Bonus | The Tesla Cybertruck Automotive Review Disastersode of 2024

The Oxford Dictionary defines perfect as something made completely free from faults or defects. So when I see paid influencers talking about how the Tesla cybertruck is the perfect family vehicle, the insult sinks like a dagger into my brain. So how do I feel about them? Well, I have every reason to believe that I would be as safe inside of a cyber truck as I would inside of the Ocean Gate Titanic submersible. Both were poorly plangelopies, created by oblivious billionaires, each living in bubbles of artificial reality, and released with an incredible number of obvious safety and design issues. So let's get into it. Hello and welcome to this expanded doomsday Patreon content. Picking up where we left off discussing the Tesla cyber truck as the worst vehicle ever developed in the long storied history of the automobile. You'll remember the cyber truck as the vehicle Elon Musk built, brought on stage back in twenty nineteen and immediately broke the unbreakable windows. Well it's five years later and people are still waiting for theirs. They are terribly designed and so fundamentally flawed that as a person who preaches the lessons of safety drawn from disasters. The cyber truck screams irresponsibility at me all the way from the pedestrian guillotine they call a hood to the finger eating trunk. And I don't normally do car reviews on this show. I believe this is my first. However, the point remains, I shouldn't have to do car reviews on this show, yet here we are. I'm here to protect my audience, so that's what I'm going to do. Think of this as one big, somewhat caddy and unbelievable safety segment. The Tesla cyber truck was advertised as having better utility than a truck and more performance than a sports car, and from everything that I have seen, you are possibly better off with a ten year old Toyota. To coma, a friend's son who actually makes more money than all of us listening put together, wants to save up and buy one, so we have been trying to talk him out of it. And why you ask, oh, I don't know. Maybe because of the safety and BILLD issues being revealed every single day since its release. To begin, I mean to pick just one thing and begin. They are made from stainless steel. They're described as having ultimate durability and passenger protection, and yeah, we're going to come back to that. The vehicle has a nearly impenetrable exoskeleton made from ultra hard thirty X coal World stainless steel structural skin, and as soon as they announced this, it was obvious that they had started by looking at one hundred plus years of safety standards of engineering and decide to go another way. My immediate feeling was the Ford Pinto is safer and Pinto's would sometimes explode. Stainless steel is three hundred percent heavier than aluminum for starts, so they basically made the exterior of the car as hard as possible, which i'll explain why that is the worst idea possible. But first, if you've ever owned anything made of stainless steel, you already know they require about as much constant attention as a human child. If you're not on guard with exactly the right specific stainless steel cleaners ready to pounce and clean that thing constantly, Stainless steel will quite famously corrode, which makes it kind of a strange choice for an outdoor, ground level vehicle to call it stainless, but that is a massive misnomer. Stainless steel loves to stain. I mean, if you get water, dirt, snow, rain, salt, saliva, even human fingerprints anything on it and you don't meticulously clear it up almost immediately, those marks can quickly become permanent mementos of a poor purchase decision, which was obviously the way some people felt when their vehicles were finally delivered with the panels misaligned, which creates noise and allows potential water damage for a vehicle that's supposed to be waterproof but according to the manual, cannot survive a car wash. The company promised that every part of the vehicle would be aligned to within ten microns, which is hard enough to do with paper, let alone with ultra hard stainless steel. That beats the hell out of the kind of machinery needed to even try to cut and shape the body of the car, and that is why the vehicle has such an Origami shape to it. And for reference, on those specs, they wanted ten while the width of a human hair is seventy microns. The car I'm driving right now is probably worth about eight hundred dollars and was clearly in an accident at some point because there is a panel gap between the doors which causes wind noise at speed. Course, course, the thing is I did not spend one hundred thousand dollars on it. So let me explain why these things will never be legal in most car markets outside of the United States. If you've seen one of these things, you'll notice quite the unique design. While most every other vehicle on the planet are designed with the kind of increasingly sleek and aerodynamic curves traditionally described as sexy, the cyber truck has more of an etches sketch aesthetic. If you're thinking it has to be for some very important reason that makes this vehicle somehow superior, it's not. It's a flaw, not a feature. You can pound on ultra hard steel with a sledgehammer without making a dent, so it will absolutely refuse to be bent into a friendly or pleasing shape. They have to use industrial machines to score and bend the metal at harsh angles, so those sharp angles are about as streamlined as you're going to get, and of course the result is a pointed edge in the front. Elon Musk has said that yet his unconventional design is there to create a vehicle that stands out from traditional pickup trucks and offers more of a futuristic aesthetic. But if that esthetic is soaked in blood, then just leave me out of it. Any vehicles hit by these things are going to look like they were blown into by a train, and any pedestrians hit by these things are dead. They're just dead. One does not simply walk away from seven thousand pounds of solid steel plowing into them at speed, and that splatter does not just cover the exterior. Unlike every other vehicle produced for the last thirty forty fifty years, the cyber truck takes a colossal leap backwards in safety by removing the all important crumple zone. Every car in the world is designed to crumple, allowing the body of the vehicle to absorb force from the impact, which then redirects around you, the passenger, But cyber truck engineers opted for violence. All the force of any impact is transferred immediately through the body, completely undiminished, and all of that force goes directly into you splag. In crash test videos, passengers in the front and back find themselves flying forward and wrapping around the interior. The Simpsons did a bit once where Lisa watched a crash test of a car from the fourth Reich Motor Company using living humans as crash dummies. Well, it will be less funny when you are the crash dummy. If you're familiar with Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof, you are the ones sitting on the metal seat with no belt. And they certainly didn't point any attention to it. But in the crash video, the rear axle of the truck clearly snaps, and that was only in a thirty mile or fifty kilometers an hour collision. Do you have any idea how much force it takes to snap an axle, Well, a lot more than it takes to dislocate your spine. Oh and on the topic of unbreakable those unbreakable windows, well, a couple weeks ago a man in Texas had his truck out in a parking lot during a hailstorm, and somehow his was it's the only windshield that was cracked. But aren't those windows supposed to be indestructible. Well, the website says it should be able to withstand class for hail, and there's a reason that that's a lie. The windshield is massive and it's completely flat. Again, there's a reason why every other vehicle in the world has a curved windshield. Curved glass is just safer in an accident. It is way less likely to shatter and cause injuries. This is an obvious and proven safety thing that just wasn't so obvious to Tesla. Oh and don't call speedy autoglass unless you've got about twenty three hundred dollars to blow if yours were to break. They're just a little more expensive than regular windshields. Less safe, but also more expensive. Oh and with bulletproof windows and doors, if you do crash in this thing, all of those external cameras can record all the rescue workers just standing around watching you die. Because the thing is, no one's getting into this thing without you being conscious and able to unlock the doors. And this is a small thing, but windshield wipers are designed to be hidden below the visible level of the glass. If they do this for safety and to keep water off the window. Well, the wipers on a cyber truck sit maybe a few inches above the bottom of the glass, kind of like an annoying black line. Just sitting there in your line of sight. And again, yeah, it's a pretty small thing. But if social media has anything to say about it, the cyber truck is all about small things, and it is suffering a death by a thousand cuts. Oh and even though that windshield wiper is the biggest and most expensive in the world, it also clears most of the driver's side window, but the passenger side maybe sixty seventy percent, So there's that. And that single running headlight in the front is not exactly road legal in most places. It's just kind of dim. And it's not just the body that's ready to slice through traffic, both foot and automotive. A lot of people immediately started uploading videos showing how dangerous the trunks can be using vegetables in lieu of fingers. As it stands, the trunk will close on your fingers, your hands, or anything you like. Really, and the only available setting is chop. I saw someone recreate the test with a cadaver modeled hand with bone fingers and ballistic gel skin, and it cut right through the bone and took the thumb off without hesitation. Most other cars that have automatic closing doors have a kind of a pinch protection just to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen. I mean, elevators have had this technology for over fifty years, and much much cheaper vehicles have had this technology in place for decades, but these were not advertised to the public as digit removers. They were sold to the public as futuristic off roading vehicles. The Internet is full of videos of cyber trucks getting stuck on everything from sand to dirt to puddles, puddles that have gone on to kill the electronics. Again, in spite of the boasts that this vehicle is waterproof enough to be used as a boat, the trunk lid on some of these is not even waterproof, and part of the reason that it gets hung up on everything it encounters is because it has some pretty awful traction control. This vehicle is pretty much entirely driven by software, less so with actual hardware, and it doesn't come with differential control, which means that these things will slip and wipe out in fairly normal conditions on ever so slight inclines. However, that's all expected to be fixed in a future software update, so just remember where you got stuck and a band in your vehicle. I can't imagine spending one hundred thousand dollars on a vehicle to find out that the software's not ready. And as long as we're designing a vehicle to be unrecognizable to the average user. You know how your gearshift is either between the driver and passenger seats, right where your hand rests, or on the right side of the steering wheel column. Every car company in the world puts theirs there because they let you safely shift your gear without having to look or think, because it's so intuitive. The cyber truck went a different way. They moved the gearshift to where that useless sun classes holder above the rear view mirror usually sits, and separately as tiny icons on the side of the display screen. I mean, why not just put them in the gloff box or on the side of your seat, or in the back seat for that matter. They chuck all this up to stylistic and minimalist design choices, but really it's just a way to save them money, making driving one of these things less intuitive. The breaking was also rated as poor and unstable. They've come with steering and handling issues like lateral jerking and structural shaking and the tires. Well, tire companies love these vehicles because they are as heavy as hell, which means your tires are going to need to be replaced an awful lot sooner than on a traditional vehicle. And specifically, the cyber truck tires a stick out too far, which they are not supposed to do apparently. And b they've got these goofy ass too expensive for what you get looking hubcaps that sit over the tire. You don't really see hubcaps built this way because they could damage the tire, as shown on the cyber truck where the hubcaps have been physically cutting into the outer walls of tires. They've told drivers just to remove the hubcaps and they'll be redesigned and replaced later, mind you, not for free. Man. I have crapped a lot on this truck. But the single biggest or most common complaint is the mileage. See Tesla promised three hundred and twenty miles or five hundred and fifteen kilometers on a full charge. However, when you see expected mileage on a gas car, you know that they're talking about driving in the most ideal conditions possible and you're never going to get that promised miles per gallon, but in the cyber truck people are reporting that they're getting closer to two hundred miles or three hundred and twenty kilometers. It's like they've taken the comparative predictive ability of a meteorologist and somehow engineered it into a serious range issue. Oh and they don't charge well in the cold, sorry, North America. And not just that. If you thought recharging time was annoying, sometimes people have to reboot. The screen just comes up, craps the bed tells them to restart it, which is supposed to take two minutes. However, people are describing waiting five hours. The cyber truck is a disaster. The cyber truck was released with too many problems, and it was Elon Musk's baby. He even forced employees off other projects to work on it. And now it is out. And you know that meme where the guy's looking at another girl and his girlfriend is looking at him all pissed. Well, Elon is the girlfriend, the guy is the consumer, and the other girl is every other reliable and less expensive electric vehicle option on the market. Last week, one buyer complained that he found a human hair permanently laminated between the layers of glass in his skylight, and that's a pretty weird and unique thing to have to complain about. However, this issue points out another massive behind the scenes problem here balding technicians. Nope, no, that's not it. The problem was he couldn't get it fixed or even looked at, because sales are tanking, and Tesla thought that the best way to offset the loss would be to lay off fourteen thousand service staff across the nation. However, based on everything that's been going on, these should be the busiest service staff anywhere in the country, and now with reduced staff, yeah, even more so. And as a result, service centers have been canceling service appointments like crazy, and a lot of the ones that they do keep, they have to keep telling people that they have no idea how to fix whatever it is that's gone wrong with their car. Imagine being laid off by Tesla, only to be sent a link to a website asking you to sign a petition to help support Elon Musk's fifty five point eight billion dollar bonus check. I've only seen Elon Musk break the windows of a cyber truck. I've never seen him actually squeeze his massive testicles behind the wheel of one. Even his largest retail shareholder and billionaire superfan, le Okogan, is trying to shoot down this bonus package. This guy has plunked billions into Tesla, but he's clearly getting a little too embarrassed to continue. And for context, Elon's bonus package would be worth more than all of General Motors. And I am just saying this one man is not worth more than fourteen thousand employees and certainly not worth more than all of General Motors. And the last I checked, bonus checks are supposed to be rewards for performance, but his performance this year has tanked the stock thirty six percent, and that's just so far. It's weird and ugly encounterintuitive. But when companies slash their staff, that is supposed to help spike their stock prices, but somehow it didn't. And speaking of terrible performance, videos are increasingly surfacing showing a red screen of death telling drivers to pull over immediately because of a voltage is you it says, pull over because I'm turning myself off, whether you do or not, And others simply die as soon as they're delivered More than one driver never made it more than a single mile before their vehicle cacked completely. And the weird thing is, when you think of a car, you think, well, they're all made the same, and once in a while maybe you get a lemon. But in this case, every vehicle seems to malfunction completely differently. Lots of them drive no problem, except for the part where they randomly hop curbs, or steer onto sidewalks, or insist on passing a school bus, which just happened not very far from where I'm recording. Most self guiding cars have radar and ultrasonic sensors to prevent that kind of thing. But again, they went a different way and decided on an untested technology called testlavision, And my review of it thus far is that, hey, my dog has great vision, but she's still too dumb to operate a vehicle. The most frightening experience that I heard of was of a man who took his foot off the accelerator with no reduction in speed. He stopped on the brakes, but the brakes didn't work, and surprise, he crashed. Oh and his air bags didn't work. He could still steer, but the acceleration braking and air bag systems had all gone offline without warning, which again only goes to prove how we've all lived long enough to realize that electronics are not always as safe or trustworthy or cooperative as traditional technologies with physical, moving, connecting parts. I mean, that was the entire point of our thera at twenty five disaster episode. And how many of these things are actually on the road, Well, we're not supposed to know. See Tesla claims that they have sold over one hundred and forty six thousand of these things, but they would never actually say how many had been delivered because deliveries were another massive problem. But we know how many have been delivered? And how did we find out Well, because as I am writing this, quite unexpectedly, Tesla has recalled all the cyber trucks, all three thousand, eight hundred and seventy eight of them, which, as numbers go, tells us that they were hiding the fact that only one in forty people ever received their well almost said working vehicle. And with just one hundred forty two thousand, one hundred and twenty two left to go, I sat and did the math, and assuming a consistent delivery schedule, all of those still waiting for their vehicle should have theirs by August of twenty one thirty six. We got the number because they were legally forced to because of the recall, and they were recalled due to an accelerator pedal issue. Instead of just having a regular acceleration pedal, Elon's Monster comes with a decorative slipcover that you press, which can slip off and become wedged under the footwell, forcing the truck to accelerate at one hundred percent. Thankfully, the breaks will stop the acceleration, but only while you're holding them. The moment you let go. Let's go see that tree. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is pretty interested in this, and because of that, the truest irony of the cyber Truck's failings is that, well, the thing that finally took it down was a low tech, no brainer, physical part that required zero customization, and yet it's still screwed up. Imagine spending one hundred thousand dollars to basically be a beta tester on a vehicle that may disassemble itself or try to kill you randomly. Oh and if you don't like it, you can't resell it. Because Tesla withholds the right to sue you. It's right there in your purchase agreement. Let me actually stop and say that I have zero issue with people using their genius to reinvent old technologies. But that's just not what happened here. Elon Musk may not be a genius, and the Tesla cyber truck didn't reinvent technology, It just replace it with less reliable alternatives. I don't even hate the cyber truck per se. Drivers complain that they don't get the respect they deserve, and to some degree they are correct in a lot of ways. These are absolutely incredible vehicles. I just find it insulting and ill conceived, the dangerous and again insulting, and poor value for the money. And it's overly reliant on brainwash sycophants and fanboys and fickle influencers for sales. It is as if they had said, can you design a vehicle with so many fundamental irritations that it leads to a sense of utter joylessness and despair within three to five years of purchase? Oh, and make it look like an asymmetrical sloping pyramid covered in corroded handprints and rain streaks. Let me say this. Have you ever seen a movie so poorly written that you actually feel dumber for having watched it? Well, I'm about to say something that I can't take back. The Tesla Cybertruck is the Police Academy franchise of automobiles, the lowest rated movie series of all time, specifically five through seven. After everything that I've said, if you have more money than you know what to do with, and you don't take safety or history, or engineering, or fiscal or civic responsibility, all that seriously, by all means, get one, make the most of it, enjoy it. Actually, you know what, screw that. If you're that lucycousy with money and I just saved you on one hundred thousand dollars purchase and you want to thank me, you can find me at patreon dot com slash funeral Kazoo. Otherwise, for the rest of you, I hope that you enjoyed our little disastrous automotive review. We shared a little levity and a lot of consumer outrage, and it's all in good fun and all at the expense of listener of the show. Elon Musk