Why aren’t cars made from Stainless Steel? 

I am somewhat upset that I had to get on the world wide web and watch a video made by a man in the UK to learn about a car museum in the city I was born, raised and live in lol.

'Cold rolled stainless steel is even harder then regular stainless steel.' Any thin sheet stainless steel is cold rolled. The mild steel used to produce standard car bodies is also cold rolled. Please explain what you mean by 'regular' stainless steel.

Cyber truck looks like the design never finished rendering before the factory started producing

6:01 Wow that looks SO much better in yellow! And with those 90's/2000's alloys it looks like an actual sports GT, instead of something built in shed by a beardy guy called Derek.

The DeLorean wasn’t truly a stainless body, it was a stainless steel skin on a GRP structure, you could remove the stainless panels and still drive it. As for Tesla, we can’t say what Tesla will do for production as they have only shown one concept car and that isn’t productionable as it’s not road legal for a production car.

Tesla cars are made from precision molded plastic, cheap to make. You crash a Tesla body work is not needed, plastic parts are replaced, not repaired. Bumper $15,000, etc. Makes billions for Tesla.

Those vintage cars in stainless steel look so cool

When it comes to the cybertruck one of the most interesting things for me is going to be the crash tests Of course this is if it ever comes out

One thing I should have mentioned is Tesla intends to score and bend, and score and cut sheets of stainless steel. Thanks for everyone who pointed this out!

I don’t see why a car lasting longer is a bad thing, at least for normal people and the environment, obviously it’s the worst thing ever for CEOs because then they will only make a buttload of money instead of a few buttloads.

It’s a big silver elephant, much better than a white one .....

I live in the rust belt, so I would buy a stainless steel car in a heartbeat

That's probably why the cyber truck doesn't have any round edges, due to it being difficult to machine. I think that's why they went with such a low-poly design.

The Delorean wasn't really a stainless car. It had a steel chassis, a glass fibre body with clip on thin stainless panels. The original intention was there but got watered down as the reality of production set in. The only structural stainless parts were the the doors.

Stainless steel is actually a diverse family of alloys. There's the austenitic steels (chromium and nickel), ferritics, martensitics, dual-phase, and precipitation-hardening stainless steels. Most cars have ferritic s.s exhausts, and your quality kitchen knife is martensitic. Austenites have been used for many, many applications... but indeed, hardly for cars .

Thank you for talking about the early history of stainless steel in the Ford production cars.

Because stailess steel does not rust Planed absolesence

I’m so happy to see the channel growing so well!

One thing everyone has missed is the crumple zones if that lassie hit a human at 5 mph they would be sliced bread!

"Steel car bodies don't rust like they used to" Yes they do... I see alot of new cars that are suprisingly rusty after just 4-5 years. They had a period where manufactures where good at rustproofing and then went backwards in later time. And some manufactures have never been good at rustproofing.

I would add another point: crash tests. With steel panels being used to absorb energy in crashes, I am curious about how Tesla solved this approach in the CyberTruck

Very interesting and well-presented video as always - thank you! There was a Stainless Steel aircraft (Bristol 188) manufactured in the UK in the early 1960s to study the effects of kinetic heating that arise from flying at very high speeds for long periods. They too found that stainless steel was a very difficult material from which to fabricate the complex shape of an air frame and new construction methods were developed. For various reasons, the aircraft was not a success, and only 3 were ever built. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_188

Tesla has solve the problems with the hard material being formed; he's going to have a bunch of employees beat them out with hammers in the parking lot

That thing is absolutely the ugliest truck I’ve ever seen.

8:18 because only criminals don't like getting shot.

5 year buying cycle for a car? What? In my country it's normal to buy cars that are 5 years old and drive them for 10 more years. Really, cars can last for a long time if you take care of it and pick a reliable brand. I would never buy a new car, especially not every 5 years. And it's not because I have no money, I just spend my money on smarter stuff (Like real estate) and my current car is Hyundai almost 8 years old. No probelms at all, just channge oil and filters every year and it can last for another 8 years easy. People are spending money like crazy, it's really weird.

I'm quite certain this yet another Tesla gimmick. As has been shown with past models, Tesla isn't good about costing out the parts to come to a profitable price. As another Ford executive once said, if the part costs less than 1/200 of a cent, we give it to the customer for free. If the Cybertruck doesn't sell in the forecast numbers, Tesla will take a financial beating with something worse than a sledgehammer. They'll take an even worse beating if it isn't costed closely enough and it turns out to be a big seller. They'd lose even more money total under that scenario. The late, lamented BMC had experience with this problem selling the Mini. Stainless steel, especially cold rolled, is a very expensive metal to produce and work with. There's a reason why major buildings, that have no five year replacement cycle, aren't generally built with stainless steel. Finally, there are still Federal safety standards to meet in terms of body integrity for impact and rollover. I've heard nothing about the Cybertruck meeting those standards.

The Delorean was merely clad in stainless steel over a fibreglass body. Typical appearance over function nonsense. It then needed to be laquered as brushed stainless gets grubby very quickly if handled..

The Audi thing is a myth and misunderstanding. Audi started making cars that were fully galvanized after welding, by bathing the entire car in the galvanizing bath after it's been welded. Other car manufacturers just take galvanized sheet metal and weld that, which is why they start to rot at the seams. To some, this impossibly rust-resistant treatment apparently meant it must be aluminium. Anyhow, Audi did make the front body panels of the second generation Audi TT in 2007 out of aluminium, but that was long after the aluminium myth had been established. Generally the "Audis are aluminium" is a false, however.

these painted delorean hurts my soul

More cars get scrapped from rust than from accidents. Still want a cybertruck.

I know the US cars of the 50's-60's were not safe, and practical like todays, but man were they sexy. Just about every American car of that era was a piece of art.

Some folks are more easily bent out of shape than stainless steel... Great job as always!

in the philippines a lot of backyard made jeeps have stainless body

Highly dangerous device for pedestrians. A razor sharp edged front in high strength steel, at the height of a child’s head and the breast, heard and liver of an adult. With it’s semi bulletproof glass it’s probably going the preferred vehicle of the terrorists wannabes and other criminals. I think it should be outlawed.

The Cyber truck isn’t anything more than a proof of concept demonstration prop. The shatterproof/bulletproof windows, while neat, wont make it to production for side window but maybe windshields and rear windows: US DOT won’t let it happen because it restricts emergency crews during rescues. As for the stainless steel bodies...yes it’s more durable but like you said it’s also more expensive so I’m hedging my bets that it’s going to be used for the unibody and in key areas but the rest (because the final shape of the truck isn’t set yet) of the truck will still be plastic/fiberglass/steel because as you stated repairs would be very hard otherwise. Good video 👍

I see multiple issues here 1. Price. Just because musk says something doesn't mean it'll cost that much when it releases, it'll definitely be more expensive than an identical version using conventional materials 2. Weight. I doubt tesla has figured out a way to form the entire structure of the car from the exterior panels and even if they did it would weigh slightly more than a conventional structure since it takes up so much more space 3. Safety. Not just that of the occupants but imagine hitting a pedestrian with this, especially with its speed and the people who think "full self driving" means the car can fully drive itself (crazy, why would they think that) 4. Appearance. For me the most significant factor is how terrible it looks. It's like a 3rd grader drew wheels on a house with is pointed roof, has no connection with teslas design language either. Sure some people like it but it's ultra divisive which is not something you want in a car, excluding a large proportion of people who would possibly be interested. 5. Build quality. Tesla already struggles with build quality, regularly ranking some of the worst in the industry. I don't have a lot of faith they'll be able to do better with a material that's even harder to work with

One of the main things I like about the Cybertruck is stainless steel... say goodbye to door dings and laughing at carless folks damaging their vehicle on yours for being careless. Rarely will you have to concern yourself with bodywork on these trucks.

Slight contradiction - car manufacturers apparently didn't want cars that didn't rust as it would affect their business model...but car manufacturers also researched and implemented ways to prevent and in Audi's case eliminate rust. This would lead me to believe that it was not really a factor in avoiding using stainless steel. In fact given the difficulty in repair there could have been a big market for replacement panels.

Another major disadvantage of stainless steel, especially when it has a brushed finish is that it will get stained from fingerprints. The chloride in a person's sweat superficially attacks material. Any fingerprints on a DeLorean should be wiped clean within a few days otherwise you'll need to rebrush the affected area.

Those old Ford's look amazing in stainless steel

Awesome how all those disadvantages are actually advantages.. It'll be great to buy a second hand car that isn't full of bog and touch up paint!!

Why isn't anyone addressing crumblezones ?

Looks crap..just like the interior of any tesla.

Fascinating as ever ... Zinc coating. The most hideous design ever, painful to look at but the younger generation seem to like it so what do I know.

This sounds like a bunch of excuses. I love the last one. "It's bullet proof!" My thoughts: "yeah, how cool is that?" Video: "it's gonna be used by criminals!" Also, environmentalism is the big thing now. Why is trying to make cars more sustainable, longer lasting, and easier to repair a bad thing? And BTW - how is a car made of streel plates harder to repair than a car made of an intricate aluminium cast? The cost of a stainless steel sheet and a few welds is way lower than the cost of exchanging a part of the car that is specifically.pre-shaped and marketed by the manufacturer.

The Crawford auto aviation Museum....I’ve got to get down there; for once some random obscure museum someone mentions actually isn’t too far from me 👀 Ohio Ftw!

I want the Tesla CyberTruck!

Good job! I enjoyed that vid. I’ve always wondered why stainless wasn’t more popular and I suppose the answer is it’s too good.

I never knew about the early stainless steel cars before this video. Now I want a polished stainless car.

The Delorean has a fibreglass body and a steel backbone chassis, the Stainless steel panels are stuck onto the fibreglass body. The Delorean was basically designed by Lotus which is why it uses a modified Lotus Esprit chassis. Colin Chapman absolutely hated the car and thought the doors were stupid design.

Thanks, another informative and fun feature

Please read a fundamental book on materials before you use terms like toughness and hardness ever again. Thank you, a materials scientist.

Question: what happens when you crash against someone with an aluminium car with your stainless steel truck? Aren't you gonna outright ram through the car and kill who's in it?

1:44 Cyber factory will not need a press (no curves) It will make it a lot cheaper to manufacture.

In my opinion as far as business and growth strategy goes, to choose to make the cyber truck out of stainless steel will increase the volume ordered from the SS factories over the long period of time lowering the cost with economies of scale. This will in turn can be applied in the rocket building side of business which would generally have a lower volume of SS required. This efficiency is also transferable in the engineering and design of all the forming equipment and tools required to build anything space related which would otherwise wouldn't have direct positive cash flow. Selling the cyber truck is really paying for Engineering and factories to build space equipment.

Those old stainless Fords are amazing ! This Tesla truck is ugly as sin and appears to be as aerodynamic as a garden shed !

It's expensive and heavy and there is no big upside from security point of view and gives less mileage, along with all problems with a heavy body.

It's expensive, heavy and difficult to machine, most manufacturers are trying to reduce weight such a dumb idea.

I just ordered 2 of the tesla trucks. I need only one, but my wife fell so in love with its elegance i had to order a second one.

You forgot another problem with the cyber truck. There is no deformation of the body during a crash, no crumple zones to reduce passenger impact. It is doubtful that that will be accepted in the US, EU and other countries.

In philippines, there are locally produced, hand made and hand assembled cars called "owner type jeep" some are made of stainless, and the body literally lasts a lifetime. Their not as luxurious as modern cars, but its enough to get you from point a to b.

I think the buying cycle/planned obsolescence thing is much less of an issue to sales than you would think. There are a section of society who buy a new car, keep it as long as its reasonably reliable without major repairs (say 7-10 years) and then replace. However most people either buy new cars, or they buy used cars, and often people will buy at a similar age (of car) each time. New sales are primarily driven by finance deals, PCP is designed to trap people into replacing a car every 3 years, because after the 3 years is up they would need to pay out about half the cars value to keep it, whereas by just continuing to pay the low monthly rate (and a deposit which will be much smaller than the payment owed on the old car) they can get something new - which is flashier etc. This means that very few people who actually buy a new car are worried about how long it lasts - they only own it whilst its warrantied and pre-MOT. Theres a couple of other things to note, body work condition is hardly ever the cause for scrapping a car, theres usually far more rust under the car than on the body unless it suffered some damage which wasnt repaired. So unless they start making subframes out of stainless steel, the cars life expectancy will be the same. As an additional factor for Tesla, its got a battery, which will likely last around 10 years, which any decent well maintained car should last anyway. So, cars are more likely to be scrapped due to poor battery range than body corrosion. Really, replacing a car you bought new because it fell to bits after 5 years hasn't been the case for over 20 years, and longer for many manufacturers - which is of course why they invented the finance deals to boost sales. I think the other factors, about the technical difficulties and the lack of colour wer very interesting, but at the end of the day, unless you make the whole thing out of a rust proof material, its still gonna die. I have an Avantime, plastic body is obviously mint 17 years on, glavanised chassis also looking pretty good, but everything attached to the chassis (subframe, suspension, various brackets and supports), all rusting away far too fast. I will have to strip it down and galvanize everything at some point so it lasts.

Nothing has been said about the Cybertrucks crash rating it must be compromised by making it out of stainless? No crumble zones? And what about its pedestrian rating lots of sharp angles to maim people with

Please stop saying transparent aluminium. That means *Everyone* There is no such thing. Marketing BS. It's ceramic - with alumnium element bond in it. Using this term is daft as saying table salt is a transparent metal - because it has sodium in it or maybe crystallised chrlorine gas. It makes no sense. If you persist with transparent aluminium I'll have to start forcing you to refer to water as liquified oxygen. STOP IT. PLEASE

I’d hate to be hit by that thing, either as a pedestrian or in any other vehicle. Typical arrogant car design.

Everyone is asking about the crash test. It would not make much sense for Tesla to not consider this prior to launching this product. People have a tendency to be negative towards anything that do not have the answer to. I have a question: why do race cars have a cage for the diver, the cars do not have very effective absorption body work? They are also travelling at 200 + miles per hour and their insides don't turned to mush in an accident. In regards to cost and manufacturing of this truck, it would be not very likely that Musk would create a product that was not cost efficient and easy to manufacture. SpaceX is all about efficiency and easy of manufacturing so why would he do the complete oppisite with the Cybertruck. My two cents and I like the video.

One doesn't require 8 minutes to answer the title question. Yearly profit would plummet if cars were made of rust resistant steel.

Generally your channel is entertaining and it is always a pleasure to listen to clean British English. 👍🏻 This topic is an interesting attempt. Ok. But you should do better research and talk to Metallurgy Engineers. Whenever the talk is about Aluminum it is about 99,9% Aluminum alloys in real. We never talk about pure Aluminum because it is not stable and would react with anything in the near within the fraction of a second. How can you allege that Aluminum or better said Aluminum alloys do not rust? I am sorry but this is not true at all! You can find this out very easily on your own. Go to any football field and take a detailed look at the areas where the Aluminum alloy parts of the goals are put together. You will see that there is partly corrosion which has white colour. Car factories do not use Aluminum alloys in order to get rid of corrosion. This metall is easier to be handled and can save weight, but is hard to be maintained in a car body workshop if there is damage on it. Stainless steel is also not really stainless. It will rust harder but you can’t really stop it from starting to corrode. Please take care. Thanks.🌷

With all the words the British mangle, I can't believe he screwed up Brougham.

@bigcar2 --- How does magnesium compare to stainless steel?

Tesla won't worry about the cost, they're burning through cash like it's going out of fashion.

Two words: Engineered obsolescence. Sad fact is, as much time goes into making sure a car fails after ~10 years as it does in making sure it lasts about 10 years. We as consumers have accepted that they do this but really don't have many options... John DeLorean was far ahead of his time and wanted to change the status quo, unfortunately due to a whole host of issues, it wasn't meant to be. I hope Elon is successful, my order is in for a tri motor CT.

With no plastic bumpers in the way to absorb those 'fender bender' accidents, the panels will have to be resistant to denting. Otherwise it's an expensive repair. Some of those angles look futuristic, but not very good for pedestrian safety. At 6:57 did you mean competitors?

Completely wrong about stainless steel and dies in relation to the Cybertruck. The author is clearly very knowledgeable on the history of stainless steel cars. I had no idea. However, better research on the Cybertruck would have been helpful, and would have avoided this basic error. At 1:47 the author incorrectly states that the difficulty of stamping cold rolled stainless steel is even worse for the Cybertruck. Actually, this problem doesn't even exist at all for the Cybertruck. Indeed, the manufacturing cost is greatly reduced because no dies are involved. The increased cost of the material is more than compensated by skipping both the stamping and painting steps. That's why the design is angular. What people don't get is that the design is not simply a fashion statement. The choice of material and the absence of curves go together as a single decision.

Thank God we today have downsized engines with exhaust gas recycling so the engines die before the car can start rusting. Correction: Aluminium isn´t "rusting" as steel but it´s degrading as well.

Cybertruck is surely a joke? The way ahead is plastic, light and strong. Stainless steel is basically the answer to a non-existent problem but comes with a host of its own problems. The goal is to make an electric car that performs like a petrol car in every way. Silly getting side tracked with Teslas marketing stunts.

You miss One big disadvantage. It's to hard so it will not stand the crash test. All energy will travel to the passengers and kill them. Thats why modern cars crumble as the do at crash-test. To absorb the crash energy. BMW had that problem at the second 3-series. It was so hard so the safety belts snapped.

That is the ugliest truck?? I have ever seen talk about a back to the future 70's design 3/10 for design 0/10 for taste, looks like a Tupperware box on wheels.

Its a joke car, one of the engineers at space-x said, i bet i can build car from these sheet metal plate we bought too much of, and there you have it.

I think part of it has to do with style. Most cars today look the same. Remember when you could name a car based on its looks? Now we have to look for the name buried somewhere in all that plastic.

Thanks for this deep dive.... No thanks for showing those horrendous painted DeLoreans!!!

Cybertruck looked ugly at first, then refreshingly nice, then ugly, then ... well still ugly or at least hard to digest. Hope I am wrong!

If you for some reason like color use foil. For me paintless and foilless is the best because I use cars to transport stuff. Bad for the other carmakers but good for me. I would love to only buy one car and use it for the rest of my life. Maybe some OTA updates now and then.

"tesla is making their new cyber truck..." they are? its 2021 now and they still havent started production. havent heard of it in a long time, actually...

You didn't mention that stainless also suffers from fatigue far more than regular steel, although this could be designed around mostly.

You rather skated over the fact that: 1) The Cybertruck is years late & 2) the vehicle shown at the launch broke safety laws in all significant jurisdictions and would require a fundamental redesign before it would have any chance of going into production. So more a publicity stunt than a serious attempt to produce a marketable vehicle. Pretty much the same story for the Semi. Tesla are becoming the masters of vapourware, without a single product that they are selling at a profit. Right now they are only being kept afloat by government handouts ' grants that will soon be drying up. The most over-hyped company since Theranos...

"Trucks" carry cargo. That's not a truck. It's a weirdly shaped, impractical SUV.

Porsche made a couple of stainless bodied 911s. Experiments. Not sure why they went no further, but there's one in the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

Aluminum is better. Change my mind

And what happens when you crash your cyber truck at 60km/h and you get turned into liquefied human because there is no crumple zone to absorb the energy of the collision?

I love how the first 3 cons are actually really good for consumers. Tells you something about the automotive industry and why everyone is cheering for Elon.

Thanks. You answered all my questions about SS cars. And why the scumbag car manufacturers didn't use SS. All it would have taken is for ONE car company to figure out how make them affordably...then they could have sold millions of cars. Especially in places where they put salt on the roads. If #Tesla #CyberTruck uses all SS in the underbody / battery box / everything down there -- it could be a huge seller in those places.

Waw that stainless cars are very pretty. I'm not a car guy, but if they still produced that kind of car, I will definitely get one.

Some square wheels would look grea and harmonious on Tesla Ugly Truck! 🤣

A good video. But the Tesla Cybertruck looks like a prop from a low budget SYFY channel movie. Yuck.

No mention of safety in collisions. The harder car will just obliterate anything it hits instead of crumpling like all other cars. This is a mixed blessing depending on if you are in the truck or in the thing being hit

Wasn't there a big push for pedestrian safety in auto designs a few decades ago? The cyber truck kind of just throws that concept out the window with its pointed front end designed to make sure pedestrians go under rather than over the truck

Why isn't it obvious that Tesla is following the same business model as apple? Fan factor products, overpriced for the status, with unique engineering so you can't go to third parties for add ons or repairs.

Since stainless steel is a harder material than today's conventional chasis, it would absorb less of the impact during a collision with another car and, thus, make for a less safe vehicle, if I'm not mistaken.