Comment by kraig911
19 hours ago
Full disclosure: I work for a competitor to Tesla so I'm a bit biased.
The Cybertruck I thought was initially kind of neat but when you try to use one as a truck you quickly can see some glaring problems that most people who buy a truck want. Towing with an EV is terrible. I've heard there's power stations with pull throughs but havent' seen them personally. The truck bed isn't practical for anything but a lawn mower. When I ride in one it rides like a car. It doesn't look good dirty. I just think they were going for warthog from Halo and thought the rest would work out. It's also super expensive for all these issues. It's a hobby vehicle. A toy.
I think Tesla is struggling personally. The marketing tactics of showcasing cars we'll never be able to buy just to cause a scene. Don't get me wrong the new Roadster my jaw dropped and I agree with Elon now that SpaceX and Tesla are the 'same' company I think it's great but let's be realistic. Most people want cars that are cheap, dependable and sort of cool. Not everyone can afford multiple cars, and a corvette that isn't feasible. Like I said I work for a competitor (GM) and I fear China is going to eat our lunch. Unless we make infrastructure for charging better and make it a no brainer.
I would buy an electric car tomorrow, I have access to cheap charging, and I don't even do long commutes. But there is zero chance I want a spyware car that's like another cell phone.
The U.S. is being protectionist because of Chinese cars that can spy on U.S. soil-- just do the right thing and stop all the car spying nonsense. Require manufacturers to open the code and let us even develop alternatives.
Tell GM.
I have an electric Hyundai and you can disable all internet connectivity fairly easily. I have mine disabled and the car works fine. It never connects to any internet connection. I suspect that most other modern cars are similar. The firmware is closed source, but it works fine. It supports CarPlay and Android Auto, which are effectively open standards, so you can replace the infotainment system with whatever you want. This is standard for modern cars.
America is the only country where buying private data is legal so this is a flawed idea. Ford would definitely spy on you for those adbucks.
Heard of Slate Auto? Full electric, simple, no cellular modem at all, hand-crank windows.
IDK. Grok bot works with Tesla’s grok so today I learned I can just ask how’s my house is doing. It responded how much solar I’m making vs consuming, hows batteries are doing, is garage door open and flagged that my heatpump water heater is off (i shut it earlier because it can get little loud).
Yes you can sort of get there with Siri and HomeKit, bug nowhere close to sophistication.
Yes please. Make it a selling point and people will buy it.
Here in Australia, it's interesting how well the Tesla cars are still selling.
The model Y is still the best selling EV despite the wide choice of other brands. BYD out sell them in aggregate, but Tesla are holding their own pretty well. Of course, all the Tesla cars here are made in the Shanghai Gigafactory, but still, I don't think Chinese brand dominance is a forgone conclusion. I think the real danger is if American protectionism makes Tesla feel like they don't need to innovate any more.
Software is everything when it comes to EV's. As an American, I've had many years of experience with software from around the world. No one makes software more suited for Americans, than other Americans.
The UX of the car software is only a small portion. The actual car has a lot of software which isn't cultural.
The dashboard and UX of the car can be tailored to a culture, while the onboard processing remains the same - it's just one software update away. This is sort of a silver lining of removing physical dials and buttons and going all in with touch-screen.
These are exactly the kind of takes I still come to this site for!
Can you explain a little more? What expectations do Americans have of software that are unique to their country?
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> No one makes software more suited for Americans, than other Americans.
yeah that's why there's no immigrants in US tech am I rite.
that's also why tiktok is not used by americans at all /s
How well does the self driving work over there? That's the real innovation and personally it seems to work well enough in America so I'm curious what your experience is with that.
I used it in a Tesla Y to commute to work in Sydney (from Terry Hills to Alexandria).
Absolutely sublime. I turned it off _once_ yesterday as I didnt trust the gap it was leaving with a woman who was driving over the lines.
Honestly blew me away.
My colleague at work paid extra for it a few years ago - still waiting for it to activated… not sure it widely available here yet
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China is bringing their more expensive cars first to make money once the market gets saturated then we might see more domination as they try to compete for more market share
> now that SpaceX and Tesla are the 'same' company
Did I miss something big on the stock market or are these actually still two different public companies? How do the shareholders of both of these (ostensibly different, kind of unrelated) large publicly-held companies feel about them being conflated like this? Is there any historical precedent for this situation?
I read this as 2 phrases
“I agree with Elon now”
Meaning now I agree, and
“that SpaceX and Tesla are the 'same' company”
With ‘same’ in quotes meaning they are not literally the same but conceptually they are the same.
FTR I do not agree they are the ‘same’ company and I think the circular relationships between Musk’s companies is kind of like a shell game.
Sorry I did not mean to be vague you hit the nail on the head but I think the circular relationships he's made between his companies has real pay off.
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They are still distinct public companies and they want to merge them. And even today the amount of cross mingling between those two entities however is quite significant. You would not necessarily know that they are independent from each other.
The roadster uses Space X propulsion tech, the cybercab uses starlink, grok is in all Tesla cars, both companies share Terafab. But then Tesla also supplies batteries and cybertrucks to Space X etc.
The "roadster demo for a car that doesnt exist and may never exist" uses space x propulsion tech.
They might be confusing X, which is a subsidiary of SpaceX. The IPO was just a vehicle to pay off X’s debt.
> The IPO was just a vehicle to pay off X’s debt.
... and to offload a ton of bad luck onto retail bagholders.
Once the AI bubble pops, SPCX will collapse, but everyone in on the game will have gotten much more thanks to selling their stock than they'd ever put in in either SpaceX or Twitter.
There is a rumor going around that Musk is going to merge the two in December before the Democrats take power.
Always thought it was designed after the '79 toy the Big Trak. Even the initial concept of the trailer looked like it was from the aesthetic.
Wow, I'd forgotten about these. Thanks.
As I understand, electric motors deliver instant maximum torque. Isn't that advantageous for towing? You can get a good list of pros and cons from an LLM with a prompt like this: "towing with electric motor vs ice engine".
What is your opinion on the upcoming Tesla Semi? I expect that it will be successful, useful, and efficient.
Nobody expects an impressive 1/4 mile time from a vehicle towing a trailer. That's not what makes EVs bad at towing.
My towing-capable gas vehicle sees at worst a 30% decrease in range from towing my camping trailer, and my towing-capable diesel vehicle sees closer to a 10% decrease in range.
A while back, I read a comment on here from someone who lived in a trailer full-time as a digital nomad. They were also dedicated to driving an EV. They towed their small trailer with their Model Y. I grant you, the Model Y is not optimized for towing the way that the Cybertruck (ostensibly) is, but they described the process of travelling between Grand Junction, Colorado, and Moab, Utah, a distance just over 110 miles. With the trailer, they had to drive to Cisco, about halfway in between, drop the trailer, drive back to Grand Junction, recharge fully, drive back again, pick up the trailer, and drive the remaining 60 or so miles to Moab, where they could recharge again. Because without the trailer, they could drive the entire 1-way distance 3 times over without recharging. With the trailer, they could not make the whole trip once.
That is pretty bad. Probably a combination of the smaller battery, and a very non-aerodynamic trailer. Of course, an ICE truck could do it without too much trouble, but that's largely because most tow-focused ICE vehicles are wildly inefficient compared to EVs and are discarding lots of unused capacity every time you drive them without towing near maximum load. Not a big deal when diesel is cheap, but now, less so.
If you think about how much excess power your diesel is wasting when you aren't hauling its kinda crazy. When you changed the total weight, and thus total energy required in the system, 50-70%, you only started using 10% more energy.
I remember my family driving long distances in a 1980s VW Diesel, we could barely climb hills but we got 50mpg.
It is reductive to say it is terrible. The issue is that the current range we are putting in trucks, adjusted for the range loss from towing a large trailer, is insufficient.
The Tesla Semi proves that this is the issue: with an extremely large battery and high-speed charging, the Semi solves these problems.
A regular truck that can TOW 300 miles would certainly not be "terrible for towing."
> A regular truck that can TOW 300 miles would certainly not be "terrible for towing."
Agreed. A fairly typical gas half-ton gets 300 miles from a tank. If an EV can get that distance and recharge in like half an hour it would be a pretty great truck.
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They provided a concrete example: Trying to charge when a trailer is attached.
> As I understand, electric motors deliver instant maximum torque. Isn't that advantageous for towing?
Your understanding is not wrong, but quantity of torque is a minor piece of what matters, so that doesn't move the needle.
Towing lowers the range of an EV by so much that it becomes nearly useless. This is much more important with an EV than an ICE, because EV charging is less available and takes much longer.
It's understandable that you might not fully understand the magnitude of the pros and cons from your LLM prompt, those sorts of responses usually assume certain levels of experience and familiarity with the topic. It'll make more sense when you get older!
Towing for traveling, you mean. Around town, a Lightning with a big utility trailer is still good for over 100 miles, and that meets the use case for a lot of small businesses that need to tow. We get a bunch of them over on the Lightning forum. They love the truck, and they love how inexpensive and convenient it is. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth (and a scramble to find funds to quickly fill out their fleet) when Ford announced the cancellation.
> quantity of torque is a minor piece of what matters, so that doesn't move the needle
I know of approximately nobody who thinks this, who actually tows anything meaningful. Somethning like a 6.2 naturally aspirated Ford V8 in an F250 is a chore, it's loud, works very hard, goes nowhere with any urgency. This is why people love diesels -- torque. And an EV takes that to the next level. The towing is sublime.
Yes, we need bigger batteries though so people can do long distance road trips with travel trailers. That niche isn't a great use case today.
The downside of electric motors for towing is that they require electricity.
And towing requires a lot of electricity. How do you bring enough electrons?
The towee could carry an additional battery. Probably not hard to link it with a cable to the tower.
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I don't think the towing aspect matters much: I live in a semi-conservative rural area of the US with a lot of truck drivers, and about 90% of pickup trucks are used as glorified minivans / SUVs anyway that are kept clean at all times. The only pickup trucks I see towing anything are much older trucks (late 80s-early 2000s). Very old 80s Toyota Hilux / Ford Rangers are a common sight as well for filling the truck bed which carries a lot more volume that even modern trucks (most of the drivers don't care about going over the weight limit).
The Cybertruck failed because it's an awfully designed vehicle, along with all of the baggage of being associated with Elon Musk's politics (whether you agree with them or not).
I think it matters. There are lots of people who have a camper or a boat or some ATVs or whatever. Maybe they only take the camper out once or twice a year, and so you never see it hooked up. However, on that one week per year, they do need it to be able to tow.
Gas/Diesel trucks lose range when towing too, but dealing with a shorter range gas truck isn't too big of a problem on a trip beyond the extra cost. Gas stations are everywhere and it takes 5 minutes to fill up. At most gas stations, filling up while towing a trailer isn't too big of a problem. Even if your truck only had a 150 mile range while towing, it would only be a minor annoyance, and the reality is that you'll probably get at least 250 miles out of a tank.
If you're towing with an electric though, you probably are looking at less than 150 miles. Now every couple of hours you have to stop for probably an hour or so, even with a fast charger, because you're probably going to want to charge the truck to full, not 80%. You're also probably driving somewhat out of your way to hit charging stations that frequently if you're not in a very populated area.
> Towing with an EV is terrible.
If you have to charge, it can be a pain. It's fine for towing short distance. It can tow up to 11k lbs.
> The truck bed isn't practical for anything but a lawn mower.
Hard disagree. I've hauled gravel, lumber, furniture, appliances. It can fit a 4x8 sheet of sheetrock with the tailgate down.
> When I ride in one it rides like a car.
It drives like a sports car. Literally the most fun vehicle I've ever driven.
> It doesn't look good dirty.
Disagree, I think it looks better dirty. More dystopian.
> It's also super expensive
The price for the AWD dual motor is comparable to other pickups.
It's also the safest pickup truck you can buy, according to the IIHS and NHTSA.
Make it make sense. A silverado Turbomax can tow 12k and the bed can handle cargo up to 2500lbs and it's around 45k and a cybertruck easy 85k. Don't get me wrong some of what I said was opinionated.
I think a more apt comparison might be a fully optioned silverado trubomax, which can range $60-$75k.
AWD CT can haul 7500 lbs, air suspension, tonneau cover, premium sound, 240v out, FSD, etc.
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> I think Tesla is struggling personally. The marketing tactics of showcasing cars we'll never be able to buy just to cause a scene
I think as a car company they're doing alright. They sell two of the most popular vehicles on the road. But the valuation of TSLA is 15-20x what it would be if they were valued at a car company, which is why you get over-the-top demos like the roadster.
>Towing with an EV is terrible
Why?
I explained this in my other comment but I'll paste it here:
The thing is that ICE vehicles are so inefficient to begin with, but a towed trailer needs the same amount of energy regardless of what is towing it. Imagine a trailer takes 1 unit of energy to move, and ICE truck takes 5 units to move itself, and EV truck takes 1 unit to move itself.
The ICE truck towing it would go from 5 units to 6 units, reducing the range by 16%.
The EV truck would now go from 1 unit to 2 units, reducing the range by 50%.
So the better your efficiency, the worse you are at towing. Ideally EV trucks would have such a huge battery that even when the range is reduced by 50%, it is still as long as a gas truck's range, but modern battery technology is still too sucky to achieve this.
This analysis doesn't make sense to me.
An ICE vehicle isn't less efficient because the frame itself takes more energy to move, it's less efficient because the engine burns off a high percentage of its energy as waste heat.
But that will be true regardless of what the load is. If the ICE truck takes 5 units of energy to pull itself compared with 1 unit for the electric truck, that implies that the the truck chassis only actually requires 1 unit to move, but the ICE engine burns off 80% of its energy as waste heat. The engine is only 20% efficient.
Now if you start pulling a trailer, you have (in total) 2 units of energy worth of load. But if the ICE engine is still only 20% efficient, then it will take 10 units to pull both, rather than 6.
I can believe that this effect is real (electric cars suffering more range loss when towing), but it seems to require an explanation beyond this one.
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That's part of the answer, but the other part is that towing is going to reduce range significantly regardless of your fuel. With a gas or diesel vehicle that's not a big deal, because you can fill back up in 5 minutes or less. With an EV, it takes 20+, and the fast charging locations are less plentiful than gas stations. If you're not towing, that doesn't matter too much, but when you have to charge 2-3 times as often due to towing, it becomes a real issue.
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This would only make sense if the EV efficiency gain were due to lightness of the vehicle or better aerodynamics. It's definitely not the first, and don't imagine the second is a big factor but maybe I'm wrong. I'd even expect EV to help here because a heavy trailer takes more energy to get moving that can be partially recouped when regen-braking.
Is it just that these EV trucks don't have multiple gears to tune themselves for towing? Like how many EV cars are geared for city speeds but suffer on the highway. I know dual-motor ones have different ratios, but that's still 2 speeds vs 6-10. Edit: Could also be about engine tuning.
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I'm confused by where efficiency comes into this.
The efficiency is usually defined as the energy the car can use to move itself over the energy going in (electrical, or chemical for gas). If an ICE is 20% efficient then using 5 units means you get one unit out. Towing a trailer that doubles the load means you need 2 units out, which means you need 10 units in. So you get half the range either way.
The engine doesn't get more efficient just because you hook a trailer to it: it's still 20% efficient regardless.
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I think you're missing the cost of ownership in your efficiency calculation. EV's without incentives cost a lot compared to ICE so much so that the savings don't equate usually until I hear year 4 of ownership. Now that's getting better I mean look at the new Bolt or Ford Fathom 30k Retail usually (which I think is where there's a lot of room in small midsize trucks and EV's)
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>So the better your efficiency, the worse you are at towing
The fuck?
best explanation of towing I've heard great job.
Once I discovered that the entire EV battery holds only 2 gallons-of-gas-worth of energy (roughly about 65kwh) , all of the range issues made a lot more sense.
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I don’t think this is true at all. If towing the trailer doubles the energy required at the wheels (and both engines maintained the same efficiency under the additional load) then both ranges would be halved.
In practice, diesel engines can become more efficient under additional load, and it obviously varies between models but it’s not a 16% vs 50% difference like your example.
The reason EVs don’t tow well is they don’t have a high enough range to begin with. Diesels have nearly double the starting range of an equivalent EV, and storing additional fuel on board is an option.
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So the EV still beats the ICE vehicle threefold (2 units vs 6 units), it just _feels_ worse (half as efficient as without a trailer) so you declare it _is_ worse.
With that type of reasoning, let me guess, the competitor you work for is General Motors?
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Dude, your comment does not compute.
Care to clarify with actual math? We are a technical audience here.
The charging port is on the rear of the Cybertruck, which means if you have a trailer attached, you would have to find a charger with a long enough cable, or one that lets you pull all the way through.
If the charging port were on the front of the vehicle, you could pull straight in, but now your trailer is probably blocking traffic.
Of course you could disconnect and reconnect the trailer, which adds an extra 5-10 extra minutes to your 15-40 minute charge time depending on your battery level.
In Europe at least newer Tesla charging stations are drive through charging stations in pairs. Unless it is crowded, the trailer is parked in the charging spot behind you. Only if it is crowded do you have to disconnect.
Pulling a trailer with an EV is very common around here (Norway).
Lol it's like that awfully stupid design choice of Apple charging the pencil by physically connecting it into the ipad charging port
Aging Wheels on YouTube basically concluded that EV towing from a handling perspective is actually quite superior, but the charging and range is so much worse that depending on what you're doing it's likely a dealbreaker.
His channel is a highly recommended watch for anyone who is curious. He also did some very easy to understand tests of range for towing comparing the impacts of the weight of what you're towing vs the wind resistance.
How do I pull into a charging station when I'm towing a camper?
some of the newer locations have clearance for one camper . otherwise you have to take up extra space or unhitch .
Range is cut in half for starters.
We have Rivian charging stations in Montana and Idaho that have pull through bays.
I've seen pull through charger spots at the Rivian stations where I charged my VW.
The top comment says that the cybertruck is neat?!?!?! TS;dr. Is there a sort order that improves HN comments?
China (e.g. BYD et al) is basically banned from selling in your USA country. They will not eat your lunch there.
Everywhere else on the planet, though? Most certainly.
> I've heard there's power stations with pull throughs but havent' seen them personally.
FWIW Rivian has pull through charging stations along I-5, so they do exist. In general, their charging infrastructure is very reliable, uses renewable energy (matching), and is fast (even for my non-Rivian EV) and is not associated with a fascist.
> Like I said I work for a competitor (GM) and I fear China is going to eat our lunch.
AFAIK outside of trucks GM is mostly a reseller of chinese cars these days.
> I agree with Elon now that SpaceX and Tesla are the 'same' company
Why? Doesn’t make any sense to me although there is much speculation as to why Musk wants to merge them.
I mean the synergy is there to do some amazing stuff with vehicles.
I don’t see it. The roadster stuff isn’t going to lead to any mass market or even niche profitable product for a very very long time if ever.
I could pick nearly any two random companies and come up with equally wild speculative synergies.
People intuit cost per mile, if states stop making it illegal for Tesla to charge less insurance themselves with FSD, it’s possible they win.
China can produce 7M more vehicles annually than the entire world (including them) needs, so the world has to decide whether to give up all their manufacturing to let china do it, or china has to increase worker’s rights and pay so that they can afford to buy more vehicles (their currency and financing tactics essentially reduce purchasing power at scale to fund their manufacturing infrastructure).
It'll likely be both
Towing with EV isn’t exactly truck or Tesla problem. So I kinda agree for those particular cases it’s pretty bad choice. But most don’t do that and just like big cars with utility.
> Towing with an EV is terrible.
Why? I saw a Cybertruck towing a Porsche 911 racing a Porsche 911 and winning. That seems like decent torque.
Range is the problem, of course.
All EV trucks suck at pulling, so that's a category problem. It's designed to ride like a car, as truck dynamics of leaf spring suspension on a solid rear axle isn't actually good technically. The feel, though, is a personal preference. It is not a hobby nor a toy: it is fully functional as a truck other than for pulling long miles. It is way more capable than other trucks on certain dimensions. Other trucks are outrageously expensive with similar features. I feel like you are biased.
How do you not understand the trickle down effect of motorsports, given that you work for a competitor? The tech in the roadster trickles down to normal cars (e.g., its drivetrain advancements), and possibly to off-planet rovers (Earth is the brutal case to test the equipment on, but I don't know enough about the potential to reuse here).
>there's power stations
you lost me here, laughing. Nobody calls them that. You’ve never driven an EV long distance, much less actually towed with one.
I’ve towed 5000+ lbs, including a mid-size SUV on a trailer, cross-country with another EV half of a dozen times. Stopping a lot is bit tedious, but it drives so well. The Rivian and Silverado both have big packs and work well. The Lightning didn’t have enough range for long-distance towing.
Moving a trailer around in town or taking a boat or camper to a lake nearby would be comfortable and the torque makes the drive effortless.
5,000 lbs is not some kind of grand feat.
A 3.6L V6 can do that easily and they are dime a dozen.
Yeah I don't get the brag 5k lbs is nothing. That's like 450lbs of tongue weight. I've pulled that with a toyota corolla.
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