this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2025
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Fuck Cars

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Considering the pickup EV has been an enormous commercial flop, only selling barely a fraction of Musk’s promised 250,000 to 500,000 Cybertrucks a year, there’s a good chance Tesla is using the mercurial CEO’s other venture to boost the numbers ahead of the end of an otherwise disastrous year.

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[–] markz@suppo.fi 30 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Are they gonna use them as ballast or dummy payload or what?

[–] SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world 10 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Just so long as they strip out the lithium batteries first - otherwise that'd be one helluva fireball coming back down in some random spot

[–] ch00f@lemmy.world 44 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

I get what you're going for, but the amount of energy stored in any mass going at orbital speed far outweighs the energy stored in its chemical makeup. A 1kg mass traveling 7.8km/s (LEO speed) has 30MJ of kinetic energy. By comparison, 1kg of TNT has 4.184MJ of chemical energy. So even if the Cybertruck was made out of TNT, the TNT would only account for about 13% of the total energy. Removing the batteries would significantly reduce the mass which would have a large impact on the "fireball," but I don't think that's what you're going for.

[–] davidagain@lemmy.world 23 points 5 days ago

You are part of why lemmy is great.