LOL
Some more Tesla LOLs https://futurism.com/categories/advanced-transport/page/2
What a garbage article. Elon sucks, the cyber truck sucks, but an article about tweets is less than worthless. Perhaps the article instead of assuming elon just “didn’t have time to run tesla properly”, should dig a bit deeper and demonstrate that tesla was successful despite elon, not because of elon. Same with Space-X or Star-link.
Now as far as why the cyber truck is getting stuck in snow, tires is the low-effort answer, but maybe look at the weight of the truck versus the contact area. Maybe look at how the traction control system works? How about whether the car is front wheel bias vs rear-wheel biased. Does it make assumptions about which wheels have contact to the ground? Does it have a differential or are all 4 wheels independently controlled? (I don’t know the answer to any of these by the way, but if I were concerned about a vehicle getting stuck in the snow, I’d certainly want an analysis that addresses all of the above.)
Welcome to modern “journalism”, throwing together a few sentences based on twitter and reddit posts, without any research or asking experts.
Well, they advertised it as a truck that does truck things…
And the people with them now, ordered years ago.
It all comes back to range, and the range is horrible. So out of the factory they get “fuel efficient” tires that are great for range and terrible for everything else.
Put on truck tires, let alone winter, and range will nosedive.
Not everyone will drive one in snow, but all of the suckers who bought one know the range.
If it does that would help…
Weighing it down gives traction. Hell, most hillbillies load up their truck beds in the winter because the weight is such a big help, especially in the back.
I think I might have heard something about weight distribution though, like a normal truck has an engine over the front, but Tesla’s weight is in the middle of the axle.
But this is the tires, and probably something about whatever this things equivalent to a transmission is. Like you only need to put your foot on it a little for normal driving. Which means take offs in snow would almost always spin out.
So like the RPMs of the wheels go up to fast? I think that’s the easiest way to say it.
It makes a vehicle seem faster the less you have to push on the gas pedal, it’s a pretty old trick, because most people never floor it, so they don’t notice halfway thru it stops doing anything.
I see Jersey schmucks up here with their pavement princess trucks getting stuck in the snow all the time. I see locals in a Corolla or fiesta or other tiny light car make it just fine in deep snow. One of my bosses at the ski mountain used to drive a mini Cooper an hour to work every day.
This is a skill issue.
I used to have an old Subaru (Leone, 83).
I could get it anywhere in the snow. It was so easy to drive. It had absolute pizza cutters for tyres.
Once drove up to a ski field without chains on. Was one of only 7 cars to make it to the top (with zero issues) because there was so much snow.
Was a blast to drive.
Skinnier tires are actually better in snow because they can dig down to the ground somewhat and find traction there. Wide tires tend to float on top of the snow because of the larger contract patch (but not enough to stay above it, that requires huge, under-inflated-balloon-like tires like what you’d need on an antarctic expedition)
One of the most satisfying things for me is driving my wife’s little Mirage in the snow. With normal all season tires it does great, with proper snow tires it’s completely unstoppable - that is, until you need to stop.
It turns out that accelrating and stopping a 2,000 pound car on ice and snow is easier than it is with a 4,000 pound vehicle.
Growing up my mom lived on one of the biggest hills in a town that was basically all hills. She remembers when it snowed they’d watch all kinds of cars and trucks get stuck trying to make it up that hill, and then watch a guy in a little VW beetle go right up the hill like it was nothing, perfectly happy will of that engine weight right over the rear drive wheels.
Years later I’m a new driver borrowing my parents’s cars, a '93 RWD ranger, and a '92 Buick century, and that comparison did a good job of driving home how much difference that weight distribution matters. The ranger had some pretty good grippy tires, but without any weight in the bed, it didn’t take much to make those wheels spin. The buick, on the other hand, handled snow beautifully, it had all the weight of that big boat-like front end over those front drive wheels, never once struggled to find traction, the only limiting factor was that it sat pretty low to the ground so it didn’t take too much snow before that front end was just trying it’s damnedest to plow through snow. If some mad scientist ever thought to lift an old Buick a few inches, I’m pretty confident that 4wd/AWD would become all but obsolete.
skill? sometimes. the fact that those corollas and mini coopers only weigh a fraction of those huge trucks probably has something to do with it, too…
Weight and weight distribution are both important, but a pickup will usually perform better in snow with more weight, like 500 lbs of sand in the bed usually does the trick.
How you apply power to the road surface is also very important. Not enough weight and you will just spin tires. Break too aggressively and you lock up. Pedal to the floor and your tires are spinning. Overcorrect your turns when you start to slide and you’ll never get back straight.
My car is a little older and actually drives better in snow with the traction control off.
As someone who lives in a snowy area:
- deep snow - lighter vehicle is better
- shallow snow/ice - heavier vehicle is better
Also, I think drivers of larger vehicles are often over-confident. I know my cars are really bad in the snow, so I drive incredibly carefully. I slow down really early, speed up really slowly, and turn as gently as I can. I haven’t been stuck in the snow in over a decade, nor have a slid into anything (though I have slid), and I’ve been in some pretty crappy snowstorms.
I think AWD/4WD can be a liability because people seem to think it’ll solve their problems.
Agreed, and something else I’ve noticed… people seem to think AWD/4WD will help them in all cases, but don’t realize that stopping has nothing to do with that feature. So they get better traction to go, go too fast, and ABS only helps so much.
Big trucks aren’t necessarily all that heavy. The bed is entirely empty space, remember.
The bed is entirely empty space, remember.
but they have much larger, heavier engines and drivetrains.
a ford f-150 weighs about 4,500 lbs (minimum). a dodge ram weighs about 4,750 lbs (minimum)-- these are without any outrigging which can almost double the weight.
a corolla and a mini weigh about 3,000 lbs. a ford fiesta weighs about 2,750 lbs.
those are pretty big differences (to start) which can get bigger depending on the configuration of the truck.
I’d feel like such an asshole driving one of these things. If someone gave me one for free, I wouldn’t even want to park it in front of my house.
Sell it for some extra cash.
Egh, looks like the facebook crowd has come to Lemmy.
Wrong tires… It’s that simple…
I hate Elon as much as the rest of us, but this reads like it’s written by the Anti-EV crowd. All it needs is an ad for a Dodge RAM at the bottom… And, I don’t particularly find the cybertruck (or any large truck), appealing at all tbh
I can put the wrong tires on my jeep too, and skid off the road when its wet… Not everywhere needs snow tyres (here in Australia, they would be useless), and I’d be guessing they’re less efficient too?
Also, I’m not really sure how it works with deep snow (since I’m here in Australia), but wouldn’t snowchains help as an alternative? Or can you not use them on EV’s?.. Or do they not work with deep snow?
Chains are only useful if there’s snow compacted onto the road (like in a lot of mountainous areas). Winter tires are useful because they stay softer in cold weather, while summer tires get hard as a rock below a certain temp, turning your car (or cybertruck in this case) into a sled. There are also studded snow tires, but they’re useless or even dangerous on roads with no snow.
Yeah ok… So, there isn’t really much that could be done in this case except use Winter tyres anyway? If so, that makes this article seem even more silly I’m guessing?
Without knowing specifics about the cybertruck, it’s hard to say. Another factor could be that the tires are too wide, which would prevent them from cutting through the snow to make contact with the road. There could be other factors, like traction control freaking out and locking up the wheels, AWD issues, driver error. I just don’t know enough about the CT to make an educated guess. Tires are probably the most common reason for something like this though.
If you are leftist you should be anti-ev. All EVs do is propagate car-centric social development which is a cancer to any potentially better world.
Tires may be part of the equation, but ground clearance is typically more important to avoiding getting stuck in the snow.
Definitely important, but in my experience with good tires and patience you can basically plow the snow out of the way
Getting enough snow jammed under a vehicle will high-center the vehicle. If the tires can’t touch the ground,it doesn’t matter how good they are.
I imagine deep snow is very similar to sand where you want the largest contact patch possible in order to float on the surface. Here we have some dunes that you can offroad in and tour companies take busses full of people out there but they use gigantic tires that look like donut shaped balloons and perform decently even though they’re low powered and incredibly heavy.