Cybertruck Designer Talks Stainless Steel
The Ride the Lightning tesla podcast, hosted by Ryan McCaffrey, released an interview with Tesla’s Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen on January 15th. The interview is full of interesting information on the inner workings of Tesla’s design team - but McCaffrey wastes no time diving right into the topic of the upcoming Cybertruck.
Using the vehicle’s display in the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, McCaffrey discusses the unique nature of the Cybertruck’s stainless steel body - comparing it to the DeLorean a few times.
It’s not a terrible comparison, the DeLorean was one of the most recognisable stainless-steel-clad vehicles ever produced, but Franz seemed keen to distance the Tesla pickup truck from the failed 80’s sports car.
Franz doesn’t deny that the DeLorean likely came up during some design meetings - it’s hard to do the sort of research that design demands without looking into one of the most iconic stainless steel vehicles - but he says it wasn’t a direct inspiration.
The biggest difference is that the DeLorean made use of stainless steel body panels, while the Cybertruck uses a stressed-skin exoskeleton and structure - making its exterior act more like an aeroplane rather than a car.
But the discussion of the Cybertruck body lingered on the finish as being the big standout here.
The Cybertruck’s body isn’t the standard “brushed” finish that most stainless steel products are. Fridges and the DeLorean both made use of that type of finish, but Tesla wanted something tougher.
The finish on their truck is what allows for so much resilience. Not only was the finish designed to cut down on reflective glare from the shiny truck, but it was also made with scratch-resistance and repair in mind.
We all remember the unveiling of the Cybertruck back in 2019 - and the interview brings that up here, as Franz was the guy who famously took a sledgehammer to the side of the show-model on stage - putting a small scratch in the door. Franz laughs while saying,
“If you look really close, you can JUST see it.”
And he says that while the stainless steel is incredibly tough, the Tesla design team made the finish to be fixable at home by Tesla owners in the event of some scratching happening to the vehicle while it takes the beating that pickup trucks often do.
In fact, the integrity of the Cybertruck’s body is so important that Franz said the discussion of whether to create options for colour tinting or paint were also thrown out fairly early on.
It follows along with what Franz says is the design philosophy of the Cybertruck - “putting the hardest stuff on the outside”.
This is a great confirmation of what Tesla fans have been guessing at for some time, as stainless steel is typically used for just that sort of resilience, but we just didn’t know if it would be possible for a Cybertruck owner to simply scrub out a scratch like other stainless steel.
After that, the conversation quickly covered how Franz feels about Tesla competitors in the electric truck space. Tesla is oddly not the trailblazer for that particular market - Rivian, Ford, GMC, even smaller companies like Canoo - are already crowding the space.
But Franz says this is a good thing - it shows that Tesla’s mission to push the industry towards electric is working - and given the specs of the Cybertruck, he says he’s confident that Tesla are still the leaders in this space.