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Tesla Cybertruck lead engineer shares insights on deep integration and vehicle development
Tesla Cybertruck Lead Engineer Wes Morrill recently shared some insights on the electric vehicle maker’s deep integration and unique approach to car design in a recent post on social media platform X. As could be seen in the engineer’s post, it is Tesla’s intense attention to detail that ultimately makes the company’s vehicles as disruptive as they are today.
Anyone informed who looks at the Tesla Cybertruck would know that the vehicle is a symphony of automotive engineering. Tesla, however, took some time before it reached this point. As per Morrill in his post, Tesla in its early days utilized different teams with collaborative goals in vehicle design. Adopting this system allowed the company to make great cars, but the designs of the vehicles themselves were not optimal.
“A well known example – early days of Tesla there was a battery team and separately a vehicle structures team. Structures team designed their vehicle body to meet given requirements of strength, crashworthiness, torsional stiffness, etc. Likewise, the battery team designed their part to be self contained, it could survive durability, accidentally being dropped, being hit in a crash, etc.
Good analysis – this is what happens when teams work together to make the best product. https://t.co/XAXf70k3jc— Wes (@wmorrill3) September 14, 2024
“As a result, we ended up with was a super dense battery in a strong box like structure, which was then Installed into the vehicle which had a nice space for it to mate into. There were no issues with integration, everything fit together perfectly and met all product goals. It achieved one of the highest crash safety ratings measured at the time.
“But we had a box full of battery cells that was installed into another empty box shaped receptacle on the body. A box in a box. When you simplify it down that far it sounds obviously wrong. The two organizations had achieved their goals, worked together without friction, and the product met its overall goals. Yet the product ended up with a clear lack of optimization as a result of the organizational boundaries of the two teams working in isolation. Nothing was wrong, but it wasn’t optimal,” Morrill wrote.
The Cybertruck Lead Engineer noted that Tesla learned from these experiences, and the company adapted. This is how innovations such as the structural battery pack—which is now being simulated by electric car makers in China—came about. Morrill stated, however, that such changes may require large organizational changes, and there has to be a drive to make the best product regardless of ego.
Have you heard of Conway's Law? It's an interesting observation about the root cause of why large organizations usually make products worse.
In 1967 Melvin Conway wrote "Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication… pic.twitter.com/SetWd6OfTe— Wes (@wmorrill3) September 14, 2024
“Before the next product was designed, the battery team gave responsibility of the battery structures also to the vehicle structures team. On this iteration, we ended up with the structural battery, which is an integral part of the body and crash structure. Without it, the vehicle body will not work. It’s the literal floor for the vehicle. But the redundancy is gone and the design is more efficient as a result. This vehicle also achieved one of the highest crash safety ratings measured at the time.
“This is a super obvious example (in retrospect) and solved with a fairly large organizational change but you can also see this happen in small technical decisions and doesn’t require structural change to fix. Someone just needs to question if there is a better solution in a team open to criticism. This mindset to work together to make the best product regardless of ego is where you end up with the most innovative products.
“Some smaller examples have been seen when inspecting Cybertruck design. The chassis air suspension which is used to pressurize the battery pack to prevent water ingress. The subwoofer which utilizes the air volume of the body side instead of making the enclosure larger. Centralized zonal vehicle controllers instead of many small distributed controllers. Doors which use the exterior surface as a crash intrusion beam. The pedestrian warning system used as a horn. The list goes on. The excitement and motivation by everyone involved to work across boundaries and actively break down Conway’s Law is one of the many reasons I love working at Tesla,” Morrill wrote.
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Tesla is delaying its event for the Roadster, moving it from this Thursday, October 1, to Thursday, October 15, due to unfavorable weather.
The company has said it has been tracking the weather for this Thursday closely with local meteorologists, and because the event can only be held outside, Tesla is making the call to delay it:
“We’ve been tracking the weather closely with local meteorologists, but given the severe conditions predicted & because this event can only be held outdoors, we’ve made the difficult decision to reschedule. New date is October 15. Additional details to follow.”
Roadster event update
We’ve been tracking the weather closely with local meteorologists, but given the severe conditions predicted & because this event can only be held outdoors, we’ve made the difficult decision to reschedule.
New date is October 15. Additional details to…
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 28, 2026
We are sure that this is bringing back PTSD for some Tesla fans, and we know it is not ideal, but this also reveals some things about the event. Tesla said that this can only be held outdoors, meaning it bodes well for the rumors that the vehicle could potentially hover.
Some believe that this was essentially confirmed by the FAA airspace restriction they were granted, but this could have been for a drone show or to keep drones from spying on the event.
Tesla Roadster is available for order once again following brief hold
The Roadster event has been long-awaited, and it is unfortunate that the weather is going to keep us all waiting a little bit longer.
The Tesla Roadster will be unveiled in Waco, Texas.
Elon Musk
SpaceX turned a heralding moment for Starship into its greatest
Starship reached orbit despite losing an engine, deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites on Flight 14.
SpaceX’s Starship reached orbit for the first time on Monday, and for a few nail-biting minutes it looked like it wouldn’t. During ascent on Flight 14, one of Ship 41’s six Raptor engines shut down early, and SpaceX’s livestream host Dan Huot told viewers the team had decided not to commit to orbit. Minutes later, after what Huot described as a lot of conversation in the control room, the final poll came back in favor, and a roughly 19 second burn of a single Raptor pushed the ship into orbit about 170 miles up.
The reversal matters because SpaceX had written the exit ramp into the mission plan. The company said it would only fire the orbital insertion burn if flight controllers confirmed enough backup hardware remained for the deorbit burn, a condition Teslarati laid out ahead of the flight. Losing an engine was exactly the scenario that rule was built for.
Pressing forward fits Elon Musk’s history. Falcon 1 failed three straight times before its fourth launch reached orbit in 2008, with SpaceX nearly out of money, and Starship was developed by flying prototypes until they broke. What changed this year SpaceX going public, and with $SPCX sliding below its IPO price in July when Flight 13 slipped, the short interest climbed significantly, as Teslarati reported at the time. A Starship potentially lost today with revenue generating next-gen Starlink satellites aboard would have landed directly on shareholders.
Splashdown confirmed. Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on the first orbital flight of Starship! pic.twitter.com/urjmiwnvNl
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 28, 2026
That pressure showed up after orbit. SpaceX cut a flight planned to last nearly 10 hours to about three, moving splashdown from west of Chile to the North Pacific near Hawaii. SpaceX gave no reason, though Musk said this month the company was being extremely cautious about debris risk. The single Raptor for deorbit worked, and Ship 41 completed its flip and landing burn before breaking apart in the water, an outcome SpaceX expected. Musk has structured SpaceX’s governance to shield long term bets from market pressure.
The payload is the bigger business story. Musk posted that all 26 Starlink V3 satellites deployed and are “operating nominally.” Each V3 is rated for about 1 Tbps of downlink and 160 Gbps of uplink, so this single launch adds roughly 26 Tbps, about 10 times what a Falcon 9 load of V2 Mini satellites adds. The V3 is too large for Falcon 9, making Starship the only vehicle that can build out the planned 100,000 satellite constellation, at up to 60 per flight once it reaches routine service. Unlike the 20 V3 units on Flight 13, which reentered on a suborbital path, these will raise their orbits and could begin serving customers within weeks and bring in hundreds of millions of additional dollars in projected Starlink revenue.
SpaceX has already begun winding down Falcon 9 Starlink launches from Florida in favor of Starship. Reported targets put Flight 15 as early as October 19, leaving about three weeks to diagnose Monday’s engine shutdown before the next orbital attempt.
Starship’s 14th flight is set to launch on Monday, Sept 28. The 75-minute launch window opens at 7:15 a.m. CT. Live coverage of the mission starts ~35 minutes before launch → https://t.co/uQKQvgaTmJ
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 27, 2026
Tesla quietly doubled the size of its Cybercab fleet within the Robotaxi program in Austin, Texas, over the weekend to well over 100 units.
The move not only establishes more of the steering-wheel-less and pedal-less vehicles within the ride-sharing fleet Tesla has been operating for a year, but it also solidifies a more robust Robotaxi fleet as a whole.
Riders started receiving notifications from the Robotaxi app that stated: “Cybercab fleet has doubled: more rides available.”
I got this notification on the robotaxi app. They are saying the Cybercab fleet has doubled. Glad that they are advertising this pic.twitter.com/FFrnw4FRCF
— Abhimanyu Yadav (@WorldlyReviewer) September 26, 2026
Tesla first launched rides in the Cybercab in early September, although the Robotaxi fleet has been active for over a year, as rides began last Summer. Cybercab is truly Tesla’s most crucial vehicle release yet, as it is the first car any company has built that is geared toward full-fledged and end-to-end autonomy, never needing human intervention for anything.
Only available in Austin at the current time, Cybercab has two seats and has been spotted testing around various U.S. states and regions; Tesla plans to deploy the Cybercab in various U.S. cities in the coming months as a best-case scenario.
Tesla Cybercab gets initial tie-in to localized, in-house cathode plant
The availability of the Cybercab has doubled from just 58 units last Monday to 125 the following Friday. Marking a substantial increase in Cybercab availability, the additional ride-sharing units are more than welcome, as wait times for Cybercabs, especially, were quite high.
The dramatic increase is a sign that demand for Robotaxi is growing and Tesla is feeling more confident that its driverless ride-hailing suite, especially its Full Self-Driving software, is able to handle any traffic situation without explicit direction or supervision from a human being.
Tesla Roadster event gets delayed due to unfavorable weather
SpaceX turned a heralding moment for Starship into its greatest
