Don’t follow the line, Still plugging away, Cyber WTF Truck, Big Menu
Yesterday a guy from the solar company stopped by to mark the property for location of the solar array and the wiring to go to the house. It was the same guy that came out a month and a half ago that I had met. When I got home I saw the line he painted was 100% wrong, not following the path I told him we needed to follow back in October, I guess he forgot. The line he painted goes right through buried sprinkler plumbing, buried coax cable, and more. We need to more or less hug the fence line and then make a 90 degree left hand turn to the house to minimize it’s impact. I even quickly sketched out a crude diagram of what I meant and sent it to the construction manager. He said it was no problem and they will follow what ever path I advise them to on Monday.
Last night I set up the folding table and dug more into my Prusa MMU2S issue. I found a couple things that were not assembled quite as they should be upon reviewing the instructions. I corrected them best I could and did another test print. It sort of worked. I had to babysit the filament in slot one but slot 2 and 3 loaded and unloaded cleanly repeatedly which gave me some hope. My third Prusa MK3S arrives Monday so I’ll be doing some more shuffling in the hobby room.
I neglected to stay up till 11PM to see the Tesla CyberTruck reveal but I dug in quickly this morning. I had seen a lot of renderings of what people thought the truck might look like leading up to the reveal. Some looked sort of normal and some looked sort of crazy, I figured what would be announced would be somewhere in between. Well I was wrong.
Instead what was rolled out onto the stage was a few degrees beyond the craziest designs I had seen. The angular design was visually shocking and futuristic. It looked like some crazy vehicle you would see on a movie set, not a production vehicle. When I started looking at the numbers my jaw started to drop. The three levels of equipment had very similar pricing to the Model 3 which was shocking. An entry level CyberTruck is pegged with a $39,900 starting price with the the top of the line version being $69,900. This pricing is very competitive with full size ICE trucks.
What was even more surprising was the performance numbers. The base model gets up to 60MPH in 6 seconds plus, great numbers for a big truck but the “tri-motor” truck will do it in UNDER 3 SECONDS…WTF Equally impressive was the battery range which started at 250 miles+ for the base all the way up to an incredible 500 MILES on the top tier, a number previously unheard of. Of course most truck owners care about towing and payload numbers. The CyberTruck delivers in spades there as well, being able to tow up to a whopping 14,000 pounds with a 3500 pound payload. It can do real work.
The construction of the truck is unique as well, utilizing stainless steel body panels that appear to be extremely durable. During the demo they hit a door panel with a rubber coated sledge hammer multiple times without leaving a mark. The glass on production vehicles is supposed to be bulletproof which they also tried to demonstrate at the reveal, unsuccessfully. A guy tossed a metal ball at two of the windows. The intent was for it to bounce off the windows like a basketball but instead it cracked them both, a bit of an embarrassment but Elon assured us it will be fixed in production vehicles. 🙂
So the CyberTruck, despite not being slated to begin production until the end of 2021, which will surely be delayed based on Tesla’s track record, can be reserved with a deposit today. Gone are the days where Tesla required a big $2500 outlay to reserve a vehicle, it can now be done for a measly $100. With little hesitation I plunked down a deposit on the mid-level truck. It’s refundable but who knows, with the predicted timing of the CyberTruck arrival it would coincide with me getting ready to move on from the Tacoma, maybe. There is a lot that can go down before now and then.
I have a three day weekend coming up thanks to taking off Monday for the solar project launch followed by an even longer four day weekend next week for Thanksgiving. This weekend I have a bunch to do, shocking I know. It includes mowing down the back half of the property and getting some pressure washing done. I’m not sure if I will split the task into the sheds now and the pool area next weekend or try to get all of the misery contained within one arduous day.