There are many reasons to hate the Cybertruck. Looks, shoddy workmanship, flat out performance lies, Man-child business owner, etc…

But my biggest gripe, and this is the unpopular bit, is that in my opinion, it’s not actually a truck at all.

The Cybertruck is a uni-body construction, often called a “car chassis”. It shares that with the Honda Ridgeline, Hyundai Santa Cruz, and a few others. Trucks that are meant to do actual work use a body-on-frame construction because it has more ability to flex and twist when you put a heavy load in the bed or towing something heavy.

To put it simply, if you put a heavy enough load in the back of a uni-body truck, you’re going to lose some traction on the front wheels as the weight will tilt the entire body backwards, whereas real trucks made for work are developed with the bed mounted separately to avoid that issue.

I know that yes, Santa Cruz, Cybertruck, Ridgeline, etc… are still technically classified as a truck. But in my (unpopular) opinion, anything uni-body shouldn’t be classified as one.

  • WoahWoah@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    38
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    13 hours ago

    You’ll also break the frame if you hop on the hitch. It has a vertical load rating of 160 pounds and the frame is aluminum. No bending, just breaking. It’s poorly conceived, executed, and implemented from top to bottom.

    • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      12 hours ago

      It has a vertical load rating of 160 pounds

      Did literally nobody ever use the tow hitch to jump into the bed or something during development? How does this even happen?

    • snooggums@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      13 hours ago

      This seems like guaranteed failure if it goes over nearly any rough road or rapid inckune/decline with a load trailer.

      Of course the odds that anyone attaches a trailer is pretty low.

      • WoahWoah@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        11 hours ago

        It can PULL more. It just can’t handle much for vertical load. This is true of all Teslas. They are all aluminum frames. This is specifically for things like a cargo or bike rack. The leverage becomes greater every mm away from the hitch the weight is. There’s some question of what a stress test would show. But the problem is there’s no standard distance for those type of racks from the hitch.

        Imagine a 10 foot steel bar in the hitch, and you hopped up and down on the end of it. If you weigh 200 pounds, you’re applying roughly 2,000 pounds of effective vertical weight on the hitch. If you do it again only two feet from the hitch, it’s 400 pounds effective vertical weight. What is the actual upper limit of effective vertical weight for a tesla hitch? Likely much more than 160 pounds. But that’s what is put in the manual because they don’t want to warranty the hitch because of the composition of the frame.

        The real issue is that the hitch is attached to the frame, and the frame is aluminum. So it’s not the case where you might bend the frame and could then have it bent back to good working order. If you put too much weight on a Tesla hitch, the frame itself will simply fracture.

        • RoidingOldMan@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          8 hours ago

          So if I see one parked, I’m hearing I should go hop up and down on the hitch and then run away.