Obviously, publicly traded companies should not be producing products based on the whims and childhood fantasies of the CEO.
Heh, nope, I remember it clearly as a stupid exercise that produced a pretty ugly car that sucked and rightfully failed.
Totally agree, but I was addressing those who posted that the CyberTruck could have a stainless steel body with some curves.
Once Elon made the questionable decision to go stainless, the truck was going to look weird.
John Z. was bending stainless steel over 40 years ago! These were made in 1981 and they were beautiful then, and they are still beautiful today.
Gag me.
Please pull up a picture of a DeLorean and look at the wheel arches.
With 30+ years in the metal fabrication industry, I can tell you that you’d better be OCD about keeping it clean. Ferrous steel on the surface of stainless will rust, and that will start the stainless itself rusting. When working with stainless we do everything we can to keep from contaminating it with mild steel. On some projects we are even required to paassivate the stainless assembly after fabrication to get rid of any possible mild steel contamination.
Saw my first in the wild today. It’s, uh, it’s ugly. I got a decent look at it while I was driving past and the exterior looked… kinda waterstained in places? I’m not sure what it was exactly and I didn’t linger.
The main thing I noticed was a result of the single plane of the windshield and hood. It’s pollen season here, and the cybertruck’s hood was badly streaked with the mixture of pollen and wiper fluid that would normally flow into the wiper cowl. Not pretty, especially against the stainless steel.
Considering that demand for even the well-engineered and reasonably good-looking (if you like big pickups) Ford Lightning is falling well below predictions, I’ll go out on a limb here and predict that the Cybertruck will be the biggest PR catastrophe for Elmo since he bought Twitter.
I won’t say “biggest economic disaster” since it’s hard to beat the $25 billion or so he’s lost on Twitter, but certainly the biggest disaster of any automotive launch perhaps since the Edsel. And compared to the Cybertruck’s soul-searing ugliness, the Edsel was a thing of beauty, and compared to the Cybertruck’s likely near-zero market share, the Edsel that nobody wanted was a miracle of marketing genius.
It’s entirely possible that the Cybertruck will fail, because pure electric trucks are starting to look a little iffy in general and demand for them has collapsed. But it has some appeal that other trucks don’t for urban and suburban use. Maybe it will capture the sports/adventure truck market. I could see it becoming a fixture in some cities, given that it’s much easier to manoever than other pickups in tight spaces and it would be very hard to break into it. But yeah, I’m not seeing it penetrate much into the work truck market.
Oh, that’s silly. Right now they are backordered. It’s WAY too early to call the Cybvertruck a disaster, or even a flop.
As for Twitter being his biggest economic disaster… Musk’s net worth goes up and down more than that on a given good day or bad day in the markets. A year after Twitter was purchased, Musk’s net worth reached all-time highs and he regained the top spot on the billionaire leaderboard. Then Tesla took a dive and he lost FAR more than what he’s lost with Twitter.
And I’ll predict that Twitter will eventually be a profitable play for Musk. The AI training data it represents is worth a lot. But even if Twitter just chugs along at a 22 billion valuation, the money he lost is about 10% of his net worth, and his net worth swings by more than that regularly.
I “get” that. I mean, it’s very obvious what it’s going for and I have no illusions for anything but function followed form in this instance.
However, that form only looked cool in its setting. If we were on the neon lit streets of Neo-City, it might appeal to the 13 year old in me. Outside a modern strip mall, it just looks stupid. Sort of like, if you were to wear some Death Knight armor in a Target, you don’t look like a Death Knight, you just look like a giant dork.
Now that I type it, that’s what it looks like: Someone trying to cosplay Shadowrun while picking up cat food and milk.
Looks like a shoe box that someone stepped on and partially squashed.
Oh, very much so. And I imagine the gentleman (my assumption) behind the wheel making Pew-pew noises as he’s shooting lasers at the people in front of him in the grocery store parking lot, and simulatneously gloating that he’s “bulletproof”.
Actually, if you step onto the middle of a shoe box, it will deform with some natural curvatures. This thing looks – and I think intentionally – completely unnatural, like an artificially evolved giant insect from the planet Gliese 667C.
Obviously how it looks is very subjective. There are folks out there who think the AMC Gremlin and Pontiac Aztec were good looking vehicles.
This thing would not look out of place in Baja with the other machines. It looks pretty darn cool running around the SpaceX facilities.
But let’s talk about practicalities. If you’re a pickup owner, a standard requirement is often that the vehicle be able to haul a standard 4X8 sheet of material. The Cybertruck has a 6.5’ bed, while the others have 4.5-5.5. That means you can also put a camper top on the Cybertruck and sleep in it.
The locking motorized tonneau cover would be a pretty useful thing for me. It would be nice to throw your tools and stuff into the bed, push a button and have it be safe from thieves.
I was originally annoyed by the sail panels along the side, thinking it would inhibit side access to the bed. But the air suspension pretty much eliminates that, especially considering that the competitors tend to be lifted and the bed rails are way up there.
The biggest problem with it is that it’s an electric truck. Two years ago I thought they were going to be great. After reading a year’s worth of real world outcomes, it’s understanding why they aren’t selling.
I’m biased by being in Canada, but they really don’t work well here. Ford Dealers in the area have hundreds of Lightnings on their lots, discounted, and they still aren’t selling. PHEV trucks will be the only thing that can get us to our net zero goals. But they’ll be too expensive to really make up much of the market.
And these people are known colloquially as “idiots.” 
OR blind…
Good catch. So how did they form those curves?
Googling, the Ford F150 can be ordered with a 5.5-foot bed, a 6.5-foot bed, or an 8-foot bed. The standard bed on the GMC Sierra is 79.44 inches (6.5-feet), while the long bed is 98.27 inches (8-feet). The Ram pickup is available with a 5’7" bed, a 6’4" bed or an 8’ bed.
I’m comparing it to the other available electric trucks. Of course you dan get pickups with all kinds of bed length.