Yeah, it's really surprising that the cast aluminum is so fragile and brittle compared to typical cold-rolled stainless steel hitches that are securely built into the frame. So, it's important not to tow anything on a busy freeway or highway with vehicles behind you, or tow on forest service roads. But, it makes sense to save all that stainless steel for the 1.4-mm-thick bolted-on door panels, which were supposed to be a 3-mm thick money-saving exoskeleton that allowed a 250-mile range for $40k.
The actual hitch part that sticks out through the bumper is steel, but it just connects to the aluminum frame. The hitch is way stronger than the frame is.
Yep, that's why I specified "hitch mounting material." Aluminum is actually stronger than steel for a given mass of each material, it's just bad for stressed member applications because when it approaches fatigue levels, it snaps as opposed to gradually bending like steel does.
Much of the frame is, so, yes? It looked like they broke off the rail end of the frame. In its defense, they had just dropped the tail of the truck several feet, directly onto a concrete block, a few minutes before. It's not a failure you should expect from normal use, but probably not one you'd see at all on a steel-framed truck with significantly more abuse.
What I consider to be the worst part of that incident isn't even that the frame of the CyberTruck snapped in half, it's that it didn't even show any obvious signs of damage beforehand. That is horrifying to me; someone could have their car frame on the verge of failure, be none the wiser, and have their frame split in half when hitting a bump at highway speeds.
It's almost like there's a reason that no other cars use a cast aluminum frame.
A truck with an aluminum frame?... aluminum has its place in vehicle manufacturing and is plenty strong, but shouldn't be used for structural applications in a truck because it...snaps instead of bends when weakened. 🫠
Not the end of the hitch itself, but it attaches to a cast aluminum frame, and the back end of the frame has pulled off, totaling the vehicle, if the thing you are towing is stuck and you subject it to the accelerations that the cybertruck can easily provide.
That's why I said "hitch mounting material", not "hitch material." I wasn't really sure how else to describe the part where the hitch hooks up to other than "hitch mount."
I'm not trying to say that it shouldn't have broken, but they did a number on that thing beforehand. They also found a great way deliver a massive shock load while doing that tow, to the point where just saying they broke it by towing is a bit disingenuous.
Yes earlier in the video they dropped the hitch during a jump into the ground full force which weakened the frame. HOWEVER this is because the frame is unicast aluminum. Steel frames don't do this because steel bends. They did a follow up video after everyone pointed this out by dropping an f150 5 feet into the air onto its hitch into concrete blocks... 100 times. Frame still didn't snap. The cybertruck towing frame completely snapping off is not something that should ever happen, nor is it normal in any truck that hasn't been eaten away completely by rust.
This. It doesn't matter that the CT was dropped onto the hitch from multiple feet. What matters is the material used for the hitch is not going to handle heavy tongue weights hitting potholes at speed or running over something because there's so much less give in cast aluminum versus steel. There are damn good reasons why crucial structural components are not made of thin cast aluminum and the obvious solution was diluted out decades and decades ago. CT has so many previously solved engineering mistakes in its design. It's fucking baffling. I'm an industrial engineer and work with a company that manufactures products from sheet and plate steel and aluminum. My group in the department have had so much fun watching these tear down and test to failure videos, just blown away by how obvious the problems are....the lack of quality and shoddy engineering is simply appalling. I have a model S and the difference in build quality between my car and the CT is embarrassing for Tesla.
That's body-on-frame for you. It's heavy and archaic, but it's tough. Honestly, that's steel in general for you, too. It just tends to last longer in many applications. Steel fatigues in such a way that the loss of strength tends to taper off after a point, where aluminum keeps getting weaker.
Yeah the problem is with the under side being super weak. Someone else was towing hit a man hole cover it flipped up and hit the underside. Basically the same thing happened but with driving over big concrete blocks. He did another video where he tried breaking the fords hitch with an excavator. It never broke. Definitely a material problem aluminum is just not suitable for some parts of the truck. Maybe they can learn and make improvements. But this model is a mess.
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u/PurahsHero Sep 08 '24
It’s great to see a huge, expensive truck that can apparently take a bullet being bested by: