Driving Tesla Cybertruck - Overhyped or the Pickup Reinvented?

hello everyone and welcome Tesla has reinvented the pickup truck they looked at all the other pickup trucks out there and they're like nah and so here we are inside of the Cyber truck it doesn't even feel real to me even as I'm sitting in it it just feels like this thing shouldn't exist it doesn't really exist and yet here I am sitting in it driving it this is a customer's car it was delivered to them it is a person who owns this car the car is real it's real the Cyber truck is real despite seeming like all of this time that it was a joke it is not a joke I am shocked by that still but with Reinventing the pickup truck comes a lot of engineering decisions and that's what I'm really interested in what are the engineering decisions that went into this vehicle does it make it a better or worse truck is it worth the hype those are the types of questions I want to look at so the first thing that we have to start with absolutely is the shape now when you look at it yeah it's polarizing it's different it is not normal Al looking vehicle which is cool to me I think it's respectable to do something different have something look different whether or not you like the way that it looks and make no mistake the shape was an aesthetic choice right they wanted to design something that looked like the future and so here it is their perception of what they believe the future looks like we now get to drive it with that decision with that aesthetic Choice they're engineering pros and cons right like anything else so from an aerodynamic standpoint yeah it's not really the greatest shape you know it's a triangle right and you don't really want sharp edges uh for aerodynamics so if you look at a boat the bottom of a boat isn't just you know a straight V like a triangle that wouldn't be great for going through the water same with the top of this vehicle that said it is surprisingly still quite aerodynamic so drag coefficient of just 335 no it's not as good as the best out there like rivan and if you compare it to other Tesla models right to cars you know this is 50% less aerodynamic just from the shape alone but that's comparing it to to a car so there are better truck examples like the rivon there's worse truck examples like the Ford Lightning so as far as the compromise of choosing this style of shape it's not really that big of a compromise from an aerodynamic standpoint if you look at the market out there yes it is a sacrifice but not as big as it could be and some surprises you know there's some curves to the front that are hard to see on video but very obvious in person and so aesthetically it looks like very sharp edges everywhere it looks like straight lines everywhere but there are a good amount of curves to this vehicle at the front that you start to notice the front hood uh in front of the frunk the glass there are curves to this even the back kind of rolls a little bit down and it's very subtle and you can see it in person but looking at photographs it just looks like you know straight up triangle now this shape does have rigidity benefits so Tesla engineering says that the sails along the side there going from the cillar back actually adds 25% to the torsional stiffness of this vehicle it is an extremely stiff vehicle and that is a good thing you want a really stiff chassis because that means your suspension can do exactly what your suspension is designed to do the less stiff it is the less your suspension has control so when people talk about torsional stiffness what they're talking about is imagine you were to fix the front of the car you know to a immovable wall and then you were to take the back of the car and try and twist it that's torsional stiffness and so this car has very very high torsional stiffness Tesla engineering says it's about 3 to four times stiffer than the F-150 and to give you some perspective modern trucks are very stiff compared to the past so you know these are tens if not 20 30 40 times stiffer if we start going way back to older trucks where you know you hit a bump and you feel that vibrate through the whole cabin from that perspective it helps make it feel more car-like when you're driving now does it feel like a car we'll get into that later but it makes it feel more car-like in that when you hit bumps things like that I imagine if you're off-roading you're not getting these full body shakes you expect from from a truck uh that you know they're just gone in this thing it is super rigid and part of the reason for that is the shape triangles are just a great shape uh for engineering purposes you know it's why they're used for things like Bridges now there's some functionality consequences as a result of this triangle shape though right because the back the bed yes you actually have a lot more enclosed cargo space with that slant because that tunnel cover goes over that slant and it means your cargo bed area is actually larger however if you want access to the bed from the side you really can't just like reach over and get in so pros and cons more enclosed space though if you were to get a Topper on a regular pickup truck obviously that'd be more uh but here you know from the factory you have a large enclosed space not as easy access getting to the sides there so I think you know true pros and cons as far as if it's to be used as a work truck you might want that access to the side okay so number one was about the shape number two let's talk about voltage now I think this is an important engineering discussion and from a consumer standpoint completely irrelevant and you don't need to care about it at all so we'll get into why for both from an engineering standpoint high voltage is cool this is Tesla's first powertrain going from 400 volts instead now we're at 800 volts and it is their first time for the accessories uh going from 12 volts to 48 volts and so this is something the industry has wanted to do for a long time switch over to 48 volts it makes a lot of sense from an engineering standpoint because you want to reduce current the reason why you want to reduce current is it means you can use smaller wires by using smaller wires less material you save money so power equals voltage time current if you quadruple the voltage well for the same amount of power you have a fourth the current which means you can use smaller wires great you save money and it's a little bit more efficient because you can have less heat losses in your wiring so heat losses is a function of current squared 1/4 the current 1/6th the heat losses that's not as exciting as it sounds so when you hear 11/16th the heat losses it's like wow that's crazy right how much heat do you actually think is lost like in the wiring of a car it's very little it's a very little consequence to the overall performance of an electric car that is why you know Tesla has very efficient electric cars if this was the key high voltage was the key why does the rivan uh get better efficiency than this Tesla better economics as far as how far one kilowatt hour of energy takes you you know it goes further in the rivan than this because the rivan is a more aerodynamic shape it's a little bit smaller truck right and so you know Tire decisions wheel decisions all of these things have much much much greater impacts on how far you go with a certain amount of battery then what voltage are you know your accessory systems running on now there's real benefits of using this higher voltage for example this giant windshield wiper right that runs on 48 volts Tesla engineering says you know it's close to a kilowatt of power so it makes it a lot easier when you have a higher voltage going to that motor have thinner wiring same with the steering so this has steer by wire you've got two Motors controlling the front steering for the two front wheels and as a result you know having that higher voltage 48 Volts for those Motors means less wiring involved it's easier to do from a power perspective using 48 volts than using 12 volts now the reason why I say who cares again goes back to that range thing right there's so many more items that are so much more important for range than knowing what the voltage is so for a consumer knowing that you know your window goes up and down with 48 volts who cares it doesn't matter it's not going to affect you you don't really need to think about it from an engineering standpoint yes it is cool it means you can take material out save a little bit of energy it is a smart engineering decision now to help illustrate why this doesn't matter what I did was I took the EPA data that all of these companies submit so we've got a bunch of different electric trucks and I'm also going to throw in a model 3 rear wheel drive just for reference and so you can look at these electric trucks and this data that we are looking at is showing what is the force resisting this vehicle at certain speed speeds which we have on the bottom so for example at 60 MPH you can see how much force it takes the Cyber Tru in order to push through the air at that speed so just if it's not obvious looking at this plot the lower the curve the better it means less force is required to push the vehicle through the air at these speeds less rolling resistance less mechanical losses through internal friction and so as a result it means you have better efficiency you can travel a further distance with the same amount of energy this is data the manufacturers have to submit to the EPA and so you plot these curves and see you know from a coast down perspective how much energy is required for each of these vehicles to travel a certain distance just purely based on how much energy it takes to get from A to B and what's really really interesting looking at this plot is that you can see the force for a Tesla cyber truck is double that of a Tesla Model 3 and if you look at the gap between the model 3 and the Tesla cybertruck which is of course huge there's the same same gap between the Cyber Tru and the Hummer EV it just tells you how much energy is required to push that hummer EV down the road if you take a Hummer EV at 80 mph it takes the equivalent energy of three model 3s at 80 mph it is insane how much energy that hummer Eevee takes so yes this is two model 3s going down the road as far as resistive forces pulling it back so it means you need you know twice the amount of energy to go a certain distance at high speeds but you can see it's kind of in the middle there of these other vehicles it's on the more efficient side the rivan is a bit more efficient takes less energy overall to move a certain distance but certainly compared to the F-150 uh compared to the Silverado EV compared to the Hummer EV the cybertruck is doing really well moving on to number three is steer by wire and this is something truly unique about this vehicle Tesla was not the first to Market with steer by wire infinti was the first however infinti had a mechanical backup there was a steering column still in place that connected the steering wheel to the front wheels this has absolutely no mechanical connection to those front wheels which is quite interesting I drove a Lexus that also had this setup but it was not a production vehicle this is someone's car right this is a production car right here and so they were first to Market without a mechanical backup as far as I am aware now am I worried about safety no I mean there's enough redundancies in this where if something goes wrong you pull over and then you get it towed and you don't wor about it right there are redundancies in place that will allow you to have control in the event that something fails so if one of the motors fails well there's two Motors up front controlling the steering either one could handle it all both split it with a 50% duty cycle between them right if one of them fails the other one takes over no sweat you have duplicate sensors that know where the position is so you can trust that if a sensor fails no worries you've got another covering it same with you know the Control software so there's redundancies in place where if something does fail I'm sure you'll get an alert you'll know to pull over and you get it checked out and fixed you don't have to really think about it from a catastrophic standpoint will it happen one day maybe I don't know but same as like a tie rod falling off right mechanical steering can fail yeah it's super rare same with this I imagine it's also going to be super rare is it possible for it to fail sure just like anything is possible for it to fail the safety aspect of it does not concern me at all what is really interesting about steer by wire is that it allows you to choose your steering ratios which means at low speeds when you turn the wheel a little it turns the front wheels a lot at high speeds when you turn the steering wheel a little it turns the front wheels a little and so you have that ratio that you can change you can play with it's all a software decision you can make the steering feel however you want to make the steering feel that's really interesting and it's really interesting to be able to change the ratio you don't have to do any hand overhand nonsense like you do with literally every other car out there including Teslas with yolks this doesn't have a Yol and it's funny they bring up Wyatt doesn't have a yolk they say Well when you're Offroad you want to be able to grab the steering wheel anywhere and I agree with that what's funny is that they have yolks where you can't grab the wheel anywhere where you do have to do hand overand and so it's like well why would you have that there and now when you actually could get away with using a yolk because you never really have to take your hands off you know nine and three you could get away with it but they have the top of the squirkle here uh as they so call it uh which honestly is great I think the steering wheel here is a much better decision than a Yol what I rather just a simple Circle yeah sure but with steer by wire you can easily get away with this because you don't ever have to take your hands off uh 3 and9 now as far as steer by wire I really think it's worth a deep dive video just going solely into that so I don't want to focus on it too much but just from a feel perspective it does take a little getting used to I actually do like it I think it feels pretty good at low speeds it is pretty Dy and then that starts to fade away as you get to higher speeds and at higher speeds it feels very familiar the tires are pretty gummy and so you know there large 35-in tires if you start turning this thing it's not going to react like that because you know it just can't it's too much weight uh there's some body roll that the tires are giant but the response is there in the steering system and that a little bit goes a long way as far as steering so it's a interesting transition I think it's pretty easy to get used to I got used to it very quickly the first time at low speeds I took a right-and corner it was like whoop I gave it too much and I had to kind of back out of it but you'll learn that very quickly you know what the actual turning radius is like now speaking of incredible turning radiuses rear wheel steering and this was something I experienced in the Hummer EV and it is absolutely incredible Offroad how maneuverable the Hummer Eevee was because of 10° of rear wheel steering rear wheel steering is incredible for maneuverability at low speeds especially with large Vehicles like this so it's really exciting that they brought it to this vehicle I also while driving it haven't noticed it ever really feeling like disconnected like sometimes with rear wheel steering it can feel like the front rear aren't communicating really well together I haven't noticed that with this all right number five I want to talk about truck stuff cuz this is a truck right so I want to talk about truck stuff that it does really well truck stuff that it doesn't do so well so as far as what it does well you've got lots of storage you've got lots of outlets so you've got 110 and 240 volt in the bed of the truck that is awesome to have that much power um you can run pretty much anything off of that you can charge another EV if you really wanted to you can power a welder really cool how much power you have with the charging there also biral charging so you can eventually with a kit you need some extra Hardware with your home but you can use this to power your home say you have a power outage you want to still have power well you could use your cyber truck where you've got this giant you know 123 KW hour battery pack that you can use to help power your home that is awesome really love to see that it's the first Tesla with that bidirectional charging so it's really cool that they've included that you've got a ton of cargo space with this thing the bed actually is really big so you can fit all kinds of stuff in that bed the tow rating is good not what they said it will be you know they said 14,000 for the highest level now it's 11,000 11,000 is still a lot of weight to be able to tow now that is for short distance Towing I should say longdistance Towing is definitely a challenge for electric trucks and this is no exception I mean the reason being it just has a low amount of energy overall um and so you have to charge a lot so I think that's worth again an updated video just on the charging involved and the numbers behind Towing now that we have have all the release specs of this vehicle uh so I won't get too deep into it but long range Towing there's been some tests and it is challenging for electric trucks the final benefit as far as truck stuff that I want to talk about is the tough exterior right it's got this stainless steel exterior a lot you know basically every vehicle's weakest part is the exterior any little you know scratch of a rock or anything and you ruin your paint you don't have to worry about this here you know dings and dents at a construction side very common with this thing you've got this really hard stainless steel exterior you don't have to worry about the exterior of the car as far as getting dense things like that you know rocks hitting it no sweat so that is kind of cool to have a very tough exterior that's like mildly you know bullet resistant but you know the glass is not so you want to stay behind the uh the doors I guess if you're getting shot at probably best to avoid that situation entirely regardless really tough exterior which is cool now what about the bad stuff as far as truck stuff well long range Towing as I mentioned that's just a real challenge for electric trucks even though they're going to offer this range extending battery pack it's going to be really hard for long distance Towing and I think that's really disappointing because when Tesla initially announced this in 2019 they said $70,000 over 500 Miles 14,000 lbs of Towing six seats none of these things ended up being true and so what's a bummer about that is to me when I see okay a $70,000 pickup truck that has over 500 Mi of range might actually conver convince some combustion engine truck buyers that tow to switch to EV with the lower numbers the lower range numbers Towing doesn't really make so much sense with this thing unless you're only traveling short distances when you're towing and you know that you've got a charge or wherever you're ending up so that's a bit of a bummer the other really huge bummer to me with this vehicle that is just kind of insane to me is that there's no spare tire like what a Ford Maverick a tin little Ford Maverick has a full-size spare AR rivan which is a slightly smaller truck it has a larger battery pack offered and it has you know that gear tunnel they still found a way for you to fit a full-size spare without putting it in the truck bed it's underneath the truck bed uh versus with this if you do get a spare you have to throw it in the bed and it's just sitting there in the bed rather rivan where they have their storage underneath the bed that you can stick that fulls siiz Spar I think that's really cool I think it's a true disappointment that a truck a truck not a car I mean I think everything should come with a spare but a truck which is designed for off-road use has off-road mode allows you to get stranded and not have a dedicated spot for a full-size spare that doesn't mean intruding in on your bed space Okay so we've chatted about the engineering what is this thing actually like to drive now I have daily driven a Tesla Model 3 for the past 5 years and this thing very much so feels like a Tesla yes there's some things you have to immediately adjust to the steer by wire the visibility challenges where you know if you have the Tunnel closed you don't see anything out the back but you've got this screen which is showing you what's behind you you've got cameras everywhere so as far as visibility you have cameras to assist you when you need it there are things like that that you have to adjust to right but overall The Experience feels very Tesla likee when you put your foot down you get really great response when you take your foot off you have this really nice regen breaking I love the way Tesla regen breaking feels I love their throttle programming the way that they have their throttle pedal designed as far as the mapping of it of how much you get you know and what percentage of throttle you get it's beautiful they have a really well controlled throttle pedal for both regen breaking and accelerating and so overall the Driving Experience very Tesla likee feels very familiar in that way now one of the misconceptions I feel like because I have heard this a lot is that this thing feels like a car and when I first got and I thought okay in this direction straight line it feels like a car in that you don't really feel the weight because it has so much power when you let off the regen really does a good job of slowing it down and you don't notice the body pitching or rolling you know too much this direction but you do have roll in Corners right and you do notice that this is a truck when you turn the steering wheel I think that is one of the things I've heard about it that it feels very car-like to drive this does not feel like a car to drive this feels like a truck no it doesn't have that whole body shake because it's a very rigid truck but it most definitely feels like a heavy truck when you're driving it you can certainly feel the difference again I'm coming from a model 3 Performance right and telling you that so it's like that is something that's much lower to the ground it weighs significantly less it has more response and so it it's much more direct this is on 35s right you can't have crazy steering response on 35 in tires it just doesn't work there's a little play there right you have to get that huge slip angle to start turning things this feels like a truck is it really responsive is it really good is it really Tesla like yes did they do a good job yes it still feels like a truck you can't mask the fact that we're at almost you know 7,000 lb or 6,500 lb as far as some of the interface you know between me and machine using the turn signals on the steering wheel I'm not a huge fan of that I'd rather have a stock sometimes I push them and they don't work sometimes I push them and they do work and it's so there's kind of like Hit or Miss I do like that they're actually buttons instead of like these heptic just you know this little force feedback thing where you tap it it is an actual button to turn these things on but I much prefer the stocks I feel like they're more intuitive to use and you know for things like flashing your brights for Switching gears instead of using the screen uh and even for turn signals because I've had mixed use with these where sometimes I push it and it doesn't do anything and I'm like all right how do I get this to stop so as far as the controls I would get used to it I wouldn't care too much about it yeah I'd rather they had stocks all right how let's get some giant windshield wiper actually oh oh my oh my oh it kind of like sprays out all across that thing that's kind of cool it's uh it's a little man it's a little squeaky but that is a giant windshield wiper so does it deserve the hype I mean this thing has absolutely blown up the internet and that is really impressive to me and when I start to look at why has it blown up the internet I mean I think you know people who don't even care about cars know about this thing and that's really why it's gotten so big right it's extended Beyond enthusiasts and Tesla has done a really good job with that where a lot of people know about this thing and then people say hey did you know about this thing called rear wheel steering did you know about 48 volts did you know about steer by wire and all of these are technologies that have existed right Tesla didn't invent the idea of steer by wire 48 volts or 800 volts or rear wheel steering but they created this shape that got a lot of people to look at a vehicle and Go whoo that's different I'm interested and then learn about all these technologies that do exist within the realm of cars and then think hey that's really cool that they did that and so it's exciting that it has brought people in however if you have come from an engineering background and you're familiar with all this technology it's like Tesla has done a really good job of putting it all into one vehicle and making a really cool product with it but it isn't this like mindblowing thing of like oh experiencing this is different from any other thing I've ever driven like I've driven steer by wire before with the Lexus prototype that is by far the most shocking thing about driving this and so that will a lot of people will be like wo this is different because of the steering aspect but other than that it feels very familiar I think overall super Solid Truck price is a little high really practical a lot of good features that I'm impressed by I like how much cargo storage there is I like how responsive of a vehicle it is is it the most fun vehicle to drive no I think if you are into driving Joy you'll find much more driving Joy from smaller Vehicles you do feel the heft of this thing it is impressive from an engineering standpoint how well everything works together despite the fact that this is really an unfinished product I mean at this point it has lockable differentials that don't let you lock them it has no autopilot despite every Tesla vehicle coming stand standard with autopilot it doesn't have any sensors as far as if you get close to something it doesn't warn you so there are incomplete features that I assume software updates will bring down the line and it's interesting to see something released like this it's becoming more common where you know software isn't quite there yet though that said with my model 3 again 5 years ago it was a very different car it didn't even have one pedal driving it didn't have Sentry mode it didn't have dash cam it got faster while I've owned it so my model 3 has gotten exceptionally better over time and I imagine if Tesla you know does what they've historically done they will be releasing updates for this that do actually quite improve it so currently it's a really good truck and I think it has potential to be better a little disappointed on some of the range specs as far as the towing capability if you're actually using this like the truck you know how many truck owners actually use their truck for truck stuff I think an EV and most scarios is planning to get the job done has a massive bed has all these Outlets bir directional home charging really really cool stuff they've pecked into this and in a very like cohesive job Tesla has really good packaging so they've done a really good job with that I really like the interior I'm surprised actually I feel like it's really nice in here I've been having a hard time like trying to express how I feel about driving this and I kind of figured it out it's like meeting a celebrity and so you know celebrities are just like normal people right live their own lives they go to Costco and like buy groceries and stuff right they're normal people but we put them on this pedestal and so when you drive this thing that's just been super super hyped by the entire world it's like cyber truck and then you finally get in and you drive it's like oh it's a truck like it's cool it's chill right like it's it's normal it's it's not extraordinary though it looks very different and got all this hype right so it's like meeting a celebrity and they like they're just regular people you know they're cool they've been very successful they did a good job so did Tesla with this product but when you meet it it's not this like otherworldly experience it feels familiar feels good I like it think it's a cool truck really appreciate you all watching and thank you to Ben of voyage ATX uh for allowing me to drive his vehicle I'll include some links to his stuff so really appreciate it Ben letting me get in your car thank you all so much for watching if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below

Channel: Engineering Explained

Views: 751,160

Keywords: Tesla, tesla cybertruck, cybertruck, elon musk, engineering explained, cybertruck review

Id: TeqE1kOO3dE

Length: 26min 26sec (1586 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 09 2024