It was never going to be a top seller–it’s too unusual for that–but it’ll probably easily outsell its current competition. The F-150 Lightning is only selling about 5,000 units a quarter, and Rivian only about 15,000 units. I’m not sure I’d call those flops, but they definitely aren’t massive sellers. I think it would be easy to sell 50k Cybertrucks a quarter. Small compared to Model 3/Y sales, but decent compared to their current competition.
Rivian has a good product but it’s expensive and doesn’t have a high production rate. The F-150 Lightning is in a similar position but with the added downside of going through dealerships.
I believe Ford sells hundreds of thousands of F-150 trucks every year, so if they can convert even a fraction of the ICE sales over to the EV version, that will be a huge number. (Though I think a lot of the F-150 sales are for use as a platform, for utility trucks, tow trucks and other such vehicles. I don’t know if the Lightning will work for that.)
I don’t see how you could decide on that ratio (groundbreaking vs. unaesthetic) from just a few pictures at a few angles. Certainly, you likely really like it or you really don’t, but I can’t tell which… yet.
Again, I’ve seen articles in which people who know about how autos are manufactured said that actually making the Cybertruck is going to be difficult, if not impossible. Partly because of all of the straight panels and partly because of the stainless steel panels.
It’s just a bad picture, though. The shape of the vehicle hasn’t changed. It’s just unflattering at that angle without the stage lighting. Rolled-down windows also look bad. It looks much better driving around:
It’s a bit suspect that the only time it seems to look good are the renders (not just this top down video…any time you see a car driving along a desert road in a car ad, it’s a render. We’ve been able to photorealistically render cars for a very long time now).
I can’t decide if it’s just that it looks brutish when you’re not in a swooping camera, or the build quality (how well the panels line up) is that bad in reality. Or both.
Tesla is much better at manufacturing cost-effective EVs than their competition. They are casting enormous sections of their vehicles in one shot, eliminating hundreds of processing steps.
No one else is doing that at the same scale, and I expect they had their reasons for why such a thing was difficult or impossible. So I’d take establishment knowledge with a grain of salt. Auto manufacturing is very conservative if nothing else.
As an aside, the Cybertruck is constructed differently than originally planned. It was initially expected to use the skin as a significant load-bearing structure (an “exoskeleton”), but is now using the same casting technology that they’re using for their other cars (which they developed in the meantime).
… and your downside might well be an upside for a lot of people …
yes, unflattering - and possibly this was the reason for the pic to be taken.
But poking around the electrek site, there are a couple of structural changes vs. the prototype, most of which do make it uglier (most noticable the reduced overhangs that make it look “squished”, lowered, heavy-set,…) There is a reason why there are companies like Pininfarina (sp?) - who just know how to make a car look good.
… the lower pic inspires some convert-your-ford-escort-into-a-testarossa-kit vibe… that were somewhat a thing in the 80ies … a very distinct “backyard-design” feeling if you will …
here = production model (admittedly a very low bar for “here”) … so what you see HERE is what you will be able to buy in a few weeks
I see articles that say that Ford sold something like 640,000 in 2022, but that’s for the entire F-series line. I’m not sure how many F-150 vehicles were sold.
Oh, huh, i somehow thought Tesla was working on a real truck. You know, those things with 18 wheels that move stuff across the country. I didn’t realize the Tesla “truck” was just a futuristic-looking private passenger vehicle.
Do you have any more information about that? Because the stuff I read says that those very straight panels of bent or folded stainless steel are going to be impossible to manufacture.
limit a google search of cybertruck to electrek … they had 100s of articles on musks junk …(and while the site is pretty meh (clickbaity) … the comment section is often very knowledgable on EVs and batteries
Meanwhile, I’ve heard stories about how much time and trouble it takes to get Tesla and other dealer-less vehicles serviced. So there’s still some advantages to an extensive dealer network.
