It is absolutely positively useful for separating the loony prepper crowd from some money. Which is the the real purpose after all.
Cf. Monster Cables and audiophiles. Some products simply exist as voluntary taxes on the True Believers.
Indeed. Though to be fair… from a certain way of thinking, loony prepperism is just another hobby. It has no actual purpose, but gives people something to do. I find the people burying shipping containers to make their underground base more interesting than those clicking “buy” on some website, but we don’t all have equal talents.
Granted.
ISTM some of the harder-core preppers are about one step short of becoming anarcho-terrorists though.
They are so busy preparing for TEOTWAWKI* that soon they end up wishing for it. They lust for the sweet sweet feeling of using their carefully hoarded firepower to mow down crowds of ravening city dwellers, preferably of a darker skin tone than themselves. I used to work with a guy who loved to tell us that fantasy over and over.
From there it’s a short jump to wanting to bring TEOTWAWKI about. The biggest jump, but also the last one as they lose all restraint, is going from wanting to taking action.
In all audiophiles are rather less likely to unleash even local havoc.
* The End Of The World As We Know It. It’s standard term in prepper circles.
15K for that? Must be some sort of joke.
Wouldn’t that prevent OTA updates? Which could be a good or bad thing, I guess.
This guy is incredibly cheerful about his dying at 21 miles. Kind of amazing they didn’t do a quick dust wipe down before handing a $100,000 vehicle over to him though. “Exiting and re-entering vehicle may restore operation.” 
is this the same vehicle that was posted some 20 msg above in a video - or a different one?
Different Twitter users and (it appears) different issues.
I posted both, and they’re different.
Found this video by Doug Demuro interesting having three different people try to park a cybertruck into a “standard” sized parking space. Really shows some of the real world usability challenges, namely:
- Lack of any self parking/auto parking feature since even autopilot is a “coming soon” feature for Cybertruck
- Tesla’s bizarre refusal to offer a top down camera view
- Massive blind spot for the front right bumper where poor sightlines and lack of a camera provide very poor sense of car feel
- Overall design meaning incredibly poor sightlines out of the back
- Lack of any kind of warning beeps for when an corner is getting too close to an obstacle.
- On the positive side, everyone praised the steer by wire for its responsiveness
It’s these poor usability experiences that stay with a car owner after the initial coolness factor wears off and it’s hard to see too much Tesla can do to improve it absent a radical redesign of the car. I suspect things like this are really going to be the motivating factors for many people quietly getting rid of their Cybertruck after a few month/years as they either find a different car more convenient to deal with on everyday errands or they get into one too many minor fender benders with a concrete pillar due to misjudging a sightline and then are shocked at the cost of repair.
To be clear, this isn’t about the truck being big, lots of other trucks are that big and people buying them know the downsides of buying a truck that big. It’s specifically, for a truck that big, there’s a number of design features unique to the Cybertruck that make it a unique pain in the ass.
I suspect you might be underestimating the extent to which the people buying these vehicles personally identify with Musk and the brand.
I just watched a range test of the Chevy Silverado EV–pretty much the same price as a CT, exceeds it’s range estimate handily (went 440 miles in a mix of condition), has a much better interior, a pass-through bed for over 10’ of capacity, and excellent hands-free driving on mapped roads. More like 4.5 seconds 0-60, however, if that’s what counts for you…
Since buying my Model Y a month ago I have spent a stupid amount of time of Tesla forums and groups. People do love the brand, and I have become a huge fan, but I have literally not seen a seen a single post where people have expressed love for Musk and very very few where there was even something postitive to say let alone identify with him. Mostly people complain about his capriciousness or that he has little effect on the engineering. I am on Model Y specific forums and some general Tesla ones.
Maybe the truck specific ones are different but I doubt it. Do you have any evidence for this?
As an aside, I’ve started to see the Cybertruck referred to online as the “Incel Camino”.
@Alessan: That is too clever. I laughed.
I’m truly mystified what logic could have driven this decision.
I drive a fairly large car with difficult sightlines and pretty eyewatering body repair costs. I use the top-down view substantially every time to avoid “oh-shits!”
And to ensure I’m dead centered in the space for max door ding protection. More often, I’ll park in an end-space so I can use the cams to get the tires almost touching the island on one side to maximize clear space on the other side where the idjit next to me is parked. It’s that important.
Leaving those cams off the CT is wacky. Just wacky.
Not likely. There isn’t anything like the Cybertruck on the market. It’s a sculptured work of… well something.
Not just the Cybertruck, every single Tesla on the road is missing that feature and doesn’t contain the necessary hardware to ever enable it!
Tesla owners have asked for a 360-degree camera view (bird’s eye view) for years now. However, there’s an important reason why Tesla cannot offer it with the current setup. All cameras on Tesla vehicles have a narrow field of view and cannot cover the 360-degree surroundings. The bird’s eye view doesn’t require high-definition cameras, as proven on other car models that offer it. Instead, they need a “fish-eye,” 180-degree field of view camera. This means that Tesla would need to add four more cameras to its vehicles to offer a bird’s eye view
Providing top down camera would require a brand new hardware revision.
That and refusal to offer Apple Carplay/Android Auto are the two super WTF decisions Tesla makes that I’m like, Jesus, why?
Because they don’t want to pay a license fee to Apple/Android and the user base for the most part doesn’t give a shit. It’s not just Tesla. Honda only offers it on the top trim of their cars now. GM is eliminating it all togther. It’s becoming a relic.
If that’s the reason, I think Apple should have offered Carplay for free rather than spending the billions trying to build its own car. They could have used it as a backdoor into controlling more and more cars.
Yes it would. Or more accurately, it would have to be designed into future models starting in model year X. Certainly it’s not going to be readily retrofittable.
I can see the “visionary” argument made that those cams are only useful for manual parking and the car will be parking itself real, real soon, any day now in fact. So why bother with dedicated hardware that is only useful to a human driver, not the AI chauffeur?
And we can also see that “visionary” argument is hallucinogenic BS.