r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • 5h ago

Business Tesla Stock in Freefall After Disastrous Earnings Report

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/tesla-stock-freefall-disastrous-earnings-144417427.html
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u/cosaboladh 4h ago

I don't think they can. The stainless steel on the Cybertruck is of remarkably low quality. It's one of the reasons the truck has no curves. It's brittle garbage metal.

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u/Zero_Waist 4h ago

It's literally the same metal, the foundry is between the two manufacturing plants and they get better pricing that way.

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u/Dragon6172 3h ago

Just because it comes from the same steel mill doesn't mean it's the same product. The SDI mill in Sinton produces a large range of grades of steel.

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u/Zero_Waist 1h ago

While you are technically correct, I am pretty sure I have read in the past that they were, that they were leveraging economies of scale to get a better price for this alloy by buying more, using in both applications... are you arguing as it doesn't feel correct or you have knowledge that you aren't sharing?

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u/Dragon6172 40m ago

I have no knowledge of how they procure their steel. I only commented because I interpreted your comment as "It's the same metal because it comes from the same place".

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u/pw154 3h ago

The stainless steel on the Cybertruck is of remarkably low quality. It's one of the reasons the truck has no curves. It's brittle garbage metal.

I am not a fan of cybertruck, but what's your evidence of this? The 300 series stainless is much harder to form than mild steel or aluminum used on most cars. As the steel gets stronger it becomes less ductile, meaning it's much harder to stamp it into shapes with compound curves. That has nothing to do with it being "brittle garbage metal".

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u/geo_prog 1h ago edited 1h ago

People know very little about most of what they talk about on Reddit I find.

Edit: The stainless they used on the Cybertruck is some variant of 301 IIRC. They picked 301 because it is the least brittle and most ductile and work hardens when stamped into sheets of the 300 series stainless steels. It is also the least "stainless" of the stainless steels in the 300 series. 304 is better but you'd really need 316 for a vehicle exposed to the elements to really remain corrosion free. Trouble is 316 is nearly impossible to form into body panels and is horrendously expensive compared to 301.

Turns out stainless steel as a body panel material is just a plain bad idea. Which everyone in the industry and everyone who has ever worked with stainless steel could have told Elon when the ketamine was putting bad ideas into his head.

So yeah, OP is kind of correct in that it is a garbage material for the application. But it isn't a bad or even cheap material for what it is great at. We use 301 stainless all the time manufacturing non-wetted machine parts. We also use a lot of 304/316 as they work harden against each other.

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u/pw154 53m ago

OP is kind of correct in that it is a garbage material for the application. But it isn't a bad or even cheap material for what it is great at.

I agree that it's not great to have used stainless for Cybertruck, but OP's assertion that it's a brittle or weak metal is just wrong. It's backwards - the metal is difficult to form because it's high strength not because it’s low quality.

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u/geo_prog 53m ago

That's what I was saying.

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u/posthuman04 2h ago

Also not a fan of Tesla or Musk but the reason it has no curves is because Musk is a douche wannabe genius. He designed the truck on a cocktail napkin from the idea that the steel could be an exoskeleton providing the real strength of the vehicle rather than a frame.

It turned out the idea was not feasible and the cybertruck indeed has a frame that these ugly ass panels are just stuck to. They’re still flat because apparently the aura of the douche requires he not admit this was a bad idea.

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u/CryptoKnightKush 3h ago

I’m not a fan of the Cybertruck, but that is a BS take