Tesla Releases Stripped RWD Cybertruck: So Much Worse for Not Much Less Money | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Releases Stripped RWD Cybertruck: So Much Worse for Not Much Less Money

jalopnik.com

67 pointsrntn122 comments

> said to have a starting price of under $40,000 back then (and then around $61,000 last year when it was available to order but never actually entered production), you'll now have to pony up $71,985 for it, including $1,995 destination.

Tesla's pre-sale prices have always been hilarious.

I was seriously considering a cybertruck, but by launch (and directly after), it became clear that it was a lifestyle truck, not an actual utility vehicle

In case you’re wondering, motorcycles are a hobby of mine, and the most common negative review I’ve heard is that the gate weight is just low enough that two people trying to get a big bike in, occasionally, can do many thousands of dollars of damage

Right, because it's not actually a real truck. Real trucks are body on frame, a structure that doesn't distort under load. The CT is a unibody (monocoque) which can't support a real load from above or behind without deforming or snapping into pieces. It's a joke. It's a Hyundai Santa Fe that's been jacked up and weighed down with overthick steel panels that bring no value to the vehicle as a truck. It's a car pretending to be a pickup truck, which is fine for the suburban family that needs to grab a few bags of lawn fertilizer at Home Depot once a year, but it's not a real pickup truck and any comparison to even a 20 year old F-150 would be a crushing defeat in all normal pickup tasks.

It does what it is rated for tho? I don't get the outrage?

And it's rated for much less than similarly priced, similarly marketed utes.

I've just watched video[0] from Engineering Explained and it did pretty good job explaining why other manufacturers overrate their towing capacity. Basically they design their trucks for 95th percentile of towers.

So it's fair to say truck is not hardcore tower.

It doesn't mean it's not safe for regular tower.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsnYvAU3kfA

I don't think it's outrage so much as revulsion.

Yes, and what it’s rated for isn’t enough for serious use

Oh btw, there’s growing evidence that the hitch is significantly over-rated and may lead to some serious lawsuits. Nothing conclusive, but nobody’s ever shipped that kind of frame in a “serious” full load truck before for a reason.

The suburban family would be repelled by the look.

This is entirely accurate, but there's a legion of "real" pickup trucks roaming North American roads that exist no less for show than the Tesla. At this point, they're probably the vast majority.

In the EU no one would think twice about towing the aforementioned big bike with a cheap trailer attached to a Honda Civic. Coming from someone who's towed a lot of bikes, it's an arrangement that makes more sense than an American pickup on several levels.

The problem is that I sometimes carry two bikes (and once or twice, even 3).

But yes point taken. I’ve certainly considered it, and might again in the future. Would love to get a tow hitch on a bmw

> Would love to get a tow hitch on a bmw

Look for the neighbor always stick welding his 4x4 in the driveway. $40, a six-pack, and it's done.

i can do it myself, but there's no need. they also sell aftermarket hitches that attach to pre-designed mount points on the frame for most BMWs

"So much worse for not much less money" is a pretty apt description for pretty much everything today...

I’m rich and cars don’t cost me anything really. But I keep 1 sports car at a time which I buy new. Everything else I buy used because no one knows the quality of new cars and how long they will last. Daily driver has to be bullet proof. Why anyone other than wealthy people buy brand new cars is nonsensical to me.

At my company, as you go up the pay scale, the age of the car they drive also increases. Our president drives a 2013 Subaru with 220k miles. Our receptionist drives a $50k 2024 Honda Pilot black edition. The engineering director drives a stock 2020 Elantra and the lab shift manager a 2025 GMC Sierra.

It seems people who work more with money know how to value things better, and others just look at how much of a reach the lowest monthly payment is.

People just look at the monthly payment. Never think about what an 84 month loan means, what it costs to repair, the insurance. So absurd

A large part of the USA, for a myriad of reasons, lives paycheck to paycheck.

That doesn't explain why, after paying off the car, they immediately trade it in for a new one.

I kind of doubt that everyone does this. How many, relatively speaking, do? You seem to be sure this is a very frequent occurrence.

This is somewhat true but there is also a chasm where you earn good money but not enough to afford a mortgage. This chasm grows wider ever year in countries like Canada and Australia (and to a lesser degree America)

Short term thinking. Rather than save for decade(s) they’d rather blow excess money now.

I'm sorry is the price of housing decreasing or increasing? You have to have a dual income household to afford a mortgage. You're really going to shit on young people because they dont have two incomes?

No I’m shitting on people who buy short term pleasure then bitch about long term poverty.

I’m a frugal person. Seriously. I have so much money I can do literally anything I want. I live in this insane palace that is the most beautiful piece of property you have ever seen. And I still pinch pennies, buy in bulk, have a deep freezer, drive used cars. It doesn’t make logical sense but I just have programmed in me to be efficient.

And I look around me and see endless complaints and no one is efficient. People waste so much money on bullshit. It has worn me down to be quite cynical and skeptical

How much time would you estimate they spend in their cars? I have a '22 Subaru and basically never plan on trading it in. (Should be paid off in a year.) But I also drive when I want to, and that's not super frequently.

Not the parent, but I have a 2016 Subie nearing 100k miles and going fine. My partner's is more than 200k. Its AC is dead but mechanically it's fine and much faster than my Crosstrek. Friends have similarly old Subies. They are super reliable except for head gasket issues around the late 2000s and early 2010s (not applicable to you).

My front bumper is falling off (due to multiple crashes) and my back one has a bunch of holes (from being rear ended) but I drive it all the time and it's still wonderful. I'll probably never get another car brand.

Ironically our president has a 1.5 hour commute he does daily. He is extremely value oriented when it comes to money though, and will not get rid of his car until it dies. Which might be a while as he is insane about care and maintenance.

Everyone else lives within 20 minutes.

New cars can have problems, too. Especially for an enthusiast, it's smarter to buy used rather than new. You can be sure to get a reliable vehicle, and you can put the money you save in the market. You'll come out ahead on both fronts.

You can get two (lightly) used Model Ys with money left over for that price, or a lightly used Model Y and a slightly older, lightly used F150 as a backup car for when you need a truck and/or need to be off charging infra (e.x. towing a boat or RV long-range).

Don't get the value proposition at all.

Or, like, an actual truck.

Right. If you want to go EV for your daily driver, you can buy a myriad of good choices (including from Tesla) *AND* a whole actual gas truck (say an F150 or a Taco) for what they are asking for this thing.

I really can't understand why people pay around 100k for something so ugly. Maybe just to show off that you can have one. But really looks stupid.

The point of the design wasn't to be pretty, but to be different, edgy, and look rugged.

But they made a mistake by announcing the design long before they were able to produce it. By the time they had built it, the hype cycle was over, and the design was already old news.

It was also supposed to be bulletproof (presumably looking like a tank), but in reality, it turned out to be a brittle underbody with glued-on panels that were peeling off.

At the $35K starting price that Elon hyped, it could have been excused as a utilitarian design. But Tesla instead released a beta-quality product at a luxury price.

The revolutionary new cheap Tesla batteries that were supposed to make that price point possible turned out to be as real as all the other stuff Elon promised.

In 50 years cybertrucks are going to be worth something, just because they're different enough to be recognizable. Same as the DeLorean.

The DMC-12 has a classic movie attached to it. If it didn't, most every single one of them that exists today would be in the scrap heap.

Instead of a movie the cyberpunk is attached to a highly polarizing political conflict, which ignoring the nuance, is highly memorable.

I hazard you that there's little to no market for things that are solely "highly memorable," especially politically polarizing ones. Most people don't want to own a Hitler Youth knife, for example.

There is actually a market for HJ knives.

Sure; emphasis on "most people."

But in this case, what’s interesting is if there is a market, not what “most people” will do.

I predict that in 50 years, the cyber trucks in mint condition will be worth a decent amount of money. It is the first of its kind(electric SUV).

It’s still a crappy car.

Hardly will be worth more than just plonking that $ into an investment account and letting it accrue interest for 50 years.

Of course, most collectible categories underperform the market. But people like to collect things.

> In 50 years cybertrucks are going to be worth something, just because they're different enough to be recognizable. Same as the DeLorean.

Nobody would know anything about the Delorean if it weren't for its starring role in one of the most famous movie franchises ever.

I wonder will they run or be fixable in 50 years. Not just the big battery, but every other such component too. In the end DeLorean is relatively simple car and you could even install different engine in it if you have to.

Teslas are more locked down software-wise than iOS, so their worth in half a century should be around whatever scrap metal is going for then.

I hear ya, but I think 50 years is wildly generous. I give it 20 years before they're entirely gone except for a few novelty chasers. It's the Yugo of the 21st century, except at luxury prices, actually, then maybe like combining a Yugo with the Cadillac Cimarron or the Pontiac Aztec. Garbage in every way that won't survive a human generation.

DeLoreans are rare (only 9,000 were built).

A better comparison would be the AMC Gremlin.

The DeLorean was not a particularly good car, but it featured prominently in a movie series that remains a cultural touchstone.

The AMC Gremlin was just endearingly ugly. Today, it has a bit of a cult following, but that has not made it a particularly valuable car.

This style is coming back — Rivian R3X looks eerily similar, just with more even proportions.

Not really. The point of the design was a single sheet of heavy steel folded origami style into an exoskeleton that the powertrain, suspension and other bits all hanged off of.

That completely novel design would have been neat to see, and perhaps worth the required aesthetic. But that was not to be.

They dropped the origami single steel panel, then they abandoned the whole idea of an exoskeleton design and opted not for a body on frame like all good pickup trucks, but a unibody that puts them in the Ford Maverick or Hyundai Santa Cruz category, light duty, but at 4 times the price with a pretty awful aesthetic, and from a company whose owner has become a pariah among decent people.

> a company whose owner has become a pariah among decent people

That's the "cherry on top" of this dung-heap.

I think they look super cool. I’ve thought that since they were first announced. Just the coolest looking vehicle I’ve ever seen. My kids go “look dad, a Cybertruck!” Every time one passes.

I bought a Toyota Sequoia around the time they first started rolling out, but seriously considered the Cybertruck but it didn’t seem like it’d be able to haul a travel trailer as well as we’d have liked.

It’s subjective. I think it’s currently ugly but subtly so. I think with a few changes (that I can’t articulate) it would be a pretty good looking vehicle.

I mean, I'd buy it if it was like $5000, a compact car, and the person running the company wasn't an unlovable sociopath. Some people like the janky cheap aesthetic.

But $100k for a car like that is a complete insult to good taste. It'd be like selling a luxury 1.5m container home. The low price tag is the entire point of the jank aesthetic. You're supposed to be communicating that you reject the idea of "keeping up with the Joneses" and wear the aesthetic imperfections of the lower economic class as a badge of honor.

Of course, as with every cultural movement of any nuance, real world Dr. Eggman completely missed the point here and shat all over everything with his tone-deaf Rich Frat Boy With Asperger's schtick.

> why people pay around 100k for something so ugly. Maybe just to show off that you can have one

Showing off has been a well understood reason for buying luxury cars from the very beginning of automobiles (when they were all luxury).

The CT just happens to be on the extremely ugly (or unconventional looking) end of the spectrum.

It was supposed to be a novel structural design with an affordable price tag. Instead it's a unibody with heavier than needed panels slapped on it. Might as well be a Ford Maverick for its value as a pickup truck.

It's an Edsel.

How many of you all have ever seen or even heard of Edsel? That's CyberTruck in half a century. It's not going to be remembered by most, much less collected. Those who do remember it will scoff like we do Edsels and would have done for that coked out* car maker, John DeLorean's monstrosity, had it not got a starring role in one of the greatest movies of all time and the franchise that followed.

* To be fair, we were nearly all coked out in 1975 :D

> It was supposed to be a novel structural design with an affordable price tag

Who buys a car for its "novel structural design"?

Most buy a car for some combination of transportation/utility, comfort/performance, and social signaling, in varying proportions depending on their needs/circumstances, desires, and personality.

The CT's appeal seems to lean heavily on the last 2 of those characteristics, since as you point out, a common pickup truck would be more functional and far cheaper.

Had it been the exoskeleton design they promised, or even a classic truck body on frame construction, and had they actually built it from a few large "origami" folded structural metal panels, all the things they said it would be at the outset, that kind of novel design would have made the aesthetic at least interesting.

Instead, they failed at the exoskeleton design. They failed at the origami several large folded panels structure. And they kept the ugly design that those novel approaches to car building led to, but slapped it on a barely-a-truck unibody that can't compete with any other real trucks in its price range, in any dimension, and then rushed it out with serious quality issues.

A $100K unibody truck with silly aesthetics that don't actually separate it at any fundamental level from actually useful trucks, well, that just doesn't work at any scale that could make Tesla whole on the investment, much less provide them some edge in the market.

So, it's a novelty for people who enjoy getting flipped off a lot. I especially love pulling in front of them on I280 and slowing to a crawl while flipping the bird out my sunroof--and it brings extra joy when those "alpha males" have their families along.

I agree with your overall point but please don’t fuck around in traffic. You are putting peoples lives at risk just for your own egos sake.

The design was meant to be functional. Tesla wanted to use stainless steel that doesn't need paint, which is a significant part of the car cost.

But stainless steel is much milder than normal steel, so you need to use thicker panels. But thicker panels are more difficult to stamp. So why not then double down on thickness, and make the panels structural? It makes them impossible to stamp, so double down on the "flat" design.

Well, it didn't work out as intended. The whole flat panel look ended up being a total gimmick.

The structural panels never happened. That idea was shitcanned when they dropped the exoskeleton design for a unibody. Now the extra heavy panels are a stupid vestige of a design that never came to fruition. The truck is a damned unibody auto structure, hardly worthy of being called a truck, much closer to a Hyundai Santa Fe than a Ford F-150 and worse for having to carry all those heavy bolt on panels that do absolutely nothing for the truck functionality of the vehicle.

It sounds like a few software projects I've worked on. Incorrect base assumptions and not swapping out the components that were made unwieldy by those assumptions not reflecting reality.

Seeing your other comments you seem to be a passionate cybertruck hater.

Did you actually drove one or seen reviews?

My impression from reviews was screaming "WANT". This is one of the most advanced car, not just truck on the market. There's literally nothing like it out there.

They told us it was going to be the best selling car ever, over one million pre-orders.

Reality: fewer than 100k actually sold. The truck was everything anyone with half a brain thought it would be.

The way I imagine it, it was designed to look like a wireframe vector graphics video game tank, a la battlezone 1980. The design is based on the sci-fi “rule of cool”, the origami exoskeleton is retconned justification that turned out to be too tall of an ask for Elon’s engineers.

If we just look at these cars purely on their merits, I think they’d still struggle.

You’re talking about a very expensive car with tons of basic quality control issues. The EV market has stalled. I don’t need a car, but I’d probably stick to a classic gas car. Charging stations are still too few in the US.

Teslas feel like luxury secondary cars. With the economy the way it is they won’t sell well

If and when autopilot achieves level 3, the economic equation changes substantially. Whoever does it, I'd be in line demanding that they take my money. After years of false promises I understand the skepticism, but think that the industry is finally getting close. Tesla's large Cybercab bet depends on it so they are demonstrating their confidence in cash. From the beginning it has been Tesla's strategy to leverage the luxury market to fund their market-wide ambitions.

Yeah, but there are actually autonomous cabs rolling out to my metro, and Tesla didn't build them...

So it won't be a monopoly. Which means you're right back to a cutthroat, low margin business.

Personally... I'm generally a "buy the whole market" kind of investor. But I'm actively looking to exclude Tesla. It's shaping up to be a complete and total bust.

How would you exclude Tesla?

There are probably ETFs that are something like "all of S&P except for Tesla".

Buy a broad-market ETF, and then short the exact amount of TSLA in that ETF's holdings?

I looked into it, you need to do something called “direct indexing” if you want to specifically exclude a stock. Here is one example, Wealthfront can also do it.

https://www.schwab.com/direct-indexing

Calls on SPY, puts on Tesla.

You're exposing yourself to tracking error every time the index rebalances. If you want to show it to the man, just go to a protest while buying a cheap index fund.

I don't personally care enough, I made my point years ago when I bought my EV from a different manufacturer.

Not super relevant. The point is using puts to hedge out Tesla is a bad way to buy the market ex Tesla.

If you want to buy the market and bet against Tesla, it's actually a great way. It may not be the most profitable, but that's never been the point doing something out of protest or spite.

> If you want to buy the market and bet against Tesla, it's actually a great way

Nope. Certainly not in the long term. You’re better off direct indexing. If you don’t have enough money to direct index, you’re wasting money.

I'm not wasting any money, because I don't personally care enough to follow this strategy. Thanks for the info though.

> Yeah, but there are actually autonomous cabs rolling out to my metro

The economic difference is that a level 2 cab requires much higher remote labor costs than a level 3 cab to achieve the same productivity, almost by definition of "level 3". As long as a cab company has that advantage they can undercut the competition by price and still make a profit. That advantage is definitely not yet a given. It could even be achieved by open source models and go global for everyone at once. In that scenario Tesla still starts with a large advantage in cost per cab over everyone but BYD.

> Tesla still starts with a large advantage in cost per cab over everyone but BYD

Waymo is way ahead of Tesla.

>In that scenario Tesla still starts with a large advantage in cost per cab over everyone but BYD.

They literally don't have a cab.

Waymo is driving people around right now.

> If and when autopilot achieves level 3, the economic equation changes substantially.

How so?

It kills me that no one else has an "autopilot" on par with Tesla's. All the competitors have very limited scope and tight constraints on conditions. Tesla is the only one you can take into a new neighborhood and it will drive around without saying "sorry not available here".

If you're doing that in my neighborhood, better watch out because I am prepared to defend my family and friends from your monstrosity with considered force and those vehicles are quite easy to "manage" for anyone who knows anything about it.

"Rocket man bad" at it's finest

Level 3 is not useful. Humans can't do the rapid task switch that's imagined, so in practice you're still supervising the car at all times even though notionally SAE says that's not what you're doing. Or, likely, you aren't supervising (e.g. you're looking at your phone) and so each such transition is incredibly dangerous.

Mercedes Drive-Pilot is level 3 and available now, apparently. Looks like recently updated to work up to 95km/h.

https://group.mercedes-benz.com/innovations/product-innovati...

> If and when autopilot achieves level 3, the economic equation changes substantially

The market is limited to America. Nobody is going to let Tesla develop a monopoly (or even commanding lead) in their country for self-driving cars after the way Musk has behaved with Starlink. (I suspect a ban on cameras-only self-driving cars would be popular in e.g. California and New York, too.)

> The EV market has stalled.

The EV market grew 10% YoY in Q125. Tesla has declined.

https://www.coxautoinc.com/market-insights/q1-2025-ev-sales/

Ok, the near 100K EV car market has stalled.

Regardless not enough charging stations exist for me, if I’m going to buy a car I want to be able to drive it cross country.

Unless you live in Dakotas, there are likely enough fast charging stations nearby for any trip.

For travels along the coasts, it doesn't even require planning. Just hop in and start driving.

It’s not clear those stations are going to be around much longer.

https://electrek.co/2025/02/21/trump-to-shut-down-all-8000-e...

Do you really want to buy a new EV and risk your local charging station shutting down in 18 months

The stations near Federal buildings are slow chargers, they don't matter for road trips. Most fast chargers are commercial, and are not susceptible to Trump's meddling.

You can use Plugshare to look up stations near you. Set the filter to 100kW or faster charging.

The Dakotas are fine. They're better covered than Saskatchewan and we visited there in a Tesla. Superchargers on the highway, the friends and family we visited all had welders so had high amperage 240V, and campgrounds also let us charge overnight.

> Ok, the near 100K EV car market has stalled.

Meh. The near 100k EV market was never going to make a serious impact on GHG emissions, nor save consumers much in fuel costs.

Bring on the near 30K market.

>The EV market has stalled. I don’t need a car, but I’d probably stick to a classic gas car.

Why is this argument frequently framed as either/or?

I love my hybrid vehicle (the Toyota gearbox is incredible, and apparently more reliable than a manual transmission).

Frankly, I rather the simplicity of one drive train over a hybrid. The plug in charging is short ranged enough that it's not meaningful and you still need to maintain all the combustion stuff.

Hybrids may be the best of both worlds, but they're also the worst of both worlds.

I recently drove a Suzuki Vitara Hybrid for 4-5 days. The only downside I saw is its fuel consumption is very low.

Also, this one is not a fancy hybrid like Toyota's one. It has a motor between the engine and the gearbox. It also does regen braking, but that's all.

My colleague's Toyota C-HR's fuel consumption is also pretty bad. Half of its nearest competitor, and lower than most car's highway consumption, in the city.

My hybrid doesn't even plug in... only has a 1kWH battery... and is warranted for 150k miles / 10 years.

I traded-in a turbo-charged petrol-only vehicle, so I definitely understand your wanting to reduce complexity. My Camry is about as fast as the Subaru, and gets 2.5x the mileage on low-octane (city driving, primarily: high-40's).

On roadtrips the battery really isn't that helpful (other than brief accelerations), dropping to ~38 mpg.

> The plug in charging is short ranged enough that it's not meaningful and you still need to maintain all the combustion stuff.

Probably depends on usage patterns; I know someone with one of the plugin BMWs, and they effectively never end up running on petrol.

So fuel goes off after a month or so and can damage your engine. If they never run the fuel, do they add stabilizers? Do they just accept the reduced engine life? Or do they run with an empty tank?

AIUI most plugin hybrids have sealed pressurised fuel tanks, which prolong the life; many will also automatically use the engine such that they consume a full tank once every six months or something even if battery power is always available.

I use ethanol-free (i.e. 100%) gasoline in my hybrid; the gas tank is also pressurized. These combine to give shelf-stable fuel, for years.

Where do you find ethanol-free gasoline? I haven't seen that in decades.

Hybrids are gas cars.

The EV market has not stalled. Tesla has stalled and declined.

Stalled? Saw a BYD Shark in Texas yesterday.

Does it still make you look like a ding-dong and get you mocked behind your back? Yes? Oh, guess they didn't fix that yet.

That has to be the ugliest car ever.

They want to boost the used market by increasing supply? What about having undershot their sales projections 20x suggests the vast sea of unmet demand this strategy depends on to work?

They'll fail in the used market until they're so hated that the price drops to scrap metal levels and then a few people will snatch them up for the novelty or literally for the scrap value.

So, the batteries and a pile of plastic garbage, then. Good grief, from how awful the "stainless" veneers look with just a few days too many parked under a pine tree, I can't imagine there being any serious use for the stuff as raw material. It might not even really be worth the money to resmelt. If iron stops being cheap, we're all well and truly f——d.

Dunno, though. Haven't seen a Cybertruck in this neck of the woods for a while. Can't think why, but being the center of that whole parking lot's attention certainly didn't seem to be doing the fellow with the pine-besmirched one as much good as you'd have sort of thought it might, for someone who'd spent so much on something so flashy.

That makes me wonder ... what could you do with a cheap Cybertruck? Take all the panels off and remake them in something else? Maybe put a 3D printer to work and create something really unique. Sure, you'd still be stuck with a CT but a lot of the tech in that vehicle is pretty good. Could you turn it into a sand buggy? What about a flatbed truck? Maybe a repair truck with welders and other electrical equipment?

> a lot of the tech in that vehicle is pretty good

Not what I hear...

> a lot of the tech in that vehicle is pretty good

For all the insistence that "Tesla is a software company" and "Tesla's advantage is software", the Cybertruck has entirely software defined anti-slip and skid prevention loops that are utterly broken.

Which is funny, because ICE cars have solved this, again, fully electronically and with significantly less control over the drivetrain (the primary control is holding the brakes on whichever wheel is slipping and letting the diff sort it out) for decades.

My VW GTI can crawl its way across sheer ice by just holding down the gas pedal and letting the computer sort it out. A VW Passat from 2008 could do the exact same thing. Every other ICE vehicle manufacturer had this as standard functionality by like mid-2010s.

Meanwhile, you can find videos of Cybertrucks struggling to deal with an inch of slush, which is an trivial situation for electronic stability controls to handle.

There is no excuse for a fully electronic drivetrain which has perfect ability to modulate not just the speed but also the force with which it turns the wheels to be this bad. It's pathetic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com