WhistlinDiesel: "Cybertruck frames are snapping in half"

Originally published at: WhistlinDiesel: "Cybertruck frames are snapping in half" - Boing Boing

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I’m far from a Musk / Tesla fanboy, but watched part of that WhistlinDiesel video and it was not really reasonable usage he put that truck through. He compared a jump between the Cybertruck and another American truck, but the other truck jumped about 1/10th as high and far. He was “shocked” that the Cybertruck did so badly on the jump, but it was a full on dukes of hazzard style YOLO jump that got a ton of air. Also, any jump is an immediate “that’s not reasonable” reaction from me, much less a full throttle romp a dozen feet through the air.

I hate that people are using this guy as some sort of “evidence” of Cybertruck problems when there’s actual real problems with the trucks. This is like saying dodge chargers were poorly built and dangerous because they had to replace them after each jump filming the show. NO, they’re just not made to jump enormous distances and land hard. There’s plenty of internet forum dweebs out there whining about their Raptors being junk because they did the same thing and guess what?! their frames snapped. Big shocker.

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Meh. Musk himself was hugely hyperbolic when touting the capabilities of the Cybertruck (at one point saying that the truck could tow “near infinite mass”) so I think it’s fair to test unreasonable claims with unreasonable testing.

Besides, a number of people who take their trucks off-road actually have dropped the rear of the frame onto rocks and stuff, so it’s a somewhat useful (if unscientific) comparison to show how steel bends in that scenario when aluminum castings can fracture.

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Did you watch the jump? He did not “drop the rear of the frame onto rocks.” It was as said a full send jump which no production truck would ever have a chance of surviving intact. It was a click / rage bait intentional overshoot. Towing “infinite mass” does not translate to such abuse.

Keep in mind that was at the peak of a hill, and the hill kept going down. It’s like dropping a truck from 30 feet off the ground. You’re intentionally destroying it then saying “what a piece of junk!”

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I think towing near infinite mass would actually be much worse, since the spacetime distortion would shear and spaghettify the whole body.

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Have you seen some of the videos that he and others have done on the Toyota Hilux?

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DING DING DING!!!

Generally, pulling the back bumper off a vehicle usually results in some repair work to re-build the mounting points for the bumper, but you can’t easily repair fractures in cast metal, at least not without weakening the surrounding parts of it. (which is why welding on cast iron is such a pain in the ass…)

I will admit that I didn’t watch most of the video, mostly because it looked a lot like Dudebro ‘Musk Can Do No Wrong’ videos, and frankly, If I’m going to watch that sort of thing, there’s multiple porno sites for that. /sarcasm

The chain between the trucks bit was also, INAO, overly sensationalized- If I was trying to get a stuck vehicle out with a tow chain, the proper way to do it without tearing the bumpers off like they did is to tension the chain first so you don’t have all that dynamic load getting put on the anchor points. slow and constant pressure as opposed to flooring it and breaking stuff- Although I expect that was partly the point of the video.

To quote another Youtuber who does a lot of things like lifting a semi (and it’s trailer!) off the ground in order to load the whole thing onto a low-boy trailer: “small moves.”

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The clown car that never fails to entertain online.

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If you watch his followup, it’s clear that that’s exactly what it is, except he’s not willing to excuse the fragile frame and host of other issues that the world’s dumbest truck has.

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There are numerous trucks that can, and do, land a jump like this without cracking the frame. Toyota Hilux being one notable famous example. A Ford Raptor can also do this all day long.

Like, he put this truck through the wringer, but I don’t think it’s an unfair comparison. Other vehicles have survived this torture test.

The Cybertruck just isn’t cut out for the rough stuff.

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NOPE. Don’t conflate easy 1-2’ high jumps over yumps and dunes with this dude’s full send jump. I insist that nothing could withstand the jump he put it through. An example Raptor doing a similar - but not as high - jump and being destroyed:

Remember that “jump” does not equal “all jumps.” Look at the still I posted above, and see also that I said the hillside kept going down, so that’s not the distance it fell - it fell further. No Raptor or Hilux is going to survive that.

Yeah, whistlindiesel is the type of guy to wear his MAGA hat to the UK during COVID while buying an actual tank to ship back to the US. I believe he’s also part of one of the bigger firearm YouTube frats (the Demolitia) so it’s weird seeing him so much on BB these past few weeks.

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YouTube, destroy things spectacle shows must make a lot of money to be able to casually burn money by trashing cars?

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lol. the video you posted is a full order of magnitude further than the WhislinDiesel jump.

I insist that nothing could withstand the jump he put it through.

Insist all you want.

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It’s also debatable that it “destroyed” the raptor. Looks like it deployed the airbags and bent the bumper, but there’s no visible frame damage. Landing any vehicle on its corner is going to cause massive amounts of damage.

The point of the CT test isn’t that it will encounter that amount of stress under normal usage, but that one of its core “features” (gigacasting) has major drawbacks for a vehicle that is supposedly up for heavy utility usage. The F150 gets brutalized and suffers severe damage, but the damn thing is still in one piece.

It’s not even cut out for the most basic off-roading my freaking Subaru Forester handles without blinking in the Adirondacks. I’ve been in so many “oh shit” situations that it’s pulled itself out of admirably (ice, snow, ice and snow, mud).

ETA: I’m not stating that a Forester is an off-road vehicle, btw. I know it’s not. But that doesn’t stop it from staying steady as hell on snow and ice in the mountains and getting itself out of situations the CT has been repeatedly shown to struggle with.

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This youtuber is also a fan of Muskrat?

Awkward Bye Bye GIF

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Personally, I couldn’t give the first toss which of the many wanktanks out there could survive a jump or not.
What I want to know is, when they snapped the wishbone, who got the wish?

And did they wish for a decent car?

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What, exactly, is your point? The frame broke before the “full send” jump you’re harping on. You can clearly see in the video that the bumper and tow hitch are gone.

The jump is entirely irrelevant to the frame damage.

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My point is he intentionally abused the truck to the point of destruction, in ways that no production vehicle would survive. It’s not useful data, certainly not enough to use it as any ammo against the durability of the “truck.”

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Did you somehow miss the bit where he put an F150 Lightning through all of the same stuff? And it survived? I won’t pretend it wasn’t stupid and clickbaitey - but it wasn’t a hit job on the Cybertruck, either.

Im also 99% certain that the bumper failed before the Jump, on a pretty mild tow - but that might have just been an out of sequence edit.

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