I’m not sure all of these awards actually exist. It’s possible some of them (ahem, #9) should have never been imagined. Nonetheless, this is what some Thanksgiving-night brain juice has dreamt up about the Tesla Cybertruck after reading about the Tesla Model 3 winning Car of the Year in Denmark.
It seems that now is a good time to look at the various types of people who might genuinely buy a Cybertruck and for what reasons.
If you live on planet Earth, you surely know that holiday weekends can generate an enormous amount of traffic. Thanksgiving weekend is probably the worst in the United States. Historically, Tesla drivers on certain high-volume routes, especially in California (where Teslas are most abundant), have faced some struggles while stopping to Supercharge before continuing on to grandma’s house (actual lines, and sometimes long ones).
It’s funny, just when you think Tesla’s got the most gangbusters, insane, record-breaking vehicle on the roads, it unveils another one that one-ups its predecessor. The Tesla Model 3 shattered record after record, and then Tesla unveiled the Model Y, a crossover or SUV version of the 3 that is basically guaranteed to outsell the Model 3. Just as Model Y test vehicles are being spotted left and right and there are rumors about production starting soon, Tesla says, “hold my beer, bruh,” and unveils the Cybertruck (aka Cybertrukk, aka I’m-gonna-blow-your-freakin’-mind-and-then-put-it-back-together truck).
I had this article in drafts before Frugal Moogal wrote a piece similarly trying to address “controversy” around the $100 refundable preorder cost for a Tesla Cybertruck and the news of 200,000 preorders. However, I have slightly different framing — despite seemingly agreeing on the same two core points — so I feel compelled to still put this piece out there.
The goal of a serious messaging campaign is to reach as far and wide as possible, and as deeply as possible. Whereas you’d typically expect a “Big Oil” campaign to reach conservatives, Fox News viewers, and moderates easily exposed to the messaging campaign, you wouldn’t expect progressives — especially noteworthy and boundary-pushing progressives — to be sucked into the messaging campaign and even repeating the talking points. Since when do progressives and Big Oil end up on the same side of an issue?
There’s a lot of interesting brain food embedded in the Tesla Cybertruck. You can have a serious, intelligent, academic discussion about it all until you’re blue in the face. But there’s one basic, fundamental, gut-turning point about the Tesla Cybertruck (or Cybertrukk). The thing just turned Ford SuperDuties, “like a rock” Chevy Silverados, and ramming Ram 3500s into princess wagons. Here’s what I now think of when I look at a normal pickup truck:
There’s a lot of temptation to compare the Ford Mustang Mach-E to the Tesla Model Y. Indeed, they’re basically in the same class, are in the same price range, have similar specs, and are both electric. Furthermore, Ford very clearly picked up a number of features and design cues from Tesla — even being the first to do so in some cases.
For better or worse, consumers (also known as “people”) typically organize products in their heads using simple descriptors or tags. Pre-Tesla, electric cars were not that well known. Among those who knew what an electric car was, the prevailing summary of them was that they were slow like golf carts, geeky, and only for a certain (weird) kind of person. Elon Musk and other early birds at Tesla blew those stereotypes out of the water.
The most popular CleanTechnica stories last week included fun content about an off-grid month with SunPower solar panels + Tesla Powerwalls, the just-beginning economies of scale Tesla is getting from its gigafactories, a pitch for Elon Musk’s The Boring Company getting into pumped hydro, Tesla dominating US electric vehicle sales, and much more. Scroll down for the headlines and click through to the ones that tickle your fancy!
