YouTuber Simone Giertz Transformed a Tesla Model 3 Into a Pickup Truck (theverge.com) 154
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Simone Giertz was tired of waiting for Elon Musk to unveil his new Tesla pickup truck, so she decided to make one herself. The popular YouTuber and self-described "queen of shitty robots" transformed a Model 3 into an honest-to-god pickup truck, which she dubs "Truckla" -- and naturally you can watch all the cutting and welding (and cursing) on her YouTube channel. There's even a fake truck commercial to go along with it. Giertz spent over a year planning and designing before launching into the arduous task of turning her Model 3 into a pickup truck. And she recruited a ragtag team of mechanics and DIY car modifiers to tackle the project: Marcos Ramirez, a Bay Area maker, mechanic and artist; Boston-based Richard Benoit, whose YouTube channel Rich Rebuilds is largely dedicated to the modification of pre-owned Tesla models; and German designer and YouTuber Laura Kampf.
Giertz's truck looks exactly like what it is: a Model 3 with the top part of the back half removed. As such, it blurs the line between sedan and pickup, which used to be a popular design style in the 1970s and 80s, until consumers decided that bigger is better. Think Chevy El Camino, or Ford Ranchero. But Giertz smartly added some standard truck accoutrements, like a lumber rack with Hella lights attached to the front, so that it wouldn't look out of place among the Rams and Silverados of the world. It wasn't a project without its obstacles. After stripping the backseat and the trunk of its many parts, the Model 3 refused to start. Ramirez explained that the car was reporting "all of its many faults" to Tesla headquarters via cell connection, or essentially "snitching" on the YouTubers who were trying to modify it. They also ran into problems after cutting through the first beam when the metal started to buckle slightly. Luckily they were able to reinforce the steel and keep going.
Giertz's truck looks exactly like what it is: a Model 3 with the top part of the back half removed. As such, it blurs the line between sedan and pickup, which used to be a popular design style in the 1970s and 80s, until consumers decided that bigger is better. Think Chevy El Camino, or Ford Ranchero. But Giertz smartly added some standard truck accoutrements, like a lumber rack with Hella lights attached to the front, so that it wouldn't look out of place among the Rams and Silverados of the world. It wasn't a project without its obstacles. After stripping the backseat and the trunk of its many parts, the Model 3 refused to start. Ramirez explained that the car was reporting "all of its many faults" to Tesla headquarters via cell connection, or essentially "snitching" on the YouTubers who were trying to modify it. They also ran into problems after cutting through the first beam when the metal started to buckle slightly. Luckily they were able to reinforce the steel and keep going.
Looks more like (Score:5, Insightful)
A Holden ute.
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Pickup trucks are not common in Europe.
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People in the UK have healthier teeth than people in the US, so well done the rest of Europe if they're doing better than that.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I remember those, too. Wanted one, at the time. If Musk & Co were to start making these, I'd probably find a way to come up with the payments.
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Depends, because "Ute" typically refers to SUV, which is basically a bigger car on a truck chassis. (Think Chevy Suburban or Yukon).
There are also "crossovers" that are a truck on a car chassis - these used to be the smaller "city SUV" that are extremely popular - while they aren't as high, they offer a higher view and more space (typically mini
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Not quite.
In Australia, 'ute' was the short form of 'coupe utility', which was a utility vehicle that looked like a coupe (drive to church on Sunday, drive the pigs to market on Monday).
Almost all Australian utes up to the 1990's were car based (search for Ford Falcon ute and Holden Commodore ute) and often without a separate frame.
Then we started calling everything a ute that had both a bonnet (hood) and a cargo tray (short of a Mack truck) - including the HiLux, Silverado and Ranger.
So having a separate f
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Yeah, nah. Ute does not typically refer to SUV. They are dramatically different vehicle configurations. Nor is it a pickup truck.
From the comments in the article:
https://www.carthrottle.com/po... [carthrottle.com]
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And it's a fairly common thing to do to sedans in the modding communities. You can find BMWs, Volvos or even Porsches [carscoops.com] cut up this way. But this is a Tesla and done by a Youtuber so it's all over the internet now.
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What’s a Ute [youtube.com]?
Re:Looks more like (Score:5, Insightful)
All the looks of a Ute, with half the payload capacity and range for 8x the cost. Who wouldn't want that?
Re:Looks more like (Score:4, Informative)
All the looks of a Ute, with half the payload capacity and range for 8x the cost.
But a lot more acceleration and a lot cheaper to fuel/maintain. Though I'm sure the cost of the mod will more than exceed the savings. I'm equally sure that the YouTube revenue will more than exceed the cost of the mod, so there's that.
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All the looks of a Ute, with half the payload capacity and range for 8x the cost.
But a lot more acceleration and a lot cheaper to fuel/maintain. Though I'm sure the cost of the mod will more than exceed the savings. I'm equally sure that the YouTube revenue will more than exceed the cost of the mod, so there's that.
Depends on if the modifications lead to premature wear of the base vehicle compared to if it was left stock.
In the 1960s Ford tried to make a pickup truck where the cab and box were one piece, with a single bulkhead separating them. This unit was still on a truck frame, but even still it flexed too much and the idea was scrapped after only a year or two, and that was with a vehicle designed by a manufacturer.
If she uses her creation as a truck I don't see it going especially well. The car wanted to collap
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They have made some reasonably useful unibody pickups since the 60s. The Chevy Avalanche and Honda Ridgeline are probably the most successful ones. Although, those have their own drawbacks as well. Structural rigidity is a huge one. The "sails" that connected the sides of the bed to the cab were necessary structural features until recently. Honda eventually figured out a way to reinforce that area without them, but the added weight makes it no lighter than a traditional body on frame design. I doubt s
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In the 1960s Ford tried to make a pickup truck where the cab and box were one piece, with a single bulkhead separating them. This unit was still on a truck frame, but even still it flexed too much and the idea was scrapped after only a year or two, and that was with a vehicle designed by a manufacturer.
Ford Australia invented this type of ute in the 1930's and continued making them until 2017 when they stopped manufacturing in Australia. Holden (our GM subsidiary) did similar. Japanese companies have been doing similar from the 1960's. European companies do them occasionally but their wet weather favours vans instead.
It only failed in the US because there you like everything big and a car based ute simply wasn't big enough for your tastes.
Also, when we got the Ford Falcon sedan in 1960, the US derived veh
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She specifically wanted an electric pickup truck.
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She specifically wanted an electric pickup truck.
So go get an old Tacoma, Mighty Max, Frontier, or S10 and convert one. Put the electric motor where the current transmission sits. Put battery boxes between the framerails under the bed and in the former engine compartment.
Hell, didn't GM even experiment with some all-electric S10s? Go track one of those down.
At least then the vehicle would still have a usable payload volume.
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Not really practical for other reasons as well. The suspension isn't designed for heavy loads. Ground clearance is too low. If it's supposed to be able to handle offroad surfaces, the battery pack shielding design is inappropriate. The vehicle's aerodynamics and weight distribution aren't optimized for having a bed in the back. Etc, etc, etc.
That said, it's impressive work by Simone. :)
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The suspension is good enough to handle 600 lbs of people in the back seat, so the bed can at least handle that much.
Ground clearance is easily solved. Simone
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600 pounds is nothing for a pickup truck. ;)
2" lift is still pretty low. And again, the pack shielding system isn't designed for offroad usage. It's based around a sort of "debris bar" in front that either shoves any debris in front of the car or crushes it. But in offroading, you might have the undercarriage pound down on a rock as you climb over something, or whatnot. The pack isn't armoured in a way to be able to take that sort of abuse. A proper electric pickup will need an alumium profile crush stru
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*** shoves any debris in front of the car away or crushes it. :)
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The suspension is good enough to handle 600 lbs of people in the back seat, so the bed can at least handle that much.
Suspension, maybe - what about the car itself? It's a space-frame/unibody type construction, so you're seriously degrading the stiffness/stability of the platform as well. And with the big battery down in the lower rails, there's not a lot of space to add big thick new frame members to compensate for the loss of the roof support.
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Who wouldn't want that?
I question I ask about everyone who buys a penis exten... err large car.
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And a link .. and Americans using metric!!!! .. and we couldn't do this in Australia... compliance to drive this thing on the road would be nigh impossible...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Metric is fine. Americans don't really hate it, we just hated having to buy two sets of tools to work on stuff. Now that cheap Chinese tools cost less than half the price, we all own both systems.
25 years ago I used all metric doing quality control in a car parts factory. My measurements were all recorded in mL and grams. Logged in a journal, in blue or black ink. To be fair there was a bit of chemistry to my job, and US chemists moved away from customary units long ago.
Ultimately it's just numbers and I ra
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I'm lucky to have a pencil handy, let alone a calculator. I do most of my work in my head, but I'm not likely to bother memorizing things like gallons per cubic yard or inches per mile.
FUD in Oz (Score:2)
Nonsense. I know someone who built a car more or less from scratch (the engine was a heavily modified production one) and it is road legal in Australia. You have to work with the compliance engineer.
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From what I understand industry, notably automobile, made a big a shift to metric in the US, with the main lagard being the construction industry. On the streets it is still imperial for the most part.
Oh, and the federal government is metric based and the imperial units are defined against metric units.
And a brief history of the metric system: http://www.us-metric.org/a-chr... [us-metric.org]
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Of course we can do this in Australia.
Do a search for Torana ute's - none made in the factory and all converted from hatchbacks.
You just need an certified engineer to sign off on it to make sure it is structurally okay.
There was also a hand built thing called Utopia - a Supra front end with a Hilux rear end.
Looked surprisingly good but I can't find a reference for it anymore.
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A Holden ute.
At least someones making them now
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There was a company importing them to the USA but they aren't cheap. If you want the LS V8 model its like $100K.
Whole Foods Hauler! (Score:5, Funny)
It can can carry one bale of hay or TWO whole bags from Whole foods!
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It can can carry one bale of hay or TWO whole bags from Whole foods!
Yawn . . . I can put one paycheck in my glove compartment, which has the same value as TWO whole bags from Whole foods!
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It can can carry one bale of hay or TWO whole bags from Whole foods!
I just watched her video, and found out a few things. The roof rack is very strong... it's part of the structural support of the newly hacked-up car; and her use case will be to put plywood and/or lumber on the roof rack and haul it to her shop for her projects.
She wanted some kind of pickup truck, and she doesn't ever want to own a fossil fuel car; she only wants to drive electric.
A real pickup truck can haul more stuff and/or heavier stu
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Yes. El Camino... a small one. I think I like it, actually.
Now I want someone to chop the back of a Mini Cooper, to create an El CaMini.
Ranchero (Score:2)
I was going to call it a Teslero after Ford's version of that: the Ranchero. [wikipedia.org]
UC Irvine did this Years Ago with a Kia Soul EV (Score:2)
I saw it at a conference probably 2 years ago. Major university campuses throughout California are being forced to transition their entire vehicle fleet to alt fuels. There aren't any non-experimental sub-$100k electric/hybrid pick-up trucks or vans available in the States yet, so UC Irvine bought a couple Kia Soul EVs, tore out the back seats, threw down a tough bed, protected the windows, and done. I think they had roof-racks for pipes, conduits, and ladders as well.
Couldn't have cost that much and now th
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All cars are crap.
I had to drive a Kia Soul 2800 miles and it was utter abominable festering crap. The slurry pit at a dairy farm is less crap than that thing.
On the flipside touring Morocco in a Kia Picanto was fantastic, so I wouldn't write off the brand wholesale.
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Yeah, but Kia probably don't make their vehicles as difficult to mod as Tesla.
I thought she had a brain tumor? (Score:2)
Seriously, you go girl. Never heard of you before your tumor, and have been a fan ever since.
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A brain tumor, which she had removed, and then came back and she's been in radiation treatment for the regrowth.
Having the energy to put into fun engineering projects after all that is commendable.
Re: Nice work but... (Score:1)
She organized and worked on a truck mod for a Tesla Model 3, and one of your main observations is what she's wearing? That she's not dirty enough?
Ever question what guys on YouTube were wearing while doing something similar?
Lawsuit incoming (Score:2)
Probably violated a EULA or something.
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Would you take a bet?
https://www.engadget.com/2016/... [engadget.com] (link goes to 2016 article of tesla to hearse and limo conversion).
Oh well, I still like her. (Score:2)
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I'm subscribed. She's a builder of things, and she is also goofy and easy on the eyes.
She did a series of videos on DIY astronaut training, and in the last one she took a ride on the Vomit Comet. The look of pure joy on her face during the flight was priceless.
. not cost effective . (Score:2, Funny)
"popular YouTuber and self-described "queen of shitty robots"" I guess it's all about the eyeballs for those YouTube 'influencers'. But some of us can't afford such wasteful projects . . .
Wednesday, 1966: As I was out for a stroll I saw a particularly striking vehicle cruising a Chicago street on this sunny morning. A big white Caddy ambulance with very unusual modifications. I knew that this car was meant for me, but it had already passed. Aha, it was stuck at the next red light so I ran up to it and yelle
Re:. not cost effective . (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know what you're going on about. Simone only drives electric vehicles. She has a tiny little electric Comuta car built in the 80s, but it's not very practical. What she really wanted is a reliable functional electric pickup truck that she can use for work. Since no such thing existed, she got some friends and colleagues together, and built one. It's not the kind of thing you can just buy off the street through a chance encounter.
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YouTube is her job, you prattling idiot, at least when she's not doing TV. Are you upset that a woman is successful enough at her job to be able to buy a new car for the first time?
I like it (Score:2)
"Ramirez explained that the car was reporting "all of its many faults" to Tesla headquarters via cell connection, or essentially "snitching"
I like it when my cars snitch on people who try to cut it into spare parts.
They also snitch on people keying them or doing other damage.
They should all do that.
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Crashworthy? (Score:2)
This is all fine and dandy until she gets rear-ended by someone too busy trying to find the right GIF to insert into a text to pay attention to the stopped car . . . . Honda released the second generation Ridgeline, and the amount of engineering needed to take a Pilot, cut away the rear of the vehicle, carve out a bed, and still make it safe is amazing. Personally, I like my body the way it is, and I wouldn't drive in that "truck" anywhere except for the farm.
El Camino? Ranchero? (Score:1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Consumers? (Score:2)
As such, it blurs the line between sedan and pickup, which used to be a popular design style in the 1970s and 80s, until consumers decided that bigger is better.
Consumers did not make that decision. Congress did by taxing that style of vehicle in favor of larger pickups with worse mileage.
Re:Am I impressed? (Score:5, Insightful)
well to be fair; at least this one 'does something'. You might not like what she makes/produces; but at least she's doing SOMETHING, Compared to a bunch of 'em who apparently do nothing but travel, eat-out, and try on clothes. (And possibly letting Saudi sheikhs defile their bodies for money, but that's not really discussed)
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What do you think the El Camino and Ranchero were?
The Ranchero came from the Ford Ranch Wagon, and the El Camino was a converted Brookwood wagon, both of which were 2-door station wagons. :p
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What do you think the El Camino and Ranchero were?
The Ranchero came from the Ford Ranch Wagon, and the El Camino was a converted Brookwood wagon, both of which were 2-door station wagons. :p
The Ranchero came from the full size Ford in for 57-59, the Falcon in 60-65, the Fairlane in 66-67, and the Torino from 68 on. There were some 2-door Ranch Wagons, but I don't see any in the 57-59 model years.
The El Camino came from the full size Chevy (B-Body) in 59-60, and from the Chevelle (A-Body) from 64 on. The Brookwood wagon was not a 2-door (ever); you're thinking of the 55-57 Chevy Nomad 2-door wagons. Later Chevy wagons, including Nomads and Brookwoods, were all 4-doors; five if you count the
Re:Where does the money come for this? (Score:4, Funny)
Tax dodges.
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...since pickups usually had to be commercial.
Where? I grew up in California, where, by default, pickups were (and still are AFAIK) registered with commercial number plates. But you could/can ask for non-commercial registration, and some people did and do.
Where I live now, the default is to register them with non-commercial plates, unless you request commercial registration. I have non-commercial plates on my pickup. Many of the people I know who have pickups here have them registered with non-commercial plates.
Re:Where does the money come for this? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure this was a pretty expensive project to pull off, not the least of which was all the other skilled people's labor and no doubt a lot of materials and tools, etc.
I wouldn't be so sure without watching the video (having watched enough of the video to tell you that you are wrong).
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The "cutting up a Tesla Model 3" would be the point at which it stops being affordable for most people.... :)
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The video shows her paying the down payment, with a car loan and without the need to buy gas they are quite affordable.
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Right, so tell me, just how many people have the ability to take out a loan on a vehicle they then destroy...? Unless someone decides this is art and buys it for a ludicrous amount of money, the cars resale value just dropped to scrap, and yet theres still a loan to be paid.
The end result certainly looks good, but equally the end result was not guaranteed. It remains to be seen just what the long term holds for it as well - how well will Tesla support it etc?
Dropping $30k on a hobby project isn't exactly
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Dropping $30k on a hobby project isn't exactly affordable for most people.
Sure, but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be people out there doing stuff like this. I can't afford to put a Tesla drivetrain in an Audi but I'm fascinated by the guy who did.
Re:Where does the money come for this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Given some of the other stuff she's produced, the result is very impressive and surprising that it didn't break in half during the first drive
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I wish more people thought like that, the world needs more engineering types. If you like her work, check out April Wilkerson on Youtube (no affiliation). She does a lot of woodworking and some metal working. Videos are easy to watch and focused on the work rather than have to labor through crappy background music and listening to the host drone on and on.
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She also designs her own electronics and mechanical parts, not just solders them.
It's curious that you feel the need to put her down.
Re: Where does the money come for this? (Score:1)
Seeing collaboration and helping out as weakness is the real weakness. It makes you unable to take advantage of the fact that humans are social and altruistic animals.
Re: Where does the money come for this? (Score:2, Insightful)
It used to be that Slashdotters wouldn't read the article before commenting. Then the pathology spread to not even reading the summary. Now we've hit a new low: won't even watch the first few minutes of a video THAT ANSWERS EVERY ONE OF YOUR POINTS.
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So is she basically independently wealthy as some kind of YouTube star?
She was a fairly big youtube star back before the ad-apocalypse, when Google was still making sure other video hosting companies couldnt compete by giving big money per view, so yes, probably more or less independently wealthy.
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Re:What a fuck up (Score:4, Insightful)
She dubs herself "The Queen of Shitty Robots". What exactly were you expecting???
Meh, it's entertainment (Score:2)
It's rare to find a mod that doesn't make a car worse. Stretched Humvee: Amusing? yes. Good? No.
A Tesla3 pickup does mean you can buy a huge TV and take it home. Not that I'd have any money or time left over for TV after buying a brand new Tesla and spending hundreds of hours hacking it to bits.
Re:From the Article (Score:5, Informative)
Hardly. If you had seen any of Simone's or Laura's earlier videos then you would know that both are very good at fabricating things.