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Comment by pornel | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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