>I think the timing of the Cybertruck starting deliveries roughly aligning with when Elon got heavily involved in politics

That and also it's just a bad product.

>That said, even though it's not to my taste, I do admire that they dared to do something different and took a big gamble on it.

A pickup truck should just be max utility, especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one

edit: agree there's a market for the raptor off-road tremor package thing, but it wasn't ford's first and they've been selling commerical trucks for 75 years. A true tesla f150 competitor would have sold like crazy, I think

> I do admire that they dared to do something different and took a big gamble on it. So many vehicles, especially in the truck space, are almost indistinguishable and lack any kind of imagination.

I 1000% agree with this, in fact I love the way it looks, like something out of a SEGA Saturn game. But I would never buy one for the same reasons I would never buy any Tesla, or in fact any EV, or any post-2014 car at all. But the looks of it are not one of those reasons :)

I do have to laugh every time I see a Tesla with one of those “Bought this before we knew Elon was crazy!!” stickers, because to me they just read as “Wahhh I bought my car to make a statement and now it makes the wrong statement and I am self-conscious about it!!”. It's weird to me to think that other people are thinking that way about their automobiles, because I bought mine (Prius C) based on its features and how they fit into my needs and my life. I guess the Prius line was a popular “statement car” of the pre-Tesla era, though, like how Brian drives one on Family Guy, or the “Smug Alert” episode of South Park, but it was never that for me.

Politics or no, the price point ultimately dictated its maximum sales. By that measure it's a reasonable success, and if Elon was forecasting that they would sell multiple tens of thousands of vehicles per year at a $80,000 price point he needs to lay off the drugs. Elon sometimes seems like the living embodiment of "How much could a banana cost, Michael, $10?" parody of out of touch rich people.

I'll applaud anything that tries to move us away from the current stale design trend where every car looks like the same boring bar of soap and every truck looks like the same aggressive, drivable, mechanized fist.

As someone who has used both light and heavy pickups for work, recreation, and farm work for decades, the Cybertruck is absolutely terrible at everything you want a truck to do.

It's a brodozer for people that are slightly environmentally conscious or have Elon issues.

And again, I say this as an actual cowboy, in that yes, I own cows. And a lineman who ferries manly men (and a few manly women) to do manly man work on high voltage power lines that will kill you so dead it's a guaranteed closed casket funeral. Trucks aren't just dick compensators, they exist to do work. And the Cybertruck sucks at all of that work. The F-150 lightning was a useful fleet vehicle due to the 120VAC outlets alone, aside from being, you know, a usable truck.

There's a reason most of the offering are very similar. We figured out what work pickup trucks need to do and how they're engineered to do it 50 years ago. The Hilux and friends made it highly economical. So you've got the Hiluxies and the SuperManlyMinivans and those are the two main kind of pickup trucks.

I wager people care way more that it simply costs a lot, and they don't like it or need it

You can attribute the failure of this vehicle to politics if you like, but it's fairly obvious to anyone watching why it failed - it came out at double the proposed priced with half the proposed range. It's not even the hideous design, there were hundreds of thousands of "pre orders" who knew about the horrible design. It's the price and range.

Have we completely forgotten about how Tesla dealerships were shot up, firebombed? Video after video showing cybertrucks vandalized with scratches and spray paint?

It may be a terrible car from a terrible program, but these events at least bear mentioning. If you saw it happening in 2025, would it have a cooling effect on your decision to purchase? Who would want the trouble?

Elon Shithead promised a lot for apparently a good price and wasn't able to deliver.

It wasn't just the hate i think.

> Elon got heavily involved in politics hurt it quite a bit

I think the Cybertruck was DOA and his involvement in politics got people who shared his views to buy one in order to signal the same.

I'm one of the few people that love the cybertruck design, but even I can't look at one these days and not think "swasticar". It's terribly disappointing, really. Fully self-inflicted.

The Cybertruck also does the tightest turns because it has front and back wheel steering. I could imagine that to be useful on job sites.

I'll always give Tesla, SpaceX etc props for the work they accomplish, even though Elon is at the helm, he's not a perfect dude but I will give him props when he gets something right too. At the end of the day his employees are doing incredible work and it should not be written off because of Elon. To any Tesla / SpaceX employee whether you agree with Elon or not, thank you for helping to build a more interesting tomorrow.

The thing with Cybertrucks losing panels certainly didn't help.

A big part of the Cybertruck marketing was the robustness of its unusual design: exoskeleton! space grade materials! They smashed the door with a hammer and it didn't dent (just avoid pétanque balls...), Elon Musk commented that it would destroy the other vehicle in an accident. Morally dubious arguments sometimes, but it appeals to many potential customers.

And then, the vehicle that is supposed to be a tank falls apart by looking at it funny. And the glued on steel plates, is it that the exoskeleton? Not only the design is controversial, but it failed at what it is supposed to represent.

Honestly, both the Lightning and the Cybertruck are just bad trucks. Some review of the Lightning I read said it has less than a 100 mile range towing a full load.

It's a fashion statement, not a work vehicle.

I mean as with most "product" things related to Musk, it's more about the meme stock than any fundamental coupling to finances in the real world.

Ford is a car company. They sell cars. The Lightning was a poorly selling car, so they stopped selling it. Pretty simple!

Tesla is a lifestyle company. They make line go up by owning the libs, catering to edgelord identity, and triggering speculation. The Cybertruck probably gained the company more memetic shareholder value than it lost as a real product.

> I think the timing of the Cybertruck starting deliveries roughly aligning with when Elon got heavily involved in politics hurt it quite a bit. It is such a distinctive vehicle with a strong association with Elon, that there was an immediate brand association. It may have had poor sales anyway, but it certainly didn't help that many folks on the left, who are typically the most 'pro EV', had a large 'anti-Elon' shift around its launch.

IMO the sort of person who wants a vehicle like Elon's dumpster has a strong overlap with Elon's politics. Basically everything about its design and marketing was aimed at the sort of person who is focused on presenting a masculine image, who thinks they're going to be in a war zone on their daily commute, who wishes they could drive through a crowd of protesters, etc.

Basically the only thing "left wing" about it is the fact that it's electric.

> Kudos to Tesla for trying to break the mold and push the category somewhere new.

The only thing it actually did new was the drive-by-wire steering, which is by all accounts impressive but could have been done on any normal vehicle as well. The "unique" styling is mostly just re-learning lessons that John DeLorean taught the rest of the industry decades ago.

> many vehicles ... are almost indistinguishable

That is so right on the money. I attended the LA Auto Show a couple of months back and the takeaway was that every manufacturer pretty much makes the same safe car. There might be a feature here and feature there, but it's the same car.

In the years past they at least had lots of concept cars. This year, I maybe saw two and they weren't all that "concept".

Elon going off the deep end is the tail wagging the dog. It's an objectively terrible car.

The collapse of the company overall, particularly the Model Y, which is a great car, is all about Elon. Not only his unveiling as a fascist, but he essentially looted the company.

gl getting out of one in case of a crash when the battery that opens the doors malfunction

I'm very much on the left, and I honestly like the design of the Cybertruck. (I know this puts me in a minority.) It is disappointing that the original "unibody" design was abandoned. The new design where the body panels just randomly fall off is silly.

If it was made by some other company I would genuinely consider buying one. But I would never buy another Tesla. I owned an older Model X, before Elon went full-fascism. And even ignoring Elon, the car was awful. It was shoddily built, kept breaking down, and the service experience was shockingly bad. Absolutely atrocious.

But after all that, I can't give money to Elon ever again. I can't fund America's descent into fascism. I could not live with myself.

While largely true, that trucks have adorned the comforts of luxury cars, most are running 6' beds. This largely ignores the evolution of the truck and the job site. My family operates contracting and excavating businesses that operating in all manner of weather and terrain, no one is carrying loads in their truck beds anymore... its not even legal most places unless you convert to a dump bed...

Whats in their trucks? Well, a crew cab occasionally is used for car pooling workers, where they all park their vintage beater trucks at the business... Sometimes weather sensitive tools, or job related items, documents, you can just throw these in a glove box... The bed usually has a gas pump for refilling remote equipment. Cones and other safety shit. Sand hoppers for plowing. Yes they also use these "luxury" trucks to plow.

The thing is... These people are making decent salaries... my direct relatives are multi-millionaires who still pick up a welder, a hammer, a shovel.

Im see alot of assumptions about why trucks evolved the way they did, who owns them, and what for... I would argue the "luxury faker" is a very small crowd, one that likely moved to the cybertruck... and despite the trucks looking modernized, are beaten to pulp over long service lives.

Now, go get in a modern tractor, dump truck, or excavator. They are also all AC, Radios, Computers, Leather Seats, etc... People want to be comfortable.

I mean, in certain circles online, people were literally calling Cybertrucks "Swasticars." Not the greatest for marketing.

I feel like kudos for making a public eye-sore merely because people typically don't make public eye-sores is a bit missing the point.

> it's not to my taste

It's not just you, it's universally tasteless and that's the point: It is a contrarian vehicle.

In an age where the Internet has flattened subcultures into surface phenomenons, the only remaining way to publicly distance yourself from normality is by making patently, obviously bad decisions and using the backlash to further fuel your ego.