I’m surprised Tesla hasn’t come out with a motorcycle yet, if that was priced affordably I’m sure a lot of people would kill to have one.
This Tesla pickup truck is either an elaborate joke of some kind or the next New Coke.
Musk has said he’ll never do a motorcycle–he almost died on one while young and has had an aversion to them ever since. The ATV appears to be happening, though.
Yes, and it’s refundable. So some people[sup]1[/sup] are going to say that most of those are going to cancel before the trucks are delivered. But they said the same about the Model 3 yet it turned out that the vast majority of those orders stuck it out and got their car. So it’s hard to say with the Tesla cult. My guess is most will stick with their orders.
Word is that Elon doesn’t like motorbikes. That 4-wheel e-ATV (optional with the Cybertruck) is probably the closest they’ll ever get to one. But really, there must be at least a couple dozen electric motorcycles on the market or close to it. Why jump into such a crowded market?
[sup]1[/sup] All those people that are always claiming the Tesla is one step from declaring bankruptcy. Ignore those people. They have big bets that Tesla is going broke, so it’s in their interest to make it look like the company is doing poorly.
They’re going to sell an electric ATV to go with the truck.
This is pretty interesting. I don’t recommend actually watching the video unless you like to hear two old dudes ramble on for a couple of hours, but someone did a partial transcript. And apparently, this idea has been around for a long time but no one’s had the guts to do it yet:
Never heard about this “XY design”, but it’s not a surprise that this isn’t really a new idea.
So I’ve been wondering how much of this design isn’t really just cleverly dressing up making a virtue out of necessity. There isn’t time/budget/expertise to do anything fancy with regards to design, so they went with flat pieces of metal stuck together, and are now dressing it up as some kind of ‘retro-futurist’ design commitment. (After all, one suspects that many of the futurist designs of past movies are similarly influenced by having to stay on a budget and nevertheless coming up with something ‘different’.) I’ve wondered the same about the Starship.
The whole narrative of “simple to assemble” is a canard until someone actually sees any detail of the body design. Just because the outer surfaces are flat doesn’t mean there are no stampings. They aren’t just going to be butt welding flat sheets of stainless together; the edges of panels are going to have to have some sort of interfacing features stamped in so they can locate to other panels with some semblance of consistency. And as far as dumb crap like 3mm thick outer body panels and “armor” glass no one is asking for, well, if that’s what they think is important.
I really hope this is just a concept vehicle. ‘Cos it looks like something Elon cooked up because he still believes his fantasy of living on Mars, and his stans are just far too credulous.
Based on my intellectual capacity and my vast knowledge, tactically and tentatively, right from the beginning of times especially in the light of Ecclesiastes Devolution, I have come to a concrete, definite and profound conclusion that I have nothing to say about this oddly polygonal pickup truck.
100%. Saying “then you fold it up like origami” sorta glosses over the fact that you need a giant hydraulic machine to “fold up” 3mm stainless. And if you’re doing a bunch of panels like, say, a big assembly line to mass produce trucks, you’ll want some jigs to hold your panels while you fold them up. And the jigs need to be real sturdy. Like, as sturdy as stamping dies. And then you can take a negative jig and press the panel in between the first jig and… oh, we’re just stamping panels, aren’t we.
I’ve read the stainless is a bitch to stamp, especially 3mm thick stainless, which is why the Delorean had simple stamping dies and likely why the design of this is so angular. But, and I cannot stress this enough, this is not a money saving endeavor. Every automaker on the planet can crank out stamped steal panels, have them painted, and slap them on a $18,000 vehicle while still making a profit. Any problem caused by using 3mm stainless that needed an angular design to be solved could also have been solved at much less expense but just not using a stupid material for the body skin in the first place. Nobody needs their vehicle skin to take an impact with a sledgehammer.
It’s ugly beyond belief. A Homer-mobile. I can appreciate the flat-surface aesthetics to some extent (Subaru XT, Zumwalt-class ships), and I understand that the rear “sail” plays a role in hauling, but the roof doesn’t make sense and there is no reason to have non-round wheel wells.
Many men in rural areas of the U.S. and Canada are really attached to the pickup truck for some reason, even those who have no use for it. That’s not going to change in the next few years. So I want at least some of those men to want an electric pickup truck. To find it attractive, look at the numbers, weigh the pros and cons, eventually get over their range anxiety and think of buying one. Tesla had very little chance to make this happen anyway (because they can’t sell vehicles in many of those U.S. states), but this sends the message that it’s not possible to make a desirable electric pickup truck.
VW bug was ugly but people bought those.
it can be, depending on grade and how deeply you want to draw it. Work hardening can be an issue (can be with aluminum as well.) But I’ve got a drawer in the kitchen full of items stamped out of ~3mm thick stainless steel. Probably 18/10.
welp, the DeLorean was angular because that was the style of “exotics” in the '80s. Plus it’s body was primarily fiberglass, the stainless panels were more or less a “skin” over them.
That’s why I’m still struggling to understand what customer this thing was designed for. having a bunch of people on the internet say “whoa that’s cool” doesn’t mean you’re going to have a lot of buyers for an “out there” $50,000 vehicle.
and I have to LOL at the people saying “this is the truck for Mars.” there’s no way this thing would operate for very long on Mars once the radiation does a number on its electronics.
1935 Ford coupe. vs 1935 VW Bug designed by Porsche. It was far from ugly when it came out.
Granted as the yeas went buy it became a cult car because the style didn’t keep up but it sold as a cheap economy car until the world caught up to it and made better economy cars.
I would had that My brother had one when he was young. What a horrible car. It was slow, loud, smelly, cold and the gear shift was seriously loose.
I really miss it.
this has “off-roader” written all over it. I can easily imagine someone buying it and customizing the crap out of it. If you can just get Tina Turner to stand in the bed of it as you drive it would be perfect.
Also, given Tesla customer’s problems it might be a great selling point to have a car that that can hit something larger than a butterfly and not be down for 6 months waiting on repair.
yeah, the Beetle didn’t look out of place when it was launched here, no uglier than anything the domestic car companies were making in the 1950s. VW just never updated it much. Being cheap and cheerful was its selling point.
If the Cybertruck catches on, it’ll be because it appeals to younger buyers. The older generation is pretty much married to their F-150s, Silverados and Rams. Even Japanese makers, no matter how good their trucks, have trouble making large inroads into that market. They just have too much brand loyalty.
Now I’m not saying it will catch on among younger buyers; it’s just that it might. But at first it’s going to be bought by Tesla-fanbois. After that market is saturated, if it still has sales it’ll be because younger buyers want to do something different than their parents.
Oh, so apt!
Re: VW Bug (original). It was a cheap car. The cheapness meant certain economies were made in building it and that was reflected in the original product. People accepted the ugliness to save a lot of money.
Tesla doesn’t make cheap cars. Entirely different markets.
(The revived Beetle always baffled me. Take a Cabriolet and round the corners reducing passenger and storage space. Charge more. And people bought this because ???)
That’s obviously a bit of Muskian hyperbole, but the electronics aspect isn’t really an issue. SpaceX has tremendous experience in designing radiation-resistant electronics. They use off the shelf components and then many-way redundancy to avoid the inevitable bit errors. It’s way, way cheaper than using straight rad-hardened stuff (sapphire substrate, etc.) and you get to use modern components instead of stuff designed decades ago.
The giant flat glass sheets are a bigger problem. In terms of pressure, Mars might as well be a vacuum. Flat glass doesn’t have that sort of strength. But that’s a solvable problem (use less glass, put in reinforcement stringers, etc).