Tesla Cybertruck No Match for Car Wash

https://jalopnik.com/tesla-cybertruck-no-match-for-car-wash-1851417011

by Tomte • 2 years ago

61 104 2 years ago

kleiba2• 2 years ago

What has the world come to?

A call with Tesla confirmed that the truck had needed a complete reboot which took over five hours of sitting to complete.

Apparently so far that we put so much software in a car that it takes multiple hours to boot.

kleiba2• 2 years ago

Working on updates

20% complete

Don't turn off your computer

jc_811• 2 years ago

I will never understand why Elon decided to go all in on the Cybertruck. Did anyone, at any point, think this was a good idea besides himself?

garbagewoman• 2 years ago

It was easier to make than a new roadster and gets just as much press

Hamuko• 2 years ago

Isn't the Roadster hard to make only because Elon keeps saying dumb things about it, like that it'll come with rocket boosters that maybe even allow it to fly[1]?

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1005577738332172289

bamboozled7• 2 years ago

I think cars are the exception to the rule: "there's no such thing as bad press".

AdamN• 2 years ago

Trucks are very high margin and he has a chance to take over a top selling segment in the US. If the gen2 version hits it's stride it could be a multi-billion dollar win that pays out over decades.

I won't buy it for multiple reasons though: 1/ it's a truck, 2/ Elon Musk, 3/ build quality, 4/ UX.

Ekaros• 2 years ago

Did they actually go all in? Or did they just execute something shoddily thrown together? Not that it wasn't waste of time and resources...

TheAlchemist3• 2 years ago

It's a very very stupid idea. But the idea itself is not really the problem here.

If they did deliver the truck they announced, with the price they announced, I think it may sell well - only in the US, but still.

The problem is, that they delivered a truck with 1/2 the range, 2x the price and that's very clearly not yet finished.

I have this theory, that Tesla is going to need to raise a lot of capital very soon or it will go belly up, and hence Musk is trying every trick he has available to sell some kind of futuristic vision, so that investors turn a blind eye to their actual business.

DennisP2• 2 years ago

From a glance at their financials, they have $29 billion in cash, $9.5 billion in debt, and positive cash flow of $4 billion annually. Why would they go belly up?

lotsofpulp3• 2 years ago

I suggest reading their audited reports and understand their financials instead of guessing (a guess that is completely wrong).

https://ir.tesla.com/sec-filings

https://ir.tesla.com/_flysystem/s3/sec/000162828024002390/ts...

This website offers nice breakdowns and history of the financials:

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSLA/tesla/long-te...

wongarsu• 2 years ago

Elon came up with the Cybertruck when Tesla was deep in production problems. It's basically the result of Elon solving production problems at day, and dreaming of an easier to make car at night. That's why the bodywork looks like you could make it by just taking a big sheet of metal, put a couple of straight bends in it, weld like 4 seams and you're done. The rest of the car follows a similar design philosophy of making it stupid easy to manufacture and assemble, and leaving as much as possible to software.

Turns out they didn't execute that idea very well. They should have probably spent a couple more months testing prototypes. Or maybe the design philosophy just doesn't make for very good cars, it's hard to tell.

llamaimperative• 2 years ago

It’s not hard to tell: it’s an absolutely atrocious idea with nearly zero public (ie market) appeal.

The fact the execution is separately so awful is just icing on top.

mrpopo• 2 years ago

And remember that the Cybertruck is steer by wire. The software controls the entire car, and it also happens that the software just randomly crashes.

tetris112• 2 years ago

Thankfully steer-by-wire has been crash tested by the aviation industry...

MissTake5• 2 years ago

The aviation industry is also chock full of mandatory servicing requirements[1] that even lead to semi strip downs at regular intervals.

However, once purchased, one is legally allowed to drive a CyberTruck no matter how old or how many issues there are (being licensed and insured etc. aside).

[1] https://www.aopa.org/go-fly/aircraft-and-ownership/maintenan...

araes• 2 years ago

Mid-flight, "Hi, this is the captain. We're terribly sorry, but the plane will now be going into a 5 hour reboot mode. We flew through a rain cloud in the sun. Do not be alarmed when the lights turn off and the engines cease."

daghamm2• 2 years ago

I believe almost all modern vehicles are like that.

(drive by wire, not crashing all the time)

gizmo• 2 years ago

The cybertruck doesn't just have drive-by-wire it has steer-by-wire. That's really unusual for cars.

Vecr• 2 years ago

Absolutely not, the other current effort is on a few Lexus systems, I don't know its current status. Accelerate by wire, but drive by wire.

IsTom• 2 years ago

Not sure it's still like that, but for a very long time EU required that there is a mechanical linkage between steering wheel and actual steering.

paganel• 2 years ago

The guy from the linked TikToks does mention that he also hosed the inside of the trunk after returning from the beach, that might have been it.

That's always a risky thing to do, even on "conventional" cars (or maybe it's just Volkswagen Group cars that have a habit of electrical malfunctions every time there's water in unusual places involved).

With all that said, last time a car-wash fricked up some of my car's wirings it only meant that a back-light stopped functioning for a day or two (again, maybe this is just a Volkswagen Group thing), while in this case the whole car/truck got bricked. That's not ideal.

jdmichal• 2 years ago

I'm not familiar with the design. Does the Cybertruck have a trunk, or are you referring to the truck bed? And if the latter, is it not intended that the bed is open-weather?

MissTake5• 2 years ago

It does. It’s located at the front of the vehicle and therefore known as a “frunk”.

saalweachter• 2 years ago

Frunk. Front-trunk.

One of the more compelling things about an electric truck, TBH.

Although, as unnecessarily big as they make new ICE trucks, you could probably fit a frunk in there.

voxadam• 2 years ago

The guy from the linked TikToks does mention that he also hosed the inside of the trunk after returning from the beach, that might have been it.

In video[0] the story links to the owner mentions that he "vacuumed the inside". It sounds like what he hosed off was the rigid tonneau[1][2] that covers the bed of the truck. If he had hosed out the interior I'd question his judgement even more than I do for him being a Cybertruck early adopter.

[0] https://twitter.com/StonkKing4/status/1780306557538050532

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonneau

[2] https://insideevs.com/news/693899/tesla-cybertruck-tonneau-c...

unnamed76ri• 2 years ago

I still can’t believe cybertruck isn’t some massive joke. Like Elon one day said to his team, “make me the ugliest truck you can think of and let’s see how many people buy it.”

It looks like a prototype you would see in Popular Science 30 years ago.

littlestymaar• 2 years ago

I have a friend working at Tesla, and he told me a few years ago that his entire team was really impatient to be done with the cybertruck so that they could work on actual cars instead.

mojuba• 2 years ago

The "I am different" show-off effect of the owners is definitely at play here. Musk could have come up with arbitrary but unusual design and still sold it.

throwaway634672• 2 years ago

People love these ugly cars, Mercedes G class is one of the most popular models (and one of the most expensive ones), I think preorders are filled for years to come. Turns out there are tons of jerks that like big, intimidating looking cars that they can pose with.

bamboozled7• 2 years ago

You find g class intimidating ? Beautiful looking things?

davidcbc• 2 years ago

I still can’t believe cybertruck isn’t some massive joke.

It is, but Elon isn't in on it

Ferret7446• 2 years ago

"Ugly" is subjective. I'm sure a lot of people find it to be aesthetically pleasing.

ricardobeat8• 2 years ago

Not a fan of this vehicle at all, but this article is pretty vapid clickbait, besides the unexplained system issue.

No car should be washed in direct sunlight, you'll get spots from drying soap, water etc. And 'car wash mode' is totally normal and standard, you don't want charge ports to open, the wiper to start, or accidentally put it into gear.

I drove a Polestar 2 for a while and was extremely scared of going into a car wash, there are like 17 steps you need to take (including a warning that "the touch-sensitive doors might lock and unlock intermittently during the wash cycle").

TheAlchemist3• 2 years ago

Is this normal for an electric car ?

It sounds kind of crazy to be scary to go into a car wash.

martin_a• 2 years ago

No issues with my Hyundai Kona Electric. Although it does not have features like hidden, touch-sensitive door knobs and whatnot. It washes (and gets dirty) just like any car.

isoprophlex• 2 years ago

The EV car wash experience I'm having: You drive it into the car wash, roll up the windows, put it in neutral. Don't open the doors while it is being washed. You're done.

bamboozled7• 2 years ago

Anecdotal counterpoint, I've owned probably 15 cars in my life. Anything from performance to trucks. I've washed them in the sun, I've washed then in car washes, I've driven them through flood waters. I've actually never had a car that I own, break down on me in my life.

There seems to be a lot of stories like this one regarding cyber trucks. I don't remember reading anything like this about Toyota trucks.

cess11• 2 years ago

I've had fewer cars than that but my experience is similar. Mostly older, youngest was a 2007 make. Take care of fluids, tires and brakes, and they've just worked.

Worst breakdowns I've had have been flat tires, that's a half hour downtime until the spare is switched in. Unexplained five hour "reboots" sounds like a joke. That's not a car, it's a toy.

ricardobeat8• 2 years ago

That doesn't mean your manuals did not warn against doing some of that. Manufacturers want to offload as much liability as possible. Check out the list of warnings for a Corolla: https://www.toyota.com/owners/warranty-owners-manuals/digita...

But most importantly, the story does not provide anything linking the car wash to the truck issue, that was the owner's assumption. It's just speculation / early reporting for the clicks.

elisharobinson• 2 years ago

just means you havnt read much about trucks https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1370PE/#:~:text=(Reut....

mingus88• 2 years ago

Every auto detailing product you see on the shelf has instructions to wash your car in the shade. You don’t want the product to dry out while you are applying it.

This has nothing to do with the CT specifically and it’s actually embarrassing to see this mentioned in the article and interpreted as some kind of slam against Tesla’s quality

op00to2• 2 years ago

How do water spots cause a car to stop functioning?

First, you can absolutely wash a car in the sun and not get spots. With properly filtered water you won’t get water spots.

I wash my black car in the sun because I don’t care about water spots. It’s a car, it gets dirty and wet and clean again. It’s a piece of crap but it never stopped working because it got wet.

ricardobeat8• 2 years ago

They don't. The point is, there's nothing in this report suggesting the water has caused the truck to stop working, despite what the headline implies.

russdill• 2 years ago

There's been a lot of problems with delivered cybertrucks. It going through a car wash could just be a correlation and not a causation

Barrin92• 2 years ago

Or alternatively people could stop buying cars that are designed in this way:

The screen, which runs all functions of the truck, went black, and wouldn’t respond at all [...] A call with Tesla confirmed that the truck had needed a complete reboot which took over five hours of sitting to complete

It's an actual joke that this is what modern automotive engineering has become.

mrkeen• 2 years ago

Or alternatively people could stop buying cars that are designed in this way

It's hard to do in a race-to-the-bottom scenario. I'm not saying that it's the case yet with cars, but it will be eventually.

Same with TVs: I want to give money to the manufacturer who will sell me a TV without advertising malware.

rsynnott4• 2 years ago

It's an actual joke that this is what modern automotive engineering has become.

I mean, there've always been cars with crap electrics; Jaguar used to be notorious, say (because of these people, a case-study in how to screw up competition regulation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_Industries).

throwaway634672• 2 years ago

To me it sounds pretty weird to have a “car wash mode”, I have never encountered this in most ICE cars. I guess newer cars are more fragile though due to the multitude of sensors.

Terr_• 2 years ago

I wonder if it has to do with turning off automatic wipers that misidentify the car wash as regular rain while driving.

lawgimenez• 2 years ago

It seems my Honda 2006 can survive a car wash under a direct sunlight than whatever that thing you are driving right now. I also live near the equator where El Nino is brutal.

Spooky232• 2 years ago

Huh? I’m in my mid-40s, have been washing cars since I was 10. Other than closing the windows, there is no prep procedure.

I’ve never experienced a car that opens and closes its doors when exposed to water, and I never will.

My buddy and I had an idea to buy up low mileage 2002-2005 Hondas and Toyotas to “mothball” and resell at a premium later as a business years ago. We laughed it off, but now I regret not doing it.

ricardobeat8• 2 years ago

If your car doesn't have rain sensors, a powered charge port, automatic door handles, collision warnings, automatic emergency braking, auto parking brake, etc, then yes, nothing to worry about.

ICE higher-end models can also have a lot of assist features that need to be disabled in a car wash.

rsynnott4• 2 years ago

My buddy and I had an idea to buy up low mileage 2002-2005 Hondas and Toyotas to “mothball” and resell at a premium later as a business years ago.

The industry has finally figured this out, too; it looks like we have reached Peak Touch Interface, and a number of manufacturers are either already rolling some of it back or will start in the next model year.

4ndrewl3• 2 years ago

From the owners manual:

Don't wash in direct sunlight.

Do not expose to bright lights.

Do not let it get wet.

No charging after midnight.

pvaldes• 2 years ago

You toke that list from "Gremlins", admit it.

gravescale3• 2 years ago

I just wish they could make electric cars with our all the touch sensitive glossy dogshit. Just a decent make's mid-spec car circa 2010 with cruise/limit, central locking with a keyfob, Bluetooth, A/C, a decent sound system, the old button/knob console controls and maybe adaptive cruise if that's your thing. This was all a completely solved problem 15 years ago.

Just swap (yes i know it's not a straight swap, the chassis and other bits are basically completely different) the engine for battery, motors and regenerative brakes. That's the only change that needs making to the visible function of the car.

Leave out the touch screens, proprietary nav running on an underpowered shit SoC, media player junk, app control, LED strip lighting, Street sign sensitive limiters that downshift in traffic because the think they saw a sign that said 30, subscription this and integration that and anything that expects an internet connection. It's all utter dogshit.

ricardobeat8• 2 years ago

There are a few which sit in a decent middleground. Kia and Hyundai EVs, BYD, Nio, Polestar all have a decent amount of physical controls to varying degrees. It's a shame that Volvo went in the opposite direction.

I don't think we can turn the page back on central touchscreens though, there are way too many features and settings that you cannot translate into physical buttons.

beej71• 2 years ago

I have a 25-year-old car. The thing I have to do before a car wash is crank the windows closed.

Some day I'll have to buy a new car, but I'm not looking forward to the bullshit. (Cruise control will be nice.)

shaneos2• 2 years ago

While the car definitely broke down, the suggestion that it was caused by the car wash is pretty disingenuous. Many cars have a "Car wash mode", which ensure that the automatic wipers do not turn on and that the windows stay up. It can also allow the car to be moved slowly through an automated machine I think. Either the author didn't know this, and should try driving a car built in the past 5 years, or they did know and were just chasing clicks. Either way, lazy journalism.

Tomte• 2 years ago

And as far as I understand car wash mode was used, but Cybertruck still died.

op00to2• 2 years ago

None of the “car wash mode” actions you mention would leave a car totally immobile.

shaneos2• 2 years ago

Precisely, I agree. There is nothing to suggest that it was the car wash that bricked the car. It likely would have failed without the car wash. It's pure speculation on the writers part, but it's a nice salacious headline that strikes me as pure laziness

aitchnyu• 2 years ago

Car Wash Mode closes all windows, locks the charge port, and disables windshield wipers, Sentry Mode, and walk-away door locking.

What damage would leave it frozen?

4ndrewl3• 2 years ago

"After filing a ticket with Tesla to get the truck rebooted".

Filing a support ticket to reboot your own car. What a time to be alive.

rhymeswithjazz• 2 years ago

Appropriate dystopia for a dystopian vehicle.

daghamm2• 2 years ago

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

Sounds like pretty normal support response to me

rsynnott4• 2 years ago

Having to _ask support to reboot_ your thing seems a bit odd, tho.

MaxikCZ• 2 years ago

"I tried to but support is unresponsive"

otikik• 2 years ago

“Car wash mode”

Do others have that? Sounds like a very bad design

passwordoops• 2 years ago

If you need to enable "car wash mode" then whatever you own is not a car/truck

bamboozled7• 2 years ago

It sounds concerning to me too, maybe it would be ok if "car wash mode" is automatically activated while doing 100 on the free way without affecting driving performance or safety, which doesn't sound very possible.

rsynnott4• 2 years ago

The Cybertruck’s owners manual does caution against ever washing the truck in direct sunlight, and there is a section expressly mentioning that the truck has to be switched into “Car Wash Mode” before washing to avoid damage to parts of the vehicle.

"You're holding it wrong", car edition.

1vuio0pswjnm7• 2 years ago

Why do people buy^1 these things.

Truly, "buy" is not the correct term. Maybe something like "license" or "support Musk's folly". It's seems like a donation to a WIP, like some overblown Kickstarter project.

kameit00• 2 years ago

Didn‘t Space Karen announce a „Boat Kit“, that turns the truck into an actual boat?

What could go wrong *lol

ThinkBeat• 2 years ago

I have had quite a few different cars, all of which I have used automatic car wash "tunnels" regularly during all seasons of the year.

I have never experienced any problems from it.

Not long ago I read about a Tesla driver S driver who had a fight with Tesla over the paint job. It was deteriorating in a hurry. Tesla said it was due to the owner not following proper car wash procedure. With specific soap at specific temperature and so on.

The driver protested and said they had done everything by the book.

I dont find it reasonable to have so many limiting rules to washing a car .

Then again perhaps this is a common problem with luxury cars. I have never had one of those, except my first car which was a really old Cadillac. The paint was still good even after all those years, and I put it through the aut car wash many times.

bathtub365• 2 years ago

Tesla’s are not really luxury cars. They charge luxury car prices but you seem to get the ride quality, interior quality, build quality, and customer service level of a cheap American domestic car. Luxury German cars of various makes have their own reliability issues and can be expensive to maintain but the quality of car overall is still in another league.

tim333• 2 years ago

It depends a bit how fussy you are about micro scratches on the paintwork. All car washing causes some scratching due to grit on the car and the amount varies depending on how you do it. It's why new cars look shinier than older ones.

Most cars use a similar tech with a clear coat over the paint. For a bit of money you can have it polished smooth again.

Tesla Cybertruck No Match for Car Wash

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