Lots of cynics here can’t separate the baby from the bathwater. You may need to get off your device and try driving one. Moreover, it’s an EV and i know reducing carbon emissions is a value that’s widely held here. It might be that you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
It just feels folks here want to align the people with the things with the beliefs and then let the negative opinion span across all of it as if it were one thing. It feels intellectually lazy. Or is it stereotyping?
i wonder if these detracting comments are meant to be persuasive or just score points with like the like-minded. Consensus indicates something, i suppose, lol.
No, I can’t separate Tesla from its childish, hateful, misogynist CEO.
No, I can’t separate Tesla from its smug, cultish owners. If you buy a Tesla it has a negative social connotation, the same way BMW owners can’t complain when people make turn signal jokes about them.
But also, my feeling is it’s positioned poorly in the market.
The Hummer EV is a better more capable vehicle that “does it all” a lot better. It’s more luxurious and the build quality is better. It’s better in every spec.
The Rivian R1T beats it out in range and capability as well, and some of its trim levels are cheaper than Tesla.
The Ford F-150 Lightning is cheaper and has a ton of design elements that have been proven by people who do real work.
And next we’ll be seeing the Silverado EV and RAM EV.
The CyberTruck comes in one color, has stainless steel panels basically glued on top of the unibody, has a barebones interior lacking a number of luxuries, and the recalled hub caps aren’t even shipping to customers.
It’s also going to be impossible for Tesla to refresh without major tooling changes. It’ll be like the PT Cruiser or New Beetle where it is overdesigned and can’t be easily transitioned to a second generation.
That’s another great point. Unlike some other trucks, it won’t even be street legal in a lot of other countries, and it’s one pedestrian safety legislation away from needing major reworking.
Rivian is expanding into Europe including its commercial van, which is a product that Tesla should have made given that EVs are perfectly suited to delivery vehicles.
Tesla should be coming out with a three row family vehicle similar to the EV9 or ID Buzz but they wasted resources on a niche $100k truck that will inevitably (in the long term) be snuffed out by Ford, GM, and RAM pushing the kind of volume that they do with trucks.
Fortunately if legislators and regulators are appropriately financially or politically incentivized, such safety legislation may not be something shareholders need to be concerned about.
The Model X isn’t price competitive with the EV9 and the doors are maintenance liabilities.
Its third row is too small. It’s a two row-size SUV where they stuffed in a tiny third row, it isn’t a serious alternative to a car like the Hyundai Palisade.
It's pretty amazing - between the drivers who think Teslas are only for snooty liberals the drivers that want nothing to do with Tesla's CEO you'd think there'd be few left buyers left but still they sell like hotcakes. I'm a boring sedan driver but there must be something people like about the Cybertruck beyond it looking cool.
I drove a Model Y for >2 years, and it was great. The camp-mode alone brought so many opportunities to stay with friends and family more than I otherwise would have. Camping and sleeping in the car was the only time I had to wake up the dog in the morning. Usually she's up before me.
It used to be that Elon's public persona was a geek who wanted solar panels and EVs everywhere. When there were concerns about battery life, he upped the warranty. There were a few more very positive cases like that.
Then those things slowly feel apart.
Later it turns out we were fooled all along, and he's been a lifelong conservative, mistreated his kids and still does, and lately offered financial support to a wanna-be dictator. I can't even remember every horrible thing now.
Getting rid of the Model Y wasn't easy or cheap, but if I can't stand by my principles when it gets hard, what's the point of having principles?
I know some people who just can't afford to get rid of a car like this, but those who deliberately support a person like Musk are just hanging out in a Nazi bar at this point, and my grandparent literally did bad things to Nazis.
If you ever heard people ask "What did normal people do during the Nazi's rise to power?" -- we're all doing it now.
It’s sad to me that this type of car is street legal. It’s so clearly unsafe for everyone on the outside of it (other cars and all humans who share the streets). It’s a massive steel battering ram with acceleration that has no purpose other than entertainment and peacocking. Meanwhile I’m pushing my child in a stroller in fear.
I’m glad the NHTSA is going to start actually testing car safety with pedestrian dummies. That’s a start.
The height of the vehicle makes it really difficult for the driver to see obstructions.
Smaller vehicles would see the child and stop. The cyber truck would not.. (just because other trucks and suvs are big, doesn't make the cyber truck safer)
The driver's literally can't see front of the vehicle. 2 weeks ago I was at a mall in Orlando and saw two separate SUV drivers fail to see the 4ft metal traffic pole in the parking lot and just plowed right over it, damaging their vehicle.
Here is my scientific data:
> Whatever their nose shape, pickups, SUVs and vans with a hood height greater than 40 inches are about 45 percent more likely to cause fatalities in pedestrian crashes than cars and other vehicles with a hood height of 30 inches or less and a sloping profile, an IIHS study of nearly 18,000 pedestrian crashes found.
- IIHS [0]
> After controlling for crash characteristics, I estimate a 10 cm increase in the vehicle’s front-end height is associated with a 22% increase in fatality risk.
- University of Hawai'i professor [1]
> [A study] found that between 2009 and 2016, pedestrian fatalities increased in nearly every circumstance examined. But among all types of vehicles, SUVs had the biggest spike in single-vehicle fatal pedestrian crashes, and crashes were increasingly likely to involve high-horsepower vehicles.
As someone who has gotten hit by a small car before, I would probably be toast if it was a truck. It just hit me in the legs.
Whenever someone gets killed on the road in my country, it is always someone on a moped getting run over by some truck. And I don't mean a pickup I mean one of those heavy commercial trucks.
I would rather self-driving cars not exist though. Just for the simple reason that it gives the government or corporations a plausibly deniable way to assassinate anyone at the push of a button by hacking their car. And with AI is all sorts of adversarial stuff you can do with image recognition. idk I just dont trust computers in cars
The amount of active safety sensors and monitors on newer/modern vehicles tend to make up for all that. My SUV is so loaded with cameras, sensors, and automated braking systems that it is significantly safer for anything that might be within the classic “blind spots” of larger vehicles than the smaller cars I have driven. My vehicle barks at me and will auto brake if I am anywhere near anything that I might hit. I’d venture to say that I would have to try and intentionally hit something to override the safety features it has.
I’m not a fan of the cyber truck, but the reviews I have seen show that vehicle is also loaded with these safety systems.
The high sharp corners are indeed intimidating when Cybertrucks pass near cyclists.
Paradoxically for a vehicle that's surely received oodles of aerodynamic attention, it at least doesn't seem like a design that might push a pedestrian to the side or lift them up onto a hood, but rather knock them forward (and then under the vehicle).
A Cybertruck crossed in front of me at a traffic light this weekend in my first Cybertruck encounter as a cyclist. I was surprised by my lizard-brain's involuntary concern as the hood's corner passed by.
Edit to add: it seems like a wide vehicle, too, which adds to the effect.
Do you think vehicle safety regulations give pedestrian safety an appropriate amount of consideration, in light of the poor forward visibility of many vehicles that are currently for sale?
Where are you that pedestrian injuries in auto accidents is of greater concern or more prevalent than passenger and driver injuries?
Seems to me that if the bulk of the injuries encountered during a vehicle accident occur to passengers by an order of magnitude greater than pedestrians, it would make sense that design elements that protect passengers even at the expense of pedestrian safety would be a positive overall safety impact.
Agreed. One must be rather careful when determining the Cybertruck's "direct rivals".
It's got a lot of properties of a "truck", yet it is difficult to imagine utilizing it, especially given the price, in many of the environments for which trucks were originally designed.
It's an SUV and I think most people know that and if not a ton of people buy $70k+ pick up trucks when they really only need a normal SUV or car anyway, so it's not like the market was full of rational behaviour and clearly defined work vs consumer marketing by the vendors.
I drive a Ford Lightning and it’s exactly like my previous F-150 except faster and cheaper to operate. Oh and it was cheaper out of the door than its gas sibling at the same trim level. 10/10 - would buy a vehicle from an experienced manufacturer again.
You might be surprised at the number of vehicles over $100k. Performance and luxury trucks bump into that category. Genesis and Land Rover have vehicles easily in that range. Just go price out an Escalade or Navigator and it becomes expensive quickly. Long ago was the era of only ferraris and lambos being >100k.
GM did it in the early 2000's. It's not generally worth the trade-offs in a pickup truck (cost, durability, maintenance, weight capacity, wheel-well size, etc.).
In San Francisco this week, and saw one for the first time (from a Waymo; presumably the cybertruck’s computer was seething with jealousy at the spinning lidar thingy as we passed). Burst out laughing (in my defence I’d had a drink or two, but it’s really an amazingly ridiculous looking object in the flesh.)
I thought so too, until I saw one in the wild (they're still very rare where I live). It was quite something coming at us in the opposite lane, and the steel has a neat, purplish, oil-slick sheen to it in the sunlight. I'm not rushing to buy one, I still prefer my Bolt EUV, but I think it looks better in person than it does in pictures.
Seeing them in person made me go from thinking they're kinda stupid looking to thinking they're extremely stupid looking. They're somehow even more ridiculous in person than in pictures.
They now seem to be as common as any other car in my area. I see one or more every day. I can’t imagine what would make someone want to buy one besides the “hey look I have an obnoxious new thing” effect, and that appears to be quickly diminishing.
They're pretty common in the SF Bay Area, where non-work trucks are very uncommon. I wouldn't expect to see them in places where using a truck as a daily driver is normal.
I actually really want one and could afford it, but the combination of abundant apparent QC issues and reports of poor/slow customer service kill the idea for me.
Once they’re out there for another couple of years and there are published statistics - and I’m able to get my hands on some used ones to see how they’ve held up - I’ll reevaluate. Until then, I’ll stick with my 25-year-old Jeep.
I’m saying that it looks like they have sales growth when what is really happening is that they’ve been so constrained on production that they’re only now increasing sales to fulfill back orders.
The problem will arise when the back orders are filled and this too-unique looking truck with only one paint color is everywhere. The novelty wears off and now you’ve got a vehicle similar to the PT Cruiser or VW New Beetle where its unique appearance has worn out its welcome in the market. Five years from now Tesla has no path forward on refreshing the truck. Every single passenger car on the market has a 5 year styling refresh cycle.
Are you in the car industry? i feel no one talks about refresh cycles so confidently unless you’re very tight.
I think 99.9% of people in the industry have no interest in shaking the equation that feeds. but,conversely, there really is nothing but upside for the consumer. cars have been “refreshing” for decades in a fashion that is not driven by function. I think ‘visually or recognizably new’ is a marketing cheat that wastes resources.
I think some believe the truck is ugly to draw attention but, and while i can’t rule that out, i think the weighting would be in the 10% realm. the remaining , at least originally,based on pushing the envelope as practically as possible. for instance, to be able to fold the metal of the car to simplify it’s construction.
Stainless steel holds a special place in many engineers’ minds. this truck is fundamentally cool because so many ideas got to come together under one hood. a truck is foremost a tool, like a hammer, and nobody tries to keep a top coat nanocermajama on their hamma!hehe
I follow the auto industry closely. I’m not in it.
Of course car platforms don’t change especially fast. They’re complicated to design and build.
But yes, all car companies tend to have some kind of refreshed exterior styling within a platform generation, and they also update interior amenities, sometimes major and minor ways (new infotainment systems of course are common). Yes, they have customers they love to sell to repeatedly every 3-5 years and it is wasteful. Lessing is the most profitable form of automobile sale.
Just compare the 2025 Kia Carnival to the 2020 model, as an example. Basically the same car but new electronics inside and new exterior styling to match Kia’s latest brand language.
Tesla themselves refreshed the Model 3 just recently after about 5 years of high volume sales.
What I’m saying here is that the Cybertruck will have major difficulty doing a mid-cycle refresh like that. Where do you even start from a styling perspective? Do you just keep it the same forever? What happens when the novelty wears off?
The stainless steel panels are also a huge problem since they can’t be pressed in a mold like normal automotive steel, they have to be bent. You say engineers hold stainless steel with in a special place in their heart, but with that in mind you’ll have to explain why more vehicles don’t use stainless steel if it’s such a great material to build cars with.
If stainless steel is so great why don't other automakers experiment with it?
Well, we already know why: difficult machining, can't be made into complex molded shapes, can't be painted, can't be color matched, sucks up fingerprints like no tomorrow, difficult for body shops/repairs, reduced pedestrian safety...
And what are the benefits? What does the customer get out of it?
I don't know any group of automotive engineers who would choose Stainless Steel given an "unlimited budget/creativity" type of project. You don't see it in million dollar exotic cars or anything like that. The fact of the matter is that Elon Musk is stuck in the 1980s and wanted his own DeLorean truck.
