A new document posted online purports to be a direct communication from Elon Musk to the Tesla team regarding Cybertruck design and build quality. If real, it shows an incredibly strict standard that the CEO is hoping to achieve. The revelation of this note comes at a time when Cybertruck production appears to be very close to beginning.
On August 23, Musk posted a photo of what he called a “production candidate” on his social media platform X. The high-resolution picture shows the Tesla Cybertruck in all its glory and appears to also show a few slightly misaligned panels.
At almost the same time that Musk posted the photo, a person on the CybertruckOwnersClub forum posted what they call an “internal email from Elon Musk on Cybertruck.” The entire message is short, succinct, strict, and reads as follows:
“Due to the nature of Cybertruck, which is made of bright metal with mostly straight edges, any dimensional variation shows up like a sore thumb.
All parts for this vehicle, whether internal or from suppliers, need to be designed and built to sub 10 micron accuracy.
That means all part dimensions need to be to the third decimal place in millimeters and tolerances need be specified in single digit microns. If LEGO and soda cans, which are very low cost, can do this, so can we.
Precision predicates perfectionism.
Elon”
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To be clear about what Musk appears to be asking for is something akin to many times smaller than a human hair. Those are about 50 microns in width on average. A sheet of copy paper is typically 70 microns thick. We’re talking about incredibly tight production accuracy.
It’s worth noting that there’s no date on this internal memo so it’s plausible that it could be from some time in the relatively distant past. That seems almost more likely as Musk mentions keeping the “design” to this standard and the final production design has likely been finished for some time.
Will the final production version of the Cybertruck feature these nearly perfect parts? If so it would make the delays in production seem a lot more reasonable and it would give critics a lot less to complain about it.