"Hi, it's the EV revolution calling. Can you hear me now?"
The Tesla CyberTruck symbolizes the arrival of an economic disruption that is killing the market for gasoline-powered-anything. The competitive basis of both the transportation and energy industries will forever change this decade as a result of technology cost curves crossing critical thresholds. The cost-curve stuff is explained in a video at the end of the diary, but is based on the long-term rate of improvement of key technologies such as silicon chips and battery cells.
The Trusk is a declaration of superiority by EV powertrains over ICE power, in it’s most demanding passenger vehicle use-case. Tesla is ‘going Daenerys’ on the work-hard/play hard macho image vehicle which is the heart of the GM and Ford brands. It clouds the emotional math of the purchase decision from on of Price/Features to one of Future/Past. Tesla is the only manufacturer ready for customers to sit in their products and have that conversation.
Here’s what Tesla is offering in the 2022 CyberTruck:
- 250 — 500+ miles range
- Very fast recharge speeds (>250W charging)
- 3,500 lbs cargo capacity (1 ¾ tons)
- 7,000 — 13,000 lbs towing capacity
- 0-60 mph from <6.5 to <2.9 seconds
- 16 inches ground clearance (highest setting)
- Seats six
- 6.5 foot cargo bed with 100 cubic feet lockable storage under retractable metal cover. Optional solar cells on cover.
- 120v & 240v power outlets in the bed
- Built in air compressor
- $39,900 base price + $7,000 FSD, up to $79,900 with FSD included.
- Available fall 2022 (dual and triple motor versions will be available late 2021)
For reference, the average price of an F-150 sold in 2018 was $48,800, and the nearest F-150 performance-wise to the Trusk, the Ford F-150 Raptor dual cab, sold for $54,000.
Based on price and specifications, the Musk Trusk isn’t just a better pickup truck than all those built before, it is also a better EV than all those built before. For fun, let’s compare the performance versions of new Tesla pickup with the original 2012 Model S: the truck has nearly twice the range, offers 150% more range per dollar, is a third quicker 0-60, carries 3x the stuff, seats one more adult, includes Full Self Driving hardware and costs 25% LESS. Now keep in mind that no other manufacturer has yet built a vehicle which matches the 2012 Model S, meaning the Tesla pickup is improving upon performance that other manufacturers can’t even reach. These cost and performance benchmarks are attainable only because of advances in: 1) battery technology, 2) cell and vehicle manufacturing processes, and 3) design. Let's look at how each is individually manifested in the vehicle and then return to why it is a harbinger of the economic disruption.
Advances in battery technology and cell manufacturing
Tesla’s original intent was for Gigafactory One in Sparks, Nevada, (GF1), to produce 35 GWh of batteries per year. But as Tesla and Panasonic’s manufacturing expertise advanced, their pathway grew to three times the originally forecast battery production volumes, from 35 to 105 GWh per year. So the manufacturing improvements already mapped by Tesla included a 300% improvement to the battery cell manufacturing process, based on the 2170 format which has a power density of about 250 — 255 Wh/kg. All of which might now be obsolete.
There will be an presentation in March which should tell us the "state of the art" of battery manufacturing at Tesla in an investor presentation which will be webcast on YouTube. The expected announcements include both details on it’s latest Plaid powertrain, and hopefully a plan for switching to dry electrode batteries. The dry electrode technology is expected to reduce production cost and space, and double lifecycle performance. It may also reduce or eliminate use of cobalt, but Tesla is still securing contracts for long term supply contracts, so this is unlikely. I should mention, however, that Tesla’s cobalt comes from industrial copper mining, which produces cobalt as a byproduct.
Here’s how Maxwell Technologies, now owned by Tesla, describes the performance improvements demonstrated in lab tests.
>300Wh/kg, 10-20% cost reduction, 16X Production Capacity Density Increase. If Tesla can capture these benefits they will be the first company to breakthrough the “disruptive technology” thresholds of $100 per kWh, with power density over 300Wh per kilo. All while simplify manufacturing. Fingers crossed!!!
The quote on the slide saying “>300 Wh/kg Demonstrated with path to >500 Wh/kg Identified” is an 18% improvement with a path to full doubling! But most significant is what this means on the cost curve.
Note; Maxwell Technologies was an employee-owned company purchased with Tesla shares in May. The stock price has doubled since the deal closed, so the $235 million in stock received by Maxwell employees is now worth almost $500 million. Congratulations, Maxwell team!
There are two thresholds which need to be crossed for batteries to be a "disruptive technology” to markets and economies, and those are energy density (measured in watts per kilogram or Wh/kg), and cost per kilowatt hour ($/kWh). The magic numbers to reach are an energy density above 300 Wh/kg and a production cost at or below $100/kWh. The Maxwell dry electrode should allow Tesla to cross both of those thresholds once they have it incorporated into the manufacturing process. Tesla is believed to be at approximately $120/kWh presently. The big questions then, are: 1) what improvements are captured?, 2) what’s the plan and timeline to integrate into the manufacturing process? and 3) how will that unfold across the existing vehicle product line?
The Maxwell dry electrode technology provides a "16x improvement in production capacity density increase". Is it possible that Tesla has a path to manufacture 10x or even 16x the number of battery cells in the same manufacturing footprint? That would make GF1 a terawatt scale battery manufacturer at a single site, and thus TF1. It would also uncork the potential growth rate of vehicle production. Particularly if Tesla licenses the GF and battery technology to other producers for their own cars, and collects fees for every “skateboard” produced by the competition. Unlike their competitors, it would be consistent with Tesla’s mission statement to do so, thereby accelerating the transition to sustainable energy. .
But the real news here is that the current battery is already good enough to beat gas pickups at being pickups. And honestly, there’s always another ‘latest battery advance’ to incorporate into manufacturing, which is one reason Tesla designed the manufacturing process it uses, for ease of upgrade. And by double-stacking two battery packs of 2170 cells to deliver 500 miles of range, Tesla is demonstrating that their existing technology has the energy density and price per kWh to serve the vast majority of real world gas engine demands.
Advances in vehicle manufacturing
Elon Musk has long talked about the factories in which Tesla cars are produced as a product themselves. He also said he thinks Tesla may be the Microsoft of manufacturing software. Tesla has been coding manufacturing robots (built by Kuka, among others), for as long as they've been coding their cars, and has more software engineers than any other kind. They have used their mastery of software to improve their cars’ range and acceleration with over-the-air updates, years after delivering them to customers. So to understand Tesla’s advancements in manufacturing, first recognize that Tesla doesn’t see the manufacturing process as stopping when they deliver the vehicle to the customer. That’s a mental shift other manufacturers haven’t made yet, and customers are going to notice. Consumers will begin to expect ongoing software improvements from all their durable goods purchases. Consequently, manufacturers who aren’t operationally designed to iterate software and push-to-customer, will find it nearly impossible to compete. Basically, if a durable good doesn’t have a software strategy it won’t be able to serve the full range of customer service that evergreen devices can offer. Tesla is leading the field, as most manufacturers still require a visit to the dealer to manually install software updates, thus hampering the iteration rate and hurting the ownership experience.
At Tesla the best possible thing a engineer can do to improve a step in manufacturing is to remove the step entirely. And that's what Tesla has done with the most capital-intensive steps to manufacturing a car: the stamping machines and the paint shop are completely removed from the CyberTruck production line. With the 'exoskeleton design' executed in stainless steel, the outside panels of the Trusk are structural rather than decorative, and the grade and thickness of the steel (301-ish at 3mm) makes it un-stampable. That’s one reason the design is so angular, because complex curves aren’t practical. The steel is grooved and bent the fewest possible times to create the simplest structural forms, thereby simplifying manufacturing while reducing space and machinery requirement.
Another example of manufacturing improvements at Tesla is the wiring. The Model S has a fairly standard wiring diagram for a modern sedan and thus has almost three kilometers of wiring in it. The model three reportedly reduced that by 57%, to 1.3km and reports are the model Y intended to reduce it to a 700 meter wiring harness, thereby eliminating the weight and expense of roughly 2,300 meters of wiring per car. Go pick up that box of obsolete cables at the back of your junk closet and consider whether eliminating almost a mile and a half of that might impact a vehicle’s weight, range and performance? Based on Tesla practice of continuous improvement It is reasonable to assume that the Trusk will benefit from what has been learned before, and match or exceed the wiring efficiency of the Model Y. One report claims there will be less than 100m of wire in the truck.
Finally, as mentioned, there's no paint. The steel was materials-engineered in a joint effort with SpaceX for use on their Starship spaceship and Ultra-heavy rocket. A feature of spaceship metal is that it is basically impervious to the elements and has an unmatched strength to weight ratio across a temperature range that includes armageddon, nuclear winter, and the zombie apocalypse. Future selling points?
<Late EDIT:
A famous engineering company called Munro and Associates took a look at what it will cost to make production lines for their educated-guess of what the CyberTruck is, and a modern F-150. He found:
Production line capital expenditures (Munro & Assoc.)
| Units/year |
F-150 |
Musk Trusk |
| 50,000 |
$240M |
$32M |
| 600,000 |
$600M |
$125M |
Here’s a lengthy discussion of Sandy Munro’s technical assessment on Autoline Network’s YouTube channel.
/EDIT>
One day you’ll be behind one of these things at a stoplight, staring at the huge, flat, unpainted steel tailgate, and you’ll think "That’s made out of spaceship steel", and it will feel like the future has arrived. Then, when you look between the Trusk and every other car you'll vividly recognize that you’re like an in-situ social anthropologist looking at the future and the past, all at an intersection. All the words you’ve read and heard about a coming disruption will look like it’s right in front of you. And that’s the statement Tesla is making with their pickup truck. It screams “everything else is obsolete”. Which brings us to design.
Advances in design
Tesla designs aerodynamic cars because they have better range. Aerodynamic shapes can be quite boring, and the Model X illustrates that ably. But pickup trucks are bought by two types of people, those who need the abilities of a truck to accomplish their work, and those who want to be seen as needing the abilities of a truck to accomplish their work, but don’t really. The ratio is about 1:3 as indicated by the survey in which three out of four long time pickup truck owners said they have “used their truck to haul something in the bed, tow, or go offroad one time or less per year over the past three years.” Looking tough and capable is a very very high priority to these folks, so the idea of entering this market with a rounded, aerodynamic truck showing soft edges and no corners goes completely against the image they are trying to convey. To this crowd, making pickup trucks aerodynamic just makes them feminine. And there is no greater sin in the minds of pickup truck buyers than to appear feminine, weak, or incapable.
Here’s Ford’s announced electric pickup:
The macho isn’t overcooked in this design, but everything from the wheel skirts to the giant mirrors to the oversize and useless grill is there to enhance the image of bigness and toughness. And in a rail yard!
Ford has cultivated a look that is a somewhat formulaic study of contrasts, and by dialing those contrasts up or down, they can Macho Up or macho down the same vehicle. Look at the chrome grill on the grey/brown paint job in the photo above. See how it catches the eye like jewelry peeking out from the sleeve of a professional suit? Need to macho that up a bit? See if you can find the grill here:
This 2017 Raptor...I think it’s probably a Ford...costs more than the Tesla pickup, and is less capable. Which is like a torpedo below Ford’s waterline, because the F series provides over 100% of Ford’s profit (they lose money on the rest), and is the avatar of it’s soul. Killing the ICE pickup will kill Ford. And GM.
Ford and Chevy both beef up the grill and wheel wells/corners to convey sturdiness, strength and toughness. Nothing on these pickups screams “aerodynamic” or “efficient” because buyer macho!
So when Tesla announced they were going to build a pickup truck, people couldn’t figure out how they were going to be both Tesla aerodynamic and pickup-truck rugged. Look how hard this artist worked to render a Tesla-pickup looking both aerodynamic and tough at the same time.
Big and macho but still smooth. There’s a short bed so utility has been sacrificed for clean smooth lines. This was a very credible compromise in form and function, and a great effort to imagine how Tesla would reconcile aerodynamic needs with work-ability...but would it be seen as still too feminine in the eyes of traditional pickup truck buyers?
Then Tesla released a teaser image. This is a doctored photograph of the truck.
Here’s the sneak peak. Everyone expecting the soft, aerodynamic design ethic of Tesla looked at this picture and couldn’t see the truck. There is a trick of light, the windscreen edges appear bent back, which in fact they are not. Only the lower fenders at either end below the light bar are angled back.
Some artists tried to reconcile the sneak peak with their understanding of the Tesla brand.
Illustrating how revolutionary the CyberTruck really is, this artist’s conception was created after the sneak peak, (above), and correctly captures the windshield rake and the stark front end. But the artist still cannot carry the same lines to the rest of the vehicle, and instead retreats to curved surfaces and soft edges. Contrast the soft top line with the sharp edge between the wheel arches meant to toughen up the rounded sides. Tesla took that sharp edge and dialled it to eleven, all over.
Surprise! Tesla says screw rounded shapes, because this truck is here to work!
“Hi. I am the future. Everything which came before me is obsolete. Adjust. And have a nice day.”
Tesla understood that the world was expecting them to release an aerodynamic pickup, so instead of soft and rounded they went exactly opposite and designed hard, angular and flat. By choosing stainless steel and using ‘exoskeleton design’ they eliminated two incredibly expensive manufacturing steps. That design decision funlocked manufacturing efficiencies. By compounding complementary advances across design, manufacturing and battery production, this fully capable truck will come to market below the “price parity” point with it’s ICE brethren.
But Tesla has also changed the emotional equation during the purchase decision, and the visual design amplifies this message. The thought which will dominate the brain of every pickup truck buyer who has laid their eyes on a CyberTruck in real life will be, “should I be buying the future or the past?” The Trusk is the future and everything else is the past. It’s really is going to be that simple.
Why the Musk Trusk defines the future of EV’s and Transportation
Most people still view EVs as compromised vehicles. They think they wouldn’t be able to do the things they hope to do with their car, because they still view EV’s as city-cars. By targeting the most demanding vehicle segment of the market Tesla is slaying the myth that EV’s require compromise. By introducing a better truck at a better price Tesla is showing that batteries have entered the ‘disruptive technology’ stage, which will usher in the Clean Disruption .
For those who can’t watch the video, the thesis is that virtuous cycles between three technologies which are individually disruptive, (batteries, solar cells and autonomous vehicle software), create a mutual virtuous cycle which will change the entire competitive basis of the energy and transportation industries. This disruption will usher in distributed electrical grids and TaaS, which is robotaxis, (Transportation as a Service). According to Mr. Seba, TaaS will be providing 80% of the passenger vehicle miles driven in the U.S. by 2030. And he’s got a lot of data supporting his claim.
According to the graph, robotaxis would have to enter service this year for the Autonomous Electric Vehicle revolution to begin. What’s that? AEV commercial service is already operating in Arizona? Huh.
Regardless of whether you’re convinced robotaxis are inside the horizon or not, EVs from Tesla are passing the point of price parity with their ICE counterparts, and that is never going to be undone. Continued advancements means the delta between gas and EV performance will continue to grow to the EV’s favor. And the continued growth of the charging networks will mean the convenience of owning an EV is only improving, even while EV ownership becomes more affordable and practical.
In Mr. Seba’s vision the convergence of technology cost curves makes the supremacy of EV’s, TaaS and distributed grids forgone conclusions. He makes a compelling case that it’s all going to unfold this decade. Originally made in 2014, his predictions have proven to be slightly conservative, with things unfolding slightly faster than expected. That means we should all get to watch the death of oil unfold over the next few years. And the ramp of CyberTruck production in 2022, likely with the new dry electrode battery, will represent the leading edge of EVs crossing the price-parity threshold to offer superior performance AND lower upfront price AND AND even lower operating expenses. No compromises.
