Musk: Cybertruck Tolerances Need to Be to the "Third Decimal Place in Millimeters"
The internet is full of photos and videos of Tesla vehicles with misaligned body panels and quality control problems upon delivery. CEO Elon Musk is on guard as the automaker’s most anticipated vehicle launch in years approaches, as one of his recent emails surfaced that shows him telling engineering teams that manufacturing tolerances for the truck must be perfect.
We’ve seen images of pre-production trucks sporting warped body panels and misaligned gaps, but Musk’s new edict states that all components must be built to within a 10-micron window accuracy. “That means all part dimensions need to be to the third decimal place in millimeters, and tolerances need to be specified in single digit microns,” his email stated.
Tesla’s engineering and manufacturing teams haven’t had much luck getting panels and tolerances to that level with the automaker’s existing vehicle catalog, so it’s likely this email sent some chills up more than a few spines at the company. Musk finished the message with a jab, saying, "If Lego and soda cans, which are very low cost, can do this, so can we.”
Though it’s promising deliveries soon and trucks have been spotted on carriers, Tesla hasn’t detailed pricing for the Cybertruck, and we don’t have full specs. It’s likely the first deliveries went to employees and others tied to the company, but we’re getting awfully close to the release date without a ton of information to go on.
[Image: Tesla]
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Chris grew up in, under, and around cars, but took the long way around to becoming an automotive writer. After a career in technology consulting and a trip through business school, Chris began writing about the automotive industry as a way to reconnect with his passion and get behind the wheel of a new car every week. He focuses on taking complex industry stories and making them digestible by any reader. Just don’t expect him to stay away from high-mileage Porsches.
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Apprentice Tool and Die maker working in new build. Typical tolerances for even high end parts are +/- 0.5mm on 3D surfaces with the most extreme tolerances I've heard of being +/- 0.1mm. What Elon is proposing for his vehicles is absolutely ludicrous and is likely not even possible to achieve in the scope of automotive tooling.
Apprentice Tool and Die maker working in new build. Typical tolerances for even high end parts are +/- 0.5mm on 3D surfaces with the most extreme tolerances I've heard of being +/- 0.1mm. What Elon is proposing for his vehicles is absolutely ludicrous and is likely not even possible to achieve in the scope of automotive tooling.
Every decimal will drive costs up by an order of magnitude. One tenth of a millimeter, (0.1mm) is less than .004in. One hundreth of a millimeter is less than .0004in. And the third decimal point of a millimeter is .00004in. The single digit micron is .00000004in. All but 0.1mm are laughably unrealistic for a high production rate vehicle. It appears all the curves on the other cars Tesla built obscured a lot of Tesla's incompetence.
There's a cyber truck in my neighborhood. I kept thinking, "I'm supposed to give up my Lexus GX for that thing?" No. I don't think so...