The level of disaster of that rollout, combined with D.O.G.E. and "Mechahitler" Grok, has forever tarnished the Tesla brand. I suspect there is a sizable group of people who will never buy a product by that brand ever again (or at least as long as Musk is at the helm).
Every time I see a CyberTruck out in the wild, I am still just stunned by the crappy design — like a dumpster designed for anti-performance — the wheel positioning and size is all wrong, and the metalwork always looks cheap because the 'flat' surfaces are always wavy or rippled, and the seams don't match up properly.
I am definitely one of those people who used to look forward to buying a Tesla next time I change vehicles, but will never consider it now (and I'm big on electric vehicles).
So, I've not seen one in the wild (I'm in Europe they're not road legal here), so the only things I see are either distance shots or close-ups; the distance shots are mostly beauty shots, the close-ups are mostly showing one of the many production problems the design has.
From a distance, the design looks cool to me… as a child of the 80s who grew up with low-poly graphics.
But "looks cool" doesn't mean "I approve"; given the sharp edges, the traditional American car design with worse visibility for children crossing too close in front of you than an Abrams tank, even just given the physical size, I'm glad the EU already had rules preventing it from being road legal here.
And that's even if they fix all the issues that led to the unglamorous close-ups.
Completely different.
But when I watched it in context, it looked like a man putting a hand on his heart and then proffering his thanks to the audience.
My belief is that it was most likely not a nazi salute and is not relevant evidence in the important task of assessing Musk's political stances.
>"I'm sorry for that tweet or post," Musk said Wednesday. "It was foolish of me."
He has famously thumbs-ed up significant chunks of such content and in the event mentioned here replied to an explicit statement (as outlined about) as being "the actual truth".
See, eg: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67446800
He is an unquestionable fan of Nazi like content, many will shrug it off as his grandfather was an actual Nazi fan (having to move from Canada(?) to South Africa because of such beliefs), and his uncle (IIRC, certainly a close family relative) was a senior member of the South African apartheid government.
Your belief is incorrect
Terrible branding for Tesla of him to singlehandedly permanently alienate the majority of his customer base.
While they've hurt their image in the US, for now, that might change over time. 5 or 10 years from now, possibly aided by more success from SpaceX, Tesla's or Musk's image could recover.
They could have spent all the effort building EV delivery trucks with built in self driving which would help them collect even more data for FSD to tell them rollout robotaxis.
* I think it will, eventually, but "eventually" can be a long time, and the point is that this no longer even matters because of how cheap LiDAR is now.
The board and shareholders had their chance to dump Musk a few weeks ago; they could have just turned down his ridiculous pay package and he would have left. They didn't so he'll be dragging them down for at least another decade.
Tesla’s board decided after the war was lost to not only let the nazi sympathizer continue running the company, but to give him an egregiously disproportionate compensation package. The guy who single handedly pushed the biggest failure in the history of the company (cybertruck) is apparently the only one who can save the company.
I expect at some point they’ll be acquired for pennies on the dollar by a Chinese company or if Trump gets his way he’ll insist on a government takeover.
You'd expect to see it hauling ladders or tools or towing horse boxes and so on, but nope. It makes me curious why. Is the truck overpriced for anyone who needs a truck to work? That seems unlikely, trucks are already north of 70,000 bucks. Are there no accessories like towing hitches? Seems unlikely. Is it just not a usefully sized bed? That would be a bizarre miss for a truck designer. I just dont understand it.
As a truck, is the CT any good, or no?
US truck customers are getting smarter. The fleet trucks, for HVAC, plumbers, and appliance installation and repair, I see in my area are almost all vans now. Butch pickup trucks still have the gender affirming care market.
Would I stand by and allow my shares and future profits flounder while the head guy goes rogue? No blankin' way.
Regardless of personal preference for politics, no serious organization should ever want to come within one light year of DC politics. It can only use, besmirch, tarnish, degrade the organization's credibility and from there hit into money. Trump makes it exponentially worse.