Lately, I have fallen in love with the look of a mirror polished stainless steel CyberTruck look. Just to be clear, when I say mirror polished stainless steel CyberTruck, this is achieved by having a professional metal polisher literally polish the hell out of the stainless steel panels on a CyberTuck, which is typically a process that takes several days and cost between $4500 and $8500.
I decided to clean up the photo by fixing the sky, and removing all the power cables and then I added my JAKEe Rear Window Sail Pyramid Panel to the picture above to show Mark how great I thought it would look on his Beast. Then I realized, how insanely great this looks, and now I have decided when I get my CyberTruck I am going to do exactly this. It looks so great, and so NEXT-LEVEL, I am even thinking about delaying doing my two-tone black bottom JAKEe wrap design, as I love this looks so much!!!
One More Thing
Mark asked me if anybody sells the side faux window panels already cut, and I mentioned that T-Sportline does, and they call them "Tesla Cybertruck Rear Window Fade Out PPF Wrap Kit", but I pointed out to Mark that from what I can tell from some angles these sail panels don't look right or look kinda crooked.
I believe the solution to optimizing this looks is to also wrap the flat window sill area with black, which completes the look as seen below. This makes it look much more cohesive and organic and makes the rear sail panel look more real. By tinting the windows and adding black wrap to the window sill, it also make the CyberTruck look more masculine, kind of like the CyberTruck is wearing Sunglasses, and the extra black wrap has a mascara effect. Also, it doesn’t look like an afterthought sticker that got slapped on...
Decisions, Decisions?
I originally planned to wrap my CyberTruck when I get it with my original JAKEe CyberTruck Wrap design seen above, but I like the look of the Mirror Polished CyberTruck, I think I will do it first, and then maybe later add the black PPF on bottom, which I will now probably have to do in glossy, in order to match the top of the my CyberTruck which will have a mirror finish. This may not seem strange to you, but it does to me as I was stoked an confident I was going to immediately wrap it like my design above, so I can't believe I think I have changed my mind? I just think the mirror polished CyberTruck looks soooooooo RAD!!!!!! and soooooo NEXT-LEVEL, as it look otherworldly, and does not look at all like a standard CyberTuck...
I am a YuuuuuuuGe fan of the Polished CyberTruck look, and I published a story on it back in October on TeslaMagazine.org. I thought about how cool it would be to do this when I get my CyberTruck, but I had so many questions and thankfully Mark from Mark of the CyberBeast mentioned to me when I spoke with him that he was planning to polish the stainless steel on his CyberTruck, and he decided to document the entire process!!! I reached out to Mark to ask him questions about his polishing project, and his brilliant answers can be seen just below the videos:
Q&A with Mark of the CyberBeast
Question 1: What made you want to polish your CyberTruck?
"My wife and I love the rugged, masculine look of the metal, so I didn't want to wrap it. It's not that we don't like them wrapped, but we felt it takes away from the intent of the design using that stainless steel exoskeleton. We saw this and loved the look, it looks neater, more finished, especially in the sun where we live."
Question 2: How much will it cost you when it's done?
"I've seen companies charge $8500 but Oliver's Metal Polishing who did it for me will be charging people around $4500, not much more than a PPF wrap and cheaper than a 3M wrap."
Question 3: How do you believe polishing your CyberTruck will affect the resale value of it? In other words, will it lower the value as it's no longer stock, or do you expect it to enhance the value as it will look way better? I realize you probably don't care about Resale value as you likely don't intend to sell it, but I am curious...
"I don't think it will hurt, hopefully help but I still have my 13 year old Tundra so as you can guess, I have no plans on selling this, probably ever! Someone can always wrap it if they don't like it."
Question 4: I mentioned to a friend of mine who owns a CyberTruck that I am thinking about polishing my CyberTruck when I purchase it, and he responded, "I would NEVER do that as the mirror reflection will reflect storing sunlight and blind people!". This seems to contradict what I thought I read in a post where the person said something like the light that hits the CyberTruck is reflected to the ground, and does not cause any kind of safety issues. Since you actually have a polished CyberTruck, I would like to separate the fact from the fiction in my article about your CyberTruck.
"In motion, you really don't see such a harsh mirror and due to the angles it really isn't as bad on other drivers as you would think. It looks really reflective in pictures because THAT is the look they are going for, the stealth blending in. I do plan to put the 3 headed beast sticker on the tailgate to help with headlights of someone following me though. Many tanker trucks are polished and they don't have the distraction people talk about so I'm not worried."
I was thinking about the alleged reflection issue, and if you think about it, in order for the sun to blind somebody by reflecting off the side of a polished CyberTruck would require the sun to be in the perfect position, so the side of the CyberTruck, and the CyberTruck facia would have to be at just the right angle to perfectly reflect it at a persons eyes. If you think about it, nobody would be in a position where their eyes would be low enough for the sun to reflect perfectly into somebodies eyes. Not the mention, the upper side area would reflect sun way upward, so I don't see how the sun could reflect off the surface of a polished vehicle where it would effect anybody or anything in a negative way...
In my opinion polishing a CyberTruck it TOTALLY NEXT LEVEL, and makes a CyberTruck look an order of magnitude cooler...
I was talking to Mark yesterday, about the CyberTruck, and his superb YouTube channel, and he mentioned he had just finished up his 2024 Tesla Earnings video which can be see below, and he makes many superb points. Mark has a great Tesla YouTube channel named, Mark of the CyberBeast, which I highly recommend. Mark is really smart, and we talked about perhaps collaborating in the future on an article and video comparing the AWD CyberTruck to The Tri-Motor Beast CyberTruck!
This interview which feature Cern Basher on Brighter with Herbert is one of the most profound conversations on the subject of the long-term value proposition of Tesla stock as an investment vehicle. In my persons option, I have long believed Tesla has had the entire automotive industry in check-mate, and will go on to become the single most valuable company on earth—by a long shot. If you study the history of Tesla stock you will discover that from its IPO on June 29, 2010 It's up 30,486.02% as of this writing.
It is also a fact that to date, over the past decade and a half since Tesla IPO'd, it has appreciated close to 5% per month. That's 5% per month, not per year, so that means on average Tesla stock has gone up on average close to 60% per year. This is the most critical key ingredient to thrust Tesla stock up above all other companies as Tesla has magnificent trajectory, which is key.
Tesla finally launched the new 2025 Model Y (Codenamed Juniper) exclusively in China today, and it looks PRETTY RAD!!! It's obviously just a matter of time before the U.S. and Berlin made Model Y are updated to match this design language. I think Tesla did a GREAT job with overhauling the design of what is currently the Number 1 best selling car on earth, and yes, I am talking about the Tesla Model Y. Tesla basically just made it look way more attractive, sporty and sleek.
Exterior Updates
As we see from the image below, the Model Y "Juniper" refresh design language is similar to the upcoming Tesla RoboCab, and on the back of the vehicle we see it has a similar diffused lightbar, which looks really cool...
The new Model Y has a much sharper, cleaner vibe, as the front bumper facia, is sleeker and less bulbous, and the Duckbill/Porpoise/Botox lip look face is gone, as the new lightbar and headlights give it a much more modern persona. Also, it's slightly more aerodynamic overall, and the car is also just a big longer by 47 mm. The new Model Y Juniper measures 4797 mm in length, while its predecessor was 4750 mm long.
They say there is no such thing as a stupid question and If I could ask Elon Musk one question, it would be:
"How in the future will Tesla vehicles be able to drive safely using full unsupervised autonomy using just cameras? How for instance could a Tesla vehicle navigate safely on a road at night with really thick fog?"
Over the years, there has been a lot of speculation about the validity of Elon Musk's vision to make Tesla automobiles that are genuinely autonomous—meaning cars that can drive themselves without any human supervision. I have spoken to so many people who say Elon's vision is an impossible pipe dream.
I have NEVER doubted Elon's vision, but there were two important variables I questioned.
The dream of autonomous transportation, as it was originally put forth, was to have a Tesla vehicle that could drive itself from San Francisco to New York, without a person in the vehicle.
When Tesla first introduced FSD (Full Self Driving), there were two questions that would not stop popping into my head.
The first question, which I considered was "If a Tesla was going to be able to drive itself from San Francisco to New York, by itself, how would it charge itself along the way? 9 years ago, Tesla showed off this bizarre video that shows a prototype snake charger, that could robotically charge a Tesla through the standard wall charger outlet:
I always thought the solution above was NOT realistic or viable, but at the time I was already aware of wireless charing solutions for Electric Vehicles as I had attended the CES show in Las Vegas, and saw a working prototype that was similar to a wireless charger for a smartphone.
Back in 2020 I wrote a seminal article titled "Thoughts on the Future of Autonomous Vehicles: The Shape of Things To Come", in which I discussed my ideas on the future of autonomous vehicles. In that article, I included a profound video that showcased and documented the future reality of wireless EV charing becoming standard for autonomous cars, which can be seen below:
Recently, when Tesla announced the CyberCab, they mentioned they were going to be incorporating wireless charging, and thus one of the two final puzzle pieces was put in place. Below is an official Tesla Video that shows how their CyberCab will use wireless charging:
Of course, I realized this years ago, which was further confirmed with the advent of the CyberTruck as Sandy Munro's CyberTruck teardown discovered wire harnessing already built-in to the CyberTruck, that could simply come to life if a Tesla wireless charing pad was installed. In other words, all CyberTrucks can easily be upgraded to have wireless charging.
So this solves half the equation. Also, it's easy to see the amazing benefits of wireless charing for Tesla vehicles. For instance, your Tesla could pull itself into your garage automatically and position itself perfectly over the wireless charing pad. Also, if you plug in a current Tesla model to charge it today at home or at a Tesla Supercharger, or at a third party charger, in order to drive away, you have to manually unplug, and thus untether the vehicle, which oftentimes can be a pain.
With wireless charing, the drivers simply puts the car in drive and drives off. At Tesla Superchargers, it's kind of scary for many people to know they can't just drive off when they are plugged in, so if for instance somebody tried to attack them, they couldn't just drive away, without having to first get out their vehicle and manually unplug it. With wireless charing this is no longer an issue or concern.
I have even seen prototypes where the base/floor charing pad was on wheels that could move horizontally, vertically, or diagonally so it could optimize its charing position every time. Jordan Giesige, from The Limiting Factor just came out with a deep dive video on how Tesla Wireless Charing will work, which is interesting:
How "Tesla AI Vision" Works
The second half of the equation I set out to resolve, is based on the Tesla exterior camera system, which the car used to drive when placed in full self driving mode, which as of today is only available in supervised mode.
In other words, Tesla and Elon Musk have promised that in the future, they plan to release Full Self Driving (Supervised), which will allow Tesla models to drive themselves.
Several years ago, all Tesla models had both cameras and lidar sensors for autonomous driving. The logic was that whatever the camera couldn't see, the lidar could detect. Lidar is a form of radar, that can see through things.
An edge case or corner case complex driving challenge example would be:
What if an autonomous Tesla was driving itself on a slippery road where snow was falling, and there was thick fog, and let's say there was a person crossing the road, or traffic stopped ahead of your, that you could not see since the fog is so thick. If the car was traveling at 60MPH, and the cameras could not see through the fog, the lidar would see what was behind the fog, which makes perfect sense.
Vision Based Approach
But then a few years ago, Elon Musk informed the world that Tesla was completely removing lidar and all forms of radar from Tesla vehicles, and planned to move forward with a camera only approach. This confused me to no end, and with my scenario, I couldn't understand how a Tesla could drive itself safely in such a scenario as I just mentioned with all the fog, without crashing or posing a significant safety hazard.
I kept doing research on this subject and asked a number of smart people and nobody seemed to know the answer, but I recently stumbled into a video that addressed and seems to have resolved this issue. The video below is from BestINTesla and is titled: "The GPU Giants Bet Big on xAI - The Dawn of a New Era in Energy Storage - Tesla Triumphs Over Unions". In this video, around 9:44:00 he discusses this topic in detail:
In the video above he points out that Chinese EV manufacturer, Li Auto CEO voiced his concern about Tesla's camera only approach.
Ironically, Li Auto CEO's scenario was similar to mine, but according to the video the way the Tesla cameras work, is they can use all the visible light, including in the infrared spectrum, which we as humans can't see or detect with our eyes, and can see individual photons, which serve as solution of measurement similar to lidar. This still sounds a little far fetched to me, but I plan to investigate more and once I figure out more, I will update this article.
So there you have it. If I could ask Elon Musk only one question, this would defiantly be it. One thing that still confuses me and seems to contradict this notion or solution, is why do I get FSD pop ups that say FSD is degraded due to poor weather conditions? In other words, if I drive in rain, often times Tesla TSD will either refuse to turn on altogether, and give me a message that says something like "FSD not available at this time. Please try again later", or it will turn on the FSD, and put up a message on the Tesla screen that says something like, "FSD quality is currently degraded at this time, so please pay extra close attention".
What Does Grok 2 Have to say?
I decided to ask X.ai's Grok2 the question just to see how it would answer it. I figured since Elon Musk owns Tesla, Twitter/X.com, as well as Grok2, it should be able to separate the fact from the fiction.
Below is the exact question I asked Grok2:
"How in the future will Tesla vehicles be able to drive safely using full unsupervised autonomy using just cameras? How for instance could a Tesla vehicle navigate safely on a road at night with really thick fog?"
Below is Grok2's exact and thorough answer:
Achieving full unsupervised autonomy with just cameras poses significant challenges, particularly in adverse conditions like navigating at night with thick fog. Here's how Tesla might address these challenges:
Camera Technology and Software Improvements: Tesla relies on an advanced vision system called "Tesla Vision," which uses a suite of cameras to gather visual data. The key to unsupervised autonomy would involve enhancing the capabilities of these cameras through:
Advanced Image Processing: Utilizing neural networks and machine learning to interpret visual data more effectively. These algorithms can learn to recognize patterns in low visibility or altered conditions, potentially identifying road boundaries, obstacles, and other vehicles even when visibility is low.[](https://caradas.com/tesla-vision-adas-features/)
Night Vision Capabilities: Cameras with sensitivity to infrared light could improve night-time visibility, allowing the vehicle to detect objects that are not visible to the human eye. This would be crucial for scenarios involving dense fog, where traditional visible light cameras struggle.[](https://x.com/PhilFox43249797/status/1873667047336591851)
Redundancy and Fail-Safe Systems: Even with just cameras, Tesla could implement systems where multiple angles are captured and cross-referenced to compensate for any single camera's failure or obstruction. This could include predictive algorithms that anticipate road layout based on prior data and mapping.[](https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot)
Challenges and Limitations:
Fog and Weather Conditions: Thick fog can obscure all types of visual sensors, including cameras. Tesla's approach would need to significantly improve the cameras' ability to penetrate fog or develop software that can infer the environment from partial or intermittently available data. Currently, cameras alone are at a disadvantage in such conditions compared to systems using lidar or radar, which can better handle low visibility.[](https://caradas.com/tesla-vision-adas-features/)[](https://x.com/inevitable360/status/1873664929200538033)
Hardware Limitations: The current camera setup on Tesla vehicles has been criticized for not providing the depth perception and redundancy needed for true Level 5 autonomy, especially in scenarios where cameras can be easily obstructed or fail due to environmental factors.[](https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1f7x2dr/your_tesla_will_not_selfdrive_unsupervised/)[](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/drive/mobility/article-all-eyes-on-teslas-cameras-going-it-alone-on-driver-autonomy/)
Future Prospects:
- Tesla's ongoing software updates and data collection from its fleet could lead to breakthroughs in how vehicles interpret visual data under various conditions. Continuous learning from real-world driving scenarios could improve the system's performance in fog, night, and other adverse conditions over time. However, experts and posts on X remain skeptical about achieving full unsupervised autonomy with cameras alone due to these inherent limitations.[](https://x.com/TheBenHakim/status/1875264250631090400)[](https://x.com/TheBenHakim/status/1874927342373720475)
In summary, while Tesla is pushing forward with a camera-only approach, the journey to full unsupervised autonomy in challenging conditions like thick fog at night involves overcoming significant technical hurdles. It would require advancements in camera technology, machine learning algorithms, and possibly some level of sensor fusion or environmental adaptation that hasn't yet been fully realized or demonstrated at scale.
My Summary of Grok2's Answer
I must admit I'm disappointed and relieved at the same time by Grok AI's answer. I'm disappointed because its answer was vague and unhelpful and didn't go as far as the answer I provided. Basically, I would say Grok2's answer was largely useless. I'm relived because now I don't feel like my question is stupid, if Grok can't even answer it.
I really like this brand new PPF color from TMAXX, which TSportline wrapped this Model X Plaid with!!! I remember a friend of mine, back in the late 1990s or early 2000s drove a BMW 7 series that had a really similar shade of forest green that was so beautiful, but it was not matte like this new PPF, which gives it a frosty cool look.
My name is Jake, and I started Jake's Tesla World as an online magazine which is a superb resource for all things Tesla. In my opinion as a designer, the Tesla Model S is not only the best car ever made, but a true gateway to the future of clean and safe transportation.
I'll never forget an evening back in early November of 2011, when I saw a movie named, "The Revenge Of The Electric Car", which showcased the plight of Elon Musk, and Tesla Motors. The movie blew my mind, and made me really excited about the potential promise of electric vehicles.
Tesla design is so timeless, as is it's story, so the when you spend time on Jake's Tesla World, since everything is in reverse chronological order, you can literally go back in time, and see exactly how everything evolved.
When I see or experience something that blows my mind, like the TESLA Model S, I want to learn absolutely everything I can about it. My goal with Jake's Tesla World is to share everything with you that I have learned about TESLA, as well as everything you would ever want to know or understand about Tesla, and obviously every detail is absolutely fascinating!!!
I hope you enjoy exploring Jake's Tesla World as much as I enjoy putting it together.
