Cybercurrency: What the Tesla Cybertruck Will Really Cost to Build

In preparing our extensive coverage of Tesla’s highly disruptive Cybertruck, we noted its almost completely flat, 3mm-thick stainless body panels would save a bundle on tooling, but because we’re not auto-company cost accountants, we didn’t put exact numbers on that potential cost savings. Recently I had the pleasure of serving on an Autoline Detroit discussion […]

The post Cybercurrency: What the Tesla Cybertruck Will Really Cost to Build appeared first on MotorTrend.

In preparing our extensive coverage of Tesla’s highly disruptive Cybertruck, we noted its almost completely flat, 3mm-thick stainless body panels would save a bundle on tooling, but because we’re not auto-company cost accountants, we didn’t put exact numbers on that potential cost savings. Recently I had the pleasure of serving on an Autoline Detroit discussion panel with Sandy Munro. His company Munro & Associates, Inc. of Auburn Hills, Michigan, is in the business of competitive teardown and analysis. A couple of years ago, we reported on Munro’s 6,000-man-hour study of the Model 3.

Sandy has yet to feast his eyes directly on the Cybertruck, let alone his tape measures, pry bars, spot-weld drillers, etc. But his team has examined the piles of photos and videos posted by MotorTrend, Tesla, and others, and come up with some great back-of-the-napkin numbers that are far better informed than we or anyone else on this side of the business is likely to come up with. And just for the record, he’s a fan of the basic design because it’ll take him silently into the woods for deer hunting, while its thick, stainless-steel bodywork harmlessly can fend off potential scratches and dings way better than his Wrangler Rubicon’s painted body can.

Tooling for 50,000 Cybertruck Bodies per Year

Sandy sees stainless-steel blanks entering the facility in a couple of sizes, from which they are cut either via water jet or laser (water would be his preference, so as not to risk altering the steel’s heat treatment). The blanks will then be handled manually and formed on press breaks or very simple stamp operations (using manual load, clamp, break, and possibly manual tack welding) and then structurally fastened via robotic TIG welding. There would be no major paint shop, as chassis and other non Class-A surface parts that require paint or other corrosion protection would arrive painted or powder-coated by the supplier. Forecast capital expense for 50,000 trucks: $30 million. Assuming five years of tooling amortization, that’s less than $200/truck—a fraction of what Sandy claims mainstream manufacturers assume for marketing ($800/vehicle) and legacy costs ($600/vehicle).

Comparative Tooling Cost for 50,000 Conventional (F-150-type) Truck Bodies/Year:

Tools to handle rolls of steel coil stock, blanking dies, stamping presses and dies: $25 million; body shop with partial automation and multiple spot welders: $35 million; paint shop: $150 million. Total: $210 million.

Tooling for 600,000 Cybertruck Bodies per Year

Let’s say Cybertruck really takes off and gives F-150 a real run for its money. Increasing the production volume much beyond 100,000 units per year requires considerably more equipment. Now you can’t cut blanks with water or lasers. Blanking dies and automating the press-break operations will cost $30 million; automating the body shop is another $35 million. A small paint shop to paint non-body and/or non-exterior parts adds another $60 million for a total of $125 million for Tesla’s Cybertruck. But to scale up an F-150–type conventional truck body, the vastly greater number of parts required raises the blanking/stamping cost to $50 million, the automated body shop to $65 million, and a state-of-the-art, environmentally compliant full-body prime and paint shop adds a staggering $500 million for a total of $615 million in the case of the conventional truck.

Exoskeletal Design Cost

Sandy sees the 3mm-thick steel body panels forming an exoskeletal body structure, which he likens to the fuselage of the Republic RC-3 Seabee amphibious airplane. That blunt-nosed, boat-hulled beauty was a paragon of inexpensive manufacture, which Munro claims cost 95 percent less to manufacture than the unibody-type fuselage (endoskeleton with an unstressed or lightly stressed skin) on the similarly sized Eclipse Aviation EA500 plane. Sandy proposed an exoskeletal structure during his time at Ford, but the idea never gained traction there. Sandy sees plenty of room for crash-absorption in the Tesla design, and exoskeletal structures are generally no better or worse for safety, but they can be pricier to repair. Of course, nowadays with the price of sensors skyrocketing, the industry is getting accustomed to writing vehicles off after seemingly minor crashes.

What Might that Weigh

How would the weight compare with a traditional steel unibody structure? Sandy won’t be able to speculate on this until he’s thoroughly examined (and weighed) a Cybertruck, but he once worked on a team designing a small civilian aircraft called Paradigm that employed an exoskeletal fuselage stamped of aluminum that was not quite 3mm thick, and its fuselage ended up weighing less than those of similarly sized and spec’d planes of more typical construction from Cirrus, Piper, and Cessna.

Thoughts on the Body Design

Sandy’s assessment of the body in white design, as shown from Tesla-supplied photos: It features nice simplified pillars and a nice flat floor—ideal for dropping onto a skateboard chassis, though he wonders what the seats will attach to unless the crossmembers for this purpose were just deleted from the body-structure photo. He’d avoid the sharp angles on charging port door as they introduce unnecessary stress risers, but he agrees this look fits the design. Sandy imagines the flat panels having flanges bent around to allow automatic welding to occur away from the Class-A surface.

About that Flat Glass

Flat pieces of any type of glass are vastly cheaper to produce than curved ones. They also make head-up displays way easier to execute without the need for complicated optics to flatten an image projected onto a curved windshield. Sandy’s takeaway from the giant ball-bearing glass test: Any normal tempered side-window glass would have disintegrated upon impact by such a large steel ball, and it probably would have even penetrated a typical acoustic-laminated side window. The performance suggests there was some bulletproofing. He surmises that—likely drawing from the Space X Starship parts bin—it may have been Surmet ALON “optical ceramic” or “transparent aluminum” (Aluminum Oxynitride) material. (Google this Star Trek IV movie material that’s now becoming a reality.) Of course, bulletproof body panels and armored glass may make tougher for first responders to cut or pry their way in to a wrecked Cybertruck…

Where Should Tesla Build it?

The Fremont plant is full, and building it in China or Germany for import to U.S. earns a Chicken Tax. There’s room in the Gigafactory, but Sandy recommends freeing up space in Fremont by moving some of the production of vertical-integration elements (components, parts, moldings) to the Gigafactory, as it’s way cheaper to ship parts than cars. Parts manufacturing is more likely to create dust/dirt that is problematic for paint or coatings and assembly, so it’s best to keep that away from final assembly.

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