Glamping with Tesla's Cybertruck and trailer concept

Glamping, a word that combines the terms, glamour and camping, refers to going to campgrounds but having the amenities normally present in a hotel.

Tesla has an interesting Cybertruck trailer concept. It's a large trailer about the size of a tiny house. It’s a nice looking trailer and it reflects the angularity and aerodynamic shape of the Cybertruck. In Cybertruck patents, Tesla shows the Cybertruck pulling a weight of 20,000 pounds, however the official Cybertruck specs say it can tow more than 14,000 pounds. I interpret that as a max weight of between 14,000 pounds and 15,000 pounds.

Now, remembering what we learned in high school physics, you’ll recall that how much weight a truck can tow has three components. The truck has to overcome rolling resistance, air resistance, and gravity. Now rolling resistance increases gradually depending on both the weight of the trailer and the speed you’re trying to tow it. It’s a linear increase. While there’s more rolling resistance at highway speeds than there is at parking lot speeds, it’s not all that much more.

Then there’s air resistance. That’s not related to the weight of the trailer at all. Air resistance is related only to the cross sectional area of the trailer, the aerodynamic shape of the trailer, and the speed of the tow. Air resistance increases as the square of the speed, so that’s a much more significant factor at highway speeds than at low speeds, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the weight of the trailer.

A few months ago, Ford came out with a publicity stunt involving a prototype electric Ford F-150 Lightning towing a million pounds of railroad cars when they were empty. Then they loaded one and a quarter million pounds of pickup trucks into the railroad cars, and the electric Ford towed all that, too (you can watch the full video below).

It was supposed to demonstrate something. All it demonstrated is that Ford likes to lie to people who don’t remember the physics they learned in high school.

The tow was done at slow speeds on steel rails with steel-wheeled railroad cars. Of all the land vehicles currently in use in the US, trains have the least rolling resistance. Maglev trains have less rolling resistance, but they’re not in use in the US. And anyway, maglev trains don’t roll. They float on a magnetic field. So all the electric Ford had to do was overcome a certain small rolling resistance. Admittedly, you or I would have been unable to start those train cars rolling by pulling or pushing by hand, but probably any pickup truck could have done it. It didn’t have to be a Ford.

The reason there’s a weight limitation for towing a trailer is that roads aren’t level. On hills, there are two considerations. The truck needs to be able to tow the trailer up any hill it might come across, and it has to be able to control the trailer when going down any hill it might come across. So if Tesla says the Cybertruck is rated for 14,000 pounds, then it really shouldn’t try towing 20,000 pounds even if that seems possible on level ground or mild hills. But there is a way around this limitation in the era of electric vehicles.

What I’m going to tell you does not come from Tesla, or any knowledgeable source. It comes strictly from my imagination so take it with a grain of salt.

The way the Cybertruck can safely tow a load that’s higher than its rated maximum towing weight is if the trailer has its own batteries and its own electric motor(s). There would, of course, have to be coordination. The trailer would have to respond to the truck driver’s control input, but that’s not difficult to arrange. If the trailer had batteries and motor(s), the range between recharges would not be degraded by towing. If the trailer could be recharged separately from the Cybertruck by a second Supercharger stall, then the length of time to recharge wouldn’t be prolonged.

Now let’s talk about what the trailer could include. I looked up the weight of a standard 30-foot travel trailer. The weight averages around 5,800 pounds. So that leaves plenty of room for amenities. The trailer could expand, for example. It could expand upward when parked, or sideways. Lots of travel trailers do that. So instead of being 30 feet by 8 feet, it could be twice that. Perhaps it could expand sideways on both sides, That would make it 30 feet by 24 feet.

Add to that interior room, an extra roof to cover an outdoor patio, another 8 feet by 30 feet. Cover all that roof with solar panels, and you’d have lots of electricity while you were at the campground. Excess solar electricity created in the daytime would be stored in the trailer’s batteries at night.

Then there are other amenities. In addition to the normal water tanks for drinking, bathing, and other cleansing purposes, there could be a hot tub for two. That would hold 150 gallons of water, 600 pounds. Tesla is good at making heat pumps. Heat pumps can be used to heat or cool the trailer depending on the outside air temperature. If the trailer is parked near a stream or a lake, the heat pump might be able to exchange heat or cooling with the body of water if that would be more energy-efficient than exchanging heat or cooling with the outside air.

While traveling, there should be enough outside video cameras so that the driver would not have blind spots next to or behind the trailer. These should sync with the Cybertruck’s display screen.

The Ford F-150 Lightning has a helpful feature for hooking up the truck to a trailer. The driver first cranks up the trailer’s hitch to the proper height. Then he drives the truck to the front of the trailer so he can see the trailer hitch in the rear camera display. At that point, the truck itself backs up until the truck’s trailer hitch is properly aligned with the trailer’s hitch receptacle. Tesla should do that for the Cybertruck in a software update.

Finally, there should be Internet access via Starlink.

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Musk Teases New Model for Early 2025 That Will Use a Mix of Next-Gen and Current Platforms

“We have updated our future vehicle line-up to accelerate the launch of new models ahead of our previously communicated start of production in the second half of 2025”. This was one of the key sentences that were part of Tesla’s deck shared on Tuesday directly before its financial results.

Since Reuters’ report a few weeks ago saying Tesla had “scrapped” the highly expected cheaper model— which Elon quickly denied on X —retail and institutional shareholders started asking for more details on Tesla’s product roadmap for 2024 and beyond.

In the earnings conference call, Elon Musk reiterated that Tesla expects to launch the next model in “early 2025, if not late this year”.

“We've updated our future vehicle lineup to accelerate the launch of new models ahead of previously mentioned start of production in the second half of 2025. So, we expect it to be more like the early 2025, if not late this year. “

Over concerns of temporary production halts to update the factories for these new models, Musk said that Tesla will produce new models with certain aspects from their next-generation platform and current models. This will reduce the number of changes needed on production lines and allow Tesla not only to ramp up production faster but also to get the vehicles to market quicker.

Model Y Redesign

Tesla appears to hit that their next-gen vehicle will be less “next-gen” than they were initially aiming for, but to get a new vehicle out the door by late 2024, the process would already have to be in motion. Tesla may likely be referring to the redesigned Model Y, which is expected to reuse many parts from the new Model 3. Earlier this year, Tesla said that the redesigned Model Y will not be released this year, so it makes sense that they’re looking to speed up that production.

Tesla CEO concluded by saying that these measures will allow Tesla to reach a capacity of over 3 million units. Tesla produced 1.84 million vehicles in 2023. However, this year they’re ramping up Cybertruck production and introduced the new Model 3 into new markets.

And we think this should allow us to get to over 3 million vehicles of capacity when realized to the full extent.

Tesla reported on Tuesday its earnings results followed by a conference call where it teased its upcoming Robotaxi and its next-generation platform saying its “purpose-built Robotaxi product will continue to pursue a revolutionary ‘unboxed’ manufacturing strategy”.

Earlier in the day, Tesla announced the new Performance variant of its sedan Model 3 with deliveries in the United States starting already next month. The new version starts at $45,490 (after applying the $7,500 Federal EV tax credit) and goes from 0 to 60mph in 2.9 seconds.

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Tesla on FSD: Close to License Deal With Major Automaker, Announces Miles Driven on FSD v12

On Tuesday Tesla reported its earnings results followed by a conference call that brought several updates on the company’s roadmap for future vehicles, autonomous driving, Optimus and much more.

While answering a question from Goldman Sachs analyst Mark Delaney about updates on the licensing of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology, Elon Musk said they’re talking to one major auto manufacturer and there’s “a good chance” the company signs the first deal before year-end. However, he went on to say that it would probably be three years before the necessary changes are integrated into the car.

I think we have a good chance we do sign a deal this year

Brings Benefits to Tesla

The technology would require other automakers to start using the same cameras and hardware as Tesla, meaning that Tesla may not only generate money from licensing FSD but also from selling the hardware itself. However, there would be other benefits as well. When licensing FSD, Tesla would likely own the data gathered with the system well, further helping them with data and edge cases that need to be solved to reach full autonomy.

people don't understand all cars will need to be smart cars… Once that becomes obvious, I think licensing becomes not optional.

Tesla’s Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja commented pointing out that future partners “take a lot of time in their product life cycle” resulting in a gap between the deal signing and the arrival in the market of Tesla’s FSD software.

Miles Driven With FSD

On the conference call, Musk added that Tesla now has over 300 million miles that have been driven with FSD v12 since it was launched just last month. He added that it's becoming “very clear that the vision-based approach with end-to-end neural networks is the right solution for scalable autonomy”.

Tesla said it will continue to increase its “core AI infrastructure capacity in the coming months” adding that in the first quarter, it completed the transition to hardware 4.0 with China now receiving the upgraded FSD computer and cameras.

Over the weekend, Tesla reduced the price of FSD dropping it from $12,000 to $8,000 for customers in the United States and from CA$16,000 to CA$11,000 in Canada.

Earlier this month, Tesla implemented a 50% price reduction for FSD subscriptions in the U.S. and introduced the subscription model in Canada at a great value of CA$99 per month.

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