After Helene knocked out power in parts of my area for a little over 14 days, I found out that a friend of ours used his cybertruck to power his house through the entire mess. He'd run the house on it for a couple of days, then drive the cybertruck over to a super charger station, recharge, then come home and plug the house back in.
The battery capacity on those things is equivalent to 9 Tesla Powerwall units or something close to it.
They may be ugly, but the emergency prepper in me always wanted one after hearing that story. Before, I always wanted to install powerwalls...but I never considered in an extended event being able to drive my powerwalls somewhere to recharge them.
Can you do this with other normal EVs? I assume they'd have lower capacity, but just getting some power for your fridge, wifi, and chargers might be worth.
Sort of. With my Kia EV9 I can use a V2L adapter to run an extension cord for essential items in my home. I understand in other markets there is a V2H connector so you can connect it to your home mains power but I don’t think it’s available in the US
In theory, yes, but they need to have the hardware/firmware to do it. Pretty sure most of the full-size electric trucks do so, but not sure about any of the smaller crossover EVs.
You also need to have the house setup to run off a generator. You don't want the truck power feeding back into the grid. IIRC, that's usually done with a big switch near the main panel.
No, you can't even do it with most other Teslas. Current models will give you 20A of 120V out from the battery, but most don't have an inverter big enough.
There is a model of Ford Lightning that has power sharing and now that resale values are way down it just might be a cost effective home battery that you can drive around during non-emergencies....
Generally a propane generator is a wiser, more reliable backup option. Propane doesn't go bad, and in disaster scenarios often the sun isn't shining or your solar panels could be damaged. Solar + battery is a good system when the weather is good and everything is going well, but for a fallback system a propane generator can't be beat.
Yeah, this is where I landed, too. Except propane bottles only get me about 3-4 hours per bottle and it's pricey. It ran my $50 for one day of AC during the last outage.
I just bought a kit to convert to natural gas though. Most people who've done it are happy to not change bottles all the time. It won't help after an earthquake but the regular PSPS outages I get make natural gas a better fit for the moment.
I'm looking into getting a large EV so I can move off of a propane generator. A generator needs service, it will cut power for 5-10 seconds while it starts up (so your PCs and whatnot will power cycle), and it's loud.
It’s unclear to me how a vehicle battery can be 9-10x the size of a house battery, be used as a house battery, include an highway safe cabin, motors and wheels and only cost 4x what a single home battery costs. Oh, and at least Kia rates their battery warranty based on miles driven, so using it as a home battery does not impact any 10-year capacity guarantees.
AI tells me they are completely different though, so I must be missing something.
I think "recycling" cybertrucks in this manner, basically to reuse their batteries, may give them a more practical afterlife then when they were a truck.
Kids really love these things and get very excited to see them on the road.
They are going to be very valued collectors items in 30 years once the kids of today have enough disposable income to buy whichever are left roadworthy by then.
Mostly I've seen younger kids love it. I was at the park and a little girl saw a Cybertruck pull up -- "Look, Dad, it's from the future!"
I think Cybertruck is probably ultimately a failure, but the amount of hate it gets when they are at least trying to push things outside of the normal makes me sad. The amount of negativity towards anything new that's not perfect is insane.
>My kids, and any friends of theirs riding with us, will boo whenever they see them on the road
Because adults around them groomed them for that. Kids don't just start booing at objects out of the blue, they parrot the learned behavior of the adults around them.
In which case I'd probably gasp at meeting those "adults" IRL.
I’m an ultra lib, despise Elon, hope he faces a jury of peers to answer for all he has done, but this seems like learned behavior. My toddler son thinks they look really good (wife and I think they look atrocious and our anti-Elon bias doesn’t help).
Create hundreds of thousands of jobs, paid the most tax of anyone in history by a large margin, and provided hope for America? Where would we be without spaceX launches? Still reliant on foreign adversaries to access space?
I mean the 4680 cells are used in the model Y and the pack assembly isn't that complicated. I don't expect it to be financially ruinous to replace over time.
Do you think so? I'm not arguing here, I genuinely don't know.
My kids are too young for this, but surely there's a tradeoff here. Should you override some of your child's natural wonder because of adult aesthetics (or worse political concerns)? Yes. But how often? I'm not sure the line should be drawn at a truck design. (Although, maybe you're teaching your kid taste, again I'm not sure.)
I was admittedly being a little facetious. It's not surprising to me that kids, especially kids who are at that age where monster trucks, construction equipment, the Batmobile etc. are the coolest things in the world would be drawn to the Cybertruck because it certainly does stand out and look larger than life in a way, like it was ripped from the pages of a comic book. I don't think there's any real harm in that, setting my own feelings about Elon and what he has come to represent aside for a moment. Let them enjoy the weird shiny thing while they're still too young to understand why it sucks. ;)
I wouldn't use disliking Cybertrucks as a proxy for good parenting. You can hate everything a symbol represents and still find the symbol cool, like I think motorcycle clubs are awesome but despise the toxic masculinity stereotype many reproduce.
I have two girls; never mentioned Elon, Tesla, nor CT to them.
Both think it looks ugly.
No need to influence most people, IMO. Vehicles are shaped the way they are because the designs have broad appeal in general (familiarity? proportions? trends?). Most of us would find a normal, well-tailored black suit to be appealing and be baffled by avant garde, high fasion men's clothing.
Why should anyone be surprised that a completely novel design isn't appealing to most?
> Vehicles are shaped the way they are because the designs have broad appeal in general (familiarity? proportions? trends?).
Isn’t it mostly fuel efficiency standards and manufacturability? You’ve got a chassis that’s used for like five different models for five years between refreshes, not a lot of room to innovate without driving up all the costs so only the luxury cars can afford to look different.
This theory backs up my opinion that every rich person who drives an exotic car is just an eight year old who had a Lamborghini poster on their wall growing up
I own a exotic car for the same reason I own mechanical watches. I love the engineering and craftsmanship. (But yes, I had several Lamborghini posters growing up) ;-)
I think there's a lot of kids (and parents) being influenced by politics more than pure ascetics.
The classroom of kids Ive seen (my kids attend 3 different schools), all of them are amazed by them - age ranges: 3, 7, 9 all their classrooms loved them. Same with some of the older kids I've been around. They're all boys, I do imagine it's a very boy-friendly car.
I personally don't have a cyber truck, not big on it personally, but never put my own opinions into my kids. The kids may not "like it", but they are amazed by it.
I'm in an area that doesn't really hate Musk, so I think that does have an impact.
I've never met or known a person IRL who cares about Tesla's ownership. I know people who hate Teslas cause they drive in the carpool lane or because they had bad experiences owning one, that's about it.
The absurdity is the best part of it. Finally it was something new, in a landscape where every car and truck has looked the same for the past 20 years. I'm happy someone designed and built something so crazy and different.
It probably would have been better had they not been mass produced, and maybe did a very limited quantity run - make it more like a collector item... I suppose thats what it'll be now. I see quite a few on the road, it takes away from the uniqueness.
lol, no. I actually saw one at a client's and beside being uglier than what a 5yo would be able to draw, it was also built like shit. I'm talking about going to the hardware store for aluminum panels and bend them, cut with scissors and some soldering job here and there kind of bad.
thank god these monstruosities were forbidden in europe
Electric trucks in general seem terrible. You only see Rivians and Cybertrucks in urban settings, the electric F150 was discontinued. Anybody who knows how people that actually need trucks use trucks saw this coming, I never once saw a cybertruck used as a truck.
I always got the impression that the vast majority of the F150s are never used as trucks either. Americans just like really really big cars because fuel is cheap there and none of the cities are old enough that big cars are impractical.
No, the F150 has great sales numbers but this is mostly due to commercial/work use. And commercial buyers need trucks that can tow, haul, be fitted with large toolboxes, booms/cranes, winches, plows, etc. The F150 electric solved none of those problems.
Most people driving trucks in the US don't use them as trucks, especially in cities. I think most people willing to take on a $1000/mo truck payment for their personal vehicle in the current economic climate are doing so for social reasons anyway. Whether the electric trucks on offer at the same price can compete on that front is a much more slippery question.
If we can get some affordable electric trucks in the US, it will be very interesting to see how the more rational segments of the market react once they are no longer priced out.
> Anybody who knows how people that actually need trucks use trucks saw this coming
I'm a current truck driver and very excited to swap out my ICE truck for a Slate next year. I need something that can haul my trash to the dump, grab a load of wood chips for the garden, and bring home the occasional sheet good from the home store.
I agree with your assessment as it applies to the Cybertruck or F150, but not the idea of an electric truck. Some people buy trucks because they need a light-duty hauling solution; unfortunately, the market seems to only want to sell luxury SUVs that happen to have truck beds.
Unlike electric cars, the price for a used F-150 lightning is still a substantial fraction of new price. There is still substantial demand.
Work trucks are a very different market than for passenger vehicles. Their usage is a lot more consistent and known. This means that electric works very well for some work trucks and very poorly for others.
The other aspect of work trucks is that they're generally purchased by very conservative businesses who don't want to buy the bleeding edge, they want several years of reliability data before committing. The F-150 Lightning was cancelled just as that data was starting to come in.
Of course, most F-150's are sold as passenger vehicles rather than work trucks. Along with almost all Cybertrucks.
1. People who need them for work.
2. People who need to carry bulky loads
3. People who need to tow.
4. People who buy them for some form of self-expression.
The only real use case for electric trucks, imho, is construction site supervisors who do most around-town driving but may occasionally need to haul stuff. Their towing range is absolutely abysmal (F150 Lightning range dropped to about 90 miles when towing a moderate trailer!).
I've only ever heard positive things from every electric truck owner I know and this is coming from a market that's very truck-forward in terms of culture.
Truck brained people are notoriously stubborn. If it isn’t like daddy’s old truck they simply can’t see past it
I live in the PNW and you see people not using their trucks as trucks every single time you go out on the road. This includes urban areas.
I’ve owned an F150 and an R1T and for camping, overlanding, snow trips, etc the Rivian is hands down the most capable vehicle I have ever driven. You couldn’t pay me to go back to a Ford
We recently had a guy drive 146 miles out of the cascades, to Oregon City, to get a replacement radiator for a Jeep after a trailside wreck. We don't know how to fix a Rivian when it breaks down, or where to get parts.
People who are towing a lot may like the idea of electric. However they need range, and EVs when towing don't deliver. It is too bad, I'd like a electric truck, but when I tow I'm trying to get someplace and EVs don't deliver.
It doesn't help that nearly all chargers are arranged such that I'd block important parts of the parking lot for half an hour if I was towing when I needed a charge, then I have a complex back out (where something is behind me that I need to avoid). Most gas stations are designed so my trailer might block a pump from someone else using it but otherwise I'm not in the way.
The range loss on an EV is comparable to the 5 MPG you are going to get with a 3/4 ton truck towing anything 10k pounds as well
The only actual difference is time you need to charge. Pull through charging stalls are ubiquitous where I live
And I just don’t know…how often are people towing loads over 100 miles regularly for this to be a problem? Where I live I see pavement princesses towing the occasional boat or landscapers towing gear and rocks.
Neither of those is going to max out the range on an EV truck in an average day
Truly terrible for pedestrians. Modern trucks are already death traps with their super high front grills, multiplying the weight compounds the problem.
F150 Lightning was ruined by the dealership network who had 0 interest or financial incentive to sell them. When they did sell them, they added huge markups.
The quality of the vehicle is actually quite high.
politics aside, Cybertuck is/was an engineering breakthrough.
48 volts, steering wheel, no paint ( better durability), trunk, wipers etc.
the car pushed the boundaries. If you compare level of creative thinking of cybertruck vs lets say electric ford, it's not even comparable. I respect that despite one person behind it. I don't care how it looks. It's polarizing. oh well.
My 11 y.o. relative from abroad asked me to take rl pictures of the truck, after he heard my neighbor bought it.
The dimensions felt off to me. I had it as a loaner and enjoyed it a bit, especially since it had HW4. But I would never buy one.
The size is just too impractical. It would never fit in my garage. On top of that, the standby drain was significant. Just sitting idle, it would lose 10 to 20 miles of range.
I liked the styling. Thought about getting one. Got a chance to get in one the other day. and it was so uncomfortable. felt like sitting on a park bench. I thought this was supposed to be not a real pickup. Rather a suburban big old thing with blade runner styling and reviews said lots of comfort. No, just a big old vehicle, that's not even that roomy on the inside (hip room felt like that of my old integra), with the comfort of an 80's pick up. not much of a point to it.
I noticed that the cyberpunk wedge cars that inspired it are 2 seaters… maybe this shape isn't right for much larger cars?
DeLorean is the real life 80s reference of course, but in cyberpunk revival media like the coupe in Ghost in the Shell 2017, the spinner in Blade Runner 2049—those cars are all much smaller cabins than the cybertruck
There's nothing wrong with an interesting design. It's not a serious market however. The Cybertruck was a pet project forced onto the market by an out of control CEO (there's a large disconnect between Musk and the consequences of his actions). Tesla requires very high volume selling vehicles to prop up its comical market cap. The entire company is resting on one car model. They desperately need another highly successful model, the Cybertruck could never be that.
Frankly Tesla is dumb lucky the Europeans and Japanese have botched the EV market so badly overall. Tesla shouldn't even exist at this point with how trivial their lineup is.
Disabling Javacsript lets you read the article already. There's no need to visit archive.today, where you participate in executing DDOS attacks against anyone who criticizes the site's creator.
I have very mixed feelings about the Cybertruck. Personally I absolutely hate it, it's just not my cup of tea and I would never in a million years buy one. However as a general lover of cars, I have to appreciate just how striking the design is and how it was a complete departure from pretty much any other car on the road.
There's nothing quite like the Cybertruck and I don't think there ever will be again.
Truly the peak of 2020s antisocial car design. The car looks designed to plow through other vehicles, barriers, and pedestrians without slowing down to count the bodies. "Bulletproof bodypanels" is only a selling point on a mass production car if you routinely piss people off enough to make them grab iron. Folks who need pickup trucks for the utility they provide have stuck with trucks that are actually fit for purpose. It was a way to signal to the world that you had extremely poor judgement and low standards.
modern cars are literally designed to deform on impact to keep the passengers safe. they're called "crumple zones" and they exist to dissipate kinetic energy to keep everybody involved safer. adding "more rigidity" isn't serving any meaningful purpose.
> The issue stems from the brake rotors, and the report says more severe road conditions "may strain" the stud holes in the wheel rotor, causing cracks to form. If the cracks persist and worsen, it may result in the wheel detaching entirely.
> In a recent off-road escapade at the King of the Hammers event in Johnson Valley, California, a Tesla Cybertruck experienced a mechanical failure resulting in one of its wheels snapping off. The incident, captured over the weekend, has raised eyebrows about the durability of Tesla's much-touted electric truck.
I can't remember the specific video, but I recall seeing someone breakdown some of the poor materials/engineering choices for "truck" use cases and of the mass of the CT.
> If the cracks persist and worsen, it may result in the wheel detaching entirely.
>
> ...engineers determined that continued use under strain could eventually lead to separation of the wheel stud from the hub.
Watch the YT video.
Telsa made bad engineering choices on this vehicle. There's no point defending it.
Is it because your world view fractures with a fallible Musk?
whatever this author writes should to be taken with a grain of salt ... i mean, he's paying his mortage and putting his kids thru school by professionally critiquing everything Elon does .. at leaat based on his wirted article history .. https://www.wired.com/story/how-tesla-made-its-new-230-mph-c... ..
That article seems to be fairly flattering of the technical tricks tesla used to make the demo roadster flip? Your claim about "paying his mortgage ... critiquing everything Elon does" is certainly not backed up by this citation. Dude clearly doesn't like the cybertruck, but to a first approximation, that pretty much describes everyone.
As someone who described himself in an earlier post as a "Big Elon fan boy", perhaps the source of bias here lies in a location other than the author of the WIRED article.
I still remember the marketing for the Cybertruck. Tesla teased a neo-noir silhouette image of partial angle the truck which had everyone guessing which part it belonged to. Childhood fantasies about Blade Runner designs were conjured in people’s imaginations. People were truly generous with the design expectations. Finally, I went to the unveiling and when it rolled out I thought this must be a gag and the real Blade Runner would follow any second now, only to realize that this ugly thing was it. Then the boss had the designer throw a ball through the window. Twice.
(Edit: the actual knows-better designer had the assistant designer throw a ball through the window.)
I'm convinced that Elon made it just because he thought it would be funny. "Let's make a truck that looks like it came out of a 90s low-polygon video game! That'll be hilarious!" He never cared for one moment if it was actually a good product.
The poor people that bought them were the butt of his joke.
The first Tesla was based on a Lotus Elise. It was stunningly good looking. It changed people's minds that an electric car had to look like a glorified golf cart.
Later cars from Tesla looked more generic but still like looked like regular cars.
The cybertruck seems like a throwback to the old electric cars that looked like something out of nerd's sketchbook.
The competition isn’t very fierce but he sure did squander his advantage in the EV segment to get beaten to market by a company that had never shipped an EV before
Rivian selling the first EV pickup truck even after Elon’s announcement of the cybertruck is pretty embarrassing
Unloved and unwanted is outright false. Go to cybertruckownersclub.com for a more balanced take. Somehow Wired managed to completely miss the best U-word description of it: Ugly.
We need this person to tell us all what we should like!
I notice this internet world we live in, networked behind screens, really demonstrates the average person's drift to totalitarianism. It's frightening to me.
...yeah? You should get an opinion from people who use the product, not people who dislike the company's CEO for political reasons and their dislike of it was a foregone conclusion.
Truly one of the most baffling stories in recent automotive history. All they had to do was make a normal pickup truck with Tesla tech. Hell, go ahead and use it as the testbed for 48V, steer-by-wire and whatever else if you want to - but the amount of time and money wasted to make what was in the end an absolute monstrosity that failed to deliver on any of its price, performance and range promises strains credulity. Cybertruck is the most visible inflection point marking Elon's descent into madness.
I wonder if we will see less aggressive and generally hostile car designs in the future, now that public sentiment towards the tech oligarchs seems to have shifted.
Renault is designing cute things again, so that's a good development. So is Citroen, apparently?
He wishes. Delorean is a modern classic, regardless of commercial success. Cybertruck will go down like the H1/H2; something entirely emblematic of the worst excesses in the time it was conceived and marketed in, that later generations will go "did they really think that was cool?".
I had a pre-order. The reason I canceled was because the delivered product had a lot less range and was much more expensive than previously announced.
There were other things that contributed to the decision, too: the announced "stressed skin" exoskeleton was panned in favor of adhering the body panels to the body with glue, it became clear that Tesla's profit and valuation were funding Elon's right-wing political project, and I would have preferred a solid-axle design.
The absurdity was not what was wrong with it. It's OK to be absurd. I really liked the stainless steel design. Less trail damage when off-roading and no need to worry about paint scratches causing body rust. The door wedge design? Meh. But it enabled the stainless steel body.
In the end, I want what the Cybertruck failed to deliver: a full-size electric pickup at a good price with excellent range. I currently have my eyes on the RAM REV. We'll see if that one gets axed, too.
All the clown show at Tesla had to do is clone the F-150. This was one of the easiest product failures to predict in recent memory. Musk can't help himself. Tesla continues to desperately need a Shotwell at the helm.
At present all Tesla has propping it up is bubble dust and one car model (one increasingly dated car model). Somehow after 14-15 years (Model S released in Summer 2012) these people still can't release a real SUV of any sort. The model Y is a grotesque joke of a fake SUV, a mutilated model 3 that doesn't really look like an SUV in any regard. The model Y is an SUV like the Cybertruck is a truck. They might as well have unlimited money to do it, and they can't do it. Same reason they couldn't release the roadster even after all this time. It's a fundamentally broken company because Musk won't get out of the way. Whatever Musk is good at it, it's not running a large scale automotive company.
I have very little interest in electric vehicles, Tesla, Elon Musk, etc. But I still think the Cybertruck, at least the design, looks awesome. It looked like something you'd see in the "Another World" or "Out of this World" intro cinematic.
Both look extremely cool to me but Elon's behaviour is the only reason I'll never buy a tesla. Even though the cybertruck looks awesome but it's impossible for me to be seen in this. I wouldn't be surprised if they'd used a cybertruck in a BTTF remake
I haven't seen any other executive do a Nazi salute and some people won't buy a car based on the country of origin so I don't see why I can't dislike a brand because of its leader behaviour.
I don't know what the others think so I can't judge on that, but I can judge based of what Elon says and does.
And aside, Elon's been lying for years about everything and promising stuff Tesla can't deliver.
IMHO, there's a strong parallel between the Elisabeth Holmes/Theranos situation and Elon/Tesla.
The cultural element is the difference. It's a suburban vehicle who wants to pretend it's a truck, exactly like the pompous suburbanite assholes who want to pretend they are rugged alpha types just because they drive a truck they don't really need: both would fall apart in a minute when faced with real problems.
The Countach was just the usual Lamborghini luxury scam, and I say that as someone who grew up a few km from the factory. Nobody cared if it was kinda crap inside, because it existed just to look like a cool car. A truck is supposed to, y'know, be a truck.
I kept thinking the design was going to grow on me as I saw more of them on the road, but nope. I still think it looks unbelievably ugly. I do not think it looks like something that you'd see in Another World, it looks more like something I would have designed when I was fourteen playing with Lightwave.
There's someone near me who has one with a white wrap over it.
I see it parked, and I thought:
"If Kenmore had the wherewithal to manufacture 4wd electric chest freezers...that's what they'd look like."
...but I'm not offended by it. I think that sort of whimsical craziness is all too often missing from modern durable goods, so I'm glad it got built.
I'm even happier that its existence upset mincing, peevish little eurotwee Conde-Nasty scribblequeefs like this Wired author. If it'd guarantee him leaping off of a tall pier, I'd pay MSRP for a Cybertruck.
The battery capacity on those things is equivalent to 9 Tesla Powerwall units or something close to it.
They may be ugly, but the emergency prepper in me always wanted one after hearing that story. Before, I always wanted to install powerwalls...but I never considered in an extended event being able to drive my powerwalls somewhere to recharge them.
You also need to have the house setup to run off a generator. You don't want the truck power feeding back into the grid. IIRC, that's usually done with a big switch near the main panel.
There is a model of Ford Lightning that has power sharing and now that resale values are way down it just might be a cost effective home battery that you can drive around during non-emergencies....
I just bought a kit to convert to natural gas though. Most people who've done it are happy to not change bottles all the time. It won't help after an earthquake but the regular PSPS outages I get make natural gas a better fit for the moment.
It’s unclear to me how a vehicle battery can be 9-10x the size of a house battery, be used as a house battery, include an highway safe cabin, motors and wheels and only cost 4x what a single home battery costs. Oh, and at least Kia rates their battery warranty based on miles driven, so using it as a home battery does not impact any 10-year capacity guarantees.
AI tells me they are completely different though, so I must be missing something.
They are going to be very valued collectors items in 30 years once the kids of today have enough disposable income to buy whichever are left roadworthy by then.
Mostly I've seen younger kids love it. I was at the park and a little girl saw a Cybertruck pull up -- "Look, Dad, it's from the future!"
I think Cybertruck is probably ultimately a failure, but the amount of hate it gets when they are at least trying to push things outside of the normal makes me sad. The amount of negativity towards anything new that's not perfect is insane.
Because adults around them groomed them for that. Kids don't just start booing at objects out of the blue, they parrot the learned behavior of the adults around them.
In which case I'd probably gasp at meeting those "adults" IRL.
Create hundreds of thousands of jobs, paid the most tax of anyone in history by a large margin, and provided hope for America? Where would we be without spaceX launches? Still reliant on foreign adversaries to access space?
My kids are too young for this, but surely there's a tradeoff here. Should you override some of your child's natural wonder because of adult aesthetics (or worse political concerns)? Yes. But how often? I'm not sure the line should be drawn at a truck design. (Although, maybe you're teaching your kid taste, again I'm not sure.)
Both think it looks ugly.
No need to influence most people, IMO. Vehicles are shaped the way they are because the designs have broad appeal in general (familiarity? proportions? trends?). Most of us would find a normal, well-tailored black suit to be appealing and be baffled by avant garde, high fasion men's clothing.
Why should anyone be surprised that a completely novel design isn't appealing to most?
Isn’t it mostly fuel efficiency standards and manufacturability? You’ve got a chassis that’s used for like five different models for five years between refreshes, not a lot of room to innovate without driving up all the costs so only the luxury cars can afford to look different.
14yo probably influenced -me- more than the other direction, though. That one has strong opinions.
Every parent influences their children. It's called parenting.
The classroom of kids Ive seen (my kids attend 3 different schools), all of them are amazed by them - age ranges: 3, 7, 9 all their classrooms loved them. Same with some of the older kids I've been around. They're all boys, I do imagine it's a very boy-friendly car.
I personally don't have a cyber truck, not big on it personally, but never put my own opinions into my kids. The kids may not "like it", but they are amazed by it.
I'm in an area that doesn't really hate Musk, so I think that does have an impact.
It probably would have been better had they not been mass produced, and maybe did a very limited quantity run - make it more like a collector item... I suppose thats what it'll be now. I see quite a few on the road, it takes away from the uniqueness.
thank god these monstruosities were forbidden in europe
If we can get some affordable electric trucks in the US, it will be very interesting to see how the more rational segments of the market react once they are no longer priced out.
I'm a current truck driver and very excited to swap out my ICE truck for a Slate next year. I need something that can haul my trash to the dump, grab a load of wood chips for the garden, and bring home the occasional sheet good from the home store.
I agree with your assessment as it applies to the Cybertruck or F150, but not the idea of an electric truck. Some people buy trucks because they need a light-duty hauling solution; unfortunately, the market seems to only want to sell luxury SUVs that happen to have truck beds.
Work trucks are a very different market than for passenger vehicles. Their usage is a lot more consistent and known. This means that electric works very well for some work trucks and very poorly for others.
The other aspect of work trucks is that they're generally purchased by very conservative businesses who don't want to buy the bleeding edge, they want several years of reliability data before committing. The F-150 Lightning was cancelled just as that data was starting to come in.
Of course, most F-150's are sold as passenger vehicles rather than work trucks. Along with almost all Cybertrucks.
1. People who need to haul stuff in the bed
2. People who need to tow stuff behind them
3. People who buy them for some form of self expression.
Electrics are probably fine for people in 1 & 3. But for 2 I have yet to find one that both tows and gets range.
1. People who need them for work. 2. People who need to carry bulky loads 3. People who need to tow. 4. People who buy them for some form of self-expression.
The only real use case for electric trucks, imho, is construction site supervisors who do most around-town driving but may occasionally need to haul stuff. Their towing range is absolutely abysmal (F150 Lightning range dropped to about 90 miles when towing a moderate trailer!).
I live in the PNW and you see people not using their trucks as trucks every single time you go out on the road. This includes urban areas.
I’ve owned an F150 and an R1T and for camping, overlanding, snow trips, etc the Rivian is hands down the most capable vehicle I have ever driven. You couldn’t pay me to go back to a Ford
It just looks too weird.
It doesn't help that nearly all chargers are arranged such that I'd block important parts of the parking lot for half an hour if I was towing when I needed a charge, then I have a complex back out (where something is behind me that I need to avoid). Most gas stations are designed so my trailer might block a pump from someone else using it but otherwise I'm not in the way.
The only actual difference is time you need to charge. Pull through charging stalls are ubiquitous where I live
And I just don’t know…how often are people towing loads over 100 miles regularly for this to be a problem? Where I live I see pavement princesses towing the occasional boat or landscapers towing gear and rocks.
Neither of those is going to max out the range on an EV truck in an average day
The quality of the vehicle is actually quite high.
48 volts, steering wheel, no paint ( better durability), trunk, wipers etc. the car pushed the boundaries. If you compare level of creative thinking of cybertruck vs lets say electric ford, it's not even comparable. I respect that despite one person behind it. I don't care how it looks. It's polarizing. oh well.
My 11 y.o. relative from abroad asked me to take rl pictures of the truck, after he heard my neighbor bought it.
The size is just too impractical. It would never fit in my garage. On top of that, the standby drain was significant. Just sitting idle, it would lose 10 to 20 miles of range.
DeLorean is the real life 80s reference of course, but in cyberpunk revival media like the coupe in Ghost in the Shell 2017, the spinner in Blade Runner 2049—those cars are all much smaller cabins than the cybertruck
Frankly Tesla is dumb lucky the Europeans and Japanese have botched the EV market so badly overall. Tesla shouldn't even exist at this point with how trivial their lineup is.
There's nothing quite like the Cybertruck and I don't think there ever will be again.
The steel chassis provides rigidity instead of a traditional frame. They ended up having to be flat, not curved, to meet the design goal.
I guess we all just want something that “looks like a pickup”, is heavy, and guzzles $7 a gallon diesel fuel
No actually the lightning and the R1T are pretty well loved by the people who took a chance on them
Who's doing the proofreading at Wired now? Is it all just AI?
Found: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_scBKKHi7WQ
Obviously the NHTSA ('Highway' is right in the name) doesn't care if you boulder-crawl and break your car. That's easy to do, in any car!
Boulder crawling typically involves heavily modified vehicles for a reason.
Telsa made bad engineering choices on this vehicle. There's no point defending it.
Is it because your world view fractures with a fallible Musk?
As someone who described himself in an earlier post as a "Big Elon fan boy", perhaps the source of bias here lies in a location other than the author of the WIRED article.
(Edit: the actual knows-better designer had the assistant designer throw a ball through the window.)
The poor people that bought them were the butt of his joke.
Later cars from Tesla looked more generic but still like looked like regular cars.
The cybertruck seems like a throwback to the old electric cars that looked like something out of nerd's sketchbook.
Rivian selling the first EV pickup truck even after Elon’s announcement of the cybertruck is pretty embarrassing
I notice this internet world we live in, networked behind screens, really demonstrates the average person's drift to totalitarianism. It's frightening to me.
The answer was wait a long time since they’re sold out. Obviously someone wants them.
With numbers that small, any vagary of demand can lead to lots full of unsold vehicles or waiting lists.
hilarious sentiment
It's certainly more balanced than a forum of non-owners who's only knowledge about the issue is that they hate Elon with an undying passion.
Renault is designing cute things again, so that's a good development. So is Citroen, apparently?
So that's a good development
He wishes. Delorean is a modern classic, regardless of commercial success. Cybertruck will go down like the H1/H2; something entirely emblematic of the worst excesses in the time it was conceived and marketed in, that later generations will go "did they really think that was cool?".
Setting aside JohnZ's personal failings, the car and its production was a catastrophe.
There were other things that contributed to the decision, too: the announced "stressed skin" exoskeleton was panned in favor of adhering the body panels to the body with glue, it became clear that Tesla's profit and valuation were funding Elon's right-wing political project, and I would have preferred a solid-axle design.
The absurdity was not what was wrong with it. It's OK to be absurd. I really liked the stainless steel design. Less trail damage when off-roading and no need to worry about paint scratches causing body rust. The door wedge design? Meh. But it enabled the stainless steel body.
In the end, I want what the Cybertruck failed to deliver: a full-size electric pickup at a good price with excellent range. I currently have my eyes on the RAM REV. We'll see if that one gets axed, too.
At present all Tesla has propping it up is bubble dust and one car model (one increasingly dated car model). Somehow after 14-15 years (Model S released in Summer 2012) these people still can't release a real SUV of any sort. The model Y is a grotesque joke of a fake SUV, a mutilated model 3 that doesn't really look like an SUV in any regard. The model Y is an SUV like the Cybertruck is a truck. They might as well have unlimited money to do it, and they can't do it. Same reason they couldn't release the roadster even after all this time. It's a fundamentally broken company because Musk won't get out of the way. Whatever Musk is good at it, it's not running a large scale automotive company.
Doesn’t the new ~flying car have similar design vibes?
I just find the moral grandstanding a bit off. The vehicle industry isn’t exactly a paragon of executive virtue
I don't know what the others think so I can't judge on that, but I can judge based of what Elon says and does.
And aside, Elon's been lying for years about everything and promising stuff Tesla can't deliver.
IMHO, there's a strong parallel between the Elisabeth Holmes/Theranos situation and Elon/Tesla.
The Countach was just the usual Lamborghini luxury scam, and I say that as someone who grew up a few km from the factory. Nobody cared if it was kinda crap inside, because it existed just to look like a cool car. A truck is supposed to, y'know, be a truck.
Just because something is "angular" doesn't mean it's in any way comparable to a Cybertruck.
To those that downvoted, I’m sorry my opinion offended you.
"If Kenmore had the wherewithal to manufacture 4wd electric chest freezers...that's what they'd look like."
...but I'm not offended by it. I think that sort of whimsical craziness is all too often missing from modern durable goods, so I'm glad it got built.
I'm even happier that its existence upset mincing, peevish little eurotwee Conde-Nasty scribblequeefs like this Wired author. If it'd guarantee him leaping off of a tall pier, I'd pay MSRP for a Cybertruck.