The Cybertruck is years behind schedule, so Tesla is launching a $30 beer
fastcompany.com
fastcompany.com
And that can be easily sold globally unlike Cybertruck which has concerns from Australian regulators (and likely others) about whether it would be street legal given its unique sharp metal corners at children height design.
Car manufacturers don't need to sell the same model everywhere anyway. Regional markets are large enough to absorb a full model's production.
I'm not a rocket science/engineering/business genius like Musk but pretty sure having one design that may require some minor regional modifications is going to be significantly cheaper than having two completely different cars.
[1] https://insideevs.com/news/629993/tesla-model-y-6th-bestsell...
[2] https://www.notateslaapp.com/news/1177/tesla-model-y-set-to-...
> According to a report from Focus to Move, the Model Y is now the fourth best-selling vehicle worldwide after an astonishing 88 percent jump from 2021 to 2022. There were 759,000 Model Ys sold last year, just 28,000 units behind the third-place Ford F-150 which has been the best-selling truck for the previous 46 years. Toyota claimed the top two spots, with the RAV4 at 870,000 and the Corolla selling 1.12 million.
(waiting on my cybertruck)
Cybertruck doesn't have to sell well, it just has to have greater demand than supply globally. Global pickup truck market is ~4M/units annually, so Tesla should do just fine carving out some of that for itself.
[1] https://cleantechnica.com/2023/01/03/tesla-sales-up-40-to-re...
[2] https://electrek.co/2023/02/27/tesla-dominates-brand-loyalty...
Also, trucks are functional vehicles, and Cybertruck violates a lot of common functionality that most “legacy” trucks have. There are probably a lot of people who drive trucks who don’t need that functionality—i.e. poseurs—and maybe some of them will buy Cybertrucks.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-siz...
I own a Model 3 and was considering a BMW 3-series (non-EV) briefly before I bought the Tesla. While shopping I was surprised to notice how closely the price of Model 3 option packages tracked the BMW equivalent packages, almost within a few dollars (although the Tesla had fewer packages.) It seemed obvious to me that Tesla had done this on purpose, in an effort to carefully market the Model 3 towards an existing successful market. Similarly, the crossover they came out with next was named the “Model Y” and seemed almost perfectly tuned to compete with some of BMW’s popular X-line of crossover SUVs, again an existing market that could easily be optimized against. So while I would not use the word “copy”: it sure seemed like Tesla was carefully targeting existing markets, with slightly more flashy vehicles and similar price points — all with enormous success! The Cybertruck, on the other hand, throws this successful and cautious strategy into the garbage and then backs over it.
That cuts the other direction as well, if Tesla/Musk just alienate 90% of the population and the backlash builds against their touchscreens and build quality then they may find that they're just selling to fanbois.
And the EV Ranger is the vehicle that is targeting the kids of the people who presently drive F150s.
A car/truck purchase is emotional, and if you live in Astoria, OR a cybertruck is going to get you a ton of shit from everyone you know.
The successful Tesla models have had styling that pretty much looked like any other vehicle and didn't stand out a lot and any cachet was based around what it was and how it performed.
That if a company is popular and profitable they should always build an entirely different product for each country. Makes you wonder why tiny companies like Apple and Nike don't follow this brilliant idea.
And 10 years later, I realize anyone else with industrial experience could have done a better job of delivering cars than Musk could.
We are giving this guy more credit than he deserves. There have been far too many layoffs at Tesla, good employees with similar vision, all because this guy was a billionaire jerk, without the billionaire title.
Now all the other companies are coming out with competing EVs, it's not obvious Tesla as a company has moved beyond a strategy based on being your only nice EV option to actually being better than the competition. The Cybertruck is an absolute joke for the truck market compared to competitor vehicles, which also have the advantage of being products you can actually purchase.
But even beyond the Cybertruck, the rest of the Tesla product lineup isn't the obvious choice it was even a few years ago. You can get a lot of nice EVs these days made by companies that also have a long history of being good at building cars in general and that you're fairly confident will be around for decades to come. Early on, the basic argument for Tesla was obvious...they were basically the only option for a cool, upscale EV. What's their marketing pitch in 2023?
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/vw-rivian-nissan-bmw-lose-140...
If you bet against Elon, you will lose.
Jay Leno hit the nail on the head “this doesn’t look anything like a pickup truck” which is exactly what the problem was with the Aztek. Crossovers are a huge market but the totally ridiculous body style was a flop.
If Tesla priced this more like a Raptor, in order to market it as a futuristic status car, it might work. That’s not what they’re doing. Rivian is eating their lunch here and will continue to do so.
1. it's an opinion, and there are a substantial number of people who like the cybertruck
2. a truck is a functional vehicle, and functionality is the primary consideration. Lots of people think the Ram is the best looking truck, but it's substantially outsold by F-150 & GM.
Rivian's truck in particular has solidly beaten them to market with a highly functional vehicle that has a ton of incredible design details and has some of the highest driver satisfaction ratings of any new car models on the market. They have already captured a significant chunk of the market in luxury SUV and truck EVs, also partially due to the fact that a lot of rich liberals don't want to be associated with Elon Musk in any way now, and Tesla has moved downmarket pretty hard.
Separately, a big part of the reason Ford massively outsells Dodge or other brands is because Ford is particularly loved by fleet buyers. Expect them to continue to do so with the Lightning.
So that leaves the Cybertruck to pin its whole hopes on style/appearance, selling to the same type of bros that might buy a Ford Raptor or higher end Tacoma/Tundra model at similar price points. Not exactly a move poised to win the EV truck market overall, given how polarizing the design is.
Seriously you think this is vaporware? They're building an entire factory for something else?
This is like reading developers say, “We’re almost done!” and you’ve only now pushed to the test environment. No QA, no UAT, nothing.
If it’s not in production, it doesn’t exist.
You remind me of the people who laughed about reusable rockets, starlink, private crew, and every tesla model.
They laugh right up to the point it is released, and then they move the goal posts to the next product.
Musk doesn't exactly have a perfect track record.
err. First Private manned flight to space. [2]
Err, First completely private crew to go to space... Is that actually something we're considering a first? Can you really tell the difference between a person who works for the gov't and a person who doesn't well enough for that to be meaningful?
If you have to explain in the accolade what it means, then it's not much of an accolade.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_spaceflights,_19...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_spaceflight#:~:text=On....
Dragon and Dragon 2 are rediculously successful programs that most people said was not possible. Most notably Boeing which is years behind sending crew to orbit even though receiving billions more from NASA.
US astronauts would be depending on Russia right now to get to the ISS if not for SpaceX. Which means in this political climate there’s the good chance the IIS would be dead right now.
NOTE: You aren't actually getting the truck, I'm just giving you a spot in line to buy the truck. The truck still costs $80k
One of the most famous examples of vaporware was the game Duke Nukem Forever, which started development in 1996, was announced in 1997, and wasn't released until 2011. I believe it was in nearly continuous development during that time. The size of the team working on it shrank and grew, but over time that seems like a massive investment. It doesn't change the fact that it was vaporware though.
Reminds me of my Starlink experience: pay $100 to get on the waiting list, wait a while, pay an additional $500 to get the downlink terminal, wait, wait some more, try to figure out who I know who still works at SpaceX because there's no support contact info for people who have paid for a terminal but haven't gotten anything, send emails to about 10 people inside SpaceX until someone responds with an offer to refund $450, then take the offer, then wait for the refund, and wait for the refund and finally get the refund 3 months later. So I'm only out $150 from trying to subscribe to Starlink.
Starlink has global availability right now though a laser backed network. The only place you can’t get it are overloaded cells and countries that have not given landing rights.
I’m sorry for your anecdotal issue, but the system has over a million users so I think it’s fine. Starships first use will be to put up the 2nd gen network.
It’s funny how people cry about high speed low latency internet in remote places that wasn’t even possible a few years ago.
I get ~monthly emails about the progress being made manufacturing a chair I backed on a crowdfunding platform years ago. They constantly show great progress being made ("we finally have a factory lined up", "here's the final version of the legs", "we've begun mass production"). It feels like every one of these emails has a message about how they're going to start shipping chairs out to backers in the next couple months. This has been the case for several years now. I'm pretty skeptical I'll ever get the chair, as is basically everyone else who ordered it.
I imagine the Cybertruck will eventually be released, but it sounds like it's now almost two years behind the originally announced release date. I think it matches the spirit of vaporware currently, just as Duke Nukem Forever did for over a decade.
I think it's understandable that people would describe a delayed release from Tesla/Musk as vaporware given how their promises of "full self driving" have been going.
Tesla has released four car models and a semi truck, all delayed, all not vaporware. Yet you choose to relate CyberTruck to some crowdfunding project.
As for “full self driving”, those cars are still not fully autonomous. That’s the whole problem that people object to. It doesn’t matter what you call it, but it’s certainly not fully self driving yet. They still routinely fuck up. Also, as I pointed out earlier, being released eventually does not mean it wasn’t right to consider something vaporware at some point (hence the example of Duke Nukem Forever).
https://www.reddit.com/r/cybertruck/comments/12s8gwa/cybertr...
What about the hyperloop? Was supposed to be a vacuum-sealed tube with driverless pods that go 600 mph. -> tunnel with driverless cars that go 60mph -> tunnel with driver cars that go 30 mph... for a bit... until they hit traffic.
Edit: How do you feel about the California High-Speed-Rail Project?
They built a test hyper loop in California, boring company is actively building in Vegas and hardware to hold pressure in a tunnel was tested in Texas. It’s not like they say things and don’t follow up. Maybe it doesn’t happen at the speed you like, but there is a plan being executed on slowly but surely.
No, no, they're completely different. That's why we all use Taligent, now.
Are you referring to the viral April fools video they released a couple weeks ago showing "crash testing" without any crash? Which was presumably just very slow driving with the video sped up, because they didn't want to damage their prototype?
If you were doing real crash testing you wanted to show off, you wouldn't skip the actual crash... It was a joke.
Setting up fake scenarios is basically every TV commercial ever. That doesn't make them conspiracies.
Also it was April 1. It was a joke video, get it?
Obviously yes this was put out by marketing. And again, you are completely ignoring April fools.
The intention is for the viewer to be in on the joke... I mean, it's pretty funny. It's excellent marketing. Just don't confuse it for the real thing.
You're kind of embarrassing yourself here imagining that Tesla 'staged' a run of the mill crash test.
Especially when I also posted a video of auto industry experts analyzing it as well.
Tesla's Autopilot page [1] still has a video demonstrating it's self-driving capabilities but the video is actually a composite of videos taken over numerous runs because the car hit objects and ran off the road during some of them which does not make for good marketing material. (previous discussion [2]).
That video is purely for consumption by a possible consumer; you can't get any more marketing than that!
I think you missed what I said. That isn't some footage that they pulled from some random test drive. They picked a route and drove it over and over until they had enough footage to splice together to appear as a successful run. The primary feed is also not filmed from a dash cam.
But it doesn’t matter because there are tons of the same kind of video on YouTube uploaded everyday.
You think this is a big deal, when people are driving places daily with it just fine. I myself only drive like 10% of the time while autopilot does the rest. Gets better every month as well.
Staging performers to act like fake robots on stage for a vaporware project doesn't strike you as exactly what you're talking about?
Others did that before. It doesn't appear that you are capable of having a good-faith discussion on this topic given your tendency to change the subject and offering incorrect information. If you did not watch the video there is no point in further conversation.
But yea focus on the stuff in dev as if that negates the rest of the real progress.
Trivializing the significance or landing full size boosting from orbital velocity reliably is laughable. You must be jealous of real accomplishments.
>You must be jealous of real accomplishments.
Behave.
https://www.reddit.com/r/cybertruck/comments/12s8gwa/cybertr...
April fools is about getting you to believe something happened when it didn't...
That's the worst turning radius I've seen on a pickup truck that didn't have an RV behind it, amply demonstrated by the test driver backing up when he fails to make a fairly wide u-turn at the far end of the test strip.
The Cybertruck appears destined to go down in history as the Google Glass of the automotive world. (Notably, the Glass had the same type of limited tech-centric hype before it launched, and was widely ridiculed by the non-tech community.)
Between no marketing, no dealers, and making their own batteries - it’s very hard to compete.
CyberTruck looks cold, angry, mean - there’s more than enough truck drivers with the matching personality to meet the supply.
The only type of people who would consider buying a CyberTruck are the ones who also went all in on Google Glass.
Certainly seems easier than building out a Truck with all of the promised capabilities.
Fuck off Elon fuck off together with all those dimwits who find it stylish or funny to shell out 30€ for a can of beer. Please take all your buddies with you too, and you can take those politicians with you who bypassed democratic institutions to secretly strike a deal with Tesla to build a factory near Berlin, then went to TV to brag about it. When you came around for opening day and got asked by the public about groundwater concerns and you broke out into inane laughter I finally understood what a dangerous and mad person you are. Go to hell and stay there.
If they had built a normal truck, but electric, they could have tapped a huge market. Instead they went super niche with the sci fi truck. I hope for Tesla's sake that Tesla have enough fanboys.
Honest question.
What is it that makes it your dream vehicle?
And maybe the self driving stuff will turn out to be useful too. Too soon to say.
Electric vehicles are coming much more slowly where I am and they cost 1.5-2x what they do in the US. So I bought a ICE car this year. But I hope one day a cybertruck will be a practical option for me.
Maybe it makes me a bit of an asshole, but I’m ok with that tradeoff. I’ve never had a collision in my life, but my cars have been hit by others.
I’m principally concerned with safety for myself and my family. Concern for others on the road comes a lot further down the list. Sorry. I drive with great care and responsibility, but many others do not. I’m worried about protecting me from them, not the other way around.
"Go forth and sin no more."
All I ask is that you try to do the right thing. That's it. I can understand, accept, and forgive failure as long as you try.
Do you care about the safety of others, or only yourself? You listed safety second in your list of positives, but I'm curious if you're considering things like pedestrian safety or just driver/passenger safety.
I'm sure some people do hold this view, but I've never met someone who's buying a vehicle and looks into how well it deals with people outside of the vehicle as part of safety considerations. While pictures of lifted trucks and high-bumper vehicles are fairly common posts on Twitter, usually for dunks, people still buy SUVs and crossovers that are known to be unsafe to those outside of them. Often this is disguised as "but I need it to go skiing once a year" or "what if I need to drive the entire soccer team home?"
The mindset of drivers, and especially Tesla's corporate view of it, channels Lord Farquaad. "Some of you [pedestrians] may die and that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."
I'd prefer that this safety consideration be handled via regulation, though. I'd love to see cars that recklessly endanger the lives of those outside the car banned, limited, or taxed.
But we all saw the cannonball demo, didn't we? Do you really think the body is going to be invincible?
I, for one, look forward to testing cybertruck body panels when they park too close to me.
But I am not arguing with you about your preferences. I am saying that for the broad base of consumers, most of these needs (except no paint) can be met by existing vehicles. The Rivian for example is getting great reviews, and I think it has great looks. And the F-150 is already the highest selling vehicle in the USA, so an electric version will be a good choice for many of those consumers. Tesla coming out with such a unique vehicle means they're really going to have to prove its worth.
Of course at this point they are committed to release. But I agree with others that releasing a more traditional truck would have been more savvy.
Even then, what's the chance that Tesla will remember who gave them a $99 deposit. SpaceX completely forgot about how I gave them $599 for a downlink terminal. I had to email them scans of my credit card bills to convince them to look for their records of the transaction so they could refund the charge on my credit card. (And even then, they only refunded $500 or the $599 I spent.)
But I'm grousing about SpaceX, I'm sure Tesla has a better AR/AP/CS system.
Don't be suckered by Tesla's advertising drivel, and certainly don't repeat it.
Here's the glass of a VW Golf:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWzUh53H_VU
Tesla's dog and pony show is for credulous rubes. You don't need to be one of those.
https://youtu.be/8SsnkXH2mQY?t=200
It will help strengthen you against manipulation by advertising.
Cybertruck glass is just premium auto glass.
It would have taken years to certify an entire different kind of glass for automotive purposes.
The water is there, horse. Drink it.
Aggressive swipes will get your account banned here, so please don't post like this, regardless of how provocative another comment is or you feel it is.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Edit: You've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
>Large, extremely safe
So engineered to kill everyone except the driver. Big, heavy cars are safe only because they flatten the other party in a crash. The Cybertruck will be even worse than your average murdermobile because, as an EV, it will be unusually heavy.
And it gets worse:
>no body that gets easily dented
Cars don't have squishy bodywork by accident. Flexible, easily-dented bodywork is a safety feature. The front end of a car is designed to crumple to minimize acceleration.
Well, everyone knows about crumple zones. Clearly cars need to crumple at highway speeds, but the driver is in no danger in a parking lot. However, it is crucial that this happen even for minor collisions. Any collision with a pedestrian is a minor collision from the perspective of the car but catastrophic from the perspective of the pedestrian. The hood, bumpers, and panels must flex and dent even in a fender bender if they are to protect a pedestrian at 20 miles an hour.
It's also safer for the other party in an accident, since the vehicle(s) will absorb crash energy that would otherwise be transferred to the occupants/pedestrian/cyclist. Given Tesla's abysmal self-driving record (literally, more self-driving accidents, injuries, and/or fatalities than the entire rest of the global automotive industry combined), that's a fundamental consideration.
Similarly, most cars have impact-resistant glass, but not shatterproof glass, for safety reasons. There are plenty of times when you want the glass to break.
Not to mention... I think cybertruck owners only put down $100 as a deposit. They didn't pay the complete price for it. So Tesla has to actually make trucks before people will pay the majority of the sales price.
Also since it’s Tesla, you’re gonna have to see a certified repair shop for it. Idk this just feels like an internet rumor, I’d love to read something substantial on how the manufacturing process is cheaper.
Also found this: https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-cybertruck-secret-production...
> there is no need for Tesla to invest in casting machines for the vehicle. Its steel exoskeleton also means that Tesla will not be setting up expensive paint machinery for the all-electric pickup...even the Cybertruck’s glass, which are flat as opposed to the curved ones used in other Teslas like the Model 3, will likely give Tesla some savings as well.
And there's this, which describes how the shape of the truck adds strength and hence weight savings: https://medium.com/throughdesign/why-is-the-tesla-cybertruck...
And this looks like it covers similar material: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2nSIDv29HE
It's got large flat surfaces made of stainless steel, you'll be able to weld or bolt modifications (e.g. toolboxes) directly to the body.
Who cares? I sure didn't. I needed a tree gone.
On the other hand, I actually believe Tesla is right to prioritize scaling production for their existing Model 3 / Y demand. Their problem is not generating more demand (things like Cybertruck, Roadster, etc.) but in producing the supply for existing demand. They've always been short on that, for good reason (hard to scale production fast, huge organic demand).
P.S. or ... $300 if they went to eBay... [edit2]
https://global.honda/innovation/design/topics/TMS2017/Honda-...
https://global.honda/innovation/design/topics/TMS2017/Honda-...
But sure, let's maintain the fiction that Tesla spends nothing on marketing.
This is capitalism at work. there is a market, so Elon is tapping it.
This goes for both products the truck and the beer.
YOU might not like it, but enough people are willing to pour millions into it that it will be profitable for him.
Tesla fanboys all over this.