Hacker News Reader

Comment by rdoherty | Hacker News Reader

I agree that electric trucks are important to combat climate change, but wow. If their goal is to sell to the market that buys pickup trucks, I think the styling is way off the mark.

Huge, beastly trucks are a status symbol and signalling to others that you are are certain demographic. Same reason some people buy cheap cars and add shiny wheels and lights. Same reason some people buy BMWs and Mercedes. These are all part of socioeconomic norms. I don't see how the normal truck crowd will latch on to this.

The specs are pretty impressive though. 500 mile range got my attention.

View on HN

Eh, that portion of the truck crowd was never gonna go for a truck that doesn't make loud ICE noises anyway.

I think the goal was to look heavy duty (which it does), not big, which is for people with insecurity issues.

Rest assured, if you slap a "Punisher" sticker on this thing, it will be welcome at any roadside bar in Texas. It looks like the sort of thing the SEALs would roll up in.

I don't think we can know how the market that buys pickup trucks will react to this without running the experiment. Pickup truck buyers haven't had the option of buying a pickup truck that doesn't look like a conventional pickup truck.

Is the normal truck crowd going to latch onto a $70k truck?

I think this is going to resonate really well with techies. Not a huge demographic, but one that can afford it.

The market for sci-fi/cyberpunk cars won't be huge, but in exchange, this looks like it'll capture _all_ of that market, as opposed to a small slice of a more conventional one.

When I lived in rural Missouri, I was shocked at how many of my neighbors and colleagues were shelling out $70k for their pickup trucks.

The price here is not a concern at all. The design.... not so sure about that.

Take a look at the FJ Cruiser, or the Wrangler. This fits right in with that look.

There's also a Chevy truck with a toy look... But I can't remember the name.

For the Hummer crowd?

People don’t buy cheap cars to belong to a demographic, they do it because they don’t have money for better generally

Reply on news.ycombinator.com