Cybertruck Analysis Reveals Details
It’s been just over two weeks since Tesla celebrated their first Cybertruck to come off the lines at their Gigafactory in Texas - and Tesla fans have if anything, gotten even more excited if such a thing could be possible.
Not a lot of extra details have been published by the company yet, so as usual the community has been diligently going over every image and video they can get - like this catch from @Greggertruck on Twitter showing a brief glimpse of some Cybertruck technicians working on a release candidate build at GigaTexas.
Quick glimpses are admittedly hard to decipher, but sometimes some industry professionals decide to take a look, and that’s when we get some very interesting information.
The Tesla teardown experts at Munro Live took a look at some of the recent images leaked of the Cybertruck’s construction. Industry veteran Cory Steuben and Sandy Munro himself analysed what they saw and came away with a few educated guesses about Tesla’s shiny new truck.
As is normal for the pair of engineers, they were immediately able to zero in on some details across the images that allowed them to make some estimations about the Cybertruck. For instance, they were able to tell that the front trunk of the vehicle was likely going to be smaller than the one in Ford’s F-150 Lightning - but about the same size as Rivian’s R1T - just from a single image of the Cybertruck with its frunk open.
But the most important detail the pair went over involved the Cybertruck’s construction, and what it would likely mean for production.
First, Sandy points out that even though the Cybertuck has a structural steel skin, Tesla was still forced to add an A and B frame to the casts that make up the interior structure of the truck. These are the structures that hold the doors onto the vehicle and support the roof. Sandy mentions that this was likely done because crash and rollover testing has gotten rigorous over the last decade or so, and they likely had to add extra support.
This note lead into talks about the Cybertruck’s probable weight - something the community has been wondering about for some time now.
The pair eventually came to the thought that the Cybertruck should weigh in at about 6,800 pounds, as it will reportedly need to be over 6000 pounds for tax reasons, and it doesn’t have the extra weight of a traditional frame. Sandy makes a point to pick out the spots where Cybertruck’s stainless steel skin will take over for the casts - but also that the structural battery pack, which makes efficient use of the weight of the Cybertruck’s batteries when compared to the Rivian or Ford competition.
And this leads into the last interesting point made by these two. Munro’s company has been tearing apart Tesla’s for years now, and they have a very good idea of how they work. Munro and Steuben specifically have been invited to Tesla factories to see how their vehicles come together more than once.
So when speaking about the possible range of the Cybertruck, they’re at a bit of an impasse. Steubens believes that Tesla’s current output of 4680 battery cells is too low to meet the demand for the truck - he talks about seeing Model Ys in Berlin and Texas being built using the smaller 2170 cells, and believes Tesla could choose to build some Cybertrucks with that smaller battery.
Munroe believes that despite the relatively low numbers of 4680s being made, Tesla will find those extra batteries - either from exterior suppliers, or by ramping up their new battery production lines to meet demand.
It is hard to say, but it’s likely that Sandy is correct here. Tesla has spent a lot of time and effort building up their 4680 production facilities - it would be very odd for them to start using the 2170 to compensate after all that - even if the company has made some great advancements to that battery in the last couple of years.
All told, the pair believes the Cybertruck will be a good truck for the outdoors person - good for off-roading and camping and the like. Sandy let slip that his company has pre-orderd five of the trucks for teardown and testing purposes - and have a couple of volunteers willing to sacrifice theirs for the same thing.
I know many of us Tesla fans are eager to see how the Cybertruck ticks, but that’s a wild level of dedication.