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Comment by gexla | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, a lot of people talking about how ugly it is. But that's exactly what a pick-up has always been. A big ugly thing with a bed in the back and a lot of utility most people didn't even use.

Some models over the years have looked decent. Many have (Ford especially) have been dog ugly. I could see this thing taking off, though not sure how rural truck owners would take to electric.

Edit: On second thought, rural truck owners must go through a ton of gas. I bet they would love to own something like this.

Edit edit: I also love that this thing can take a beating on the exterior. You don't have to worry about scratches in the paint or dents from shopping cart accidents.

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I have a family member who has a modified Nissan truck, that is currently getting 9 mpg and driving him crazy because of it (it was a whopping 13 mpg stock). He's stupidly spending a fortune in gas. There is certainly going to be a huge market for electric trucks. I don't know if this is one of the winners, it's a super odd design choice so it's impossible to tell how the market will respond ahead of time, however some companies are going to win very big in the segment. I'm pulling for Tesla, they've placed a lot of early, risky bets trying to push passenger vehicles forward.

Right. People will spend 50K on a truck because it's a major part of their livelihood and then the gas will be a big burden. This could help a lot in those cases.

Who cares about rural customers. How will the suburbs like it? That's who actually buys all those trucks.

Days after the Jeep Gladiator (a Wrangler pickup) was available, I saw several in the suburbs. This is Tesla territory, so come 2022 there will be a bunch of Cybertrucks taking the kids to school.

How many rural areas have you been to? I see small houses with a half-dozen pickups sitting around all the time when I get more than 100 miles or so out of a major city. And places like ranches, farms, and orchards seem to operate small fleets of them.

Of course, they usually span the past few decades of makes/models, but there are plenty of towns where the trucks outnumber the people.

I think one big issue will be that a lot of people are like 50 miles from the nearest major highway or town, which makes the range a bigger issue for daily use.

Its a population question. just more buyers in the city.

There are more people in the city, but are you sure there more truck purchases? I'm not, but all I'm saying is that I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't.

way more. Every rural person could buy 5 trucks a year and there'd still be 10x as many purchases in the city. and rural people dont buy 5 trucks a year. The population differences are staggering and trucks are popular.

Solar has been a hit for some rural folks as you can go off grid & make your own power. An electric vehicle could theoretically go part & parcel with that, although you'd need a large array.

when the Fukushima disaster happened in 2011 and the surrounding areas became no-go zone, gasoline cars were stuck because no gas tankers were coming in to refill the gas stations.

But electric cars were charging from local solar powered recharging stations just fine.

> that's exactly what a pick-up has always been. A big ugly thing

As a former truck owner I have to disagree. I like modern trucks and with a few exceptions think they've looked great since they were invented. The truck shown by Tesla does not appeal to me.

Frankly I think it's odd how one-sided the upvotes are going in this thread. I really don't think Tesla would bother astroturfing on HN so I dunno... I guess HN folks really like the design. Personally I just don't see it having wide appeal, especially among truck owners.

A Ford F150 for example, looks 'masculine'. The Tesla truck looks... sterile? It's like comparing a sledgehammer to a scalpel.

A Ford F150 looks blobby and and archaic. The Tesla truck looks like a fucking stealth fighter. How more masculine can you get?

I'm assuming by "upvotes" you're referring to positive reactions to the design as opposed to the HN voting buttons.

The design, of course, is subjective. We'll be seeing professional commentary which may sway our opinion. I would be interested to see if there were design constraints which weighed heavily in the final design.

There's a prism of ugly and this truck fits in the region which I can live with. I have mostly found Ford designs to be ugly (1995 for example.) I also feel that truck designs have mostly been similar. If I find X year Ford to be ugly, then it's relative to the same year of Chevy. There's also utility ugly and the sort of ugly which attempts to be artistic but which fails into something I would be embarrassed to drive (curves and paint schemes which aren't meant to be functional and just look bad.)

The Tesla Cybertruck has the feel of minimalist utility. It's also bold and different. Unlike the Rivian, it's not trying to be anything like the current state of the art of trucks. I think it will have a lot of appeal for being different and for having crazy specs. It's ugly, but I want one.

I have been seeing good comments pointing out problems. For example, it doesn't seem to be accommodating to accessories. Maybe this is something which will get worked out before it hits production.

History will judge this thing better than we can. Regardless of our opinion, it will be interesting to see if the design sticks.

For one moment I thought that you're calling the Cybertruck the "prism of ugly".

It's funny that you choose the 1995 style because that style of F-150 is enduring enough to have its own short hand amongst truck people, the OBS (Old Body Style). The OBS generations of the F-150 are considered to this day to be beautiful trucks with lasting aesthetics by many truck folks and you'll see a lot of well preserved or rebuilt OBS bodies out there. Certainly far more than the body style that succeeded it (1997).

Tastes are subjective, I agree, but I want to point out on, at least this small matter, how much yours diverge from a lot of people that purchase trucks. I think history will judge mostly whether this appealed to people in a venn diagram of truck owners and not truck owners who are looking for very aggressive and unorthodox large status vehicles and are underserved by the truck SUV market.

Anything about trucks in HN (or the internet really) will devolve into complaint fests about American trucks and, their size, their faux masculinity, how they are sub-par vehicles, etc. In that environment any sort of perceived challenge to the big 4 (Toyota Tundra included because it's the most American truck you can imagine, horrifying gas mileage, huge as hell) and any kind complaining about trucks is encouraged.

I don't really mind, it doesn't affect me one way or another, but I do find the consistency in these threads curious. Sometimes I chalk it up to probably far more European commenters than I would have guessed, but also it's just the demo of HN or people that spend too much time arguing about things on the internet (see the comment section of Jalopnik). You could easily turn loose a markov chain based comment generator on one of these threads and rise to the top.

This is basically cultural conditioning and selection bias. You've already owned a truck, you think they look great, you think they're masculine, you compare it to a sledgehammer. It seems marketing has worked very effectively on you.

> Yeah, a lot of people talking about how ugly it is. But that's exactly what a pick-up has always been.

That's not universal, these things are common in Australia and look pretty sleek: https://www.google.com/search?q=commodore+ute&safe=active&hl...

But even the less pretty ones had that sort of brutal, functional, serious look. This ... does not.

UTE, the symbol of bogan is sleek? These are a joke for anyone but complete degenerates.

That's not a pick-up. ;)

That's a car with a bed, like an El Camino.

That truck you link looks horrible. I cannot fathom how some designer thought that looked good. It’s like they worked halfway on the design and then pushed straight to production.

Then again some people feel the same way about the Tesla truck. Personally I think the Cybertruck looks incredible.

God I'm laughing so hard at those pictures. That is the vehicle equivalent of a mullet, business in front and party in the back.

I want this car, but other pickups have started looking pretty decent for the past two decades now. To put it lightly, the cyber truck’s look is not conservative at all

Rural owners? You mean people with a ton of cheap land to put a solar farm onto?

Rural doesn't imply the individual owns land. Rural does imply long distances, modest incomes, etc. I certainly wouldn't want to charge an electric vehicle @ $0.14/KWH and I don't have the option for solar.

I have a Toyota Tacoma. I expect it will go well into the multi-hundred miles (typical for Tacomas), I have 4 jerry cans filled for when exploring off-road or for times like "oh hey, the power is out, the pump in a rural town doesn't have power".

At 14c/kwh it’s still cheaper on a per mile basis than gasoline.

Is it really that high? That’s what I pay in New York City.

It's a rural coop and according to my last bill, the number is -- 0.14779/KWH.

Electricity is still not an option for exploring / driving extended off road trips.

Electricity wouldn't be an option for exploring / driving extended off road trips for most. An enterprising owner could use some custom PV/mounts/wiring, a battery or cap buffer, and some power electronics provide off grid charging.

Someone could do this with any EV, but tossing it all in the back of a pickup is easier than a sedan or even an SUV.

You nailed it. Long distance driving as the norm. Modest incomes, but still driving expensive pick-ups. Gas is a major expense in this case. If you can save on electric, then this thing would be looking really good.

I don't think I would trust a Tesla to the rigors one exposes trucks on farms, acreage properties, etc entail. Rural areas are a mix of some newer but also a lot of older trucks.

Gas is one expense. California and some other western states (WA) are doing what they can to ramp up licensing fees on older vehicles to make them less affordable.

>California and some other western states (WA) are doing what they can to ramp up licensing fees on older vehicles to make them less affordable.

Do you have a source for this?

I think a Tesla is rated for about 3 miles per kwh and you'd be lucky to get 15 miles per gallon in an ICE truck at 2.6$/gallon in places like Texas. So 1 gallon == ~5-10kwh assuming that very generous & awesome milage and low price for petrol. So you get about 3-4x the miles for the same money with an EV when we pretend that holds up (i.e. just double/triple the numbers for your actual cost).

Rural means limited access to infrastructure, including petrol stations. Especially when those start going out of business because of people switching to EVs, this will induce some range anxiety for ICE vehicle owners that already have to spend a lot of money on fuel just for the detours they have to make to refuel (50-100 miles). When petrol stations start going out of business, it will be the small unprofitable rural ones that go first. Margins for those are shit to begin with and even a few percent drop in demand is going to impact them heavily. And it will be more than a few percent. Worse, remaining hybrids and ICE vehicles will be competing on range and efficiency. Which means less revenue for petrol stations charging per gallon.

With an EV, any kind of wall socket will be able to charge you (though probably not at a great speed). That includes the one you have at home. With this thing you leave with 500 mile range in the morning. In case that that is not enough, any surviving petrol stations that are functioning will likely have wall sockets and if the owners are somewhat enterprising they might invest in high capacity chargers. If you are unlucky enough that there is no super charger in a 100 mile radius, that should cover your emergency needs. Generally it is going to be much easier to find the nearest functioning wall socket than a petrol station. The absolute worst case is that you run out of battery due to spectacularly poor planning and then somebody with another EV (i.e. battery on wheels) drives up to you to give you a few kwh. Mobile charging infrastructure is going to be a thing.

My bit about rural truck owners was more about demographic than power source. I have lived much of my life in rural areas of Idaho and Montana. The looks of this thing is NO problem. People will love it. But as a big life change, going electric is a big leap when throwing down that 50K for the family truck. I guess we'll see.

It’s probably not going to immediately outsell the F-150 in Montana, but I bet it will quickly become Tesla’s best selling vehicle I’m willing to bet. Long term (5-20 years), people in Montana will come around to accepting electric vehicles.

Everyone else in this thread is saying the styling is a negative, but they couldn’t be more wrong.

In 20 years we will be too far into the climate crises. Doubt people will care much about trucks at that point.

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