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263

The Mighty Cybertruck Keeps Getting Stuck in the Snow (futurism.com)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

104 comments fedilink hide all child comments

LOL

Some more Tesla LOLs https://futurism.com/categories/advanced-transport/page/2

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[–] [email protected] 86 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What a garbage article. Elon sucks, the cyber truck sucks, but an article about tweets is less than worthless. Perhaps the article instead of assuming elon just "didn't have time to run tesla properly", should dig a bit deeper and demonstrate that tesla was successful despite elon, not because of elon. Same with Space-X or Star-link.

Now as far as why the cyber truck is getting stuck in snow, tires is the low-effort answer, but maybe look at the weight of the truck versus the contact area. Maybe look at how the traction control system works? How about whether the car is front wheel bias vs rear-wheel biased. Does it make assumptions about which wheels have contact to the ground? Does it have a differential or are all 4 wheels independently controlled? (I don't know the answer to any of these by the way, but if I were concerned about a vehicle getting stuck in the snow, I'd certainly want an analysis that addresses all of the above.)

[–] [email protected] 29 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Welcome to modern “journalism”, throwing together a few sentences based on twitter and reddit posts, without any research or asking experts.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

"Another user said...."

It's so ridiculously low quality journalism it's embarrassing

[+] [email protected] 46 points 7 months ago (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 25 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Well, they advertised it as a truck that does truck things...

And the people with them now, ordered years ago.

It all comes back to range, and the range is horrible. So out of the factory they get "fuel efficient" tires that are great for range and terrible for everything else.

Put on truck tires, let alone winter, and range will nosedive.

Not everyone will drive one in snow, but all of the suckers who bought one know the range.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It also weighs way more than a normal truck. I think.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago (5 children)

If it does that would help...

Weighing it down gives traction. Hell, most hillbillies load up their truck beds in the winter because the weight is such a big help, especially in the back.

I think I might have heard something about weight distribution though, like a normal truck has an engine over the front, but Tesla's weight is in the middle of the axle.

But this is the tires, and probably something about whatever this things equivalent to a transmission is. Like you only need to put your foot on it a little for normal driving. Which means take offs in snow would almost always spin out.

So like the RPMs of the wheels go up to fast? I think that's the easiest way to say it.

It makes a vehicle seem faster the less you have to push on the gas pedal, it's a pretty old trick, because most people never floor it, so they don't notice halfway thru it stops doing anything.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

That makes sense

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 7 months ago (16 children)

I see Jersey schmucks up here with their pavement princess trucks getting stuck in the snow all the time. I see locals in a Corolla or fiesta or other tiny light car make it just fine in deep snow. One of my bosses at the ski mountain used to drive a mini Cooper an hour to work every day.

This is a skill issue.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Also snow tires make a huge difference in the snow

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I used to have an old Subaru (Leone, 83).

I could get it anywhere in the snow. It was so easy to drive. It had absolute pizza cutters for tyres.

Once drove up to a ski field without chains on. Was one of only 7 cars to make it to the top (with zero issues) because there was so much snow.

Was a blast to drive.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I’d feel like such an asshole driving one of these things. If someone gave me one for free, I wouldn’t even want to park it in front of my house.

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[–] prole 17 points 7 months ago (4 children)

How is this thing still real?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

They set out to make the truck version of the Delorean and succeeded.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

How do we know it is? I suspect all photos of the thing are AI-generated deepfakes. 😜

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

The engineers unironically ask themselves the same question. None of them wanted to do the project

https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-engineers-cybertruck-secret-design

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

All season tires in snow = a terrible time

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

All seasons with a tiny sidewall = bad news pretty much anywhere but pavement.

Although I do think Tesla needs to work on their traction control system to better mimic having locked differentials after seeing the hill climb video from a few weeks ago. This should be able to be performed via an OTA update though.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Mighty? It was a joke from the start. The only reason for buying it is a novelty for collectors. I don't think it was ever meant to be driven.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Probably bad tires to be honest. Bad tires for a hideous truck: a loosing recipe.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (5 children)

Too bad the tires are tied to the wheel and can't just be exchanged

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

they aren't tied to the wheel, just the hubcaps. If you want to run it without the hubcaps, you can put whatever tire you want on it.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Truck built for truck things fails at truck things

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I remember MKBHD made a comment about the snow possibly being an issue opening the doors as well. Hoping these things were actually tested in super cold conditions

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Tesla and tested?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Maybe if it didn't weigh 3 tons...

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (9 children)

Weight is actually a good thing in the snow. Too light of a vehicle and it's hard to get any traction without something like tracks.

The struggling in the snow is most likely an issue of tires. If someone put some all terrain or ideally snow tires, I'm sure it'd do significantly better.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

But it can't afford to run less efficient tires because it has too much air resistance and the range would suffer. There's a reason why other Teslas have no flat panels or straight lines.

It's a 100,000 vehicle with plastic hubcaps.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I don't disagree with that at all, it's a dumb vehicle no matter how you slice it and this debacle only furthers the proof. If it needs low rolling resistance, highway tires, then it's just a street queen for elon fanboys.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (5 children)

Most SUVs and Trucks now are pavement princesses. I respect the hell out of people who buy minivans now.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Who would have guessed that an offroad vehicle designed in socal only works on bare, dry, triassic limestone.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Holy shit that thing is ugly..

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Tesla touts that its Cybertruck is "durable and rugged enough to go anywhere" on its website, but apparently snow may be its kryptonite after numerous online videos and pictures have showed the electric vehicle getting stuck in typical wintery conditions.

An Instagram user posted a video of a Cybertruck slipping and getting stuck in about four inches of snow in an unspecified location.

"There's literally a sedan like thirty feet ahead of it that made it all the way to a parking space," joked podcaster and journalist Robert Evans.

And back in December, a TikTok video also showed a stuck Cybertruck being pulled up by a sports utility vehicle on a slight incline of snow and ice.

All this content showing its performance in real-world conditions doesn't bode well for a vehicle that's being hyped as the next big thing in the lucrative consumer truck sector.

Regardless, the news doesn't come at a good time for Tesla's Cybertruck, which has had to contend with range and quality control issues, in addition to numerous delays and production problems.

The original article contains 388 words, the summary contains 176 words. Saved 55%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Several comments about tires being the issue. I've driven through worse with a simple set of all-seasons - is there something special about EV tires that make them perform so poorly in these conditions?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Low rolling resistance tires tend to be not very great in snow. They get that low rolling resistance partly by not having a very sticky compound, and partly by not having a very aggressive tread pattern (among other things, I'm sure). Both of those factors are going to have an impact on traction on anything but dry pavement.

It might also be due to other design choices. I've got a 2015 Ford Fusion PHEV, and I had a 2013 Fusion Hybrid before that; they suck so bad in the snow with normal all-season tires that I have to keep a finger on the electric parking brake switch to make sure I can stop if there's any snow on the ground.

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