Tesla Cybertruck was exploded and rusted on a large scale, and this thing is still sold for 500,000?

After three years of skipping tickets and finally starting small-scale deliveries, the Tesla Cybertruck has a big problem again.

The Cybertruck Owners Club Forum in the United States (which has not yet started sales in China) recently launched a wave of "inverted" calls on the grounds that the Tesla Cybertruck, which only began to be delivered at the end of November last year, has recently begun to rust. First, a user named Raxar complained that his Cybertruck was driving in the rain for two days and then it showed rust, and then a user named vertigo3pc tweeted that his outdoor Cybertruck was also rusty.

After that, it was out of control, and many netizens posted photos of their Cybertruck rusting, and Tesla officials had to respond.

For Chinese people, vehicle rust seems to be a very old topic. Why does the 500,000-level Tesla Cybertruck have this problem? Let Kung Fu Auto take you to take a look.

(1) Just rub it, is this a joke?

After the incident, Wes Morrill, the chief engineer of Tesla's Cybertruck, responded immediately, and his statement was also reprinted by the official Cybertruck account, which seems to represent Tesla's official view on this matter.

According to Wes Morrill, the Cybertruck is a one-of-a-kind stainless steel car at the moment. Since it is stainless steel, it is active, and the free iron on the surface of the body will rust. This is not a quality issue, but a surface contamination that can be removed by the user. Wes Morrill also took the trouble to come up with a solution, which was to use a variety of detergents to decontaminate.

Tesla also said that the cleanup was not too expensive, with a 12-ounce can of Bar Keepers Friend (which should be similar to Mr. Wittmann's) costing less than $10. If customers are not satisfied with this, they can consider the five different colors of packaging available on Tesla's official website (satin ceramic white, satin abyss blue, slippery gray, satin rose gold, and satin invisible black), which is a bit more expensive at more than $6,000.

Seeing this news and this reply, Kung Fu Motors' face was full of question marks, and the first reaction was who is here to talk about it? Hundreds of thousands of cars, not to mention luxury cars, the minimum quality should be guaranteed, now the body is rusty, the manufacturer actually let the user use the cleaning ball to "polish" it. The point is, it's only been sold for two or three months now, and a little rust spot is really easy to clean. What about the car owner after a year or two, or even five or ten years? Will there be more serious corrosion? And who will be responsible for cleaning it up then?

Tesla does have a warranty plan for stainless steel bodies, but it only provides a warranty for "rust perforations caused by defects in materials or workmanship." The question is that if the rust does not reach the point of perforation (it is still quite difficult to rust to this extent), then it is completely up to the user to pay for it? You must know that this is a car that is hundreds of thousands of dollars!

Seeing this news, Kung Fu Motors not only felt that his IQ had been insulted, but also that he had traveled back in time to the late 80s and early 90s. At that time, it was still a typical seller's market, and if you wanted to buy a car, you had to go through various channels, and some problems were really solved by the customers themselves. Why, Tesla now feels that he has no opponent?

(2) There is no solution to the congenital problem, and coastal users are careful?

Many people are puzzled, isn't the Cybertruck a stainless steel monster? How can it rust? In fact, just like there is no wife in the wife's cake, stainless steel rust is actually a common thing.

The essence of steel is the combination of iron and carbon, although it has certain advantages in mechanics and processing, but there are also congenital defects in wear resistance and corrosion resistance. If you want to avoid these shortcomings, the best way is to add other elements to the carbon-iron alloy. The most typical is austenitic stainless steel, which is used in many mobile phones, which is based on the traditional steel and added chromium, nickel and other elements.

Compared with other steels, austenitic stainless steels do have a stronger resistance to rust. But if you have experience, you will find that the so-called stainless steel kitchen knife, stainless steel cup, etc., in special circumstances, will actually rust, but you will not pay special attention to this, and the general kitchen knife will be polished with a cleaning ball. But can a car that is hundreds of thousands of dollars bigger really do this? The body is the face of the owner, if you drive a car that is hundreds of thousands of dollars, the body is still scratched by the cleaning ball, this is sour.

The environment faced by the Cybertruck is much more complex and harsh than that of kitchen knives and water cups. It may have to endure dozens of days of exposure, and at the same time, it has to accept more than ten years of drizzle, and sometimes it has to receive some fallen leaves, bird droppings, and all kinds of juice. In this case, it makes sense that it will rust faster.

What's more, Cybertruck isn't just austenitic stainless steel, because while it's corrosion-resistant, it's not as good as hardness and friction resistance. The Cybertruck is positioned as a hardcore off-road vehicle, and it needs to better cope with high-load, high-friction scenarios. To this end, Tesla has also added another alloy martensitic to the austenite, so that the Cybertruck body has to make further concessions in rust prevention compared with traditional austenitic stainless steel.

There is nothing to say about this, it can only be said that Tesla will inevitably suffer problems and costs when making this material and doing this kind of shape. It's just that for ordinary users, if you are in a windy and rainy coastal area, then you have to be careful when buying such a car. Maybe I was going to buy it to "save face", but it turned out that I "couldn't get off the stage".

（3）别搞大招了，十招九坑？

In November 2019, Tesla unveiled its first electric pickup truck, the Cybertruck, in Los Angeles, California. At the time, Musk's claim was that the design of the car was inspired by the 1982 sci-fi movie Blade Runner, which was Tesla's absolute big move. But judging from the results, such a big move should not be engaged.

The first is the progress, which the Cybertruck was first unveiled to say was going to be available in 2020. However, due to technical constraints such as craftsmanship and batteries, the car was not fully designed until January 2023, and then began to be delivered in small quantities in November 2023. And then there is the problem of rust in batches, and you can imagine how disappointed Tesla fans will be.

But there is no way to do it, and now Tesla's body production is taking the aluminum alloy integrated die-casting route. However, at this stage, the strength of aluminum alloy cannot be used in the production of hard-core pickup trucks, and Tesla cannot have a separate stamping and painting process for the Cybertruck. First, this will greatly increase the cost and reduce production efficiency, and secondly, the previous publicity about the stainless steel monster has been played, so the previous efforts will be wasted.

Therefore, this bull boasted in 2019 has almost no room for maneuver, so he can only bite the bullet.

This is not the first time Tesla has done such a thing, and the previous 4680 battery was almost exactly the same experience. Tesla has found an unprecedented path in the past, but the result is that this road is extremely difficult, and the final effect is very average, at least compared with the Kirin battery, it can be said that it has been crushed in all aspects. There is also the so-called AMD smart cockpit, which was also beaten by Qualcomm 8295 and Huawei's Hongmeng smart cockpit.

There is also pure visual intelligent driving, which can't fall to the ground after so many years, and Huawei, Xiaopeng's urban NOA has run all over the ground. In this day and age, there is not so much time for Tesla to "trial and error".

(4) Kung Fu shooting

When the Model 3 was launched in 2016 (overseas), Tesla really gave people the impression that it was really eye-catching. Its pure electric architecture, high performance, long battery life, and high intelligence did far surpass other models of the same level under the conditions at that time, and Tesla also tasted the sweetness of "big moves" and became a hot car company.

But at this time, today's competition has long been white-hot, and there is not so much time for car companies to hold back big moves. Taking batteries as an example, the global installed capacity of power batteries will reach 865.2GWh in 2023, and countless geniuses and engineers are sitting around to improve and optimize. How can people believe that those few people at Tesla suddenly came up with a way to change the world in the lab.

Taking 10,000 steps back, even if Tesla's big move is indeed right, won't the opponents follow up? Two or three years after the Model 3 came out, the Xpeng P7 and BYD Han achieved the same level. And Tesla, can you still survive the outbreak of the next big move?