I’m not an expert in stainless steel, but doesn’t stainless steel require oxygen to function? I.e. using a wrap may make it more susceptible to rust?
Cybertrucks rust in the rain.
- Thread starter cptbarkey
- Start date
Just trying to remember what I can from an engineering materials survey course I took years ago.
It's the chromium content that makes stainless steel corrosion resistant. Or at the very least resistant to further corrosion.
Chromium and aluminum have a property where they oxidize/corrode extremely quickly. As such they form a tough protective oxidation layer that's supposed to prevent further corrosion by blocking any further oxidation. If it's scratched the protective layer should reform quickly in the presence of oxygen.
In an absence of oxygen, iron is simply not going to rust. But when there's oxygen present and there's any bare chromium exposed, stainless steel will form a new protective layer quickly.
I recall our lessons on why iron rusts. The iron oxidation layer is rather brittle (some say fragile) and when it forms (slowly) it continues to crack and expose more metal.
I haven't seen it, but aluminum can interesting with its protective layer. Mercury forms an amalgam with aluminum. However, the surface has to be scratched in order to form.
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And finally......it will buff right out. 
The stereotypical response and I can't find fault with it.And finally......it will buff right out.
You could probably get a polyurethane foam roller and roll a coat of Marine Spar varnish on it too with decent results.
The explanation is that there were little bits of iron from manufacturing that embedded in the skin.
He said he immediately recognized the dots from cars he’d seen in an auto shop: tiny flecks of iron or other metal had likely landed on the Cybertruck in Tesla’s factory or during delivery. That metal, he said, is more likely to get embedded in stainless steel than in a car with a paint job.
“Sometimes if it lands on a car and gets kind of trapped there, [and] if it's exposed to moisture or rain, it then rusts. But it is that iron that's rusting,” Demaree said. “That's not something you can just wipe off, it really grabs on to the surface.”
And finally......it will buff right out.
The truth is yeah with the right product.
https://www.amazon.com/Citrisurf-Stainless-Steel-Cleaner-Removal/dp/B076CTWRVS
I would think being parked or driving in the rain is something that happened to Tesla's test trucks so either they saw it and didn't care or some spec of the metal changed for regular production vehicles and this came up unexpectedly is my guess.
No it doesn't. Stainless alloys all have varying properties that are not able to be taken in isolation, and price isn't the factor.
AZjeff
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It's called stain-less not stain-proof. 
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