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Comment by gonehome | Hacker News Reader

The Tesla truck thing has always surprised me a bit since it feels like a misreading of the audience.

When I think of the people that like big trucks, I think of the people blocking super chargers or blowing black smoke out the back onto Teslas. People that hate EVs because of a tribal political affiliation. This is the group that cares about status and argues over Ford vs. Chevy.

Outside of those people are the ones just doing regular work and I think they just want a regular looking truck to put things in (not the market).

Honestly don’t know the market for this one. I love my model3, but I’m unsure of this.

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>The Tesla truck thing has always surprised me a bit since it feels like a misreading of the audience.

I watched the stream. My impression was "someone made a truck, designed and marketed it based on my preferences when I was 19."

If they had done this in 1999, I totally would have bought it.

But then I wasn't the sort of guy who bought pick up trucks. I was the sort of guy who got beat up by the sort of guy who bought pick up trucks. (I mean, by 19 I had a real job in a much larger city and was away from all that, but... the memories were very fresh.)

But that's the thing, even if this is totally unappealing to the sort of people who currently buy pickup trucks... this is appealing to a completely different group of people who currently would not consider a pickup truck.

This might explain the bad goth 'neuromancer' cosplay. to get someone like 19 year old me to buy a pickup, you need to overcome the associations with pickup trucks. and... yeah, that's going to alienate the existing pickup truck drivers.

While they may stand out, only a tiny percentage of pickup truck drivers are like this.

There are so many people who have desk jobs or jobs where they don't really need or only occasionally need a pickup, but they still drive one (at least where I grew up, in Northern California). Because of the Tesla truck's performance, and many other EV advantages, my guess is that this pickup truck will indeed appeal to a large number of pickup owners, including showboaters, occasional towers, occasional use daily drivers, as professional/hardcore customers.

Exactly. My F150 bed currently contains 6 egg boxes of children's clothes to donate, two folding chairs, a foot locker sized rubbermaid container filled with emergency gear & camping stuff, a large Patagonia duffel full of sports clothes, a smaller duffel with cleats & soccer ball, two pairs of basketball shoes + ball, an extra jacket and a large umbrella. Yes, I don't need to keep all this crap in the truck all the time, but it sure is convenient to have that option!

> currently contains 6 egg boxes of children's clothes to donate

How do you fit clothes in an egg box?

Ostrich eggs?

Egg boxes hold 12 (I think) flats with 30 eggs each.

You can get them from supermarkets. And they're thick cardboard. Great for moving books.

This is an egg box where I’m from. You wouldn’t get anything in it except eggs or maybe thimbles. I guess yours are different.

https://www.amazon.com/Cartons-Flattop-Carton-12-Egg-Recycla...

We call that a carton not a box.

Yes, that was my point.

egg box / case : http://www.eggboxes.com/media/ecom/prodlg/30doz.jpg

egg flat : http://www.eggboxes.com/media/ecom/prodsm/5x6superflat.jpg

egg carton / box : http://www.eggboxes.com/media/ecom/prodsm/005.JPG

I largely agree with your points, but anecdotally, I want one.

I have wanted a truck for a while since I like the look/'pretend' utility (but don't like the tribal-association of trucks). This is so ugly its a statement item, but its a Tesla so its still a status symbol. Its fast (so I don't have to compromise on that bmw/audi) and it can haul shit if I ever need that.

Hi, F-350 owner here. My wife and I's other car is a Prius.

In addition to woodworking and desiring a truck bed for that, we tow a camper with which we can boondock (dry/off-grid camp) via solar power. I purchase carbon offset credits for our trips. Not ideal, but better than nothing. I have not modified my truck in any way, especially not to "roll coal", and I report others that I see doing that. I take pride in my truck passing emissions tests and would never attempt to defeat ("delete") those controls. I would never consider blocking a charging station, and in fact we almost bought the Prius Prime plug-in hybrid when it was first released but it wasn't available in our area yet at the time. Otherwise my other car would need those chargers. We also take the Prius as much as possible, and only use the truck when necessary. I enjoy hypermiling in the Prius, too. I hate that diesel trucks like mine create other non-carbon pollution like NOx so I try to only drive it when needed, and would gladly adopt new hardware to reduce those emissions further if it didn't hurt overall efficiency. I also would love for carbon-neutral (or at least carbon-reduced) biodiesel that doesn't come from destroying palm tree forests to be an option until EV trucks are more available. I have other truck-owning friends that are also not obnoxious intentional polluters that hate EVs. Anecdotally at least, my friends and I are the exact market for the Tesla Cybertruck. My gut feeling is that there are more truck owners that think Teslas are cool and want one than those that block charging stations.

I guess my point is, next time you pull up behind a heavy-duty truck, it could be me, a vegetarian EV/hybrid lover driving a carbon-offset, emissions-compliant truck on their way to go off-grid camp via solar power, waiting for the Cybertruck to launch.

You sound like the ideal person for the cyber truck then - are you excited about it? Is this something you really want to buy?

I am excited about the potential of EV trucks and a Tesla truck especially. Absolutely I'll consider it once it's reviewed well and it actually ships. After the Model 3 situation I'm not going to put down a deposit or anything, I'll wait and see. But it's certainly a vehicle I'd strongly consider switching to.

Thanks - it'll be interesting to see how many people like you there are, hopefully a lot.

I think this is going to be more of a fleet niche -- companies and gov't agencies that have a ZEV requirement for some percentage of their fleets, such as in California.

For rural/agricultural uses... EV doesn't make sense until range is fixed. 500 miles is certainly good enough for most applications, though, so maybe my thinking is out of date.

For urban contractors/builders etc., an EV truck does make sense; they're not typically going to drive more than 50-100 miles in a day. Then it comes down to cost, though; your average plumber or electrician isn't going to plop down $70K for the 3-motor AWD 500 mile range model.

For general rough-and-ready pickup drivers, the Tesla comes across as too exotic and weird looking. Those guys (and I think it's almost all guys) are going to wait until their F-150 or RAM wears out, then buy another one used. Or they're going to wait for a more "normal" looking EV truck that has decent range and off-road capability.

I'm thinking the rural/agricultural market might be quite a factor - I was pretty excited about the pneumatic option, if it can work as a small tractor that needs fewer repairs and recharges for pennies, it could catch on no matter what people think of the aesthetic.

Have you considered that your assumptions may be heavily flawed?

> When I think of the people that like big trucks, I think of the people blocking super chargers or blowing black smoke out the back onto Teslas. People that hate EVs because of a tribal political affiliation. This is the group that cares about status and argues over Ford vs. Chevy.

That's a surprisingly narrow minded world view. Are there walking stereotypes of comically evil rednecks who blow black smoke and hate on gays 10 times a day while being racist? I've met some, very few in fact and I live in a place where I go to see rodeo 3 times a year. Is that majority of truck owners? Not even close.

Where I live trucks are a sort of "I make good money I can afford one" vehicles. All young men want to have one! Tesla's truck fits the bill so well with young city dwelling men who grew up on 80's sci-fi, who love new tech and toys, and who want to proclaim "I am successful! I can afford this ridiculous over the top TRUCK"

I have been 'coal rolled' before so it's a real thing, but I could be overgeneralizing from this and videos on Reddit of trucks blocking superchargers.

That said, there's a reason all the truck ads have deep voices and talk about being 'tough' etc. Ford and Chevy sell a lot of trucks so presumably there's something about the market that pushes them to this sort of advertising.

I suspect the overlap of the people positively influenced by those ads and the people that like EVs is small and of those the people that would like this design is even smaller.

Maybe there's a new market that will want this, but I'd argue it isn't most of the existing truck market.

I was waiting for something similar to the early sneak design that took a conventional pickup design and pushed it a bit.

https://www.cars.com/articles/the-week-in-tesla-news-tesla-p...

This truck design is too far out for most people. I suspect tomorrow morning Detroit will have a good laugh at Tesla's expense. Will this prove to be Tesla's Edsel?

I know what you mean. I think of the "rolling coal" type of person too. Maybe they hate Teslas because they felt excluded by the trend...

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