Tesla Cybertruck recall #8: Exterior trim peels itself off, again Tesla has issued its eighth Cybertruck recall, this time over exterior trim panels that risk detaching while driving - the second time loose body trim has triggered a safety fix. This time, the stamped stainless steel piece attempting escape is the cant rail, a cosmetic metal trim running along the top of the doors from the …
A mirror of Musks personality?
Can it do a Nazi salute?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/20/elon-musk-daughter-vivian-jenna-wilson-salute
Even 1978 British Leyland wasn't that bad!
I feel I have to come to the defence of Tesla here. Them be fightin' words!
I give you the Triumph TR7, Austin Allegro, Morris Marina, Austin Montego - and of course the Austin Maestro - who's idea was it to put an electronic voice in it to tell you when someothing had gone wrong - surely it would have been easier to tell you when something hadn't?
Although the Cybertruck does look as ugly as an Allegro. At least they don't sell Tesla models in vomit yellow, various shades of poo brown or vile orange.
I had a 1973 Marina, bought from my grandmother in 1977 when my grandfather died. It was certainly underpowered, and the suspension from a Morris Minor wasn't really up to the job of handling corners in a larger car (although it wasn't as lethal as the Triumph Stag of that era). All the same, I don't remember bits falling off, and it was never bothered by rain. Indeed, it had one of the best heaters I remember from any car back then. Easy & cheap to fix, comfy seats too. Leyland never had to recall all of them for just one fault...
I recall reading a car magazine published in the mid-late 70s, in which they had a group test of medium sized four door sedans from the era, including a handful of Japanese models and some British ones. The Datsun 180B/Bluebird could have been one of them. It struck me that the info box for every single vehicle in the test included a list of the defects the test example had off the showroom floor, which definitely isn't a thing these days!
A 1970s Datsun was a product of its time. However, the Japanese automakers really sorted their shit out in the 1960s and by the late 70s were generally class leading in terms of value and reliability.
Tesla has been speedrunning the mistakes that the traditional automakers (you know, the ones that are only "worth" a fraction as much as Tesla) made more than 50 years ago.
At least the Datsuns were cheap.
My parents' first car was a secondhand Datsun originally sold in... 1978. (No, really).
Its achilles heel was that it was susceptible to rust in the UK climate- something which was already approaching terminal around the time it failed its MOT and it got replaced when it wasn't yet eight years old.
Yet aside from that, my Dad remembers it being a good and easily-maintained car. I suspect it was probably more reliable (and better value for money) than many British Leyland cars et al back then.
(And honestly, it probably wasn't all *that* much worse for rust than many other cars of its era. Not saying it was good in that respect, but rust on *all* cars was a way bigger deal at that time, and still a major problem well into the 1980s. Cars just didn't last as long back then.)
Considering there were >250K reservations (supposedly) and plenty of unsold stock those numbers aren't too impressive. Though does again prove that the supply of tasteless idiots with too much money isn't running short.
Maybe it sold better than the electric F150 or the Hummer EV but in the grand scheme of US truck sales all the electric ones are totally insignificant in a market that numbers in millions of units per year.
Are Tesla owners losing their drive?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2025/mar/20/are-tesla-owners-losing-their-drive
Cartoon by Fiona Katauskas
Some go to even more extreme measures...
It's not legal here or anywhere in Europe because the sharp edges and lack of crumple zones make it a danger to pedestrians. Interestingly that lack of crumple zones means that the WankPanzer will inflict similar damage on the occupants of said vehicle (I use the term loosely) in the event of a crash.
Oh, they're irreparable too so insuring one might get to be a challenge.
Vertical rain? NO! Don't leave your cybertruck in the rain!
You ask, Trump's Attorney General Pam Bondi answers.
(Pam first caught my attention by taking a bribe to not prosecute Trump for fraud. According to Trump and Bondi, giving and receiving bribes is perfectly acceptable so we will just has to judge her character by the long list of other awful things she has done.)
"The days of committing crimes without consequence have ended," Bondi said. "Let this be a warning: if you join this wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, the Department of Justice will put you behind bars."
What about shooting rifles in schools? Is that a crime?
Wankers.
HOA is probably Home-Owner-Association. You are better off avoiding them more like the street corners, 'cause some HOAs are very weird. A clear example that "freedom" in the USA means "freedom to be scammed and f*cked over by everyone, and there is nothing you can do about it."
That's *exactly* what the Cybertruck's engineering comes across as.
Something you'd expect to have been a prototype or mostly working mockup to get the point across, but all lashed-together shoddiness and short-term corner-cuts under the surface. The sort of things you'd expect to have been implemented and engineered properly in the production version.
Exactly what I was thinking. The chemistry of body of these toys has always been dubious and glue was probably one of the ways that engineers thought would reduce corrosion. Riveting anything is going to give the natural chemistry to turn these heaps of steel into heaps of rust.
Using glue to bond metals is a time proven technique, up until about 2017. If the correct glue is chosen, lifetimes of 30+ years can be achieved. Looks like here someone scrimped on the glue, and or they didn't perform sufficient weather testing to identify the appropriate amount of glue for the job. I mention 2017, because that was the time of the Grenfell Tower fire. The Grenfell Tower had been covered with a metal cladding, that included in it's materials glue to bond stiffening rods to the inside of the panel, glue we now know to be flammable. As a result insurance companies in the UK all started to decline insurance for buildings that used glue bonding in it's metal cladding panels. The solution for the industry was to adopt stud welding to weld a threaded pin to the metal plate, to which the stiffening bars were then fastened in place using nuts. The problem of corrosion in the weld is mitigated by using similar materials, i.e. if your plate is 304 stainless, then weld a 304 stainless pin to it. 316 to 316, and steel to steel and so on. If the stud and the plate are similar materials, then you don't get the galvanic corrosion issue occurring.
There's a youtube video showing the stud welding process they'll be using here https://youtu.be/SIU6YkmnSAY , and it's to be hoped that Tesla perform the necessary weather testing to determine how many studs are required to hold the panel in place without it blowing off at speed, or we'll be back to reading an article about the panels falling off again in six months time.
I've nothing against using glue to bond metals, but the use in Twatmobiles has been arrived at for the wrong reasons: unsuitable steel was chosen for the bodywork for aesthetic reasons, and presumably because Musk didn't want to pay the premium of importing the specialised steel that he'd really need but that America doesn't produce.
When they're allowed to do their job properly, engineers at Tesla and SpaceX tend to do good jobs, then the SAFA twat appears and fucks it up.
I have a good deal of first hand experience with auto manufacturing with several US, Japanese, and European car brands. US Ford and GM cars are reasonably well made. I don't like their current model line up in North America, but they're reasonably well made. Chrysler has always had a reputation for being less well made, but I would still put them as better than Tesla.
Tesla though have always been known for poor build quality and questionable design engineering. They have always sold purely due to brand promotion and image. They got into the US electric car market early and a heavy focus on the California market got them a lot of publicity with celebrities and people who write about celebrities.
They basically sell a Lada or Trabant grade product at BMW prices. If you want an electric car you are much better off buying one from one of the long established major brands who will sell you a much better made and designed car for the same price or less.
I won't be surprised if Tesla end up going out of business or if their assets are bought by someone else for a small fraction of their current stock market value. They are a luxury brand that sell a poorly made product based on image. That image is being steadily undermined by the antics of a certain rather questionable person. Once their image is tarnished nobody has a reason to buy one anymore.
Tesla and Elon Musk are embroiled in a “brand tornado crisis moment” and the electric carmaker’s chief executive needs to cut back on his work for Donald Trump to stem the damage, one of the company’s biggest supporters has said.
"the electric carmaker’s chief executive needs to cut back on his work for Donald Trump to stem the damage, one of the company’s biggest supporters has said."
Not sure on the logic here. Elon is toxic to the Tesla brand, to good organisation, to good decision making. Having outed himself as a fascist twerp who wants to be paid $56bn whilst he delights in illegally sacking government workers, there's no route back. Even if he gave up on his political activity, his previous buyers are not coming back. Having DOOFUS deliver a Tesla advert from outside the White House is probably another bit of brand damage that won't be readily repaired.
"They are a luxury brand that sell a poorly made product based on image"
But isn't that what most "designer" goods are? Something that sells to its intended audience despite its mediocre quality, and in part because of its high price? As you say, image is everything, and Musk's circus clown foray into politics is "doing a Ratner" with his own brand.
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The problem is Tesla's stock market value is inflated by a factor of 10 even considering the recent slide (which is just reversing the run up it experienced last. year before the election). But I agree they can't go on without updating their model lineup, but they can't seem to figure out how to to do that. Probably too much interference from Muskrat.
It really should not be that difficult either. A few changes in the technology "under the hood" and a change in the body styling is all many, especially US, manufactures do. I remember when we started getting swamped with US TV and hearing people talk a about a car model from a specific year. Something that didn't happen here. A model was a model and the year it was made wasn't relevant. When a new model came out, it was more likely referred to as "mark 2" or "mark 3" or similar and might be 2, 4 or more years between those changes. US marketing seems to have encouraged if nor enforced far more frequent product updates than the rest of the world. And there's Tesla with barely a change, year on year, in what they sell. It's disruption I tells ya, DISRUPTION <maniacal laugh>
"is why people don't buy US cars, despite usually being less expensive."
Reminds me of Trumps recent comments about "yoo-rope" not buying "American" cars. We do. Lots of them. From US companies who set up across the UK and Europe and took the time to learn what sells here. The "American" cars that we don't buy are the ones from US companies who don't bother to look at how Europeans are different in taste and practicality and just try to export US models with minium changes to to meet local legislation. I've driven decent (for various values of decent!) Fords that easily do 60mpg, but try getting a US made one that can do that. And that's only one minor difference between US and European attitudes to cars.
To be clear, the US car manufactures who have succeeded in Europe make the cars here, have been here for decades and make what people want to buy.
Porridge, exactly, you basically need a flame thrower to remove it from the bowl - domestic dish washer; forget it?
No idea what sort of weird chemical reaction between porridge and ceramics is going on, but probably deserves further scientific investigation. But, getting g back on topic, maybe something that Tesla could investigate as a fix for bits spontaneously dropping off their cars?
"borrow some iPhone battery glue."
Or not source the two part epoxy from the local two dollar / pound shop.
I suspect the original glue only design was a recognisably poor choice (amongst a slew of others.)
If I were compelled to drive one I would at least have the rust inclined stainless painted donkey dick pink.:)
Meh. I think that's more a Tesla-specific issue than a general US one. Build quality of Ford, GM cars is usually OK, they've been doing it a long time. (Not saying anything about Chrysler, those things are rare outside the US and for good reason IMO.)
What's not OK is the design, most importantly the assumption that efficiency is for losers.
Not saying anything about Chrysler, those things are rare outside the US and for good reason
Unlike GM and Ford, who were highly successful on the European market for decades, Chrysler never were.
They made three failed attempts to crack Europe- the first and by far most significant being in the late 1960s, when they started buying out and combining the operations of various European manufacturers, latterly selling models under their own name before they cut their losses and sold the lot to Peugeot just over a decade later.
They tried again in the 90s when they introduced the Chrysler Neon here as an obvious attempt to test the waters, but the numbers I saw weren't going to give Ford or Vauxhall any sleepless nights, and the Neon and Chrysler were quickly forgotten with nothing further coming of it.
Finally, they tried under Fiat's ownership, which IIRC was little more than slapping the name on the likes of (e.g.) the Lancia Ypsilon small car- itself based on the Fiat 500- and even *that* flopped(!), and the Chrysler name was withdrawn again.
I think they've always sold some of Chrysler's American vehicles as imports over the years, but that's always been more of a niche thing, as the US and European car markets are quite different in general.
No, it was GM that took over Saab, or at least the car division. IIRC- and Wikipedia confirms- Saab's demise was precipitated by GM's own bankruptcy in the late 2000s and the legal mess that followed the change of ownership.
(FWIW, the original parent company- defence contractor Saab- is still going, apparently).
I'm confused, I was pretty sure that a few years ago owning a small fleet of Teslas along with the home chargers, power wall and solar tiles was THE status symbol of the upper middle class to show just how much you care about the environment.
Yet here we have someone who has been vocal about climate change selling their Tesla and buying a Chevy Tahoe, which isn't even a hybrid!
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/arizona-senator-buys-chevy-replace-145834608.html
Might have taken another few years, but the result would be the same. It isn't like Tesla had some unique product no one else is able to make. They just had a CEO willing to lose money for long enough to get them over the profitability hump before the batteries were quite ready for prime time (and the technology has already moved on to LiFEPO to avoid LiON's issues with fires that can't be put out so now Tesla's battery technology is behind the times)
Unfortunately for the investors, that same CEO is trying to back up his Cybercuck over that same hump and drive them back into losses by alienating all those early customers and hoping he can make up for their loss with MAGA enthusiasts who'd rather roll coal and drill baby drill than be caught dead driving an EV.
Correct, but there seems to be a lot of short term memories here and (well deserved) hating on Musk. The incumbents were only just starting to look at the potential of EVs for the mass market instead of as curios and would have taken at least another decade to get to market without the kick up the arse they got from Tesla. There were a few experiments, especially in California that never took off enough to become mass market. Toyota’s Prius hybrid was the best of the bunch before Tesla came in years later and really shook up the "proper" EV market.
China would have still gone all-in on EVs for its own reasons on the same timeline. They're going to own the worldwide car market in 20 years everywhere but the US and maybe the EU. Tesla had little chance of stopping that before, but now that Musk has turned the brand to poison it is going to sink with the rest of the US automakers that can't compete outside their own country with big tariff walls keeping out the Chinese EVs.
Musk never lost money with Tesla, not least because of the emissions credits meant that he had a negative capital cost: he made money any time he asked investors for more cash.
Doesn't mean he wasn't courageous to invest in Tesla and Space X but he made sure he personally stood to lose little. The only time he put his personal finances at risk was when he bought Twitter.
Do you think Norway would have such a huge EV takeup if there had been no Tesla? I doubt the Nissan Leaf would have made such an impact.
Absolute it would. This Nissan Leaf lead the take-up there and has traded blows with Teslas in the sales rankings every since, but there are many other successful brands and the main cause is tax incentives.
Actually, studying the large diversity of EV car sales brands in Norway is the easiest way to refute the thesis that Tesla is somehow different from other car brands and will eventually capture a much bigger market share than any other manufacturer in history. It isn't a tech company, it doesn't have network effect nor low marginal costs. It's a car brand and people love to express their individuality through their car choice, not drive the same one everyone else in their town does. Even without Musk's toxicity there's a good case to be made that it already hit peak popularity.
"If it wasn't for Tesla we'd all still be driving 6ltr V8s.”
Maybe, maybe you are right. No actually you probably are right. Arguably Telsa did at least make EVs cool and acceptable - how much of that was down to Musk personally is debatable, but whatever; fine.
Except, I don’t think that anyone has an issue with Tesla cars per se, the problem is that the company and brand is tied to one E. Musk esquire, and he, personally is now toxic to a lot of people; not just in the rest of the world, but in the US as well. Hence the, understandable, backlash against Tesla. Nothing really against the company or their products (well bits falling off them notwithstanding), it’s him!
"It's 50/50 whether there's anyone actually setting the things on fire. "
The same odds I would give of it being his Nazi buddies doing a false flag operation to try and own the libs. With them getting the blame to enable more of a crack down on peoples freedoms. A classic scumbag Yankee move from their playbook for the last century, littered with the bodies of millions they have killed using it in other countires...
Except for the fact that it could only be the political left as they are the only ones pathetic and narcissistic enough to do things like that. And its not like the political left has never carried out random acts of violence and destruction.
Given that the owners of most BMWs, Mercedes can't get down a Cornish lane wide enough for two cars without leaving a 1 metre gap between them and the vegetation on the left hand side, I don't think it's an American car problem it's a can't drive problem.
The difference is whether you're prepared to let the nearside of your car get scratched, if only minor scratches. People who actually live in these areas will generally drive older cars, where the minor damage from hedges and stone chips will just be seen as the hazards of driving.
Here in Somerset, the country lanes are not that wider than Cornwall, and I can tell a local driver from one just visiting by how they drive on minor roads. Visitors will try to keep equal distance from both sides, and will be a real pain in the neck if you ever meet one head on, especially if they're unwilling/unable to reverse to the passing place that is just behind them.
I drive a 17 year old Land Rover (although one of the more car like ones), but don't mind the hedges, because what is a few more scratches!
Musk finding out that building cars is actually quite hard. I had a few friends with Teslas, they did like the cars but that was despite the build quality rather than because of it. Most of them had really very significant QC issues with their cars such as missing bolts leading to parts working loose and becoming damaged (power steering pump in one more serious case), paint runs, misaligned panels and lot of gremlins. But they did like them. However none now own a Tesla all moving on to other EVs or back to ICE in a few cases.
Tesla has lost it's USP now other manufacturers have caught up with their own EV products.
I think that everyone here is being very mean to Elon and the cybertruck. Stop it now, before his little feelings get hurt.
You have to consider the use-case of the vehicle, and the cybertruck is admirably suited to its design objective.
Want to look like a wanker or signal that you’re a not so closet Nazi? The cybertruck is perfectly suited to your needs.
Want to cover any distance, on road or off road, safe in the knowledge that your car won’t rust when you wash it, and will cover any terrain you throw at it? Toyota has your back.
You can't fix ugly. You can't recall ugly.
I saw a hilarious Youtube video the other day of a guy talking about why he hated his Cybertruck and after 6 months sold it. At a huge loss (because Tesla lowered the price 25% (!) after he bought it, thus undercutting the value of the existing cars. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTXbAtrV7gg)
Musk is a disaster. He can't even do the thing he's supposedly great at, well. He's all hype and no meat (sorry for the heavily mixed metaphor) and a deeply weird mess.
I don't have any sympathy for anyone who got screwed over because they bought a Cybertruck.
Unlike the earlier Teslas, the entire deal with the Cybertruck was very clear by the time it hit the streets. The bullshit stupidity of the concept. The ludicrous claims that were already being disproven even before- *long* before- it came out, most obviously the infamous "unbreakable" windows demo.
The Cybertruck is- or is meant to be- a pure "image" car, closely associated with Musk. The "I didn't realise Musk was *quite* that much a POS" excuse might have washed for owners of older models, but this was already clear by the time the Cybertruck actually came out.
If the Musk fanboys and attention-seekers who bought one "regret" that or are backtracking, it's only because they took for granted the attention they certainly *did* get would have been much more positive than it was.
Even for those with a pre-order, they apparently cost next to nothing- something like $100 IIRC- and could probably be re-sold for way more than that. Regardless, no-one goes ahead and spends $100,000 on a Cybertruck simply because they don't want to lose their $100 deposit...!
I once owned a series of British sports cars, starting with MGs and ending with a 90's Jaguar. One thing I moved from car to car in that decades-long journey was the little brass plaque which read "the parts observed falling off this vehicle are of the finest British workmanship."
Tesla has taken up this model, and then some.
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