof car...
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It's not the bulletproofness, it's the "will break whoever or whatever you hit" heavy body that will cause European issues.

I don't know what the US rules are regarding pedestrian impacts are, but judging by how the half-ton pickup trucks have grown in the last 20 years there's no penalty for stuffing a pedestrian under the vehicle and then dragging them for half a mile.
 
Foo Fighter said:
A very poor Star Trek pun but, "Scott me up Beamy".

I believe the DeLorean thing was the first motor to use stainless steel but I might be wrong there, hardly something for the whatever it is to have bragged about.
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I've now repeatedly seen a DeLorean (unsurprisingly minus a flux capacitor) in our rather sleepy Southern California Southern (yes, the double Southern is [un]ironically a thing) Orange County neighborhood, so between that and my recent NV LV "tristar" sighting it's like the eighties want their angular vehicle designs back - deja vu all over again, or just simple synchronicity?
 
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Moose said:
Small offset tests are often more challenging than wall tests, the passenger cell will distort more as the un-blocked mass of the vehicle tries to go past the obstacle. But the real issue here is the Tesla's seemingly terrible crumple zone performance. There's not much crumple, and so much of the impact gets transmitted through the solid structure that a rear wheel is nearly torn off. At 35 miles per hour! That's going to be...rough on passengers.
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It absolutely doesn’t matter what happens to the rear axle in a 35mph frontal collision. Just about any vehicle is totaled out at that speed of impact. Personally, I suspect that the rear motor had been removed from the rear suspension, where it plays a structural role, hence the folding of the axle. Why waste a perfectly good motor on an unofficial crash test?

In any case, you see less damage from a full on impact than from the current standard of 1/4 offset. All of the images of other trucks have been showing 1/4 offset crash tests. I can assure anyone that Tesla’s truck meets current safety standards because if it didn’t the regulators and trial lawyer would have a field day.
 
I have to wonder how the coup happened, another apple core I suppose but the Tesla's are nothing special, awe over substance perhaps.
 
The E-Tron doesn't have any of the performance advantages of what Tesla offers, nor in price or specs.
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It probably doesn't help its sales in the francophone word that "étron" means "poop" / "dong" (or "turd" - you get the point I presume.)

Now imagine if Audi put a ChatGPT A.I in their E-tron: as it sounds like "chat, j'ai pété" - cat, I farted.
"Cat, I farted in the Audi turd car." This doesn't smells good...
 
Scott Kenny said:
You might want to see your doctor about that...




Are we talking about the same Tesla that puts $30k interiors into $100k cars? And can't keep even panel gaps on a brand new vehicle?




It's not the bulletproofness, it's the "will break whoever or whatever you hit" heavy body that will cause European issues.

I don't know what the US rules are regarding pedestrian impacts are, but judging by how the half-ton pickup trucks have grown in the last 20 years there's no penalty for stuffing a pedestrian under the vehicle and then dragging them for half a mile.
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There aren't any rules about vehicle-pedestrian impacts.
 
Euro NCAP:
Speed is a critical factor in determining injury outcome when a vulnerable road user is hit by a car. Many vehicle manufacturers now offer autonomous emergency braking systems which can bring the car to a safe halt before a vulnerable road user – typically a pedestrian or a cyclist – is struck, or at least reduce the speed of the collision.

SOME TESTS ARE DONE IN DAYLIGHT AND AT NIGHT TO ENSURE VULNERABLE ROAD USERS ARE PROTECTED AT ALL TIMES.

For pedestrian detection, Euro NCAP tests three accident scenarios in which the pedestrian crosses directly in front of the path of the test vehicle, one in which the pedestrian is walking in the same direction as the vehicle, one in which the pedestrian is crossing a road into which the test car is turning and one where a pedestrian is behind the reversing car. All these scenarios represent situations which could result in fatal injuries to the pedestrian if the car did not intervene to prevent or mitigate the collision. The crossing scenarios are an adult running from the driver’s side of the vehicle; an adult walking from the passenger’s side (two tests are performed for this scenario); and a child running from between parked cars on the passenger’s side of the car. In the longitudinal scenario, two tests are done: one with the pedestrian aligned with the centre of vehicle; the other with the pedestrian offset to one side. The longitudinal scenario and one of the crossing scenarios are repeated in low-light conditions, as this is a situation in which many pedestrian accidents occur. Two scenarios are used where the pedestrian is crossing a road into which a car is turning: one where the car is turning into a road to its nearside; the other where the road is to its offside. These two versions of the same scenario present different challenges due to the relative angles and distances between test car and pedestrian. The final scenario is reversing. Many pedestrians, especially children, are injured or killed by vehicles reversing into them. Euro NCAP’s test replicates such a situation for different vehicle and target speeds.

Two scenarios are added in 2020: a pedestrian crossing a road into which a car is turning; and a car reversing into a pedestrian

A specially designed pedestrian target is used which has articulated limbs to replicate the walking motion of a human. Cars that perform well in these tests can be expected to have a significantly reduced risk of pedestrian accidents in real-world driving. In some cases, AEB Pedestrian technology may not be able to completely avoid the collision. For this reason, Euro NCAP only rewards the technology if the pedestrian impact tests show that the car has a forgiving front-end design.
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I can't imagine any Cybertruck-lookalike doing well in these tests.
 
Scott Kenny said:
in the US? wouldn't surprise me.
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Europe is a bit different in terms of pedestrian safety. Historically, there were too many narrow medieval street and too little physical separation between vehicles and pedestrians. In recent decades, the shift to pedestrian only districts has improved the problem. Still, it’s easy to see why there are pedestrian impact standards in the EU.
 
TinWing said:
Europe is a bit different in terms of pedestrian safety. Historically, there were too many narrow medieval street and too little physical separation between vehicles and pedestrians. In recent decades, the shift to pedestrian only districts has improved the problem. Still, it’s easy to see why there are pedestrian impact standards in the EU.
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Oh, I agree that those medieval cities make it obvious why there are pedestrian impact standards in the EU.

I'm disappointed that there aren't any in the US.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Oh, I agree that those medieval cities make it obvious why there are pedestrian impact standards in the EU.

I'm disappointed that there aren't any in the US.
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The sad truth is that American pedestrians are disproportionately at fault in pedestrian-vehicle collisions. Outside of affluent urban areas, pedestrians in most of America are disproportionately the drugged, drunk or otherwise mentally impaired. In my region, I’m hard pressed to think of a single pedestrian-vehicle fatality in recent years where the motorist was at fault and ticketed. The old American stereotype of the hit-and-run drunk driver is for the most part obsolete. Opiates have largely replaced alcohol and it very common to have junkies obliviously stumbling into the street. Or walking into the side of moving trucks and busses and being run over by the rear axles. That happens on a regular basis and no pedestrian frontal impact safety standard can prevent it.
 
Even if the pedestrian is at fault, anyone driving a car should at all times be aware of the vehicle's sheer mass - 1 ton for a small car, all the way up beyond three tons for a loaded big one. Looking at my fellow drivers, not all of them act accordingly. At times, with lethal results - even at 10 km/h, getting hit by three tonnes of steel can kill you.
 
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Forest Green said:
Since drive-by-wire throttles came in I see so many weird accidents in situations that just leave you asking, "how?"
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Throttle cables were a lot more trouble than drive by wire. Sometimes they would stretch and after a few years you could not open the throttle up all the way. Or the cable could break. Another issue was water or condensation from under the hood could drip onto the throttle cable assembly and it could freeze with the throttle stuck open. That was a problem on the DeLorean that was fixed with a little metal tab. In 2004, Dodge had a recall for the same issue. https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2004/RCRIT-04V020-5368.pdf

As it turns out, some traditional retro tech was always potentially problematic. I for one, am grateful for drive by wire. I’ve had enough issues with throttle cables on simple power equipment. And I learned to drive on a car with a stretched throttle cable.
 
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