Stainless Steel

We know Elon Musk grew up obsessed with sci-fi comics. He even looks a bit sci-fi. Satellites, Space-X rockets, colonizing Mars, electric cars, he is a walking, breathing future.

And with this, the stainless steel Tesla truck has finally hit the road. A futuristic, automotive gladiator, nearly bullet proof, scratch and dent proof. But not smudge and dirt proof. Aye, there's the rub. What do you rub on it to keep it clean?

Again, the WSJ treats us to an A-Hed piece that outlines the various products and advice owners have been giving each other over the best products to use to keep that baby gleaming.

And a new baby it is. The headline and sub-heading for the piece by Ben Glickman goes: 

The Toughest Part About Owning A Tesla Cypertruck? Cleaning It. 

Drivers try Bar Keepers Friend, Windex, Costco baby wipes to battle smudges

There is Kevin Tieman of Buford Georgia, who admits that he has to keep the behemoth clean because, "you just feel like so many people are looking at the vehicle." It has to be ready for its closeup. He uses Costco's Kirkland-brand baby wipes to keep that showroom shine.

There isn't anything that comes into existence that doesn't have an unintended consequence. And the Tesla truck with its solid front apparently is a terrific bug catcher/killer. So much so that one owner estimated there were 3,000 annihilated critters on his truck's front. 

And of course, not feeling that estimate captured everything, the owner submitted a photo to ChatGPT, which returned an estimate of 4,600 no longer flying bugs stuck to the vehicle's front. Who says AI is overrated? War planes flew through flak; Tesla drives  through bugs.

There is no Tesla stainless steel truck in my future. That's not to say I haven't experienced, and continue to experience, tainted stainless steel.

At the family flower show, being part of the indentured teen-age help, cleaning things fell to me. Windows, inside and out, change the water in the vases, keep the floor clean, as well as the stainless steel refrigerator side panels. I had enough experience trying to keep that refrigerator clean to last a lifetime.

So when my wife wanted a new refrigerator, and smartly picked out the model seen here, I experienced PTSD when it arrived. I told her, "you keep this clean. Not me." It's bad enough that it won't hold the refrigerator magnets that we've collected, but it's impossible to keep that sucker free of smudges. But the model has enough selling points that smudges were not a deal breaker. So in it rolled.

And bless her heart, she does keep it free of smudges—on the front. I don't know what she bought that does the trick, but she said that Bar Keepers Friend is not a friend. 

We don't have small children, so little hands don't come in contact with the unit. The inside door edges get smudged easily, but true to my vow, I won't try and keep them clean. 

Like the truck, the refrigerator is a monster. It goes so far deep that we have to keep a back scratcher handy to retrieve items that might find their way all the way to the back. The unit is so big it never fills up keeping groceries refrigerated for only two people.

Personally, I've yet to see a Tesla truck on the street. My wife saw one down the block by the park. She didn't know what it was until I mentioned the A-Hed piece, showed her a picture, and asked her if Bar Keepers Friend is any good keeping stainless steel clean. (According to her, no.)

Her opinion of the vehicle? "It is ug-lee." Well, any vehicle that stains from water and needs the upkeep described in the story, has to be beautiful only in the eye of the owner.

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