Quote:
Originally Posted by red-beard
So, digging into the technical. The body uses a VERY hard, scratch resistant stainless steel variant. The problem, the type of stainless is very brittle, which is why it has the flat panels.
The problem is, hardness is not toughness. The metal will probably crack in a crash, instead of deforming.
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301 stainless, which appears to be what Tesla is using, has higher elongation than any other austenitic stainless in the annealed condition. If they use it in the cold worked condition then toughness and elongation would go down but it would also be harder to brake into the shapes they're using.