Crafting the Perfect Crossbars for Your Cybertruck: the MARS™ Expedition Crossbar

Crossbars are among the most popular accessories for utility vehicle owners, and we wanted to ensure ours were designed to perfection. During the process of exploring different concepts, we established several key objectives for our crossbar design:

• Aesthetics: They must complement the Cybertruck’s exterior, featuring a good gap and flush conditions with appropriate CMF (color, material, finish) that matches the style.
• Ruggedness: They must be over-engineered for durability.
• Versatility: Can they be more than just crossbars? 

Tesla’s design team certainly made it challenging for us to finalize the design. Here are some challenges we faced when reverse engineering the mounting features on the truck:

• Slope Roof with Non-Parallel Mounting Features: Bars 1, 2, 3, and 4 all come in different lengths.
• Hidden Mounting Features: This makes tool access difficult.
• Wide Roof: Each crossbar is unusually long for a regular truck.

We devised a design that allows us to mount 3090 aluminum extrusion (one of the largest cross-sections for stiffness) on a machined step piece. The extrusion is then secured in place with a bolt. The bolt ensures the extrusion sits securely in the slot without bearing too much vertical load—the machined CNC piece takes most of the vertical load.

Exposed bolts can be unsightly, and we wanted to avoid that. We designed another machined piece that can be mounted onto this side step with countersunk bolts, giving you a clean, flush look. The final product looks like this when assembled: