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.
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
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.
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.
The problem with Teslas almost universally is with lemons. Which is to say if you get lucky your experience will be great. The problem is that there are a fuck ton of lemons and cars that have no problems turn into lemons right around the time that the first few problems show up (which means more lemons as they age).
That's essentially just a QA and reliability design failure which is indicative of broader issues with Tesla but it also means that until someone's vehicle starts having problems they will have nothing but a positive experience which can leave them blindsided by said problems.
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.
Kind of. They're what I would call a ute. They're still car based vehicles with beds. But that doesn't mean they can't do 90% of what the average person uses a truck for. They just aren't as stout as a body on frame truck and won't take as much abuse. But use them for their intended purpose and they'll do just fine.
Unibody car is misleading because the materials are very different. I don’t think it is comparable to either a body on frame construction or the type of unibody a typical sedan or crossover has.
similar things were said about the Honda Ridgeline and the Chevrolet Avalanche; they ended up having the same long-tern issues that they were predicted to have; torn mounting points and reduced repair-ability when the inevitable occurs.
>similar things were said about the Honda Ridgeline and the Chevrolet Avalanche; they ended up having the same long-tern issues that they were predicted to have; torn mounting points and reduced repair-ability when the inevitable occurs.
The fact that you think the Chevy Avalanche[1] has unibody problems says everything I need to know about your opinion
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with unibody construction for a vehicle like this some work vans have been that way basically forever (though it makes me want to go postal when the OEMs graft a really shitty frame onto the back of a unibody van and call it a "cab and chassis").
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?
"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.
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.
People keep assuming China is only successful because they're dumping, and miss the elephant in the room: China went all-in on EVs over a decade ago, while we were fucking about with hybrids and maybe-just-stick-with-ICE. They have world-class batteries and insatiable domestic demand and it's been that way since before Tesla, what if China is undercutting us because their cars are just better?
In that case our tarrifs are just protectionism, is what.
>They have world-class batteries and insatiable domestic demand
Excellent, then they won't have an issue with losing their export markets to tariffs, because they can just sell their EVs to the "insatiable demand" of the local consumers.
>what if China is undercutting us because their cars are just better
Price/performance they ARE better, China can produce cheaper because of their years of (government aided) investments and economies of scale. Of course, we aren't obligated to buy from belligerent states engaging in strategic mercantilism producing the goods of the future. We aren't obligated to prop up the Chinese export-oriented economic model in pursuit of one generation of cheap EV cars.
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 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.
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.
Are you talking about the debunking videos that highlight that the Cybertruck only beat the Porsche in the 1/8 mile and not the whole quarter mile? And that Cybertruck is still basically a 10 second truck?
It's honestly a absurd and funny to me how fast the truck is. It's like seeing an elephant fly. It's even funnier to see people get angry at it.
I definitely don't like marketing and ads, but that's literally how all ads work. It doesn't debunk some of the insane performance characteristics.
> Are you talking about the debunking videos that highlight that the Cybertruck only beat the Porsche in the 1/8 mile
No, I'm talking about the debunking videos and articles that show:
"We ran six quarter-mile drag races, and each one had the same outcome: The Porsche 911 Carrera T wins and the Tesla Cybertruck Beast loses... it’s not a particularly close race, either."
Re the 1/8: "We can say confidently that Tesla didn’t show the Porsche 911 Carrera T’s quickest possible run. In four out of six MotorTrend drag races, the Porsche 911 Carrera T beat the Cybertruck to the eighth-mile mark."
"The manual-transmission Carrera T has a 3,500-rpm limiter at standstill, and on a sticky, prepped drag strip, launching quickly requires getting off the line without letting the revs fall. Drop the clutch too fast, and the engine will bog, falling out of its powerband. It takes a slow, carefully modulated clutch release to get the perfect launch, which keeps the engine on boil and extracts a small amount of slip from the tires."
I'm sure Tesla was quite eager to make sure that they launched the Porsche optimally.
Yes. I get it. EVs have amazing acceleration. My brother in law has worked for, and owned, both Teslas and Rivians, so I'm no stranger to this.
But this was just another Tesla self-congratulatory event that needed "simulation" and "we didn't actually do it but we think it would go this way" puffery.
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 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.
I'm quite certain there's a contingent that are salving their egos with some flavor of narrative around that idea. Thing is I'm reminded of a particular gaping chasm of a human being that used to work for Epic Games. Around the time Gears of War bonus checks started dropping he flipped out and bought a Lamborghini. Shortly after taking delivery he was overheard complaining loudly about not being able to "pull" at the local club and expressing frustration that the car wasn't getting him enough attention. He decided having the car painted radium green would fix everything. We can, of course, pretend folks like him aren't common as grass but then you're stuck having to explain away things like the Hummer H2, or the rando on here that was bragging about dropping five figures on overpriced kitchen appliances until someone pointed out he could have gotten an actual restaurant walk-in for an order of magnitude less...
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.
> 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!"
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 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.
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.
"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."
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 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.
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.
Their CEO seems to be reacting to a perception that Chevy is “behind” and trying to get ahead of the market on EVs. If they were smart they’d still be making the Volt, since it’s an extremely reasonable PHEV that many people with garages in the US would appreciate. It would increase the number of electric miles driven.
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
All those vehicles have been selling for much longer (and the CT does not outsell the Y). The CT is the third-best selling vehicle for a single quarter, has only been on the market for a year, and production was pretty low for the first few months. The Mach-e has been on the market for over four years.
Personally when I see them in person I think they look dumb and ridiculous. But I have never driven it. I do like all other current Teslas but wouldn’t buy one because Elon
But I was driving with a non-tech, non-online friend and she blurted out “Wow what an ugly car”, I looked over and it was a cybertruck - so I felt validate in my views
The reason theyre selling is likely due to a US small business tax loophole that allows you to write off things like range rovers and escalades as a business expense. coupled with US electric vehicle incentives state and federal, and its a pretty sweet deal on the most electric SUV per weight and length you can buy.
Honestly I fully expect to see these things crisping in the sunlit parking lot of a predatory auto lender in about five years, or rolling through the rough part of town on an 84 month co-signed auto loan with liability insurance only, wagon wheels, a lord beerus wrap and aftermarket stereo.
Like Range Rovers and Hummers they will be gobbled up by people who (with petite-bourgeoise socialism) can afford to buy the vehicle, but not maintain it. And if Youtube is any judge of build quality, this vehicle will start to fall apart the minute it exits the factory floor.
Literally every cybertruck I see has been fully wrapped with some business logo on it. I’m not sure I’ve yet seem one that wasn’t bought as a tax write off.
Because you buy it as a "company vehicle" but 98% of it's miles are driven for your personal use. Whether the tax code considers that a loophole doesn't matter. It's a loophole to give a personal item the tax treatment of a business asset.
You wanted to buy the vehicle anyway, you were going to buy it anyway, but for some absurd reason you get to count a personal vehicle against your company's tax liability.
The IRS considers that tax evasion rather than a loophole, though. Unlike using a loophole, it's actually illegal. That said, you're right -- the practice isn't that rare and that's how it's done.
The business spends pretax dollars to pay the car payments instead of post tax W2 income or dividends/other cash disbursements that are taxed and then you can depreciate the company car against future income.
I think the implication is that the small business owners use this tax structure, but then use the car as a personal vehicle rather than a business vehicle.
Anecdata, but in the Bay Area I see a Cybertruck almost every time I go out. At the beginning of the year it was once per month. Now there are two or three Cybertruck owners in my immediate neighborhood.
I don't like the look, personally, but my kids love it.
Sure, I'm in the Bay Area too. I see Rivians daily. Had an F-150 lightning pull up next to me yesterday. Every once in a while I'll see a Luicd whatever. Can't remember the last time I've seen a Cybertruck (on the road or broken down). In the past week I've seen a couple Hummer EVs. Hell I've seen more running Vinfasts than running Cybertrucks.
Arguably their lack of extremely fast DC charging. But many of them got brand new replacement batteries, and the last wave off-lease have low miles. Looking at a wholesale price index, it seems that Bolt EUVs are $22-23k, which is similar to the prices of Model 3 (24-28k, but they don't separate standard and long range; the Bolt had only 1 variant).
What do you mean? All Bolts support level 2 charging via the standard J1772 adapter up to 7.2 kW or 11.8 kW depending on model year.
Level 3 charging aka DC fast charging was an option on them, so not all have the extra pins needed for a CCS charger.
I'm pretty happy with my 2017 Bolt which has the DC fast charging option. I wish it had distance-keeping cruise control; it's frustrating because it has the cameras and will even report following distance on the dash, but doesn't have the adaptive cruise feature for whatever reason. I also wish it charged a bit faster; 50 kW max is a little slow for road trips.
Next car is probably a 2022 Hyundai Ioniq 5, which has has both features and is also pretty reasonable. Prices on the used models are slowly coming down.
New cars have always been expensive. The average car is 12 years old in the US, not many EVs were available in 2012, but a lot of used cars are older than that. Give it time and EVs will drop in price. Though with charging standards changing it will be a while just because some cars will not be chargeable.
My witty retort would have been, “yeah, well, people bought the Pontiac Aztek, too.”, except Tesla has sold almost as many Cybertrucks in the 3rd quarter as Pontiac sold Azteks in an entire peak sales year.
You're probably thinking of the Element. There were a lot of reasons it ended up with a rabid fan-base: Honda reliability, available manual transmission, available all-wheel drive. It was overall a really practical vehicle for those who wanted something with a good amount of interior space who didn't care about frills or luxury. Amusingly the Element was targeted at then-millennial young buyers looking for "adventure," but ended up being more popular amongst older people looking for a practical daily driver.
The Aztek had some similar positive properties, but was from one of the particularly bad eras of GM malaise and was highly unreliable. It's had a tiny bit of a cult resurgence recently, but it was never popular in the way the Element was.
The Aztek would have been a cult car if it wasn’t GM. It had the hoseable cabin, the center console was a removable cooler, etc.
But it had all of the stupid GMisms. Every expense was spared. It turned out to be like the malnourished love child of a Nissan Xterra and a Ford Windstar.
I don't think "percent of EV sales" is a meaningful metric. We should want more EV brands! Tesla allows others to use their patents and chargers specifically because they want more EV brands to exist as well!
Percent of total auto sales is a far better metric.
It is honestly baffling to me how many people have such strong opinions on the Cyber Truck. I don't personally like the aesthetic, but the majority of the reason I wouldn't get one is that I really don't like Teslas interior design/control scheme (which, much like apple, has lead a lot of manufacturers to copy them). I hate the 100% touch screen thing that they have decided on. But like...also, I just won't buy one. The fact that the car isn't my ideal one does not require me to despise it, or really care about it at all. There are a lot of cars that I don't like for one reason or another.
I mean, I guess I do get it: politics have poisoned people's brains and the fact that they don't like Musk's politics means that they have to have extremely strong opinions on everything connected to him, but it just doesn't seem worth the emotional effort.
And while I personally wouldn't ever buy one, it also is not surprising to me at all that a lot of people are buying them. I have no illusion that my personal tastes reflect the broader tastes of the car-buying public (if they did, then I would find it much easier to find a car that conforms to my preferences).
> But like...also, I just won't buy one. The fact that the car isn't my ideal one does not require me to despise it, or really care about it at all. There are a lot of cars that I don't like for one reason or another.
Normally I'd agree with you, but driving a car brings with it with pretty extreme externalities - it's not the people driving these behemoths that I'm worried about, it's everyone else. Distracting touchscreens, an erratic self-driving AI, and a car made of sharp points. Doesn't bode well.
All of these things are by design. Musk’s strategy is to be in the news and for the product to be him.
He must have fired his PR team and gave up on the visionary genius schtick. Many people will hate that he’s revealed his true self to the world and it isn’t pretty.
Have you actually driven one? The only thing I use the touch screen for on a near daily basis is the defroster in the winter and that is before I start driving. Everything else I need regularly does have physical controls, e.g. wipers and blower speed.
I do have a model that still has the stalks though, haven’t driven the stalkless type enough to comment.
This to me implies that EVs have peaked and only the market for vanity vehicles remains at this time
Edit: I also have a suspicion that this is primarily due to them filling all the preorders. It’d be good to see a breakdown as to how many new orders people are placing after seeing this POS in real life.
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.
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
We will fight for your freedom to prevent sharp corners on roads.
In that case, I can't imagine how you feel about delivery trucks.
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.
Cab-over trucks usually have pretty good visibility out the front. Plus, they are useful for delivery of goods that help society.
Many cities do not allow large trucks inside the city especially in pedestrian areas. Will the same restrictions apply to the cybertruck?
Delivery trucks are typically operated by professional drivers who require clean driving abstracts and maybe even drug testing.
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.
The new Amazon electric ones appear to have pretty great visiblity. Same for the new USPS vehicle (which, to be fair, looks a bit bizarre).
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.
Most of the things you mention are issues with individual units (lemons).
The problem with Teslas almost universally is with lemons. Which is to say if you get lucky your experience will be great. The problem is that there are a fuck ton of lemons and cars that have no problems turn into lemons right around the time that the first few problems show up (which means more lemons as they age).
That's essentially just a QA and reliability design failure which is indicative of broader issues with Tesla but it also means that until someone's vehicle starts having problems they will have nothing but a positive experience which can leave them blindsided by said problems.
I drive a Cybertruck as my daily driver and I don't even know about most of these.
I smoke a pack a day and I haven't heard of lung cancer.
I play the lottery every day and I haven't won a dollar.
Etc etc
Cybetruck owners are the car world’s vegans.
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 only feels like a car because of the amazing steer by wire. It’s actually a truck though.
It's not a truck though. It's a unibody car with a bed and big wheels. Trucks are body on frame and can do real work without the back falling off.
Is the Honda Ridgeline not a truck? Ford Maverick? The cybertruck is simply the biggest thing in that segment.
Kind of. They're what I would call a ute. They're still car based vehicles with beds. But that doesn't mean they can't do 90% of what the average person uses a truck for. They just aren't as stout as a body on frame truck and won't take as much abuse. But use them for their intended purpose and they'll do just fine.
Fine then, Jeep Comanche. It's on a purpose built truck/suv platform.
The point here is that you're using generalities that are wayyyy too broad.
There's no reason a body on frame vehicle can't be stout. See every unibody fullsize van for example.
Unibody car is misleading because the materials are very different. I don’t think it is comparable to either a body on frame construction or the type of unibody a typical sedan or crossover has.
similar things were said about the Honda Ridgeline and the Chevrolet Avalanche; they ended up having the same long-tern issues that they were predicted to have; torn mounting points and reduced repair-ability when the inevitable occurs.
>similar things were said about the Honda Ridgeline and the Chevrolet Avalanche; they ended up having the same long-tern issues that they were predicted to have; torn mounting points and reduced repair-ability when the inevitable occurs.
The fact that you think the Chevy Avalanche[1] has unibody problems says everything I need to know about your opinion
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with unibody construction for a vehicle like this some work vans have been that way basically forever (though it makes me want to go postal when the OEMs graft a really shitty frame onto the back of a unibody van and call it a "cab and chassis").
[1]https://www.gmwholesaledirect.com/v-2009-chevrolet-avalanche...
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?
"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.
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.
> 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
they have the US government block competition
Only from China. Non-communist non-dumping, friendly states are welcome to compete.
People keep assuming China is only successful because they're dumping, and miss the elephant in the room: China went all-in on EVs over a decade ago, while we were fucking about with hybrids and maybe-just-stick-with-ICE. They have world-class batteries and insatiable domestic demand and it's been that way since before Tesla, what if China is undercutting us because their cars are just better?
In that case our tarrifs are just protectionism, is what.
>They have world-class batteries and insatiable domestic demand
Excellent, then they won't have an issue with losing their export markets to tariffs, because they can just sell their EVs to the "insatiable demand" of the local consumers.
>what if China is undercutting us because their cars are just better
Price/performance they ARE better, China can produce cheaper because of their years of (government aided) investments and economies of scale. Of course, we aren't obligated to buy from belligerent states engaging in strategic mercantilism producing the goods of the future. We aren't obligated to prop up the Chinese export-oriented economic model in pursuit of one generation of cheap EV cars.
100℅
50% of Telsas are made in China. China built Teslas are noticeably better built, too.
Welcome to reality.
>they have the US government block competition
>Only from China. Non-communist non-dumping, friendly states are welcome to compete.
>50% of Telsas are made in China. China built Teslas are noticeably better built, too.
Please explain how your comment relates to mine, because I see no connection.
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 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.
So I don’t think it’s much of a measuring stick.
But the LEAF is a great car :)
> impractical any actual truck work.
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.
That doesn't explain this tractor pull result where the tri-motor cybertruck outperforms both those EVs and an F350.
https://youtu.be/Pj2jMhwKuv4?si=rJ8B1NnzBvR6usqa
I thought this was a good review of the cybertruck:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK_EJ3DyiiA
Oh, just like the video Tesla released of the CT towing a 911 faster than the 911?
Entirely objective, not misleading?
I'm sure there won't be multiple publications completely debunking this video too like they did the 911 video.
Are you talking about the debunking videos that highlight that the Cybertruck only beat the Porsche in the 1/8 mile and not the whole quarter mile? And that Cybertruck is still basically a 10 second truck?
It's honestly a absurd and funny to me how fast the truck is. It's like seeing an elephant fly. It's even funnier to see people get angry at it.
I definitely don't like marketing and ads, but that's literally how all ads work. It doesn't debunk some of the insane performance characteristics.
> Are you talking about the debunking videos that highlight that the Cybertruck only beat the Porsche in the 1/8 mile
No, I'm talking about the debunking videos and articles that show:
"We ran six quarter-mile drag races, and each one had the same outcome: The Porsche 911 Carrera T wins and the Tesla Cybertruck Beast loses... it’s not a particularly close race, either."
Re the 1/8: "We can say confidently that Tesla didn’t show the Porsche 911 Carrera T’s quickest possible run. In four out of six MotorTrend drag races, the Porsche 911 Carrera T beat the Cybertruck to the eighth-mile mark."
"The manual-transmission Carrera T has a 3,500-rpm limiter at standstill, and on a sticky, prepped drag strip, launching quickly requires getting off the line without letting the revs fall. Drop the clutch too fast, and the engine will bog, falling out of its powerband. It takes a slow, carefully modulated clutch release to get the perfect launch, which keeps the engine on boil and extracts a small amount of slip from the tires."
I'm sure Tesla was quite eager to make sure that they launched the Porsche optimally.
Yes. I get it. EVs have amazing acceleration. My brother in law has worked for, and owned, both Teslas and Rivians, so I'm no stranger to this.
But this was just another Tesla self-congratulatory event that needed "simulation" and "we didn't actually do it but we think it would go this way" puffery.
I appreciate your research.
I stand by everything I said, but I will add your research to my own repoitoire.
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.
Social media isn’t reality
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.
But that can't really be true, according to HN your car is your whole identity or something like that. Totally "hinged" take for sure.
I don't even like cybertrucks or Teslas, but Jesus could you be any more sour grapes about this?
A hinged take.
quite hinged, your comment.
Your comment perhaps says more about your own mental state than of those you’re collectively chiding.
I'm quite certain there's a contingent that are salving their egos with some flavor of narrative around that idea. Thing is I'm reminded of a particular gaping chasm of a human being that used to work for Epic Games. Around the time Gears of War bonus checks started dropping he flipped out and bought a Lamborghini. Shortly after taking delivery he was overheard complaining loudly about not being able to "pull" at the local club and expressing frustration that the car wasn't getting him enough attention. He decided having the car painted radium green would fix everything. We can, of course, pretend folks like him aren't common as grass but then you're stuck having to explain away things like the Hummer H2, or the rando on here that was bragging about dropping five figures on overpriced kitchen appliances until someone pointed out he could have gotten an actual restaurant walk-in for an order of magnitude less...
Yeah because street folks impressed by a hunk of steel and thinking it cost a million dollars aren't in a bubble aha
There are a lot of terrible cars that impress non car people
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.
Yeah, but how many other cars can you revisit the 80s in?
Mine of choice would be the Lamborghini Countach, as long as I don't have to back it up. I'm too old for the Lambo Lean.
> 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!"
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.
> it’s low range and really low range when towing make it impractical for any actual truck work.
So it's a bit crap then?
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.
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.
https://archive.is/pBDXs
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."
I see multiple Cybertrucks every day driving around LA.
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 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.
I drive an Ioniq 6 and love the design. To each their own…
I like their designs well enough, but I’d hardly call them “out of the box”. Slightly edgy.
The newer generation Honda's are SHOCKINGLY nice looking. I'm a huge fan of the new Land Cruiser too, I would happily bring one of those home.
> we need more mainstream vehicles challenging the boring design "norms"
I'd argue that we need to start treating cars like the utilitarian objects they are and stop associating our personalities with them.
We need to start treating PCs like the utilitarian objects they are and bring back beige cases.
80s home computer design please!
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 genuinely curious, on a 4-month old vehicle, why weren’t the three specific repairs and costs you list be covered under warranty?
A handful of us are wondering the same thing.
> 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.
Who is doing this? Anti-Musk people? Anti-EV people? I’m not from the US so I’m not familiar with the politics.
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.
If it’s Cali, it could be anyone. Lawlessness is embraced.
Someone commented on some forum:
"People buying a car with a lifespan of their smartphone batteries is beyond me."
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.
Its the design.
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.
Hah, a unwieldly, unreliable, pedestrian-killing-homing-missile is comparable to those Chinese "hoverboards".. I like it.
To move past this barricade you must show your identification card. And a dank meme.
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.
I really wish they would have continued to make the i3 and reduce the cost. It was perfect for a lot of people but the price was just too high.
So basically the sub-$30k Chevy Bolt EV and EUV. US sales broke 60,000 units in 2023.
The Bolt EUV is the perfect EV, and it’s a travesty that they stopped selling it. Hopefully the talk of them bringing it back is true.
WTF is going on with the Chevy EVs?
They dropped the Volt which you can only pry out of owners cold, dead hands. They dropped the Bolt EUV which seems to be similarly adored.
What dumbass metric is causing these stupid decisions?
Their CEO seems to be reacting to a perception that Chevy is “behind” and trying to get ahead of the market on EVs. If they were smart they’d still be making the Volt, since it’s an extremely reasonable PHEV that many people with garages in the US would appreciate. It would increase the number of electric miles driven.
You can't make $25k/vehicle selling Bolts.
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
https://archive.is/pBDXs
Some small business owners are saving $10k annually with electricity costs at the rate they are using them.
This kind of summary is tricky because the answer can depend on the bucketing that occurs from the spread of models or manufacturers.
The linked Kelly Blue Book report tables are probably more-useful, and state that in Q3, 4.8% of the vehicles sold were Cybertrucks.
I'm not familiar with pickup-truck-adjacent vehicles, but I notice the "Ford F-150 Lightning" was 2.1%, and the "GMC Hummer Truck / SUV" was 1.2%.
GM has Silverado and Sierra EV trucks on the same platform as the Hummer.
16 thousand Cybertrucks sold in Q3.
To compare, 3.9 million cars sold in Q3.
It sells for $100k. Bet all $100k cars move volume
Shocking if true! I see way more model ys, mustang Mach es, rivians, ev6s, well pretty much everything than cybertrucks...
All those vehicles have been selling for much longer (and the CT does not outsell the Y). The CT is the third-best selling vehicle for a single quarter, has only been on the market for a year, and production was pretty low for the first few months. The Mach-e has been on the market for over four years.
Does the concept of time exists?
Not on the internet.
Isn't the Cybertruck that Mad Max looking thing that looks like it will shear you clean in two if it hits you? I'm surprised that's street legal.
It may literally be too sharp for EU standards...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/08/tesla-cyb...
That's not in civilized countries (hum, Europe)
Personally when I see them in person I think they look dumb and ridiculous. But I have never driven it. I do like all other current Teslas but wouldn’t buy one because Elon
But I was driving with a non-tech, non-online friend and she blurted out “Wow what an ugly car”, I looked over and it was a cybertruck - so I felt validate in my views
The reason theyre selling is likely due to a US small business tax loophole that allows you to write off things like range rovers and escalades as a business expense. coupled with US electric vehicle incentives state and federal, and its a pretty sweet deal on the most electric SUV per weight and length you can buy.
Honestly I fully expect to see these things crisping in the sunlit parking lot of a predatory auto lender in about five years, or rolling through the rough part of town on an 84 month co-signed auto loan with liability insurance only, wagon wheels, a lord beerus wrap and aftermarket stereo.
Like Range Rovers and Hummers they will be gobbled up by people who (with petite-bourgeoise socialism) can afford to buy the vehicle, but not maintain it. And if Youtube is any judge of build quality, this vehicle will start to fall apart the minute it exits the factory floor.
Literally every cybertruck I see has been fully wrapped with some business logo on it. I’m not sure I’ve yet seem one that wasn’t bought as a tax write off.
Literally every cybertruck I see has not had any business logo whatsoever on them.
How is buying a company vehicle a "tax loophole"?
Because you buy it as a "company vehicle" but 98% of it's miles are driven for your personal use. Whether the tax code considers that a loophole doesn't matter. It's a loophole to give a personal item the tax treatment of a business asset.
You wanted to buy the vehicle anyway, you were going to buy it anyway, but for some absurd reason you get to count a personal vehicle against your company's tax liability.
The IRS considers that tax evasion rather than a loophole, though. Unlike using a loophole, it's actually illegal. That said, you're right -- the practice isn't that rare and that's how it's done.
The business spends pretax dollars to pay the car payments instead of post tax W2 income or dividends/other cash disbursements that are taxed and then you can depreciate the company car against future income.
So? Businesses spend pre-tax dollars on most things they buy.
Most companies literally don't have the margins to be solvent if all their purchasing activity is subject to 20%+ tax.
I think the implication is that the small business owners use this tax structure, but then use the car as a personal vehicle rather than a business vehicle.
Anecdata, but in the Bay Area I see a Cybertruck almost every time I go out. At the beginning of the year it was once per month. Now there are two or three Cybertruck owners in my immediate neighborhood.
I don't like the look, personally, but my kids love it.
I was at a park. Ct pulled up to a stop sign. Kid playing drops their toy, runs into the field toward the truck, and says in awe "Cybertruuuuuck!".
People buy them as big toys.
Sure, I'm in the Bay Area too. I see Rivians daily. Had an F-150 lightning pull up next to me yesterday. Every once in a while I'll see a Luicd whatever. Can't remember the last time I've seen a Cybertruck (on the road or broken down). In the past week I've seen a couple Hummer EVs. Hell I've seen more running Vinfasts than running Cybertrucks.
I see Rivians daily too. Might have seen an F150 Lightning, but I can’t tell them apart from any other truck, honestly.
Well they literally say "Lightning" on the side so it's pretty easy to tell when parks right next to you.
Here's the thing about the Cybertruck, if you give it a decent paint job it actually looks kind of amazing...
https://pristineautospa.com/the-benefits-and-advantages-of-c...
It's the unfinished metal look that absolutely baffles me.
Tesla somehow made a vehicle that only looks its best when you put an aftermarket wrap/paintjob on it. It's almost impressive when you think about it.
Can you get insurance for them?
State Farm charges me marginally more for my CT than they do for my Model Y.
You can get insurance for anything if you pay enough.
Cybertruck reminds me of the Moon Patrol buggy.
I think the take-away from this is that EV market in the US is a long-ways away from economy cars when the #3 selling car is $100k.
You can't even find middling used EVs for sub $20k. They're all just Chevy Bolts people were desperate to unload.
I thought the Bolt had a good reputation. What's wrong with them?
Arguably their lack of extremely fast DC charging. But many of them got brand new replacement batteries, and the last wave off-lease have low miles. Looking at a wholesale price index, it seems that Bolt EUVs are $22-23k, which is similar to the prices of Model 3 (24-28k, but they don't separate standard and long range; the Bolt had only 1 variant).
No L2 charging for one.
What do you mean? All Bolts support level 2 charging via the standard J1772 adapter up to 7.2 kW or 11.8 kW depending on model year.
Level 3 charging aka DC fast charging was an option on them, so not all have the extra pins needed for a CCS charger.
I'm pretty happy with my 2017 Bolt which has the DC fast charging option. I wish it had distance-keeping cruise control; it's frustrating because it has the cameras and will even report following distance on the dash, but doesn't have the adaptive cruise feature for whatever reason. I also wish it charged a bit faster; 50 kW max is a little slow for road trips.
Next car is probably a 2022 Hyundai Ioniq 5, which has has both features and is also pretty reasonable. Prices on the used models are slowly coming down.
New cars have always been expensive. The average car is 12 years old in the US, not many EVs were available in 2012, but a lot of used cars are older than that. Give it time and EVs will drop in price. Though with charging standards changing it will be a while just because some cars will not be chargeable.
My witty retort would have been, “yeah, well, people bought the Pontiac Aztek, too.”, except Tesla has sold almost as many Cybertrucks in the 3rd quarter as Pontiac sold Azteks in an entire peak sales year.
Was it the Aztek that had really rabid fans? It was one of those boxy ones.
Never could figure out if they actually had really good reasons for it or were just trying to justify having bought an Aztek.
You're probably thinking of the Element. There were a lot of reasons it ended up with a rabid fan-base: Honda reliability, available manual transmission, available all-wheel drive. It was overall a really practical vehicle for those who wanted something with a good amount of interior space who didn't care about frills or luxury. Amusingly the Element was targeted at then-millennial young buyers looking for "adventure," but ended up being more popular amongst older people looking for a practical daily driver.
The Aztek had some similar positive properties, but was from one of the particularly bad eras of GM malaise and was highly unreliable. It's had a tiny bit of a cult resurgence recently, but it was never popular in the way the Element was.
I think you're right, it was the Element. People dismissed it as an Aztek but it had some features.
They all pale next to the true King of Vehicles - the Minivan.
The Aztek would have been a cult car if it wasn’t GM. It had the hoseable cabin, the center console was a removable cooler, etc.
But it had all of the stupid GMisms. Every expense was spared. It turned out to be like the malnourished love child of a Nissan Xterra and a Ford Windstar.
If you look at an Aztek today it doesn't stand out as unusual at all.
It feels like the Aztek was ahead of its time and many mid-size SUVs have since caught up with its aesthetic.
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Alternate headline: Tesla sales dip below 50% of all EV sales.
Source: https://www.coxautoinc.com/market-insights/q3-2024-ev-sales/
I don't think "percent of EV sales" is a meaningful metric. We should want more EV brands! Tesla allows others to use their patents and chargers specifically because they want more EV brands to exist as well!
Percent of total auto sales is a far better metric.
This appears to be an alternate article, rather than an alternate headline for this one.
Didn't mean to confuse, this is an alternate interpretation of recent EV sales data.
Cox Automotive generated the data[0] sourced in the second "paragraph" from the original article.
[0] https://www.coxautoinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Kelley...
It is honestly baffling to me how many people have such strong opinions on the Cyber Truck. I don't personally like the aesthetic, but the majority of the reason I wouldn't get one is that I really don't like Teslas interior design/control scheme (which, much like apple, has lead a lot of manufacturers to copy them). I hate the 100% touch screen thing that they have decided on. But like...also, I just won't buy one. The fact that the car isn't my ideal one does not require me to despise it, or really care about it at all. There are a lot of cars that I don't like for one reason or another.
I mean, I guess I do get it: politics have poisoned people's brains and the fact that they don't like Musk's politics means that they have to have extremely strong opinions on everything connected to him, but it just doesn't seem worth the emotional effort.
And while I personally wouldn't ever buy one, it also is not surprising to me at all that a lot of people are buying them. I have no illusion that my personal tastes reflect the broader tastes of the car-buying public (if they did, then I would find it much easier to find a car that conforms to my preferences).
> But like...also, I just won't buy one. The fact that the car isn't my ideal one does not require me to despise it, or really care about it at all. There are a lot of cars that I don't like for one reason or another.
Normally I'd agree with you, but driving a car brings with it with pretty extreme externalities - it's not the people driving these behemoths that I'm worried about, it's everyone else. Distracting touchscreens, an erratic self-driving AI, and a car made of sharp points. Doesn't bode well.
All of these things are by design. Musk’s strategy is to be in the news and for the product to be him.
He must have fired his PR team and gave up on the visionary genius schtick. Many people will hate that he’s revealed his true self to the world and it isn’t pretty.
But the car sucks too.
Have you actually driven one? The only thing I use the touch screen for on a near daily basis is the defroster in the winter and that is before I start driving. Everything else I need regularly does have physical controls, e.g. wipers and blower speed.
I do have a model that still has the stalks though, haven’t driven the stalkless type enough to comment.
People don't hate the car, they hate Musk.
Speak for yourself. I also hate the car.
I would love to see the party registration breakdown of these recent buys.
It would be wonderful irony if suddenly buying EVs has become trendy among the right-leaning crowd.
I think it is trendy: Tucker Carlson has been promoting this truck on his YouTube channel in at least two 1 hour videos.
That thing is a monstrosity.
This to me implies that EVs have peaked and only the market for vanity vehicles remains at this time
Edit: I also have a suspicion that this is primarily due to them filling all the preorders. It’d be good to see a breakdown as to how many new orders people are placing after seeing this POS in real life.
Given you can cancel your preorder without losing any money, one would presume that the majority of pre orderers were happy with the results.
Not necessarily. People who had placed the preorder were looking for a vanity vehicle, which it sure is. And, those people are not going to cancel.
I’m interested in the customer base once that market is exhausted.
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The Tesla Cybertruck - a boys idea of a man's car.
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