The weird thing I’ve seen is in almost all the online forums I visit, like Reddit, YouTube comment sections, parts of twitter, hacker news, the cybertruck is universally panned. Yet when I drove a cybertruck, the number of onlookers who approached me inquiring about the car with excitement is unmatched with even a Lamborghini that I once rented. Shows how much of a bubble the internet alone is. MKBHD got the ratio’s right in his review, 75% of all approaching population are excited about the car and when asked to guess its price, they all wildly overestimate it, guessing close to a million than a 100k. This car is probably a hit, it would be a bigger hit if it were a gas car, it’s low range and really low range when towing make it impractical for any actual truck work.
The thing is, the people most likely to complain that the Cybertruck is a bad vehicle are the people who are informed about it. The wider public doesn't know about things like the tonneau cover leaking, wheel bearings failing, the suspension being stuck down and causing tire rub, the aerodynamic wheel covers that were causing tire failures because they were puncturing the sidewalls, the upper control arms that bend like an empty aluminum can, the door edges that will cut your finger off, the tailgate that will also cut your finger off, the fact that it's got even worse sight lines than the Hummer H1, or that the bed effectively loses twenty percent of it's space because of the backwards angled bulkhead where the bed and the cab meet.
Someone who is an enthusiast will most likely know about those things because they were widely reported in the automotive news sphere, and thus they will have a much higher chance of being against the Cybertruck. The wider public doesn't know, and so the novelty factor draws them in.
I think a simpler explanation is that terminally online people just don't like the politics of the CEO and like to take any chance to dunk on him.
In a world that has been stagnant for decades in terms of design and doing things out the box, it's something at least trying to be different. Don't get all the hate
> tonneau cover leaking, wheel bearings failing, the suspension being stuck down and causing tire rub, the aerodynamic wheel covers that were causing tire failures because they were puncturing the sidewalls
I think unless you're the kind of person who specifically spends time online looking for reasons not to buy a Cybertruck, you probably wouldn't know _any_ of that.
I think most of these people don't notice because they aren't pushing it. They're using it like most people use an SUV these days--as a normal car on roads and highways without any cargo. It's an overpriced status symbol to them.
For a number of years, a friend of mine has had a '99 Plymouth Prowler. If I were to base car popularity based solely on people coming up to ask about the car, his would win hands down and you'd assume (naturally) that Plymouth just couldn't manufacture enough to keep up with demand. There's a huge difference between attention-grabbing looks to a vehicle that will have people stop you and ask about it and what people will actually buy when it comes time to buy their next car. It's tempting to point to its position as #3 overall as an overwhelming success but the EV market is comparatively small still so I'm not sure it's useful to put much stock in it.
In terms of the negativity, I'd say that unlike other cars of similar design (like the Aztek) -- a way higher percentage of the panning I see online is about it not living up to its promised capabilities. There's loads of videos of Cybertrucks needing to be towed out of bad spots by other trucks, problems even when it isn't stuck because of how little its frame flexes, the additional torque wearing away tread on the tires much faster, etc. Some of those things can be engineered around and I'm sure Tesla engineers are working on it.
I'd hazard a guess that the market share the Cybertruck is taking isn't any existing trucks but rather more "luxury-class" SUVs like Mercedes, Land Rover, and BMW.
> For a number of years, a friend of mine has had a '99 Plymouth Prowler. If I were to base car popularity based solely on people coming up to ask about the car, his would win hands down and you'd assume (naturally) that Plymouth just couldn't manufacture enough to keep up with demand. There's a huge difference between attention-grabbing looks to a vehicle that will have people stop you and ask about it and what people will actually buy when it comes time to buy their next car.
You should give sashank_1509 enough credit to be able to distinguish between the jokey/mocking questions your friend's Prowler gets, and the enthusiastic ones he reports receiving.
>It's tempting to point to its position as #3 overall as an overwhelming success
There is no other way to spin a $100K car being the #3 overall EV vehicle of any type other than a success, especially given that a) #1 and #2 are also Tesla vehicles, and b) one of them was the world's best-selling car of any kind, EV or not, in 2023.
Idk. I’d imagine it has more to do with the preorders and how they can stuff shipments.
I got to drive one… it’s an objectively terrible car. I would imagine that as the look gets let’s novel that attention will wane quickly. When they get the inevitable prominent pedestrian collision on video, it has Pinto potential.
It’s weird because the last “new” Tesla was the Model Y I think, and that is an incredibly well thought out car — probably the 2020s equivalent of the 1980s Taurus or Camry.
That's my thought too. Cybertruck had an enormous number of preorders and apparently lots of them are backing out rather than taking delivery, but those that do take delivery still mean that Tesla can deliver cybertrucks as fast as they can produce them until the backlog is gone.
It was pretty hilarious to watch some toolbag driving a Cybertruck around Santana Row (a fake-fancy outdoor mall made to look like a European downtown area out here in Silicon Valley) blasting music at all the people trying to enjoy dinner outdoors. I was there picking something up and he was doing laps around the place from before I got there until after I left, a good 30+ minutes, just driving around in circles desperately trying to get attention.
To be fair, it’s very typical to hear people revving up their crappy SRT Chargers or sport bikes constantly there all day and night. I’m not sure who’d be interested in the extremely-overpriced apartments that they have, given the noise and lack of proximity to anything else outside of the malls there. I believe there used to be Cars and Coffee events hosted there but I’ve heard they got kicked out due to too many incidents of bad behavior.
Is there some tax data about the amount of Clean Vehicle/CA and Federal EV credits issued for Cybertruck?
The income cap on getting the clean vehicle rebates is $135k ($200k joint filers). And I'm not sure about the federal rebates. Tesla doesn't offer 0% financing, current Cybertruck APR deal is reported to be 5.29% for up to 72 months. So I don't see how someone with the income under the rebate cutoff can afford that $100k car or the financing option. The delta between the number of rebates (Federal EV vs Clean Vehicle/CA) may allow to estimate, how many of these are corporate (pre-income tax + rebate?) purchases.
And these "Cox Automotive estimates", are these reliable numbers that had been confirmed by Tesla earnings, or it is a "best guess by influencers" type of information?
I actually saw one in person for the first time a couple days ago. I had a great laugh at the owner's expense. He could better serve his desperate need for attention at a fraction of the price by hosting a block party or driving a 70s F150 or similar (aka an actual truck). Unlike many folks who think these things are trash I'm delighted they're on the market. Characterless voids trying to trowel over their emptiness with expensive consumer goods should absolutely be able to advertise loudly as a warning to the rest of us. Imagine what would have been possible if they'd spent that money on a combination of therapy and developing actual interests.
CT driver here. I didn't even get one for the attention. I thought it was cool-looking, useful, and could make for a good family car. I was right!
I'm an introvert so the constant attention (almost all positive, even in the Seattle area, surprisingly) was definitely an adjustment for me. Trust me, I'd be perfectly fine without the constant attention but people just keep giving it! Now I actually kind of enjoy it. My son waves at people from the back seat, I get asked questions by curious people all the time, and I get the occasional thumbs up randomly.
"Yet when I drove a cybertruck, the number of onlookers who approached me inquiring about the car with excitement is unmatched with even a Lamborghini that I once rented".
Your sampling method is flawed. Only Cybertruck fans are approaching you. Most people aren't going to come up and tell you they think your car is ugly.
Right, it’s kind of known as the incel mobile I think by most people. In the same way when you see a MAGA hat on the street, you already know a lot about the person before they a a single word and you do your best to avoid them but other people with MAGA hats will give each other the wink and nod.
In my experience that’s the closest thing I could describe to the cyber truck experience and how most people look at it.
TBF when I got a Mach E and they were still really new I did get a bunch of onlookers come up just to complain to me about how Ford is destroying the Mustang name and EVs are actually way worse for the environment than ICE cars and that I should be ashamed of myself for buying into the globalist lies and it's just a symbol of everything in the world going to hell. Happened about half a dozen times or so.
I did also get many positive interactions when it was new as well. But boy did those random negative encounters stick out!
I think the truck is like dating an exciting but shallow person who doesn't care about you.
The truck is extremely fast, with excellent steering, suspension and lots of other groundbreaking technology.
But it is basically user-hostile. No dashboard, no stalks for turn signals or gear selection, and everything is on the central touchscreen. And that is super cluttered and impossible to do important things without looking away from your driving and jabbing at a moving touch point.
It makes you a worse driver, and you're spending 100k.
Honestly, give it a dashboard. Add stalks for turn signals, wiper, headlight, gear selection. Give it a few dedicated buttons for things you need to reach by touch (defrost, mute/volume, internal/external lights) and lots of animosity would go away. Make it an option for $5k! people will pay.
EDIT: they are learning. The wrapped black ones don't look terrible.
People are much more likely to approach you to say something positive than to say something negative.
There’s almost no precedent for a “hit” vehicle at that price point. Toyota stopped selling real Landcruisers in the US because Americans won’t pay that much for something with a Toyota Badge (hence the current real Landcruiser is sold as a Lexus in very low volume).
Tesla are claiming a hit after making people wait 5 years for a vehicle they couldn’t see and then shipping preorders. The preorders have been massively less than they claimed and now the vehicle is with people it is being shown to be of low quality and low capability. Unable to manage tasks Subarus and much cheaper vehicles can.
The proof of its success will be in the coming year. Now buyers are walking in to buy a real vehicle at a real price. The current owners bought a paper spec sheet at a fantasy price and are a self selecting group happy to pay 2-3x over what they were promised.
For the longest time, the Lx variant of the Land Cruiser was cheaper than the Land Cruiser in used markets because average car buyers don’t know that the LX is a Land Cruiser with leather.
There are tons of deals like this in the car world. While peons paid insane markups on the RAV4 prime, intelligent people were getting the Lexus variant for MSRP and they had an actually good interior on top of it!!!
Years ago I got a rental that was some new hideous looking 4-door Fiat model. Maybe a 500L or something. They were taking off the plastic wrap when I got it.
It was a week of beating off people approaching me and asking about it. It looked weird, I thought people wanted to beat me up but they were genuinely curious about it.
That some weird truck with a formerly 3 year waiting list is at the top of the charts a couple months into shipping should be surprising? Wait a year. Nobody is looking at the 500L now.
I went through this with my Model 3 back in 2018, when they were still rare in my area. Random people would approach me in super market parking lots, everyone at my gym wanted a ride in it. Now it's like driving a Toyota or a BMW, there are tons on the road and nobody bats an eyelid.
People used to do the same thing to me after we bought one of the first Nissan Leafs. So much that a friend expressed displeasure with going with me to pick up food because he knew we would very likely be delayed by someone asking about the car.
PT Cruiser and New Beetle were also incredible attention-getters when new and eventual unexciting flops. The new VW ID Buzz van will be the same due to the subpar mileage. What good is a road trip car that you must stop to charge every 200 miles?
If you drive the weenermobile you'll get a similar reaction, but it doesn't mean people want to buy it. It's an oddity, a curiosity they're excited to see in person.
Some pickup truck work is high mileage, but a surprising amount of it is low mileage. It varies a lot, there are lots of trucks that do less than 100 miles a day.
Work trucks are also usually much more predictable than consumer vehicles. Most of them do the same thing every day. The predictability should make buying an EV easier.
That's true of the range, but the Cybertruck is also terrible in terms of torque, horsepower, and suspension compared to the Rivian truck or the F150 Lightning. Those EV trucks are very practical. The Cybertruck, not so much. As others in this comment section have pointed out, it's more of a luxury SUV than anything else.
The F-150 is the most sold car in the US. How many of those ever see any “real truck work” versus driving from the suburbs to the grocery store or the office ? Probably less than 10%?
> MKBHD got the ratio’s right in his review, 75% of all approaching population are excited about the car and when asked to guess its price, they all wildly overestimate it, guessing close to a million than a 100k
This has to be hyperbole. There are many in the middle class areas I spend a lot of time in, and even $100K cars are a rarity here. No-one is thinking "oh, wow, sure are a lot of people who just bought million dollar cars, here where the median home price is $500-600K!"
The only good thing about the CyberTruck is the steer-by-wire system. It makes steering suck in all other cars. But every other aspect of the thing is a complete failure. Selling a car with such terrible terrible visibility should not be legal.
I can understand being curious about it since it is one of the most unusual looking vehicles. But, I mean, I saw one on Main Street recently and it was ugly as heck. I'd be curious about it too, without ever having any wish to buy one.
There is an anti-musk campaign on-going and anything Musk does is being criticized. That being said, from my Youtube observations it seems that the biggest issue is the build quality. They clearly rushed this through.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want to see this thing in small alleys and especially with the crazy speeds you can accelerate with. But it's definitively an interesting model.
I also fell for this online bashing of the cybertruck. And since I had a model S but skipped the model 3 for a taycan and was aware of the poor quality of the model 3, I thought it made sense.
However if people are buying the cybertruck despite all its faults, then I'm glad to be proven wrong.
The DeLorean DMC-12 is the car guy version of "never meet your heroes." So fucking cool, absolutely iconic design, and genuinely one of the worst cars ever manufactured. Criminally under-powered, no power steering, the only part of the window that would open was the part inside the plastic frame of it, issues with overheating, 0-60 in about 2 years, and the transmission was an utterly garbage Lotus one that was chosen because it was the only one that would fit in the frame.
Honestly one of my lottery dreams would be buying a DMC-12 and converting it to electric.
I feel Tesla is a US bubble. Despite all the disproportionate media this brand and it’s CEO gets, in my country I haven’t even seen one in the street yet, but I see EV Volvo, Renault, Fiat, BYD, GWM and others daily.
And yet, trucks and SUVs are the best-selling cars in the US, and have been for a long time. There is a weird loophole for fuel efficiency in mileage standards for large vehicles, but obviously that doesn’t apply to the Cybertruck. There is definitely some psychological appeal to having a very dominant-looking vehicle.
So just as a business move, the Cybertruck makes sense. But there’s more overlap with Musk’s politics than you might think.
I read a book a long time ago by this very weird product marketer Clotaire Rapaille, who, several decades ago, was trying to convince executives to put a gun mount on an SUV. His argument was his research showed that the people who loved big cars saw the world as dangerous, and had fantasies of cutting through the hordes with a powerful vehicle. Rapaille’s methods are somewhere between the usual consumer panel interviews and guided meditation, so it’s hardly scientific, maybe more like poetry, but I found it compelling.
Musk actually tried to demonstrate the Cybertruck’s resistance to guns and sledgehammers. Its actual durability is, I gather, more debatable, but he was definitely trying to reach people’s darkest fears and impulses.
I feel this is also selection bias. People approaching owners in public are unlikely to be aware of what an engineering disaster the thing is, what with all the issues with quality control, slow delivery, and very slow repairs/maintenance from Tesla, or the funnier stories where owners have had their trucks brick entirely due to getting the thing washed, whereas in the comment sections you're referencing, those topics are usually the topic of conversation. And, I mean, even if the people approaching owners do know about that stuff... I dunno, I find it hard to picture myself walking up to a complete stranger and shit-talking their new toy to their face. And not just because I'm a nice person, but because too many people in this country are emotionally unstable and armed, and as funny as I think Cybertrucks and their owners are, I'm not prepared to get killed for a joke.
And to put this even further: most people even in America are not "car people" and therefore don't know shit about cars, where they come from, what goes into them, etc. My parents are great examples of this. They've owned something like 4 of the 10 worst cars of the new millennium list put out by Forbes, but like, an awful car in 2024 is still generally fine for an undemanding casual user. Sure, people buy tons of trucks here, but the vast majority of them aren't used for anything more strenuous than hauling a dozen bags of fertilizer, and my Corvette can handle that. A Cybertruck is a terrible truck, but most people don't do truck shit with the trucks they buy, and it's a perfectly middle-of-the-road SUEV. I think it's a bad option if that's what you're after, chiefly because you're gonna spend a LOT of money on tires you don't really need to, and the panels aren't aligned right, and if anything goes wrong with it you're liable to spend months playing vehicular ping-pong with your Tesla dealership, and it's (IMO) ugly as sin... but you do you. Assuming it doesn't have some kind of catastrophic failure that an unfortunate number do, you'll probably have a fine experience.
The videos of it struggling to move in snow and "bravely" fording a creek of 5 inch deep water are funny as hell to see, because it's shocking what Cybertruck owners think "hard going" in a truck is. They'd probably lose their minds seeing some of what I've seen modified trucks crawl up, through, and across in the course of off-road competition if they think driving through a fast stream makes the Cybertruck a feat of engineering, but again, most people who buy these things aren't driving through a blizzard at 90mph to get medicine to the good children of the village so they live to see Santa come Christmas morning. They're going across town to the Good Denny's, or to the local mall for shopping, or to their kids soccer game. And on that journey, a Cybertruck and virtually any vehicle you can buy new right now, will suffice. Just don't get it wet.
I hope this is gpt generated and you didnt spend your own time writing that.
its fine. a couple early failures get fixed as production ramps, as usual, and itll become a best selling ev, as usual.
There was a Cybertruck at the Paris Games Week (there was a Tesla corner in the con for some reason). That was my first time seeing one in person.
The most striking thing was how tall it was. Half the kids attending the PGW were smaller than its front bumper. I hope these things never, ever get allowed in France.
That’s strange since the Cybertruck doesn’t meet European regulations (at the very least UN-R26) due to pedestrian safety. Not sure if there is a workaround if someone imports it as their personal vehicle though.
Obviously it's legal to own and display road-illegal vehicles. Just think about open-wheel racing, including go-karts. Just can't drive them on the road. The truck will have been transported inside a bigger truck or on top of a car transporter.
Perhaps there's some sort of exception if it's just for exhibition? If there wasn't, I suppose it would be difficult to have things like museums, auto shows, etc
Interesting about height and fatality risk: (from the article)
> a 10cm increase in the front-end height of a vehicle led to a 22% increase in pedestrian fatality risk, most strongly affecting the survival chances of women, children, and older people.
Even if it were allowed on the roads of France, with its 4 tons, you would have to pass the specific driver license C1 [1], because over the 3.5 tons limit of a classical driver license B. More than that, the C1 must be renewed every 5 years at least.
It's basically the same size as an F-150. It has a crumple zone although it probabl only activates for hard car collisions. I've seen no evidence that it is significantly worse for pedestrian safety than an F-150. Which is not good at all, but it is still a bit pretentious to paint it as a horribly dangerous car when there is no evidence that it is worse than one of the most common cars in the US.
> I've seen no evidence that it is significantly worse for pedestrian safety than an F-150
Serious question: have you looked? Or is there any special reason you imagine that if such evidence existed, you would have seen it?
I say this because I spent 10-15 minutes looking for information and gave up because I’m not sure of any tests which I could use to compare the two, or any testing bodies that focus on pedestrian safety. If that information exists, I’d be interested to see a side by side comparison.
That thing is all steel and sharp corners. Not at all the same as a delivery truck, adhering to basic pedestrian safety standards and also driven mostly by workers with special driving licenses. Also they are way slower than these steel battering rams.
"Tesla sold almost 17,000 Cybertrucks in the third quarter, according to Cox estimates, making it the third most popular EV in the US during the period. The only other EVs that sold better were the Tesla Model 3 and Y.
So far in 2024, more than 28,000 Cybertrucks have been sold. That's more than Ford's F-150 Lightning, Rivian's R1T, and Chevy's Silverado EV, Cox data shows."
"BYD was ranked as the best-selling electric vehicle manufacturer worldwide after selling over three million units in 2023 after overtaking Tesla as the best-selling electric vehicle manufacturer in the previous year. BYD's sales volume translates into a market share of around 22 percent. Tesla and the Volkswagen Group were among the runners-up. "
I find Kia/ Hyundai designs more pleasing and “out of the box” than most other automakers. Of course they have some failures like the Ioniq 6 sedan, the thing looks like the hate child between a 911 and an MB C300.
My girlfriend owns one so to share our experience, the cybertruck is an unreliable POS. She's had it three, four months now & we have had it in the shop for suspension repair, an ECU computer which fried itself at a charging station (2k), a coolant leak part replacement from the cyberbeast rear engine (1400), the passenger window falling inside the door after the wire used in the gear window retraction snapped or tangled in the gears (450). We have gone through something like 8-10 tires and rims because they can't handle a pothole, or slice themselves after some tech put the wheel cover on wrong (tried leaving it off but a tire caught debris and was punctured that way too).
She had about two or three tires slashed or had the air nozzle cut off and sentry mode didn't catch anything except the back of the persons head. The self-driving jerked itself into a barricade on the interstate when someone cut her off, she wasn't able to stop it from doing so fast enough, it was all just faster then her reaction time (thankfully the other driver admitted fault but if they had contested I wouldn't put my faith in self-driving laws to side on a drivers side in a dispute). We have put roughly 10k into this truck for service.
We bought the truck because she lives in the mountains, she drives 200 miles a day for work if not more 5 days a week (regularly up at 4am on the road at 6am and home around 7pm - 9pm depending), and its probably the biggest purchase regret of our lives.
She needed a vehicle and I just spent 15k on a used RAV, we made the decision for her to get the truck because self-driving sounded very exciting (its all 'corporate puffery' now though), and her being in the mountains left us looking at roughly 80k vehicles anyway so we figured let's take a chance on the truck and self-driving. I mean most cars you get a good five years out them anyway right? Turns out that paint it black tesla ad was even faked, and my personal opinion is Tesla used the reservations to get this news piece.
I truly don't see the cybertruck as being desirable for the average American, I believe it's a novelty which will die once Teslas early adopter advantage for self-driving dies up. I believe it should. We are currently looking to buy her a 8k commuter beater for local 60 - 120 mile work days and using the cybertruck just for the work out of state. We'd sell the truck but its depreciated so much and she still travels out of state once or twice a month minimum and all over the place once there so we still want something electric for those trips. We would sell it if I had about another 50k in the bank to be comfortable with taking the quick loss from doing so, we still might once the relatives house sells. Don't buy Tesla, that's my advice. We never will again.
I'm guessing they were covered under warranty, but the cash-equivalent costs were listed.
I think the bigger problem here is the inconvenience. You don't get much value out of the thing you purchased if it's in the shop most of the time. Plus you have to take time out of your day to bring it to the shop (if it's even possible) or wait for a tow truck to come get you if the vehicle is immobile or unsafe to drive, and then find a way to get home.
Warranties pay for parts and labor, but they don't cover incidental expenses, or more importantly, your time.
Isn't that like asking if Boeings flights aren't covered by life insurance?
Car insurance companies know the costs, and they have open listings of the car brands. They have literally all incentives in play to stay truthful. Compared to whatever PR we are force-fed a jour.
I'm betting it's anti-Musk people or depending on where OP lives, perhaps an area that's gentrifying and is filled with people who dislike said gentrification.
Emotionally unstable people. She was at a bloody hospital out of state and someone slashed her tires in the garage there. We can't speak to their motives but angry at musk or angry at the appearance of wealth wouldn't be too big of a hypothesis.
If your state has "lemon laws", maybe you can get some help. https://www.atg.wa.gov/general-lemon-law TLDR: recourse when mfg sells a defective, unsafe, or both, vehicle.
Not that this helps you...
IMHO, current CyberTruck is in the alpha testing phase. It has multiple disruptive innovations. Tesla wisely chose the relatively low volume CyberTruck to mitigate risk.
I'm concerned (but not surprised) Tesla is aggressively ramping up production.
Esthetics aside, CyberTruck has so many exciting, long overdue technology innovations. Better gigacasting, modular etherloop (replacing CAN bus), switch to 48v, drive by wire, no rear view mirror, etc.
(I think the stainless steel exterior will prove to be a mistake. Mostly for safety reasons.)
I would definitely suggest at least getting a consult from a lemon law lawyer if it's been in the shop this much. Especially if you also have buyer's remorse.
See what needs to happen to qualify, document what's already happened, and get an idea of the process and recent interactions between your lawyer and the specific manufacturer.
I had a probable lemon on a new model that I didn't do that for because we liked it despite its faults, and some of the early problems reasserted themselves before (after warranty) engine problems led me to get rid of it. I regret not pursuing a lemon law return and replacing it with a later in production model. Might have still ran into early engine troubles, but they probably figured out how to apply paint in the meantime.
VA so unfortunately we it requires contiguous time in the shop. Very much appreciate the input though, I know other owners in other states have pushed back with the lemon law.
> I mean most cars you get a good five years out them anyway right?
Uhh no? You should absolutely expect a good vehicle, hell most vehicles, to exceed 10 years without serious failures. Many vehicles come with 7 year warranties on manufacturing defects… It sounds like you need to take better care of your vehicles or buy better vehicles. I did notice that you said she drives 200 miles a day and that will certainly contribute but if you take care of it, most cars would probably do that for 10 years assuming it’s mostly cruising. Either way that statement of 5 years is nuts. I bought a 5 year old car with 80,000km on it and it was in damn near new condition!
I’ve owned 6 vehicles, including one motorcycle, none of them from brand new mind you, and all of them were still reliable after their 10th year lol. Currently I have a 5 year old car which you can’t tell apart from the brand new 2024 models because it has no wear and the model hasn’t had a face lift, and I have a 35 year old ute (truck)… 5 years is nothing. I think the average age of cars on the road would be older than 5 years
Certainly correct. My old Prius made it like 14 years so yes. vehicles should be looking at ten years, I just threw out five years out of irritation or even a worst case scenario. I just meant our absolute minimum expectations were fove years.
> hell most vehicles, to exceed 10 years without serious failures.
I do that with cars, usually 10 to 15 years (camaro-15, ford exploder-12, wife's chrysler sebring-14 (which was surprisingly problem free considering chryslers quality stats)).
One of my friends loves to get new ones every few years, but I'm more focused on the cost.
early production models of any tesla are generally garbage quality, remember the constant issues with S/X panel gaps, model 3 panel gaps, home depot plastic in the model y, etc.
This isn’t even close to true, fwiw. You can easily find stats on EV batteries. There are early Teslas out there with 200k+ miles after 10+ years with minimal degradation.
The memefication of reality is happening right under our eyes, and the Cybertruck is the perfect vehicle for it.
Expect more such memetic design across everything. From people to products, the meme is the atomic unit of attention. Beauty is a secondary goal; to sprout memes is how you win in twenty twenty four - and beyond.
tbh I continue to say the i3 scale/weight was what mass market EV transportation should have been designed towards (and more efforts focused on public trans than single/small n occupant cars). Societal/environmental cost of 6000-7000 lb behemoths erase any emissions gains from going EV.
The biggest failing of the i3, in my opinion, is that it looked stupid. It was cheap and "dorky" looking for no obvious reason. There was nothing that stopped BMW from making it look like any of their other models but they chose to make it weird and different in a way that surely hurt its sales. A real shame, honestly.
The Bolt looked nearly as dorky and they sold plenty of those. Even with the battery recall. I doubt GM made much if any profit though. LG chemicals sure didn't.
The Ioniq 5 looks way better than both and of course it is doing numbers as a result.
i3 was just expensive, low range, and overall not a competitive EV in the NA market.
the irony is that apparently it was the one model where the sales were going up year over year, vs. the usual initial high demand and subsequent decline of ICE models
Readit News
Someone who is an enthusiast will most likely know about those things because they were widely reported in the automotive news sphere, and thus they will have a much higher chance of being against the Cybertruck. The wider public doesn't know, and so the novelty factor draws them in.
In a world that has been stagnant for decades in terms of design and doing things out the box, it's something at least trying to be different. Don't get all the hate
I think unless you're the kind of person who specifically spends time online looking for reasons not to buy a Cybertruck, you probably wouldn't know _any_ of that.
In terms of the negativity, I'd say that unlike other cars of similar design (like the Aztek) -- a way higher percentage of the panning I see online is about it not living up to its promised capabilities. There's loads of videos of Cybertrucks needing to be towed out of bad spots by other trucks, problems even when it isn't stuck because of how little its frame flexes, the additional torque wearing away tread on the tires much faster, etc. Some of those things can be engineered around and I'm sure Tesla engineers are working on it.
I'd hazard a guess that the market share the Cybertruck is taking isn't any existing trucks but rather more "luxury-class" SUVs like Mercedes, Land Rover, and BMW.
You should give sashank_1509 enough credit to be able to distinguish between the jokey/mocking questions your friend's Prowler gets, and the enthusiastic ones he reports receiving.
>It's tempting to point to its position as #3 overall as an overwhelming success
There is no other way to spin a $100K car being the #3 overall EV vehicle of any type other than a success, especially given that a) #1 and #2 are also Tesla vehicles, and b) one of them was the world's best-selling car of any kind, EV or not, in 2023.
I got to drive one… it’s an objectively terrible car. I would imagine that as the look gets let’s novel that attention will wane quickly. When they get the inevitable prominent pedestrian collision on video, it has Pinto potential.
It’s weird because the last “new” Tesla was the Model Y I think, and that is an incredibly well thought out car — probably the 2020s equivalent of the 1980s Taurus or Camry.
To be fair, it’s very typical to hear people revving up their crappy SRT Chargers or sport bikes constantly there all day and night. I’m not sure who’d be interested in the extremely-overpriced apartments that they have, given the noise and lack of proximity to anything else outside of the malls there. I believe there used to be Cars and Coffee events hosted there but I’ve heard they got kicked out due to too many incidents of bad behavior.
The income cap on getting the clean vehicle rebates is $135k ($200k joint filers). And I'm not sure about the federal rebates. Tesla doesn't offer 0% financing, current Cybertruck APR deal is reported to be 5.29% for up to 72 months. So I don't see how someone with the income under the rebate cutoff can afford that $100k car or the financing option. The delta between the number of rebates (Federal EV vs Clean Vehicle/CA) may allow to estimate, how many of these are corporate (pre-income tax + rebate?) purchases.
And these "Cox Automotive estimates", are these reliable numbers that had been confirmed by Tesla earnings, or it is a "best guess by influencers" type of information?
I'm an introvert so the constant attention (almost all positive, even in the Seattle area, surprisingly) was definitely an adjustment for me. Trust me, I'd be perfectly fine without the constant attention but people just keep giving it! Now I actually kind of enjoy it. My son waves at people from the back seat, I get asked questions by curious people all the time, and I get the occasional thumbs up randomly.
Your sampling method is flawed. Only Cybertruck fans are approaching you. Most people aren't going to come up and tell you they think your car is ugly.
In my experience that’s the closest thing I could describe to the cyber truck experience and how most people look at it.
I did also get many positive interactions when it was new as well. But boy did those random negative encounters stick out!
The truck is extremely fast, with excellent steering, suspension and lots of other groundbreaking technology.
But it is basically user-hostile. No dashboard, no stalks for turn signals or gear selection, and everything is on the central touchscreen. And that is super cluttered and impossible to do important things without looking away from your driving and jabbing at a moving touch point.
It makes you a worse driver, and you're spending 100k.
Honestly, give it a dashboard. Add stalks for turn signals, wiper, headlight, gear selection. Give it a few dedicated buttons for things you need to reach by touch (defrost, mute/volume, internal/external lights) and lots of animosity would go away. Make it an option for $5k! people will pay.
EDIT: they are learning. The wrapped black ones don't look terrible.
There’s almost no precedent for a “hit” vehicle at that price point. Toyota stopped selling real Landcruisers in the US because Americans won’t pay that much for something with a Toyota Badge (hence the current real Landcruiser is sold as a Lexus in very low volume).
Tesla are claiming a hit after making people wait 5 years for a vehicle they couldn’t see and then shipping preorders. The preorders have been massively less than they claimed and now the vehicle is with people it is being shown to be of low quality and low capability. Unable to manage tasks Subarus and much cheaper vehicles can.
The proof of its success will be in the coming year. Now buyers are walking in to buy a real vehicle at a real price. The current owners bought a paper spec sheet at a fantasy price and are a self selecting group happy to pay 2-3x over what they were promised.
There are tons of deals like this in the car world. While peons paid insane markups on the RAV4 prime, intelligent people were getting the Lexus variant for MSRP and they had an actually good interior on top of it!!!
It was a week of beating off people approaching me and asking about it. It looked weird, I thought people wanted to beat me up but they were genuinely curious about it.
That some weird truck with a formerly 3 year waiting list is at the top of the charts a couple months into shipping should be surprising? Wait a year. Nobody is looking at the 500L now.
So I don’t think it’s much of a measuring stick.
Some pickup truck work is high mileage, but a surprising amount of it is low mileage. It varies a lot, there are lots of trucks that do less than 100 miles a day.
Work trucks are also usually much more predictable than consumer vehicles. Most of them do the same thing every day. The predictability should make buying an EV easier.
This has to be hyperbole. There are many in the middle class areas I spend a lot of time in, and even $100K cars are a rarity here. No-one is thinking "oh, wow, sure are a lot of people who just bought million dollar cars, here where the median home price is $500-600K!"
Don't get me wrong, I don't want to see this thing in small alleys and especially with the crazy speeds you can accelerate with. But it's definitively an interesting model.
However if people are buying the cybertruck despite all its faults, then I'm glad to be proven wrong.
There are a lot of terrible cars that impress non car people
Honestly one of my lottery dreams would be buying a DMC-12 and converting it to electric.
Thankfully our road laws won't allow the hideous monstrosity that is the Cybertruck though.
In the US, most trucks sold do very little hauling, towing, or off-reading or anything else that might justify the giant form factor.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-siz...
And yet, trucks and SUVs are the best-selling cars in the US, and have been for a long time. There is a weird loophole for fuel efficiency in mileage standards for large vehicles, but obviously that doesn’t apply to the Cybertruck. There is definitely some psychological appeal to having a very dominant-looking vehicle.
So just as a business move, the Cybertruck makes sense. But there’s more overlap with Musk’s politics than you might think.
I read a book a long time ago by this very weird product marketer Clotaire Rapaille, who, several decades ago, was trying to convince executives to put a gun mount on an SUV. His argument was his research showed that the people who loved big cars saw the world as dangerous, and had fantasies of cutting through the hordes with a powerful vehicle. Rapaille’s methods are somewhere between the usual consumer panel interviews and guided meditation, so it’s hardly scientific, maybe more like poetry, but I found it compelling.
Musk actually tried to demonstrate the Cybertruck’s resistance to guns and sledgehammers. Its actual durability is, I gather, more debatable, but he was definitely trying to reach people’s darkest fears and impulses.
And to put this even further: most people even in America are not "car people" and therefore don't know shit about cars, where they come from, what goes into them, etc. My parents are great examples of this. They've owned something like 4 of the 10 worst cars of the new millennium list put out by Forbes, but like, an awful car in 2024 is still generally fine for an undemanding casual user. Sure, people buy tons of trucks here, but the vast majority of them aren't used for anything more strenuous than hauling a dozen bags of fertilizer, and my Corvette can handle that. A Cybertruck is a terrible truck, but most people don't do truck shit with the trucks they buy, and it's a perfectly middle-of-the-road SUEV. I think it's a bad option if that's what you're after, chiefly because you're gonna spend a LOT of money on tires you don't really need to, and the panels aren't aligned right, and if anything goes wrong with it you're liable to spend months playing vehicular ping-pong with your Tesla dealership, and it's (IMO) ugly as sin... but you do you. Assuming it doesn't have some kind of catastrophic failure that an unfortunate number do, you'll probably have a fine experience.
The videos of it struggling to move in snow and "bravely" fording a creek of 5 inch deep water are funny as hell to see, because it's shocking what Cybertruck owners think "hard going" in a truck is. They'd probably lose their minds seeing some of what I've seen modified trucks crawl up, through, and across in the course of off-road competition if they think driving through a fast stream makes the Cybertruck a feat of engineering, but again, most people who buy these things aren't driving through a blizzard at 90mph to get medicine to the good children of the village so they live to see Santa come Christmas morning. They're going across town to the Good Denny's, or to the local mall for shopping, or to their kids soccer game. And on that journey, a Cybertruck and virtually any vehicle you can buy new right now, will suffice. Just don't get it wet.
So it's a bit crap then?
The most striking thing was how tall it was. Half the kids attending the PGW were smaller than its front bumper. I hope these things never, ever get allowed in France.
I'd appreciate EU citizens writing to their MEPs about this.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/08/tesla-cyb...
Dead Comment
> a 10cm increase in the front-end height of a vehicle led to a 22% increase in pedestrian fatality risk, most strongly affecting the survival chances of women, children, and older people.
Kid killer cars
[1] : https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F31121
Serious question: have you looked? Or is there any special reason you imagine that if such evidence existed, you would have seen it?
I say this because I spent 10-15 minutes looking for information and gave up because I’m not sure of any tests which I could use to compare the two, or any testing bodies that focus on pedestrian safety. If that information exists, I’d be interested to see a side by side comparison.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
There are also far fewer of them per capita than passenger vehicles.
At the end of the day they're a necessary evil while the ever growing number of vanity pavement princess pickup trucks are not.
Relevant snippet:
"Tesla sold almost 17,000 Cybertrucks in the third quarter, according to Cox estimates, making it the third most popular EV in the US during the period. The only other EVs that sold better were the Tesla Model 3 and Y.
So far in 2024, more than 28,000 Cybertrucks have been sold. That's more than Ford's F-150 Lightning, Rivian's R1T, and Chevy's Silverado EV, Cox data shows."
"BYD was ranked as the best-selling electric vehicle manufacturer worldwide after selling over three million units in 2023 after overtaking Tesla as the best-selling electric vehicle manufacturer in the previous year. BYD's sales volume translates into a market share of around 22 percent. Tesla and the Volkswagen Group were among the runners-up. "
From the article: "Tesla sold almost 17,000 Cybertrucks in the third quarter"
and I believe the total sales volume for last quarter was 400k EVs in the US and about 3.5mio worldwide.
That means Cybertruck sales were like 2-3% of total sales in the US and <0.5% worldwide.
I'll admit the design has grown on me, and we need more mainstream vehicles challenging the boring design "norms".
I would love to see a cross between the Model Y and Cybertruck in the future.
I'd argue that we need to start treating cars like the utilitarian objects they are and stop associating our personalities with them.
She had about two or three tires slashed or had the air nozzle cut off and sentry mode didn't catch anything except the back of the persons head. The self-driving jerked itself into a barricade on the interstate when someone cut her off, she wasn't able to stop it from doing so fast enough, it was all just faster then her reaction time (thankfully the other driver admitted fault but if they had contested I wouldn't put my faith in self-driving laws to side on a drivers side in a dispute). We have put roughly 10k into this truck for service.
We bought the truck because she lives in the mountains, she drives 200 miles a day for work if not more 5 days a week (regularly up at 4am on the road at 6am and home around 7pm - 9pm depending), and its probably the biggest purchase regret of our lives.
She needed a vehicle and I just spent 15k on a used RAV, we made the decision for her to get the truck because self-driving sounded very exciting (its all 'corporate puffery' now though), and her being in the mountains left us looking at roughly 80k vehicles anyway so we figured let's take a chance on the truck and self-driving. I mean most cars you get a good five years out them anyway right? Turns out that paint it black tesla ad was even faked, and my personal opinion is Tesla used the reservations to get this news piece.
I truly don't see the cybertruck as being desirable for the average American, I believe it's a novelty which will die once Teslas early adopter advantage for self-driving dies up. I believe it should. We are currently looking to buy her a 8k commuter beater for local 60 - 120 mile work days and using the cybertruck just for the work out of state. We'd sell the truck but its depreciated so much and she still travels out of state once or twice a month minimum and all over the place once there so we still want something electric for those trips. We would sell it if I had about another 50k in the bank to be comfortable with taking the quick loss from doing so, we still might once the relatives house sells. Don't buy Tesla, that's my advice. We never will again.
I think the bigger problem here is the inconvenience. You don't get much value out of the thing you purchased if it's in the shop most of the time. Plus you have to take time out of your day to bring it to the shop (if it's even possible) or wait for a tow truck to come get you if the vehicle is immobile or unsafe to drive, and then find a way to get home.
Warranties pay for parts and labor, but they don't cover incidental expenses, or more importantly, your time.
Car insurance companies know the costs, and they have open listings of the car brands. They have literally all incentives in play to stay truthful. Compared to whatever PR we are force-fed a jour.
Who is doing this? Anti-Musk people? Anti-EV people? I’m not from the US so I’m not familiar with the politics.
Dead Comment
Not that this helps you...
IMHO, current CyberTruck is in the alpha testing phase. It has multiple disruptive innovations. Tesla wisely chose the relatively low volume CyberTruck to mitigate risk.
I'm concerned (but not surprised) Tesla is aggressively ramping up production.
Esthetics aside, CyberTruck has so many exciting, long overdue technology innovations. Better gigacasting, modular etherloop (replacing CAN bus), switch to 48v, drive by wire, no rear view mirror, etc.
(I think the stainless steel exterior will prove to be a mistake. Mostly for safety reasons.)
See what needs to happen to qualify, document what's already happened, and get an idea of the process and recent interactions between your lawyer and the specific manufacturer.
I had a probable lemon on a new model that I didn't do that for because we liked it despite its faults, and some of the early problems reasserted themselves before (after warranty) engine problems led me to get rid of it. I regret not pursuing a lemon law return and replacing it with a later in production model. Might have still ran into early engine troubles, but they probably figured out how to apply paint in the meantime.
Uhh no? You should absolutely expect a good vehicle, hell most vehicles, to exceed 10 years without serious failures. Many vehicles come with 7 year warranties on manufacturing defects… It sounds like you need to take better care of your vehicles or buy better vehicles. I did notice that you said she drives 200 miles a day and that will certainly contribute but if you take care of it, most cars would probably do that for 10 years assuming it’s mostly cruising. Either way that statement of 5 years is nuts. I bought a 5 year old car with 80,000km on it and it was in damn near new condition!
I’ve owned 6 vehicles, including one motorcycle, none of them from brand new mind you, and all of them were still reliable after their 10th year lol. Currently I have a 5 year old car which you can’t tell apart from the brand new 2024 models because it has no wear and the model hasn’t had a face lift, and I have a 35 year old ute (truck)… 5 years is nothing. I think the average age of cars on the road would be older than 5 years
I do that with cars, usually 10 to 15 years (camaro-15, ford exploder-12, wife's chrysler sebring-14 (which was surprisingly problem free considering chryslers quality stats)).
One of my friends loves to get new ones every few years, but I'm more focused on the cost.
"People buying a car with a lifespan of their smartphone batteries is beyond me."
The memefication of reality is happening right under our eyes, and the Cybertruck is the perfect vehicle for it.
Expect more such memetic design across everything. From people to products, the meme is the atomic unit of attention. Beauty is a secondary goal; to sprout memes is how you win in twenty twenty four - and beyond.
The Ioniq 5 looks way better than both and of course it is doing numbers as a result.
i3 was just expensive, low range, and overall not a competitive EV in the NA market.