[grouchomarx]

>I think the timing of the Cybertruck starting deliveries roughly aligning with when Elon got heavily involved in politics

That and also it's just a bad product.

>That said, even though it's not to my taste, I do admire that they dared to do something different and took a big gamble on it.

A pickup truck should just be max utility, especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one

edit: agree there's a market for the raptor off-road tremor package thing, but it wasn't ford's first and they've been selling commerical trucks for 75 years. A true tesla f150 competitor would have sold like crazy, I think

[alexjplant]

> A pickup truck should just be max utility, especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one

The modern US pickup truck isn't built for utility. It's a $60,000 four-door lifted luxobarge with leather interior and a short bed. It signals (perceived) wealth while preserving working-class alignment. It can also be justified by way of having to pick up used furniture for TikTok refinish and flip projects or bimonthly runs to Home Depot to buy caulk and lightbulbs. Independent tradesman can write them off as work vehicles or, allegedly, use COVID-era PPP loans to buy them.

It's the suburban equivalent of a yuppie's Rolex Submariner. Investment bankers generally don't go scuba diving and if they did a dive computer would be vastly preferable.

I say all of that to say that making a pickup truck for that market segment isn't a bad idea from a numbers perspective. You just can't market it as a luxury vehicle because the whole point is that it is but it isn't.

[mrexroad]

Bingo.

Sprinter vans, utility vans, or even minivans are far, far more useful for trades than modern pickups. Heck, my minivan was the goat for home renovations—it’d easily fit a dozen full 4x8 sheets of drywall/osb/ply/mdf/etc and I could still close the rear gate. I always got chuckles from guys awkwardly wrangling/securing sheets onto a pickup’s bed at the supply yard when I’d easily slide the sheets off the cart directly into the van by myself.

A heavy duty pickup makes sense when you have regular towing, or large bulky transport, needs. While on this topic, I’ll take a moment to lament the demise of the light duty pickup that provided a bit of extra utility while still fitting in a normal parking space.

[jahsome]

As someone who's just been trying to buy a crappy used truck to haul some crap to the dump a couple times a year, you're absolutely spot on. I even live in the southwest US where trucks make up a considerable portion of vehicles on the road.

Crappy used trucks simply aren't up for sale. And even the rare listing I do come across, the asking price is ridiculously inflated.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

It is utility, just not the utility you're thinking of. Try spending all day, every day in a basic, rough riding pickup truck, then compare it to spending all day in a "luxobarge" that can still tow a 7,000lb trailer.

To the people I know who drive trucks like that, they're basically mobile offices.

[edgineer]

That's opinion/stereotype, and unsupported. From Rob Cockerham's experiment (2002):

"I guessed that 98% of all truck beds are empty"

"In 25 minutes I had counted 150 trucks, and 99 of them had been empty. This 66% empty ratio was much lower than I had expected. I hadn't realized that so many trucks were being so successfully utilized."

"The results were similar: 39% of the trucks were hauling goods, and 61 of them were empty"

"Along with this adjustment of my perception, I also realized that an empty truck is no more wasteful than an empty back seat. Most cars AND trucks in the US drive around with 75% of the cargo space unutilized...what difference does it make if it is interior or exterior space?"

https://cockeyed.com/science/data/truck_beds/truck_beds.html

[queuebert]

You're out of touch with the working class. Some people practically live in these trucks. A little comfort goes a long way toward making their day bearable. Leather is easy to clean, power adjustment makes the seat more comfortable. Auto wipers, climate, etc., help them focus on the calls they're taking. And so on. Fleets of these are bought for commercial purposes as well. Companies wouldn't spend that kind of money without a reason.

There's a reason these "luxobarges" are the best selling vehicle in the U.S., and the answer is not virtue signaling.

[Aurornis]

> The modern US pickup truck isn't built for utility. It's a $60,000 four-door lifted luxobarge with leather interior and a short bed. It signals (perceived) wealth while preserving working-class alignment.

Reading the HN version of truck drivers is such a stark contrast to interfacing with actually contractors on a day to day basis.

A vehicle being comfortable and luxurious isn’t something only the bourgeoisie can appreciate. People who work spend a lot of time in their vehicles too.

[wmoxam]

> It's a $60,000 four-door lifted luxobarge with leather interior and a short bed

It can be that but all the major manufacturers have a ton of trim levels and options. Personally I drive a f150 that doesn't even have power windows.

Most Cybertrucks I've seen in the wild are running at a low ground clearance, reminiscent of a 'coupe utility' vehicle like an El Camino.

[potato3732842]

The venn diagram between people who say what you just said (which to be clear, I'm not disagreeing with) and people who screech about safety if they see a pickup being anywhere near full utilized is way too close to a circle for me to take either seriously.

[bluGill]

The modern US pickup truck still has the utility image and they make sure they sell a bunch to people who want utility to ensure that the image is not lost. That is why the lightening came in a cheap pro trim clearly targeted at the things pros are likely to want. (I don't know how well it worked, but they seriously tried to sell to that market)

Of course the real money is in the high trim levels that sell for twice as much but don't really cost much more.

[b112]

I believe you're accurate for some purchases, but also woefully inaccurate outside of your experience space.

There are millions of workers carrying tools, parts, supplies, and refuse in pickup trucks. Where I live (rural), almost everyone has a truck, and it is for work, not show.

And in cities, as I walk around neighbourhoods, I see endless roofers, plumbers, builders, gardeners, and more using them for work.

[freetime2]

Pickup trucks also portray toughness - the other all-important American virtue in addition to wealth. I always get a kick out of American Football ad breaks, where every other commercial is either a truck commercial narrated by some guy with an extremely gravelly voice talking about how tough their trucks are, or an ad for ED pills.

[idiot900]

They can be luxury vehicles with reasonable running costs - regular gas and less depreciation than the usual luxury brands. They also have utility in case you need it. Pickup trucks aren't my cup of tea but it can be very rational to buy one even if you don't need it as a work truck.

[sroerick]

Yes, and they're awesome. Also much closer to 100k.

[mlyle]

I'm looking forward to the Telo-- if they get to market. It's absolutely all about utility. It will be interesting to see if people only want pickups as a fashion statement or if a weird, very practical vehicle can win.

(Same bed-size as Tacoma; midgate that folds down to hold a full sheet of plywood; seats 4 people comfortably; same length as a Mini Cooper SE).

[DragonStrength]

I know plenty of engineers with expensive trucks used to carry their families around during the week and haul their hunting bounty home on weekends. In that scenario, the Cybertruck is a total failure. Where's the exposed bed for a deer? How about hauling the boat to the lake?

Cybertruck is a product management failure.

[evantbyrne]

It never stopped being possible to order a bare bones F-150 with a 8ft bed. Might not have the tradeoffs that many people are looking for, but difficult to argue something like that has less utility than a mini truck that can't drive on the highway.

[yowayb]

I once rented a "kei van" in Japan once. I think I remember seeing similarly utilitarian trucks, but forget what they were called. I found the kei vans very practical.

[Aunche]

> It's the suburban equivalent of a yuppie's Rolex Submariner.

The difference is that the Submariner can actually be used as a dive watch. If it turned to fail significantly more often than other dive watches underwater, people would be much less inclined to buy it even though it would literally make no difference for them.

[thomassmith65]

My impression is that the pickup truck as status symbol began with a Back to the Future product placement. You may recall that the character Marty lusts after a 1985 Toyota SR5 Xtra Cab.

I saw the movie in the theater and, at the time, found it strange that anyone would have a work vehicle as a dream car.

[mbfg]

a pick up without flat bed rails has significantly reduced the areas where it can be used as a work truck. Pretty clear signal that the CyberTruck was a status symbol not a work truck.

[0xWTF]

Maybe temper your otherism a bit, and try reading this:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/opinion/marie-gluesenkamp...

<blockquote>

“Spreadsheets can contain a part of truth,” Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez told me. “But never all of truth.”

Looking to illustrate this, I bought the recent book “White Rural Rage” and opened it more or less at random to a passage about rural pickup trucks. It cites a rich portfolio of data and even a scholarly expert on the psychology of truck purchasers, to make what might seem like an obvious point — that it’s inefficient and deluded for rural and suburban men to choose trucks as their daily driving vehicles. The passage never does explain, though, how you’re supposed to haul an elk carcass or pull a cargo trailer without one.

It’s all but impossible to go into any rural bar in America today, ask for thoughts on pickup trucks and not hear complaints about the size of trucks these days, about touch-screens and silly gimmicks manufacturers use to justify their ballooning prices. Our economy, awash in cheap capital, has turned quality used trucks into something like a luxury asset class.

It’s often more affordable in the near-term to buy a new truck than a reliable used one. Manufacturers are incentivized by federal regulations, and by the basic imperatives of the thing economy, to produce ever-bigger trucks for ever-higher prices to lock people into a cycle of consumption and debt that often lasts a lifetime.

This looks like progress, in G.D.P. figures, but we are rapidly grinding away the freedom and agency once afforded by the ability to buy a good, reasonable-size truck that you could work on yourself and own fully. You can learn a lot about why people feel so alienated in our economy if you ask around about the pickup truck market.

Instead, the authors of “White Rural Rage” consulted data and an expert to argue that driving a pickup reflects a desire to “stay atop society’s hierarchy,” but they do not actually try to reckon much with the problem that passage raises — that consumer choices, such as buying trucks, have become a way for many Americans to express the deep attachment they have to a life rooted in the physical world. A reader might conclude that people who want a vehicle to pull a boat or haul mulch are misguided, or even dangerous. And a party led by people who believe that is doomed among rural voters, the Midwestern working class and probably American men in general.

</blockquote>

[jmyeet]

> The modern US pickup truck isn't built for utility.

Not really true. Something like an F150/250/350 is absolutely built for utility. It's popular for a reason. It's just not used for utility by a large number of buyers. It's a "pavement princess".

The Cybertruck is an objectively bad product for many reasons of which utility is pretty high up there.

For example, it's really heavy because of the steel body yet it has an aluminium frame. The problem with aluminium is that it deforms with stress in a way that steel doesn't. Why does this matter? If you're towing a heavy load over rough terrain the frame is going to face large forces up and down that will end up snapping that frame.

> It's the suburban equivalent of a yuppie's Rolex Submariner.

That's a funny example because it shows you know just as much about watches as you do about trucks, which is to say nothing.

Sure, finance bros might buy Submariners but that doesn't change the fact that it's a very robust product designed for diving, originally. Now the need for that has been diminished because we now have dive computers, quartz dive watches and such and you can argue it's not worth ~$10k or that there as good or better options for less (which there are) but it's still an excellent product with many years of design to suit its original purpose.

Even if you use a dive computer as an experienced diver, you'll generally also have a dive watch because computers can fail [1].

> I say all of that to say that making a pickup truck for that market segment isn't a bad idea from a numbers perspective

So we have luxury SUVs where once the SUV was a commercial vehicle (eg Toyota Land Cruiser) and they may sacrifice some of the features such vehicles originally had (eg AWD) but the trades are made for a product that people want.

So yes, you could make an equivalent truck and say it has a market. Maybe it does. But even if it does, the Cybertruck isn't it. Because it's a terrible product for every purpose other than an expensive demonstration of your political leanings.

[1]: https://www.analogshift.com/blogs/transmissions/watches-for-...

[staplers]

Class tourism is a succinct term here. Blending in with hardworking blue collar Americans is a whole marketing industry in itself.

[a4isms]

> A pickup truck should just be max utility

A working truck should be max utility. Around the core market of "working trucks," there are various wannabe truck products that do not have to be max utility. For example, a Subaru Brat or a Hyundai Santa Fe. Niche products compared to an F-150, but they had/have their fans.

I personally can't stand the design, but the idea of an impractical "halo vehicle" that appeals to a niche audience but burnishes the brand as "forward-looking" is not a bad one. It's just the execution of this particular halo vehicle that I would have a problem with were I in the market for a lifestyle look-at-me vehicle.

[b40d-48b2-979e]

    A *working* truck should be max utility.

All trucks should be working trucks. There is no reason to drive something that large and heavy that isn't better served by smaller vehicles that don't damage our shared infrastructure while being safer to drive.

[SPICLK2]

A modern F150 doesn't have "max utility". It's for site foremen and driving to Walmart.

[remove-resolve]

I can't speak for the Santa Fe, but most Brat owners admit they have no intention of using it as a utility vehicle. The same cannot be said for most F-150 owners I know.

[ActorNightly]

>A pickup truck should just be max utility,

The problem is as soon as you go EV, you use a lot of utility from the get go. With a truck specifically, because its a brick aerodynamically. There is no reason to buy a Cybertruck or Lightning when you can get a gas or hybrid F150 (or a Raptor) for a little bit more, and be able to sit at 80 mph on highways without worrying about range.

The biggest suprise about the lightning is that Ford didn't put in a gas engine in it as a range extender. They have 3 cylinder ecoboost engines that would have been perfect for that.

[Spooky23]

My brother has one, it is an amazing vehicle with better range performance than Tesla. It's dramatically better in the snow. Towing of large loads is a valid downside, but reality is that most people don't tow, and people who do are probably fine with 80% of the use cases (construction trailers, lawn trailers, etc).

The business problem Tesla solved at Ford cannot is the dealer network. He pre-ordered his, and the dealer he was stuck with tried to rip him off like 4 different ways.

The other issue is that car guys are afraid of electric, as the entire supporting industry is essentially obsolete. It's hard to get excited about something that will take away your ability to pay your mortgage. Every car dealer employee and mechanic knows that.

[drewda]

Here's a different aspect of utility: The F150 Lightning includes 120V and optionally 240V outlets, so it replaces the need to carry a separate gas-powered generator.

That's probably more relevant to fleet vehicles for construction and maintenance firms than to individuals towing boats. But just to offer an example of how the F150 Lightning is a great fit for certain uses.

[jonlink]

Next generation of lightning is doing exactly that with a smaller battery, they're claiming 700+ miles of range: https://www.fromtheroad.ford.com/us/en/articles/2025/next-ge...

[Reason077]

> "The biggest suprise about the lightning is that Ford didn't put in a gas engine in it as a range extender."

From a manufacturing perspective, adding a range extender does add a lot of cost and complexity. And from an ownership perspective it adds a lot of service, maintenance and reliability considerations that you don't have with a pure EV.

But in any case, this is exactly what they're doing: replacing the Lightning with a range extender ("EREV") plug-in hybrid. But a new all-electric truck based on Ford's upcoming, cheaper "Universal EV platform" is also due in 2027.

[scottyah]

You have one reason listed, which is going 80mph (which is illegal in most states). They also can't tow long distances easily, but are superior in nearly every other way.

[Marsymars]

> The biggest suprise about the lightning is that Ford didn't put in a gas engine in it as a range extender.

They announced that along with the EV Lightning cancellation: https://www.fromtheroad.ford.com/us/en/articles/2025/next-ge...

[adgjlsfhk1]

You also gain some utility. Infinite torque at idle, cheaper 4wd, better traction control, fewer mechanical problems, etc.

[LooseMarmoset]

> max utility

As the owner of a rusty 1985 pickup with manual windows and no radio, I can tell you there is great demand for utility pickup trucks that the manufacturers WILL NOT MAKE.

The first problem is CAFE rules. Congress legislated the light pickup truck out of existence. To get around CAFE rules, manufacturers increased the size of trucks and added a back row so they could be reclassified in a way that skirted CAFE rules.

However, there's a big demand for pickups, so people bought these because they needed trucks, and nothing else was available. Manufacturers took advantage of demand and started adding features normal pickup drivers didn't want or need, to access a high-market class of buyers. "Where else are you gonna go?"

$100k pickups, here we are.

Manufacturers are in no hurry to go back to the low-margin pickup days, even though that is what classic pickup buyers actually want.

[arcticbull]

> A pickup truck should just be max utility, especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one

> 75 percent of truck owners use their truck for towing one time a year or less (meaning, never). Nearly 70 percent of truck owners go off-road one time a year or less. And a full 35 percent of truck owners use their truck for hauling—putting something in the bed, its ostensible raison d’être—once a year or less.

[1] https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-siz...

[freetime2]

I wonder if there are any other countries in the world where the best-selling automobile is something completely impractical? Or are Americans unique in that regard?

Serious question. I can't think of any, but I'm also not familiar with car markets the world over. In Japan, for example, the best-selling car is the Honda N-BOX [1], which is an incredibly practical car.

[1] https://car.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/2076520.html

[groundzeros2015]

> pickup truck should just be max utility

Except the main demographic buying F150s is suburban dads driving to their office job.

[cmtm4]

I think the reason this take gets push-back in discussions (including here) is that it's highly regional.

I've lived in parts of the US where I doubt more than 10% of pickup trucks on the road (and there were a lot of them) were really justifiable purchases as trucks. They were aspirational purchases, and/or were selected for status/class/politics signaling.

I've lived other places in the US where the whole region had far fewer trucks (but a hell of a lot more Volvos... like, easily 10x as many as the other place) where I bet at least 50% of pickup trucks saw enough truck-use to really be justifiable.

[bluGill]

And using the truck on weekends to tow the boat, or do other work with it. Not every weekend, but once a month in summer.

[wffurr]

Gas doesn't cost enough.

[potato3732842]

>A pickup truck should just be max utility, especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one

How do you even define that? Give it a heavy duty bed and you're wasting weight that could be put toward hauling/towing capacities (and lord knows how people here would feel about ignoring those). A big engine for "reasonable driving" when fully loaded guzzles fuel.

[uncletaco]

I don't know much about car economics but I'd think Tesla probably should have built a truck to sell as a fleet vehicle first. There are very few car brands that aren't part of a larger entity doing b2b vehicle sales.

[pstuart]

I remember the unveiling (loved the "bullet proof" glass demo). That was before I understood who Elon really was and I was pro Tesla. I never would have bought such an ugly vehicle, and I don't normally use looks to evaluate a potential ride.

[catigula]

>A pickup truck should just be max utility, especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one

I don't think this is actually true, most pickup trucks aren't designed for maximum utility. They're designed to sell a lifestyle.

[everdrive]

Heartbreaking but true. The most popular pickups today are not the most useful pickups. There are no more basic utilitarian pickups any longer, at least in the US.

Pickups are a little bit interesting in this regard. For any given model (eg: Tacoma, Frontier, etc.) the more premium the truck, the worse it is at being a truck. Each feature you add reduces its payload, and in the case of the Frontier, you could drop from a 6' bed with ~1,600 lbs of payload on the base model all the way down to a 5' bed with ~900 lbs of payload for the most premium offroad model.

[a4isms]

Lifestyle sells.

I drive a wagon. Of course wagon owners talk about the utility. And yet, you can buy a wagon with a twin-turbo V8 engine. What's the "sportwagon" segment all about? Certainly not going to Home Depot to buy four toilets for the new house, it's about putting your $15,000 Cannondale Black Ink MTB on the roof and swanking up to the trailhead.

[rootusrootus]

I struggle to think what vehicle has more all around utility (by my own definition) than my Lightning. The only things it does not do well is tow 300 miles, and drive in NYC. Neither of which are on my requirements list.

[chung8123]

Not just trucks. Almost all cars sell a lifestyle.

[giglamesh]

> ... most pickup trucks aren't designed for maximum utility. They're designed to sell a lifestyle.

Yes, but that lifestyle can and sometimes does include actual needs for some of the utility. There is a great observation from Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat from Washington’s 3rd District in an NYT piece a couple of days ago. I included a perhaps too long quote in lieu of apologizing for the paywall.

> “Spreadsheets can contain a part of truth,” Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez told me. “But never all of truth.”

> Looking to illustrate this, I bought the recent book “White Rural Rage” and opened it more or less at random to a passage about rural pickup trucks. It cites a rich portfolio of data and even a scholarly expert on the psychology of truck purchasers, to make what might seem like an obvious point — that it’s inefficient and deluded for rural and suburban men to choose trucks as their daily driving vehicles. The passage never does explain, though, how you’re supposed to haul an elk carcass or pull a cargo trailer without one.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/opinion/marie-gluesenkamp...

[internet2000]

> A pickup truck should just be max utility, especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one

That's very unrealistic considering the market.

[dzhiurgis]

> A pickup truck should just be max utility

Yet we are in a thread where one with max utility has been cancelled and one flop of the century continues to sell.

[giancarlostoro]

> That and also it's just a bad product.

I want whatever the v3 equivalent of the Cybertruk would be. Assuming they improve on it.

[__loam]

That's basically the F150 or a rivian

[scottyah]

> it's just a bad product. So you've never driven one?

> A pickup truck should just be max utility You don't know much about trucks? What does this even mean, max utility? Trucks are designed for different purposes. Should we eliminate all programming languages besides bash or python?

> especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one Seems like you don't know much about business either. Most new products should NOT try to do everything at once the first time.

[DragonStrength]

BINGO: the folks buying these things are doing so to virtue signal their politics. If you need a truck for work or hunting, you're still buying a truck, not some Silicon Valley concept car like the Cybertruck.

[bpiroman]

Cybertruck is the greatest vehicle ever made.

[knodi]

But Cybertruck has better vibes. /s