The author is trying pretty hard to pull this narrative. When I first saw it, I thought the Cybertruck looks hideous. But then, I don't care much what my car looks like. I often wished the outside of my Golf was more scrappy, rougher, something I don't need to care about denting. The Cybertruck would be perfect for me in that sense: you can use that truck and do a lot of work with it without having to worry about the paint or breaking something. It's a perfect design for it's intended purpose. To me, it doesn't paint a dystopian future. It paints a future where appearances serve an intended purpose, instead of the current opposite. A pickup truck is an utilitarian object. The cybertruck design is purely utilitarian. I love it.
Now if they could make a Cyberhatchback, I'd buy it right now.
Yeah, the author is really making a mountain out of a molehill. They're moving into a new vehicle class, and that vehicle class values durability, resilience, and power more than most, so they made something that embodied that. It's not a vehicle for everyone. It's a vehicle for a certain set of someones who already value that stuff in the present day.
The Roadster is also a future vehicle (well the new one is at least) they're bringing to market, and it's got a pretty different design. So either you interpret it as the future might be as multifaceted as the present, or that actually cars don't forecast the future... but rather reflect the present.
> you can use that truck and do a lot of work with it without having to worry about the paint or breaking something
No. The flat shiny surfaces are more expensive, harder to manufacture, more brittle and more susceptible to denting/scratching than a normal curved car surface.
That thing is a nightmare to take care of. Best keep in the garage unless someone breathes on it and ruins the look.
The design is a statement, it's even a declaration of war.
I think they are targeting people who do not care for environmental issues and who still think that electric vehicles are something for beaus and weaklings. If these people can't be convinced to transition to EVs for ecological reasons, just give them another reason. It doesn't matter why they drive EVs, just that they do. (Well, and to give other car companies a kick in the butt in this market segment).
It is a design you can't ignore, it looks metal af and no matter what your pickup currently looks like, it will appear wimpy next to it.
Also observe that it no longer sports a Tesla logo. The teaser image [0] that Musk posted before still had one. There is none on the inside either, as far as I could tell, so maybe they are moving the Cybertruck away from the Tesla brand. The presentation was on SpaceX' premises as well, if I remember correctly. (Compare that to Zuckerberg who thinks that Facebook isn't credited enough for the success of its daughter platforms WhatsApp and Instagram and is moving them closer to the (imo) toxic brand of Facebook).
I wonder if people are underestimating how much the design was driven by the fact it was fun to make something that looked like it was from Blade Runner.
Maybe the whole thing started out as “Let’s make something shit cool like a blade runner cop car” and then the idea that it would bring down production costs, look different, etc, developed after they designed something that they really liked.
Elon seems to be quite motivated by having fun, one of the things I like about him.
> I think they are targeting people who do not care for environmental issues and who still think that electric vehicles are something for beaus and weaklings. If they can't be convinced to transition to EVs for ecological reasons, give them another reason because it doesn't matter why they drive EVs, just that they do
This actually opened my eyes, I haven't thought about it that way
Exactly. Nothing has changed at Tesla: their plan has never been to release model after model that cannibalize their business in the the electric-car-driver milieu; they aim to eat the classic demographics, one by one. For this niche, they broke out of their box and embraced a different aesthetic. Striving for that meant there was a lot they couldn't reuse--even the strength of their brand--but it's the most important niche by a longshot. It gets its own box.
If this is indeed their thinking then cybertruck is a terrible name in my opinion. It's far too nerdy for the anti-environmentalism manly man who cares about wimpiness.
“... no matter what your pickup currently looks like, it will appear wimpy next to it.”
I have to disagree. That is your opinion not a fact. I think it looks like someone who just started out at whittling tried to make a Delorean and used the result as the design for the “truck”. Personally, I think the tesla “truck” looks wimpy. I’m really disappointed by it.
And thus PR strategy may work. To give this truck's toughness credibility, they need to "leak" a few videos how this electric truck easily outperforms military Hummers in Utah mountains. In addition to that, they can shoot this truck with ak47 and say that thanks to its steel frame, none of the bullets went thru, while the supposedly tough Hummers and died pickups look like a cardboard target now. After this, the cybertrucks toughness will be undisputable.
Yeah, it is a declaration of war against pedestrians. Thankfully this thing will never catch on here in Europe and I'll continue being safe while crossing the street.
Tesla has always had somethings for those who do not care about environmental issues: looks (Tesla cars don't look like vacuum cleaners of the past), performance (fastest 0-100 of any sedan), technology (remote control, some self driving, OTA updates). In fact, the only way to appeal to general public is through these things. Environmental issues are just too hard to grasp in every day life, especially since their supposed effect are long into the future.
I suspect that it should be cheaper to make as well... very few curves make for easy to make panels. Not a lot of investment needed to manufacture these things.
I think they are targeting people who do not care for environmental issues and who still think that electric vehicles are something for beaus and weaklings
How is that different from people who want to loudly signal their environmental virtue while ignoring externalities such as the electric power probably coming from coal, the extraction and manufacturing processes for batteries, etc? This is a competitor to an electric humvee - an unnecessarily large vehicle is wasted energy no matter where that energy originated
Maybe it's overanalyzed? The design is unusual but does look like a low poly lamborghini, so it has some appeal as sports item. But is the design even legal? Is it legal in every country to not have side mirrors? That front LED light is also blinding. And is it OK for a car to have so dangerously stiff side doors?
I don't know if it says much about the future of cars, it's a more of a lifestyle item and it remains to be seen how many of the preorders are being serious.
Worth noting that Jalopnik is famous for this sort of controversial take on things to encourage discussion. I love the site but, apart from its excellent investigative journalism regarding Goodyear tires and the criminal coverup[1], its content has never really been about insightful analysis that would warrant being referenced here.
Up to 100 cubic feet with the cover closed, up to 3500 pounds if you add some redneck plywood panels to stack it higher :D
I was thinking about shuttling mountain bikes up to the top of the hill myself. I could easily get 6 bikes and 6 people. If they could get summon to work on forest roads this would be the perfect shuttle truck.
People that use trucks for actual truck things won't buy this. The design of the bed is a design flaw. Imagine you work construction and you have tools in the back of the bed. You will have to climb inside the bed of the truck everytime to load and unload the tools. You cannot access the bed from the side because of the stupid design.
There is no way this will compete with the EV F150 that will come out near the same time frame as this.
Tesla doesn't even have a method to produce the body of these trucks at the scale needed for production.
Most of the people that pre-order these trucks won't see them until at least 2025, if not later. You think people are going to wait for these over buying an EV F150 that Ford can produce at scale of the normal F150. Maybe some will because of the brand, but most will go for the F150.
> People that use trucks for actual truck things won't buy this. The design of the bed is a design flaw. Imagine you work construction and you have tools in the back of the bed. You will have to climb inside the bed of the truck everytime to load and unload the tools. You cannot access the bed from the side because of the stupid design.
That's what the frunk, the trunk in the bottom of the bed, and the storage in the two triangle rear panels are for
First of all, this is typical Gawker-site blog spam. It has zero insight.
Second of all, while I’m sure you can find some tesla fans who will go for it, especially with a $100 refundable deposit, I think they just made a bad call. How they go from Model X/3/S to this, escapes me. I love flat car panels, but I don’t think anyone who isn’t already a tesla fan will go for it. It’s viscerally ugly. They got many fundamentals right. The problem is the look. Trucks are not utilitarian. They are SUVs with the roof removed to make it less useful so that men will be comfortable buying it. Utilitarianism is not a legitimate excuse for this design.
It looks like a bunch of Silicon Valley nerds designed a truck they’d want to drive. It definitely has that niche appeal, but certainly no mass-market appeal. Is Tesla’s long term strategy to stay in the high end? I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re doing this kind of niche appeal because the price of batteries has not come down far enough to make a cheap decent electric car yet.
I've only now taken a look at the truck from all sides, and it does many things that I've thought of from the standpoint of new design movements being reactions to previous design movements.
IMO we're currently sorta ripe for cohesive neo-neo-modernism in consumer tech, after the plenty of show-offery and getting designs ever more ‘friendly’. We've seen that shift in e.g. aluminum Macbooks after earlier iMacs, but cars seem to trail behind since there's apparently no design nerd like Jobs there. Cars are all bulbous and curvy now. The closest to a modernist car that's not looking outright DIY, is the first-generation Audi TT: just a rounded box on another rounded box.
So what would a modernist car feature nowadays? Let's look at the Cybertruck:
- Resurrects the wedge shape and makes the panels even flatter than they were in the 80s, instead of the ubiquitous ‘curve on curve’ of today after we learned to shape panels whatever which way. Lots of cars from the hatchback wave of the past decade, like Opel Astra J, looked simultaneously family- and rally-oriented with no discernible design statement: that feels like baroque indulgence, it's got to stop.
- A flat, straight LED line of light instead of barely-comprehensible current headlights. (Just two giant flat rectangular panels would also do pretty good, but would resemble SUVs from the 90s.)
- No decoration of any kind on the front. This one is important, and Tesla did well here. It's pretty much the last bastion of brand-specific decoration when cars all look the same shape—but (afaik) even the radiator grille on ICE cars is only for appearance now, and Tesla has already shown that it's ready to dispose of that. With the truck, the deed is done.
Funny enough, even recently most attempts at artistic depictions of ‘future cars’ imagined them more complex, not less. It will be curious to see how designs turn around now.
What the author is missing, perhaps, is that Elon thinks he will need trucks on Mars, and won't be able to take enough with him. But if the heavy parts can be stamped out by a machine he can take, then he can have trucks there made, largely, from steel plate refined from Mars dust, and glass refined from Mars dust.
It won't matter so much if they're too heavy, because gravity is less. It will need two or three layers of glass, with a vacuum gap between, for warmth, and to maintain shirtsleeve air pressure. It won't matter how they look, because nobody will ever go outside except for work, and try to send out robots even then.
He needs steel refining and rolling to make rocket body/tanks. I wonder how the thickness of the body panels compares with those of his new rocket thing...
One thing the author got dead right: these things will look very dated very, very quickly.
Just add some attitude adjustment in the software so they cant drive right up peoples arse on the freeway and problem solved, instantly better than all other trucks!
I think the first commenter on that article said it best:
"The Cybertruck is designed with the sole purpose of brutally driving down the cost of production. PERIOD.
...
They aren’t building dystopia. That’s your neo-cortex story telling. They are driving down costs to get the price of what would be a $65,000 truck to a $45,000 truck so they can remove excuses of why people shouldn’t buy one."
When I look at what happens to areas that have a Walmart move in, when I look at all the trouble Amazon is having with counterfeits, I begin to feel that “brutally driving down the cost of production” is a pretty good way to build a dystopia.
This is the first article to acknowledge something I noticed about the Cybertruck: that it seems to be drawing from a dystopian and cyberpunk aesthetic. I don't know if that means Elon is portending the end of western civilization, but it's a very interesting choice and I don't think the article writer is wrong to unpack what the design connotes.
> because we are running out of oil, the precious and finite resource that is utterly destroying our planet.
Not really running out. The US is the largest oil producing nation in the world now, and our output is at the highest levels[1] in history. Oil is practically dirt cheap and I don't see it breaking out in price anytime soon.
Even if the general shape of the cybertruck follows from the materials and production process, the packaging and marketing is clearly playing off dystopian fantasies. Both of these things can be true at the same time.
Selling cars is as much about telling a story as it is about explaining how you will get someone from point A to point B. That's even true for "boring" family cars - the story they are telling is one of reliability.
They designed from first principles. That's it. What would a truck look like if you built in the utility that's desired with a pickup truck - Cybertruck is what you get. They kept it simple with the EV benefits and good design twist.
250k pre-orders at last tweet I saw from Musk - and the online video reviews are reasonable people saying they love it, pre-ordered and will buy it, even if they're still not 100% sold on its look.
This article just screams anti-EV. Jalopnik writers have a huge bias towards ICE.
> Cars are a reflection of ourselves, whether we choose to festoon them in explicit messages or not. They can show what we hope for, what we aspire to, not just how large or how modest our bank accounts are. They are how we present ourselves to our fellow human
This was a nice exercise in creative writing. The Model X and the truck are different vehicles for different use cases. One is a luxury vehicle and the other is a cheap as chips (almost) utilitarian vehicle that can take a beating. Neither is a metaphor for the future of mankind.
[+] [-] AYBABTME|6 years ago|reply
Now if they could make a Cyberhatchback, I'd buy it right now.
[+] [-] cbsmith|6 years ago|reply
The Roadster is also a future vehicle (well the new one is at least) they're bringing to market, and it's got a pretty different design. So either you interpret it as the future might be as multifaceted as the present, or that actually cars don't forecast the future... but rather reflect the present.
[+] [-] ncmncm|6 years ago|reply
Trucks in the 1920s and early 1930s were utilitarian. This thing is 100% about the look.
[+] [-] otabdeveloper2|6 years ago|reply
No. The flat shiny surfaces are more expensive, harder to manufacture, more brittle and more susceptible to denting/scratching than a normal curved car surface.
That thing is a nightmare to take care of. Best keep in the garage unless someone breathes on it and ruins the look.
[+] [-] makerofspoons|6 years ago|reply
It looks the way it does to drive down production costs and because of the limitations of the processes used to manufacture it: https://electrek.co/2019/11/24/teslas-cybertruck-looks-weird...
If there is some concern that Tesla is predicting some dystopian future it should have begun the moment they introduced 'Bioweapon Defense Mode'.
[+] [-] _Microft|6 years ago|reply
I think they are targeting people who do not care for environmental issues and who still think that electric vehicles are something for beaus and weaklings. If these people can't be convinced to transition to EVs for ecological reasons, just give them another reason. It doesn't matter why they drive EVs, just that they do. (Well, and to give other car companies a kick in the butt in this market segment).
It is a design you can't ignore, it looks metal af and no matter what your pickup currently looks like, it will appear wimpy next to it.
Also observe that it no longer sports a Tesla logo. The teaser image [0] that Musk posted before still had one. There is none on the inside either, as far as I could tell, so maybe they are moving the Cybertruck away from the Tesla brand. The presentation was on SpaceX' premises as well, if I remember correctly. (Compare that to Zuckerberg who thinks that Facebook isn't credited enough for the success of its daughter platforms WhatsApp and Instagram and is moving them closer to the (imo) toxic brand of Facebook).
[0] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1106714774694297601
[+] [-] jv22222|6 years ago|reply
I wonder if people are underestimating how much the design was driven by the fact it was fun to make something that looked like it was from Blade Runner.
Maybe the whole thing started out as “Let’s make something shit cool like a blade runner cop car” and then the idea that it would bring down production costs, look different, etc, developed after they designed something that they really liked.
Elon seems to be quite motivated by having fun, one of the things I like about him.
[+] [-] mushufasa|6 years ago|reply
Elon: wow, stainless steel is an underrated material, it solved my starship rocket design problems. and it's cheap!
January 2019 (https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a25953663/elo...)
Elon: what if I used stainless steel for cars?
Elon: well there was the delorean, and blade runner...
Elon: you've got 6 months team.
(note there was no need for a dialogue partner)
[+] [-] tobib|6 years ago|reply
This actually opened my eyes, I haven't thought about it that way
[+] [-] firethief|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Waterluvian|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] needToCrust|6 years ago|reply
I have to disagree. That is your opinion not a fact. I think it looks like someone who just started out at whittling tried to make a Delorean and used the result as the design for the “truck”. Personally, I think the tesla “truck” looks wimpy. I’m really disappointed by it.
[+] [-] gddvhy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paganel|6 years ago|reply
Yeah, it is a declaration of war against pedestrians. Thankfully this thing will never catch on here in Europe and I'll continue being safe while crossing the street.
[+] [-] oxplot|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mamcx|6 years ago|reply
With my brother we also speculate that this is the PERFECT car to personalize: Must be a blast to custom paint it.
Also:
If you have one, you will be (probably) the ONLY with it in the block. This alone will be a factor for some..
[+] [-] flycaliguy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] senectus1|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goatinaboat|6 years ago|reply
How is that different from people who want to loudly signal their environmental virtue while ignoring externalities such as the electric power probably coming from coal, the extraction and manufacturing processes for batteries, etc? This is a competitor to an electric humvee - an unnecessarily large vehicle is wasted energy no matter where that energy originated
[+] [-] kpU8efre7r|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] buboard|6 years ago|reply
I don't know if it says much about the future of cars, it's a more of a lifestyle item and it remains to be seen how many of the preorders are being serious.
[+] [-] ncmncm|6 years ago|reply
https://jalopnik.com/a-deep-look-at-the-design-of-tesla-s-cy...
[+] [-] macintux|6 years ago|reply
1: https://jalopnik.com/goodyear-knew-of-dangerous-rv-tire-fail...
[+] [-] rch|6 years ago|reply
For context, my first question was: "how much firewood will it carry"?
[+] [-] ogre_codes|6 years ago|reply
I was thinking about shuttling mountain bikes up to the top of the hill myself. I could easily get 6 bikes and 6 people. If they could get summon to work on forest roads this would be the perfect shuttle truck.
[+] [-] davchana|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjc50|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] techslave|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] impulser_|6 years ago|reply
There is no way this will compete with the EV F150 that will come out near the same time frame as this.
Tesla doesn't even have a method to produce the body of these trucks at the scale needed for production.
Most of the people that pre-order these trucks won't see them until at least 2025, if not later. You think people are going to wait for these over buying an EV F150 that Ford can produce at scale of the normal F150. Maybe some will because of the brand, but most will go for the F150.
[+] [-] bryanlarsen|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChickeNES|6 years ago|reply
That's what the frunk, the trunk in the bottom of the bed, and the storage in the two triangle rear panels are for
[+] [-] gurumeditations|6 years ago|reply
Second of all, while I’m sure you can find some tesla fans who will go for it, especially with a $100 refundable deposit, I think they just made a bad call. How they go from Model X/3/S to this, escapes me. I love flat car panels, but I don’t think anyone who isn’t already a tesla fan will go for it. It’s viscerally ugly. They got many fundamentals right. The problem is the look. Trucks are not utilitarian. They are SUVs with the roof removed to make it less useful so that men will be comfortable buying it. Utilitarianism is not a legitimate excuse for this design.
It looks like a bunch of Silicon Valley nerds designed a truck they’d want to drive. It definitely has that niche appeal, but certainly no mass-market appeal. Is Tesla’s long term strategy to stay in the high end? I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re doing this kind of niche appeal because the price of batteries has not come down far enough to make a cheap decent electric car yet.
[+] [-] aasasd|6 years ago|reply
IMO we're currently sorta ripe for cohesive neo-neo-modernism in consumer tech, after the plenty of show-offery and getting designs ever more ‘friendly’. We've seen that shift in e.g. aluminum Macbooks after earlier iMacs, but cars seem to trail behind since there's apparently no design nerd like Jobs there. Cars are all bulbous and curvy now. The closest to a modernist car that's not looking outright DIY, is the first-generation Audi TT: just a rounded box on another rounded box.
So what would a modernist car feature nowadays? Let's look at the Cybertruck:
- Resurrects the wedge shape and makes the panels even flatter than they were in the 80s, instead of the ubiquitous ‘curve on curve’ of today after we learned to shape panels whatever which way. Lots of cars from the hatchback wave of the past decade, like Opel Astra J, looked simultaneously family- and rally-oriented with no discernible design statement: that feels like baroque indulgence, it's got to stop.
- A flat, straight LED line of light instead of barely-comprehensible current headlights. (Just two giant flat rectangular panels would also do pretty good, but would resemble SUVs from the 90s.)
- No decoration of any kind on the front. This one is important, and Tesla did well here. It's pretty much the last bastion of brand-specific decoration when cars all look the same shape—but (afaik) even the radiator grille on ICE cars is only for appearance now, and Tesla has already shown that it's ready to dispose of that. With the truck, the deed is done.
Funny enough, even recently most attempts at artistic depictions of ‘future cars’ imagined them more complex, not less. It will be curious to see how designs turn around now.
[+] [-] ncmncm|6 years ago|reply
It won't matter so much if they're too heavy, because gravity is less. It will need two or three layers of glass, with a vacuum gap between, for warmth, and to maintain shirtsleeve air pressure. It won't matter how they look, because nobody will ever go outside except for work, and try to send out robots even then.
He needs steel refining and rolling to make rocket body/tanks. I wonder how the thickness of the body panels compares with those of his new rocket thing...
One thing the author got dead right: these things will look very dated very, very quickly.
[+] [-] kilpikaarna|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tim333|6 years ago|reply
“Tesla Cybertruck (pressurized edition) will be official truck of Mars.”
[+] [-] boznz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|6 years ago|reply
"The Cybertruck is designed with the sole purpose of brutally driving down the cost of production. PERIOD.
...
They aren’t building dystopia. That’s your neo-cortex story telling. They are driving down costs to get the price of what would be a $65,000 truck to a $45,000 truck so they can remove excuses of why people shouldn’t buy one."
[+] [-] egypturnash|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keyle|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lordleft|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rb808|6 years ago|reply
First thing I thought of is that it looks a lot like a stealth fighter - interestingly, does that mean it can avoid radar speed detectors too?
[+] [-] nodesocket|6 years ago|reply
Not really running out. The US is the largest oil producing nation in the world now, and our output is at the highest levels[1] in history. Oil is practically dirt cheap and I don't see it breaking out in price anytime soon.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M...
[+] [-] danans|6 years ago|reply
Selling cars is as much about telling a story as it is about explaining how you will get someone from point A to point B. That's even true for "boring" family cars - the story they are telling is one of reliability.
[+] [-] loceng|6 years ago|reply
250k pre-orders at last tweet I saw from Musk - and the online video reviews are reasonable people saying they love it, pre-ordered and will buy it, even if they're still not 100% sold on its look.
[+] [-] hellotomyrars|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carrozo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nouveau0|6 years ago|reply
> Cars are a reflection of ourselves, whether we choose to festoon them in explicit messages or not. They can show what we hope for, what we aspire to, not just how large or how modest our bank accounts are. They are how we present ourselves to our fellow human
Ya, not everyone believes that
[+] [-] sunstone|6 years ago|reply