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Some Cybertruck Owners Say Their Trucks Are Shedding Body Panels; One Thinks He Knows Why
(www.roadandtrack.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
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How the hell is that thing legal to sell??
I worked at the Tesla plant in Fremont for a bit and most of every car is held together with adhesive. They claim it's super strong and once heated, it's stronger than welding... But, I mean... They are still falling apart and I don't know if that's because the adhesive sucks or if it's because every single day, they had to have someone remind everyone that the glue pattern posted at every station where it's applied isn't just a suggestion, it's an engineering requirement for the structural integrity of the part. People were just slapping the adhesive onto shit in any old way they pleased a lot of the time.
Adhesive bonding can be a good engineering choice, it's used a lot in aerospace, but like any engineering process, it has to be done right. If the thermal coefficient of expansion of the panels is big enough and the adhesive is immovable, the bonds will break. And as you mention, it's a really good idea to put the adhesive where it's supposed to go, otherwise it's not going to work correctly.
(X) to doubt
Adhesives can be incredibly strong.
But never a weld.
MEK welds styrene. Cynocrylate forms a mechanical bond. MEK will be stronger in tension, cyno stronger in shear.
Yes, but stronger than welded 304 stainless?
Good ole methyl ethyl ketone.
Dropped a rubber boot in a vat of it once to see what would happen.
No idea why, but it came out much larger/expanded.
Fun fact, you can shrink barbie doll heads in acetone.
I don't even know the name of the adhesive they used. I do know that it was made by 3M and that it's orange.
Well, OK. So maybe that adhesive is stronger than a weld on that particular plastic. Of course, if you're talking about adhering a plastic to a metal you cannot weld it so Elmer's would be "stronger than a weld". But whatever's going on it's not adequate.
E: and actually welding plastic together typically isn't that strong, a mechanical bond can easily be stronger than melting the plastic to weld it.
Epoxy bonding on body panels is super common on many cars now. And it’s the only way to bond incompatible materials like aluminum and high strength steel.
Even steel body panels can’t be welded to high strength steel because the heat affected zone will be weakened by the weld and will crack just outside the weld.
Adhesives to create a mechanical bond, and the 3M body adhesives include glass microbeads that prevent you from squishing the joint too tightly, which makes the bond more effective.
Now using it in dirty or coated stainless steel clearly isn’t working, and the design of thin strips of shiny steel that will grow and shrink a lot, mostly in one direction on a design that was done by a 7 year old in a hurry to draw a truck is another issue.
Good points.
Why aren't they using fasteners? Cost or weight?
Probably cost, via speed of assembly, robots are really good at depositing glue, also design and safety, since the glue can remove intrusive hard points in a car. Also rigidity could be improved since the glue is continuous vs spot welds or fasteners.
I recently glued the roof skin on a classic car I’m restoring and the reason for replacement was that the 60 year old seam sealer had failed 20 years ago and the rust had crept in between the spot welds. I used 3M panel bond, partly because spot welds were difficult to do in position and it would likely be more reliable and water tight long term.
I probably won’t be around to find out if it fails, at any rate.
In other words, the things were being designed by underqualified engineers who didn't understand factors of safety, design for manufacturability, or that precision comes at a cost.
I suspect the real issue is the workers aren't given enough time on the line to do this correctly so they just churn them out to hit the needed metric knowing it will fail after being delivered to the owner.
Hence,
That cost could be needing to use precision robot arms instead of humans, needing to pay higher salaries to find really skilled and diligent humans, or as you suggested, slowing down the assembly line so the workers have time to be more careful.
Maybe. Or the production managers weren't maintaining control over the quality of the work.
Essentially every car has a windshield and trim attached only by adhesive, and has for decades. This ought to be a solved problem.
Is that trim piece steel? Maybe something about the material, usually they’re gluing on plastic trim pieces. They’re relying on heated adhesive but it’s a long skinny piece made of a material that conducts heat?
Yeah, used properly, adhesive can be stronger than just about any other form of fastening. Properly is the key word. Contaminates, or improperly prepped surface will drastically reduce the effectiveness.
Hell, surface coatings to protect against rust are a multi-billion industry and they often require very specific application methods and even a little deviation can fuck up the bond.
There's a reason why Musk is paying to dismantle the government.
It's not over here in the UK. They're not road legal.
There's a reason why the EU won't allow the sale of cybertrucks and it all has to do with ~~build quality and~~ safety.
Edit: strikethrough added based on incorrect assumption as pointed out below
I thought it was purely due to inadequate rounding of angles on the body due to stricter pedestrian safety laws that the EU has. Does the EU have some kind of build quality testing and standard that the cybertruck failed?
I actually didn't quite remember the reason, so I checked it. The rounding is one main reason and the fact it is so heavy it requires a drivers license for trucks, as well as basically no demand. So no build quality requirements failed, but definitely safety related.
Adhesive binding can be significantly stronger than mechanical bonding when done right.
...when done right. Yeah. Guess where I'm putting my money.
Odds the pace of the line is too fast to do it right?
There's no consumer protection agency anymore. I wonder why.
Adhesives are used everywhere on cars, especially on trim pieces. But you have to prep the parts, which could mean sanding and scuffing, cleaning with solvents, or even (on larger parts) flame or plasma treatment.
Cuz 'Murica!
What. The. Fuck...
Are we taking lessons from Samsung now? I mean are they serious? Adhesive for car parts?!
Well gee, as long as car exteriors don't experience extreme heating/cooling cycles on a daily basis, then adhesive should work just fine. Oh wait.
It's like they wanted this vehicle to fail.
Adhesive is fairly common in cars now. Some higher end cars are held together almost entirely with adhesives that bond carbon tubs to the frame.
More info here
That being said, they're obviously not using it correctly or in the right circumstances on the cybercuck. What a piece of shit.
industrial adhesive exists and is pretty strong.
I still wouldn’t use it on a car.
It's probably been used on every car since 2000.
I’m sure it is but I haven’t found any holding on body panels.
Front and rear windscreens are bonded on. Rear view mirrors are typically bonded to the glass. Side view mirrors are bonded to their mounts. The Lotus Elise famously used bonding and riveting in the chassis. If you doubt the strength of bonding material together, the heat shield panels for the Space Shuttle were bonded with a special epoxy onto the vehicle. The adhesive handled supersonic winds at extreme temperature fluctuations. The glass fascia on skyscrapers is basically held on with double-sided foam backed tape, and it stands up to rain, shine, cold, hot and hurricane winds.
So they used gorilla glue on the Cybertruck?
They should have used dutch tape instead.
I’m giggling imagining the Dutch localized Duck brand duct tape where the duck is wearing clogs.
Lol, yes, autocorrect wonder I missed. I bet that for this one an AI was used.
There’s nothing wrong with adhesive. My car window shade things are attached via adhesive.
However, if it is not an extra attachment, shouldn’t they be clipped in somehow?