Tesla’s chief designer talks about the Cybertruck and sparks interest in upcoming new electric vehicles

Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla’s chief designer, gave a rare interview where he discussed the design of the Cybertruck and teased Tesla’s upcoming new model.

At Tesla, it’s very rare for executives who don’t go by the name “Musk” to be authorized to speak to the media.

Franz von Holzhausen, who was chief designer at Tesla for more than a decade, is a rare exception because he sometimes gives interviews. The chief designer gave an interview to CNBC where he discussed the design of the Tesla Cybertruck.

Here’s the video interview, and you can find some interesting quotes we took below:

Von Holzhausen asserted that the truck’s radical design is the result of the manufacturing process Tesla needed to adopt to build the electric truck with a stainless steel exterior:

The Cybertruck is one of those rare moments where form somehow follows function. Many times we put the form in front of the function. Especially in the automotive world. And it’s really hard to blend the two, but the Cybertruck really grew out of the idea of ​​a different manufacturing method, a material that puts toughness on the outside. So we really wanted to use stainless steel as the material so that the hardest part of the car would be the outside and not the thin paint. And it felt right for a truck to be used like a Swiss army knife in whatever kind of environment it must be challenging.

The designer added about the limitations of stainless steel and how Tesla handled the design, despite those limitations:

So stainless steel is really hard to forge, especially when you make it bulletproof or thicker to take bumps and not deteriorate. And so we really looked at new ways of manufacturing. You can only break and shape the shape in one direction. You can’t do complex curves or things as thick as the stainless steel we use. So it really led us to a design that was really flat, really simple, and also was an opportunity to break the paradigm of what pickup trucks have been for the last 60 or 70 years. Same thing there’s kind of that three square shape, and we just thought from an aerodynamic perspective, having a sloping roof covered at the back would also be helpful. Oddly enough, it may not sound like it, but the Cybertruck is an incredibly aerodynamic vehicle.

That’s fair, though I’ll add “for a pickup truck”.

Von Holzhausen was asked about his favorite Tesla design so far, and the designer said it was the “upcoming design,” but he “can’t talk about it.”

The next car Tesla is expected to unveil its “automated robot”.“,” A new self-driving electric car is basically a kind of driverless Uber.

Not much is known about the car, but CEO Elon Musk has said it will be “futuristic looking.”

von Holzhausen also said he’s excited about the Cybertruck’s radical design on the road because it should create some interesting visuals. Tesla is expected to put the Cybertruck into production in mid-2023.

Regarding the production version, the chief designer said it will be very similar to the original prototype unveiled in 2019, except for a few percentage points smaller.