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Comment by immibis | Hacker News Reader

Kei trucks are unsentimental working capital. Cybertrucks have been designed to look this way because someone thinks it sells. The panels come unglued and fly off because they glued panels on because they needed the truck to look that way because they thought that attracted customers.

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Cybertruck looks that way because of compromises. They didn't think the shape would sell, they thought stainless steel would sell. The shape is a function of how hard it is to shape stainless steel. Likewise gluing panels on is required because stainless steel can't be welded. Because they refused to compromise on stainless steel they were forced to compromise elsewhere.

Stainless steel can be welded... just not easily and cheaply.

> Cybertrucks have been designed to look this way because someone thinks it sells

No, I think it's to get the cost of an electric truck down. I've never heard anyone from Tesla say it looks that way because it'll sell better. It doesn't look like the other Teslas, which all look really nice, but are more expensive.

Obviously it's subjective, but no ... the model 3 does not look really nice. The new generation with the facelift just crosses the borderline of acceptable, as does the newly face-lifted model Y. But the countless prior generation 3 and Y that litter our streets surely must be a marginal drag on the Tesla brand ... they're aging terribly. Which isn't hard considering my initial impression of them.

The model S is literally the only car they got right.

Let's not even talk about the CT. I can't even bring myself to utter that horizontal fridges name ...

> It doesn't look like the other Teslas, which all look really nice, but are more expensive.

No, they're not. The price of a Cybertruck is in line with the price for a Model S or Model X, and significantly higher than a Model 3.

You know what's better at getting the cost down better? Not adding extra parts for aesthetics. Gluing on extra panels costs more than not gluing on extra panels. Also, making them smaller makes them cheaper. They're actually too big to fit in standard European parking spaces, so clearly they have no need to be as big as they are.

Their design is all about aesthetics, but a type of aesthetics that is non-conventional in the car industry.

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