In retrospect, I should refine this comment a bit. The Cybertruck and the Horsey Horseless are different in a fundamental way. The Horsey was a very early automobile with a full-size replica of a horse’s head bolted to the front. The idea was to make it look like a horse-drawn carriage and hopefully prevent this newfangled novelty from frightening actual horses. The end result just made it look silly but the intent was beneficent. Whereas (IMHO) the Cybertruck is aggressively ugly, as if it’s intentionally designed to look threatening, which may not be too far from the truth.
That’s a real customer Cybertruck, as far as I know. There are plenty of wrapped Cybertrucks around now.
Here’s one wrapped in gloss black:
The Twitter post asks for thoughts on that video of the black Cybertruck. Here’s mine: listen to the soundtrack in that video, and then re-read the last line in my previous post.
The wrapped trucks look better than stock. Which doesn’t really impress me that you need to “finish” the car yourself so it doesn’t look like cheap trash. Also skeptical about how well some of the more reflective wrap jobs will last.
"Looks better"still has a low ceiling if you’re unimpressed by the body styling. I think it looks bad enough that “At least it’s different” is like telling me poop-flavored ice cream has the virtue of being “different” over everyone else’s variants of strawberry and vanilla.
Design is subjective. You’re allowed to dislike whatever you dislike. I hated the Cybertruck when I first saw it because I’m a ‘form follows function’ kind of guy, and it looked like the design was suboptimal for a pickup truck. I’ve changed my mind on some of that after seeing the features, and understanding why it was designed that way.
The angular shape of the Cybertruck has nothing to do with making it mean and aggressive. It’s a natural result of going to stainless steel body panels. You can’t easily bend it, and you can’t make compound curves. So the vehicle had to look ‘faceted’. Given that constraint, the design is not bad.
Umm, doesn’t every stainless steel bowl have a compound curve?
… or every stainless steel sink ever made?
IIRC Musk claimed that it was the particular type of stainless steel, or the thickness of it, that made such normal pressing impossible. In which case I’d question the ridiculous choice of that material for body panels.
I also believe – but this is purely speculation – that the extreme angular design was intentional, and so was the aggressively threatening other-worldly alien-invasion appearance. Because that’s just how Elmo rolls.
I’m just repeating what the engineers saidmin an interview. They can’t even bend this alloy the normal way. They have special ‘air brakes’ that use high velocity compressed air to bend the panels. A normal brake causes stress lines to appear.
I assume the inability to form compound curves is due to the brittleness of the alloy or the thickness, or both.
Why? They worked around the forming issues by going with a faceted design and inventing an air brake system. In every other way, this seems like a good way to go for a working vehicle. The semi-monocoque construction makes it much stiffer (floppiness is the bane of light trucks), makes it hard to accidentally damage on the job site or in the bush, etc. It’s also lighter than its competition, because it doesn’t need a traditional ladder frame.
There’s nothing quite like watching some yahoo slide a bag of heavy material up the side of your new $80,000 pickup truck so they can wrestle it into the bed. I’ve been on job sites where workers park their pickups far away from the work to avoid getting them dinged. With a Cybertruck, this isn’t a problem. Nor is fading paint, paint scratches, etc.
What other problems are there with the stainless steel body?
For one thing, the fact that they start staining or corroding and whatever other problems they have, as soon as you even look at them the wrong way? As documented in user reports cited upthread, and recommendations in the owner’s manual to be super-careful with them.
In other words, it has to look like it does because you can’t form this alloy any other way? Then the question is why does it have to use this alloy?
Because it is really strong, making for a lighter, stiffer, more dent and scrape resistant vehicle. And that matters more than whether there’s a pretty compound curve. Especially in a working teuck.
That is in dispute. What those users are likely seeing is bits of rail dust from transport, or material that collects on the surface from contaminants in rain and dew. I saw a video showing these rusts spots and ‘corrosion’, and it came right off by wiping it with a rag.
The owner’s manual says to wipe off debris that could cause staining? Yeah, so does my car’s manual. Leave some bird poop on your painted vehicle for a month or two and see what happens. My old Escape had stains in the paint I could never get rid of from bird poop and tree sap. And the front of the hood was totally chipped up from road gravel being thrown into it. The Cybertruck wouldn’t have that problem.
Now, is it more visible on the Cybertruck due to the polished stainless? Maybe. Will it induce OCD owners to have to go out regularly and wipe them down to maintain their finish? Could be. But I don’t believe the stainless steel is actually rusting, and I’m not convinced that problems with thenfinish are any worse than with any other car.
my guess is:
- Musk holding a piece of stainless-steel (SS) in hand
- some cool dog engineer came up and said “that’s not SS … THAT is SS!!!” and slashed Musks SS in half with “THAT is SS!!!”
- Now CTs are built with “THAT is SS!!!”
I don’t care one way or the other about this vehicle, I just want to point out that the thing that makes sheet materials stiff is the bends and compound curves you form into them. Flat surfaces are inherently fladapidy.
I’ve never bought a car for how it looks, only for what I need. Yeah, I have to pick a color, I pick dark colors because it helps melt the snow off of them.
Have you seen the impact tests for the Cybertruck? Hitting a door with a full power swing holding a 20# sledgehammer doesn’t even scratch it. I watched one video where a guy got into a shopping cart and the other guy pushed him as hard as he could into the side door. No damage at all.
In side impact tests, a collision that would fold up another car left the cybertruck’s panels slightly bent. And the doors don’t need structural braces to pass those impact tests like most other doors.
The biggest crash worry with the Cybertruck is that it might be so stiff that impulses will be transmitted to the occupants more efficiently, but I don’t know if there is any crash data to support that.
I guess some of the posters above are too young to remember the last vehicle with stainless steel body panels. Not a single curve on that one, either.
I am on record in the Elon Musk Pit thread as -getting- the Cybertruck aesthetics:
And I stand by that. It’s a vehicle that embraces form (although the WHY of the form IMHO only makes sense to geeky 80s nerds) over function, that almost surprisingly manages to have impressive function IN SPITE of the form. But, and this is key, for me a vehicle is about function. I don’t have fun driving, although I don’t hate it. Real, safe, effective self-driving cars would be perfect in my opinion. But that’s not happening any time soon despite Tesla’s inaccurate descriptions.
So I want something that gets me from point A to Point B with dependability (including AWD as an option or always on here in Colorado), sufficient comfort (climate control, decent but not outstanding entertainment, cruise control), and cost as my big factors. Currently, I am nearly done driving my old Subaru Outback Sport into the ground and look to eventuall replace it with a moderately priced (50-55k USD) BEV or PHEV with AWD.
Technically, the Cybertruck -could- qualify for all of the above, even with it’s challenging aesthetics, but the price is RIGHT OUT. And my understanding is that right now at least, Tesla is losing substantial money on each and every model it sells, which may be reduced if it sells a large enough number, and of course, it serves as proof of their innovation and a test bed for new technology.
None of which matter to me as a consumer, but may be worthwhile for the company.
The most impressive things about the Cybertruck are the four wheel steering, air suspension, drive by wire, and the 48V low voltage system. Even if the truck is a flop, the tech will make future generations of cars better.
I totally agree about the price. If these things are going to make a dent in the work truck market, they need to be half the price. The original Cybertruck price was $49,000 for the base model. At that price it had a shot at being a work truck for contractors and workmen, especially in suburban construction. But at 90K? For a truck compromised on range and towing? It’s little more than a fringe vehicle for well-heeled outdoorsey types. The Rivian as well.
I’m glad you like it, even though I do not. It seems odd to me that the company would choose such a polarizing, unconventional design.
I very clearly in the quoted section said “not in a million years if it was my money,” so pretty far from liking it. But it has a certain appeal to the 12-14 year internal boy that is stuck in the 80s mindset. By that inner child’s rule of cool, it makes sense. And musk is roughly two years older than me. So if you think that the Cybertruck represents his inner 14-16 year old, a very fraught formative time for young adults, and the emotional age he seems perpetually stuck in, it makes sense.
As for this, I suspect, as do others, that the company had little to no input on it. Elon declared want he wanted, and this was the image he ran with. Right in the name, he’s evoking a whole genre steeped in the late 80s of angular metal and golly-gee-wiz tech in search of a justification.