What's super funny is that over on R*ddit there are people claiming that stainless steel never rusts and how some dude has had a piece of stainless steel sitting out in the elements for years and how it looks the same as the first day it got put there.
Of course it depends on the properties of the stainless steel used, but nobody could bear to tolerate this fact.
I've seen superficial rust on stainless steel stuff like kitchen sinks before. Did it rust through like a piece of iron sitting in the rain? Of course not. But that's not the problem we're talking about here.
Not to drop a bazinga on this (I dropped out early, never paid enough attention in science class etc. and I'm no engineer) but I was wondering if it wouldn't be somehow practical to hook up a sacrifical anode to the panels. Yeah, it would add some extra cost and weight but Tesla would probably be able to bill people for their 5-yearly Flux Defibrillator™ replacement for the low price of $799 and Musk fanboys would look at the bill and be like "Yeah, I could tell there was some flux interference happening in the past couple of months..." and everybody would be happy and the CyberFukk wouldn't look like a rolling rust bucket. (But I'm probably completely overestimating how simple it would be so don't listen to what I have just said.)
There was one person in the mix who trusted the process though and was giving out armchair advice for how you could preserve the patina that would develop over time and all I could think about was how the "patina" in reality would be these roughly circular blotches of varying diameters like the panels were sporting cigarette burns and coffee cup stains all over the place.
I just can't get over how you can have a collection of the most divergent delusional thinking all happily coexisting in the same place where the overwhelming consensus is that there is actually no problem with the panels discolouring and rusting at all yet having someone else saying that it would look totally cool to have splotchy rust covering the body of their cybertruck and how they are looking forward to it.
Sacrificial anodes basically don't work on cars, and what little benefit they have experimentally shown in that use case is both very minimal and extremely situational.
The problem is that an electrical current has to flow directly from the sacrificial anode to the cathode body panels through the corrosive liquid, in addition to a physical connection through the frame. The very specific scenario in which they've shown to be effective in cars is when driving through large amounts of high-salinity water, like a really deep melty puddle on a salted road, where a significant portion of the car is actively wet. This is something that only really happens for a few moments at most, and only occasionally happens during a limited time period in only a portion of the world.
It's also less effective than simply using a phosphate underbody coating, so... Not really going to work.
Well at least you proved me right about not paying attention in science class lol
Given what you've said, I think there's a reasonable chance that Elon Musk and his team will respond to RustGate in 2024/2025 by offering a sacrifical anode as a "marine-grade" optional extra to get people who lack science literacy like me hyped up to shell out even more cash while Elon Musk can wink and nod to the camera over his ridiculous claims of how the Bladerunner's favourite car can also function as a boat "for short periods".
What's super funny is that over on R*ddit there are people claiming that stainless steel never rusts and how some dude has had a piece of stainless steel sitting out in the elements for years and how it looks the same as the first day it got put there.
Of course it depends on the properties of the stainless steel used, but nobody could bear to tolerate this fact.
I've seen superficial rust on stainless steel stuff like kitchen sinks before. Did it rust through like a piece of iron sitting in the rain? Of course not. But that's not the problem we're talking about here.
Not to drop a bazinga on this (I dropped out early, never paid enough attention in science class etc. and I'm no engineer) but I was wondering if it wouldn't be somehow practical to hook up a sacrifical anode to the panels. Yeah, it would add some extra cost and weight but Tesla would probably be able to bill people for their 5-yearly Flux Defibrillator™ replacement for the low price of $799 and Musk fanboys would look at the bill and be like "Yeah, I could tell there was some flux interference happening in the past couple of months..." and everybody would be happy and the CyberFukk wouldn't look like a rolling rust bucket. (But I'm probably completely overestimating how simple it would be so don't listen to what I have just said.)
There was one person in the mix who trusted the process though and was giving out armchair advice for how you could preserve the patina that would develop over time and all I could think about was how the "patina" in reality would be these roughly circular blotches of varying diameters like the panels were sporting cigarette burns and coffee cup stains all over the place.
I just can't get over how you can have a collection of the most divergent delusional thinking all happily coexisting in the same place where the overwhelming consensus is that there is actually no problem with the panels discolouring and rusting at all yet having someone else saying that it would look totally cool to have splotchy rust covering the body of their cybertruck and how they are looking forward to it.
Sacrificial anodes basically don't work on cars, and what little benefit they have experimentally shown in that use case is both very minimal and extremely situational.
The problem is that an electrical current has to flow directly from the sacrificial anode to the cathode body panels through the corrosive liquid, in addition to a physical connection through the frame. The very specific scenario in which they've shown to be effective in cars is when driving through large amounts of high-salinity water, like a really deep melty puddle on a salted road, where a significant portion of the car is actively wet. This is something that only really happens for a few moments at most, and only occasionally happens during a limited time period in only a portion of the world.
It's also less effective than simply using a phosphate underbody coating, so... Not really going to work.
Well at least you proved me right about not paying attention in science class lol
Given what you've said, I think there's a reasonable chance that Elon Musk and his team will respond to RustGate in 2024/2025 by offering a sacrifical anode as a "marine-grade" optional extra to get people who lack science literacy like me hyped up to shell out even more cash while Elon Musk can wink and nod to the camera over his ridiculous claims of how the Bladerunner's favourite car can also function as a boat "for short periods".