I get it, people might make mistakes in the design etc, but it’s not as if this is the first time Tesla has produced and released a vehicle into production, do you think they’ve considered how this car will cope with an accident ? Maybe you feel they think stainless is “cool” so went for it?

I’m totally aware you might be right, but I doubt they haven’t thought of this.

In all likelihood it didn't matter what the truck looked like at the reveal. All that mattered was that it justified another capital raise.

[0] https://bgr.com/2019/05/20/elon-musk-tesla-cut-costs-running...

You don't see a lot of manufacturers wasting weight on very robust body panels--in fact, quite the opposite, preferring aluminum or carbon fiber for panels, hood, and roof when practical.

My experience with aluminum is not great. But I appreciate understanding the value/cost/benefits for different design decisions.

Something in programming that helps a lot is to know when to follow the crowd and when to buck the system.

That they could've made a dent resistant door out of aluminum.

Cold rolled full hard 301 stainless has yield strength of 1000 MPa. Tesla claims a 30x ultra hard, no one knows quite what that means yet, so maybe that’s 1500MPa yield strength. So call it 6-8x more dent resistant than aluminum at same thickness.

Tesla is using 3mm thick stainless. I can’t imagine standard car panels are more than 1.5mm thick.

Stiffness grows with square of cross sectional thickness.

So it is plausible Tesla’s panels are 20-30x stiffer than regular door panel.

Maybe that’s where they get their 30X from.

What’s your math say?

They used this dead-blow feature on the Cybertruck, but twisted the hammer 90 degrees on the "competitor truck" door. You can even see the effect; in the three hits on the white door, only the two where the hammer was twisted left significant dents. [1]

[1] https://twitter.com/paully_steaks/status/1197915960646107136