Yeah, same, and just yesterday, there was one parked in the school parking lot so I got more of an eyeful. All those flat panels, especially in the front where the grill would normally go, it’s anti-aerodynamic. And those big ol’ tires, there is no apparent consideration of energy efficiency whatsoever. This is what we’re mining for lithium for, tearing up ecosystems so people can overpay then post dumb shorts on YT.
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Most purpose-designed EVs do because it’s a huge boon to vehicle dynamics to have a low center of gravity. Better EVs armor the hell out of that low battery pack to protect it from damage, though, like Rivian does.
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Ah, so at least someone at Rivian played then! 
Plastic Armor: F5, L5, R5, B5, T2, U50 …
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The engineer might be mixing up the Black Knight with somebody else whose hubris is duly punished.
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I also loved playing Battlezone in arcades! But trust me, Cybertruck more closely resembles terrain than any of the vehicles in the game. It’s not nearly that cool.
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CyberTruck sounds like something Steve Austin would have fought.
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when a friend’s car was shot up – you know, kids get bored i guess – none of bullets made it through the door. the bullets definitely made it into the door, you could hear them rattling around, but none made it into interior.
and that was just a standard old suv. *shrug* it doesn’t seem there’s any special about the cybercar(*) – it’s like marketing milk as gluten free.
(* other than it’s ugliness, impracticability, and the failed promises i mean. )
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Cybertruck is “literally bulletproof”, as long as you don’t fire those bullets at it.
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Do they? I know that the batteries are typically mounted at the bottom of the vehicle, but in the case of the Cybertruck the battery literally is the vehicle’s floor, with the front seats mounted directly to the battery structure and a giant gaping hole when you remove the battery. Is it the same when you remove the battery in a Tesla Model 3 or a Nissan Leaf?
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Hey, so’s my Honda Fit!!! I win!!!
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When they announced the “Beast Mode” version I couldn’t help think that he’d moved on from OG Transformers to that animal-themed spinoff.
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Fit owner 
Fits are better by almost every metric.
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i wonder about the safety of all that. maybe it’s rare, but when batteries burn they burn. a heat that can melt concrete seems unlikely to play nice with my fleshy human self.
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I guess it depends on how picky you are about defining “floor.” Even the Cybertruck batteries aren’t literally the undercarriage of the vehicle; they are in a case. So if you define floor as anywhere between the undercarriage and the carpet that passengers’ feet are planted on, then yes, the vast majority of EVs have their batteries in the floor.
What I was specifically referring to is that fact that you can’t remove the battery assembly of the Cybertruck without leaving a huge gaping open hole where the seats and floor used to be. That seemed somewhat unique and notable.
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It’s done for safety reasons. The biggest risk of a battery fire comes from an internal short circuit, caused by the battery being pierced.
They’re located not in “the floor” so much as they are located within the vehicle’s frame, the most rigid and most heavily armored area available in the vehicle. Also, the area above it is filled mostly with upholstered cushions and squishy meatbags, so in the event of a collision, there are fewer sharp pointy things to pierce the batteries. A high speed crash that twists the frame may compress the cells, but is less likely to poke jagged metal into the vulnerable sides of them.
Lithium cells also aren’t explosive. Once ignited they’ll burn rapidly, and will ignite neighboring cells in a few seconds, but it should give you enough time to exit the vehicle before it becomes fully engulfed.
It’s not perfect but it’s about as good as can be done.
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Tesla’s promotional cybertruck shooting was very specifically staged to maximize the apparent impressiveness without strictly lying. They didn’t want to go with just a pistol; so went with two really iconic SMGs (an MP5 and a Thompson) to look significantly more threatening without leaving the realm of pistol ammunition with really limited penetration.
Not technically lying; but definitely putting the bravest possible face on the situation.
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your explanation makes a lot of sense to me, except for the cybercar.
in that teardown, they were showing the seats of the cybercar are literally on the battery; there isn’t even a floor. so maybe a little different than how other cars or some of the electric trucks work?
Yeah. Seems somewhat impractical. The first electric car I had, you just flipped it over, fumbled open the lid and replaced the batteries. Which you had to do quite often, that thing basically ate 3R12s like there was no tomorrow. Still, good times, good times…
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