Tesla Cybertruck.
The new Tesla Cybertruck has triggered a chorus of media ridicule. Time will tell whether it’s just a visceral response to an unconventional design, Tesla haters hating, or a real blunder.
But before we get to that…CEO Elon Musk said on Saturday that the Cybertruck had 146,000 preorders, with “with 42% choosing dual, 41% tri & 17% single motor.” Electrek estimated that the reservations are worth approximately $8 billion.
Criticism:
One of the more stinging Cybertruck comparisons has been to the much-maligned Pontiac Aztec.
The Detroit Bureau said the following:
But what can one say about the Tesla Cybertruck…That it may be the single worst automotive design since the Pontiac Aztek? That it looks like something out of a bad 1980s sci-fi movie?…That it could have been the “Homer-mobile,” the horribly wrong design sketched out by patriarch Homer in the long-running TV series, the Simpsons?
–Commentary: Tesla’s New Cybertruck Makes the Long-Derided Pontiac Aztek Look Good in Comparison, The Detroit Bureau, November 22, 2019
Another story referencing the Aztek can be found at Auto123.com: “Tesla Cybertruck Is Revealed, and Our Thoughts Turn to the Pontiac Aztek.”
There was gobs of other higher-profile negative media coverage. Here’s just a sampling of the media assault on the design….
Tesla Cybertruck Is Ugly As Sin. There, I Said It – Forbes, November 22, 2019
Cramer compares the Tesla Cybertruck to the spectacular failure of the Ford Edsel 60 years ago – CNBC, November 22, 2019
Hot takes as opinion cools on Tesla Cybertruck – Ars Technica, November 22, 2019
Tesla’s Cybertruck has become the butt of every internet joke, CNN Business, November 22, 2019
Elon Musk’s Cybertruck ain’t got no alibi: It’s ugly, Mashable, November 22, 2019
Tesla’s ‘Stealth Bomber’ Pickup Fails to Thrill Wall Street, Bloomberg, November 22, 2019
And I’ll throw in some thoughts from my friend the devout car enthusiast (not a Tesla fan), who said, “The design is certainly more retro than forward and modern…I wonder if Musk is stuck in the 90s, with the word Cyber and fractal polygon designs that were popular in the computer graphics world back then.”
Other takes on the design were more forgiving
I asked Chris Paine, director of the documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car” and the sequel Revenge of the Electric Car, and a longtime follower of Tesla. Paine was one of the first to document Elon Musk’s struggles to keep the company afloat in its early days.
“I’m still trying to figure out what I feel about it,” he told me in a phone interview.
But he added that, “I’ve learned to trust that Tesla has dialed into something next level. You’re not always going to get it out of the box.”
Paine tried to put it in context. “Since 2007, there’s been a cycle of ‘these guys just made the biggest mistake ever…they’re going bankrupt tomorrow’ [all the way] to ‘these guys are geniuses,” he said.
Forbes Alan Ohnsman wrote that the Cybertruck is “something the sci-fi-loving Musk has wanted Tesla to do for years.”
The story quoted Musk as saying “’I do zero market research whatsoever,’” (Elon Musk Debuts His Hard-Edged Tesla Cybertruck—And It’s Really Not For Everybody).
And other, less emotional comparisons were made to cars like the not-pretty UrbaCar. “It’s remarkably like a scaled-down Cybertruck in design,” said Jalopnik, which cited other similar designs.
“It appears at first glance to be so naïve,” Raphael Zammit, chair of the graduate program in transportation design at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, told Bloomberg. “But it might be — and this is a big might — one of the most brilliant moves ever, and the market will tell us. It’s not designed for designers.”
Yet others cited the choice of a stainless steel body as interesting yet fraught with potential problems (see: What Tesla Cybertruck buyers should learn from the DeLorean DMC-12.)
“I’m just glad [Tesla is] being successful in getting people talking about electric cars and ultimately buying them,” director Paine said.
