I keep looking at this piece of shit thinking only part of the photo is downloaded https://t.co/g4ugbKrQLM
— kilgore trout was in the loop (@KT_So_It_Goes) November 22, 2019
Soundtrack for this post:
Tesla Truck, for when you gotta move these refrigerators. You gotta move these color TVs. pic.twitter.com/5lI7wJO9dl
— Gator MaClunkey (@Zeddary) November 22, 2019
RIP my menchies, as the kids say, but this was too good *not* to share. Bryan Feldman, at NYMag, “We May Not Want the Cybertruck, But We Deserve It”:
… The Cybertruck is a truck that Elon Musk unveiled last night. It is a Humvee-ish vehicle that looks like it was made for a direct-to-video Starship Troopers ripoff called Spaceship Soldiers. It looks like a secret car you unlock if you get a high score on every Cruisin’ USA track. It looks like one of those first-pass shots on a visual-effects highlights reel from 1992. It looks like it has a physics system completely separate from every other object on this earth and if you hit a curb at the wrong angle, the truck will glitch out and clip through an entire city block, causing untold devastation. It is the Cybertruck.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “Ah, a Cybertruck. A truck that is computer-y.” Wrong! Cybertruck should be said in the exact same way that one might pronounce the word “cyberpunk,” a sci-fi genre all about how technology will completely ruin us once we start jamming chips into our brains. Just look at the Cybertruck logo. It’s not some coder font — it’s graffiti. It’s the Official Truck of App-Catalyzed Urban Decay. This a Blade Runner-ass truck for the end times. It is not a utopian, idealistic creation — and in that sense, it is refreshing. Elon Musk is not selling us the world we want; he is selling the world we have (starting at MSRP $39,900). The Cybertruck is, in a sense, practical. Everything about this truck screams, “This is the car you will drive through overgrown suburbs full of decaying houses, searching for potable water. This is the car the next three generations of your family will be born in the trunk of. When the feral wolves attack, this truck will protect you.”
But the truck will not protect you. In its unveiling last night, Musk tried to show off the vehicle’s “bulletproof” windows. He asked an employee to throw a rock at the window. The window fractured. They tried it again on a second window. That window also fractured. It was a pure, perfect distillation of what Elon Musk’s whole, like, deal is. He has spent years pouring his billions into projects that make science fiction into science fact, in order to sell people and governments expensive stuff that maybe half-functions. A demonstration of the dent-proof doors went off more successfully.
Many of Musk’s products are self-indulgent, but this might be the most self-indulgent. Like, you know how there are people who design their living rooms to look like the bridge of the Enterprise, or have rooms dedicated to baseball paraphernalia? The Cybertruck can then be read as Musk’s attempt to shape not just his own life, but the lives of others, to mimic the media of his youth. The whole thing resembles a low-poly model — a 3-D asset made of a limited number of polygons based on the limited computing power of older devices. Musk doesn’t just want a Cybertruck for himself, he wants to see thousands of Cybertrucks roaming the streets, sticking out like sore thumbs, parts of the world that quite literally haven’t fully rendered to the level of everything else around them. The notion might not be as far-fetched as it seems. Silicon Valley is full of newly minted millionaires with more money than they know what to do with. The Cybertruck looks very stupid, but so do AirPods…
They're taking reservation money for it, so it's both, apparently.
— Artisan Loaf (@ArtisanLoaf) November 22, 2019
The Cybertruck is literally just the parody in-game billboard for the civilian Warthog from Halo 2.
An H3 Hummer for VCs who spent their adolescence shouting racial slurs on Blood Gulch. pic.twitter.com/7k13jkeVmh
— Gator MaClunkey (@Zeddary) November 22, 2019
Tbh, that’s already more testing than Tesla usually does for a product
— e^x (@costa11235) November 22, 2019
The ManDeLorean
— DBell (@DavidCBell2) November 23, 2019
This car looks like something a time travelling Wesley Snipes would blow up upon discovery it doesn't have a cigarette lighter. pic.twitter.com/Q5nA86eQW2
— Gator MaClunkey (@Zeddary) November 22, 2019
cars in the 1950s were like this. they added crumple zones when it was discovered that a very stiff body turns the occupants into hamburger in a collision https://t.co/oeM3pX7Ix4
— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) November 22, 2019
It's pretty amazing the Elon Musk looked at the depictions of mega corporations in Cyberpunk and decided "yes, I can do this unironically"
— Circle Straffing (@MenshevikM) November 23, 2019
When people get all shiny-eyed about humans living off world, I'm just going to point them to the goddamn cybertruck, "the official truck of Mars." Space is already being branded. It's only going to get worse.
— Annalee Newitz (@Annaleen) November 22, 2019
People shitting on the cyber truck have never had to deliver pizza in an enemy corporation’s city state
— Vødalus (@BFomebranch) November 22, 2019
If you want to know why Tesla just showed off an unpainted vehicle, it's because their Fremont factory paint shop has 19 unresolved Clean Air Act violations. Look it up.
— E.W. Niedermeyer (@Tweetermeyer) November 22, 2019
I am not expressing an opinion on whether unpainted stainless steel is a good or bad choice or even arguing that rampantly violating the Clean Air Act makes Tesla "bad," I am simply connecting two indisputable facts.
— E.W. Niedermeyer (@Tweetermeyer) November 22, 2019
You spelt greed wrong there, chief
— Jd – In Gender Jail (@The_JDPG13) November 22, 2019
Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada. pic.twitter.com/0ylOYtjHcC
— Ryan Wadle (@rdwadle) November 22, 2019
Elon Musk must really love the movie Total Recall. #cybertruck #Tesla pic.twitter.com/8SEPFH8dsJ
— EV (@vander_living) November 22, 2019
I assumed they were just trying to kick start our progress into the inevitable Mad Max desert future.
— Kayleigh Elby (@Marbles24) November 22, 2019
Nah… they concluded that it would be nothing more than lipstick on a pig and decided to spend the money trying to convince everyone it isn’t a pig!
— Wayne Haag (@ankaris) November 23, 2019
He lost more money than you'll ever have and he still has more money left over than you'll ever have and that's not because he deserves it, it's because his family stole an emerald mine from the Black people who live in South Africa. https://t.co/yiMR8uxWMd
— April Daniels (@1aprildaniels) November 22, 2019
WaterGirl
Anne Laurie, I
am going to pulljust pulled my post and will put it up on Sunday, as I originally planned. This is much better Saturday night fare than mine!Omnes Omnibus
“I’d buy that for a dollar!”
Actually, Do.Not.Want.
Another Scott
Meh.
Musk couldn’t have bought all the free advertising he’s getting with this “failure”, even if he didn’t plan it. (And I wouldn’t be surprised if they did (why do it twice if the first time failed??)
One of my step-cousins (is there such a thing??) apparently has a niche electric pickup that was made a few years ago, but there are none from the big manufacturers now. We know electric pickups are coming. If Tesla helps them get here faster, that’s a good thing.
Cheers,
Scott.
MazeDancer
So ugly. Very, very ugly.
And how do you load it? Haul things? Do basic truck stuff.
I thought a 70K price tag for a pimped out F-150 so it could feel like a Lincoln Town Car with room for a sheet of plywood in the back was as ridic as possible for truck absurdity. I was wrong.
Anne Laurie
@WaterGirl: Oops! Thought I’d checked for a new post before hitting ‘publish’, but guess I dawdled too long over one last proofread.
On the other hand, you’re right — your post will get more attention tomorrow afternoon, so we’re both good!
AJ
Looks like the preferred vehicle for incels and men’s rights activists.
chopper
it’s like homer simpson and robocop designed a car. ugh.
dmsilev
Electric pickups are not a bad idea. EVs have huge amounts of torque available, the big battery can be used to power tools if you’re somewhere without local power, etc. I’m not sure, however, that starting with a design sketch of ‘make it look like an F-117’ was the best of ideas. Perhaps it’s to avoid radar speed traps?
Another Scott
Reuters:
(Emphasis added.)
Heh. >:-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Llelldorin
@AJ: Only if they can add the “tailpipe belching smoke option,” because they wouldn’t be happy if they were actually doing something right, even if only by accident.
Another Scott
@dmsilev: Straight panels are cheaper and faster to make than curvey ones.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the design is “tweaked” before release.
Cheers,
Scott.
sukabi
Not a truck if it doesn’t have a bed for storage / hauling.
It had better have plenty of exterior cameras because the entire thing looks like it’s surrounded by giant blind spots.
Must commend Musk on his breakable unbreakable windows????
Nice nerf mallet muscles used on the door.?
chopper
can’t wait for the autonomous version. “johnny cab” is it?
AJ
@Llelldorin: so true. Probably worth another $1k on the price tag.
sukabi
@Another Scott: wonder if, like drumpf Jr. and his book, there’s an outfit that buys in bulk, because there’s no way 147k individuals ordered that.
Another Scott
@sukabi: It only cost $100 to do a “reservation”. Dunno if speculators are hoping to sell their spots in line later.
Cheers,
Scott.
Death Panel Truck
Does the computer talk in William Daniels’ voice?
sukabi
@Anne Laurie: might want to include this in the post…
Adam Weinstein (@AdamWeinstein) Tweeted:
Man, you thought that “pedo guy” stuff was bad https://t.co/m62PfCSGMF https://twitter.com/AdamWeinstein/status/1198418856500432897?s=20
Wag
A Delorean on growth hormone. Out of balance like steroid pumping hGH injecting body builder.
If it has decent off road capabilities, the chassis might be a good place to start on building a vehicle for accessing trailheads. The current silhouette is horrible.
Another Scott
@Another Scott: Well that’s interesting. I was doing an edit and I guess the time ran out and the edit window just went away…
[ahem..] As I was saying, from the Reuters link above:
They’re only so profitable because of the 25% tariff on imported pickups (the “chicken tax”) imposed in 1964. Without that price advantage and protection from competition, there’s no way US pickups would be so expensive and Detroit would be in a world of hurt. I hope they realize that that protection isn’t going to last forever… (At least it shouldn’t!)
Cheers,
Scott.
John Revolta
He’s got that weird skin. Jared’s got it. Fuckerberg’s got it. And this guy’s got it too.
It looks like you haven’t got any pores. What the fuck IS that?
Mnemosyne
@John Revolta:
Foundation. Though they probably tell the dudes that it’s “tinted moisturizer” so they don’t realize they’re wearing makeup.
sukabi
@John Revolta: alien Androids, they haven’t perfected the skin yet….or the empathy module.
mrmoshpotato
Who watched Blade Runner and Back to the Future II on acid and shrooms?
mrmoshpotato
@Omnes Omnibus: Shit. I forgot about RoboCop.
John Revolta
@Mnemosyne: Ah. I should’ve guessed. Although I like sukabi’s explanation better.
Come to think of it, you’re probably both right.
Another Scott
(And now we seem to be defaulting to the Text tab, but no other tabs are visible)
@sukabi: Yet another argument for very high taxes on billionaires. They shouldn’t have so much money that they get such big heads that they feel they can do crap like this without consequences.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Gin & Tonic
Here’s an interesting Twitter thread about that truck rollout.
Kamala.Harris.2020
It’s not enough just stop using Facebook. You have to encourage others to stop using it to. To let them know that their presence only enlarges the most sophisticated propaganda machine in the history of the world (thank you Sacha Baron Cohen for this description) whose CEO is a narcissistic autist who has been dining with President Trump because he and the rest of the GOP spend hundreds of millions of dollars on facebook.
So dump it and make sure everyone knows that they’re aiding Russian and Republican propaganda.
Amir Khalid
That Cybertruck is by far the ugliest motor vehicle I have had the misfortune of setting my eyes on.
@Another Scott:
So Elon is too cheap to bend metal for his truck?
KnowLittle
A post that I think will age poorly. 2 cents — I think the truck will be a crazy big hit & will change vehicle aesthetics (I thought it was hideous at first too.. but grows rapidly on you. Check out the MotorTrend articles & it will look better.) Removing the paint (using stainless steel) and heavy stamping saves lots of money & thus the surprisingly low costs.
Another Scott
@Amir Khalid: Dunno, and really I don’t much care. :-)
G&T’s pointer talks about all the ways that it’s not street legal. It looks like it was thrown together quickly and will likely change a lot before they make deliveries. It’s kind of an “auto show” prototype. Those are (almost) always pie-in-the-sky things that only vaguely look like what the company actually sells a few years later.
We’ll see.
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
?????
rikyrah
Who believes in the GOP???
chris
It’s ugly and at first I thought it was just a suburbanite “truck” but I guess not. The box is short and those sloping sides are in the way but the thing can haul some serious weight and the high end version can pull a monster trailer. So we’ll see. Some of the lobster guys around here have 50-60000 dollar trucks so the price isn’t terrible either. Even some of the four wheel drive crew might like the ground clearance and air suspension although it probably won’t make enough noise for them.
CaseyL
Fugly damn thing. I understand the difference between a concept car and a final product car, but are concept cars supposed to look like they’re made of cardboard?
Aleta
@WaterGirl: Oh, I found a glitch in the site that I don’t recall in the old one. (It may be inevitable though.) This isn’t a complaint, cause the situation is odd.
Is the box for writing comments so tightly tied to the specific page (post) that one is responding to that if the post is pulled while a person is in the middle of writing a comment, the unfinished (unposted) writing+ box also disappears? I think that’s what just happened to me.
However, it might have happened only because I had x-ited the box for a minute to look at something on the page.
(Side note: For me (MacOS 10.14.6 + Safari 12.1 2) the reply comment box first comes up in the center of the page and the page itself goes into shadow. If I want to go back to check something on the page or grab a quote to add to my comment, I have to hit X. Then the box appears at the bottom of the page, the half-written comment still in it, and I can scroll up to see the page.)
This time, possibly I hit X at the same time that the post was pulled. (Or perhaps it’s better to always x-it the box before starting to write?)
It’s a minor, rare situation. No complaint—I think this is the only time I’ve lost a comment while writing on the new site, which happened a lot on the old site. Offering the information in case it’s useful. ?
Another Scott
@rikyrah: :-)
I suppose the gun nuts will morph it into a story about her protecting her place with an AR-15-with-bump-stock in each hand. Or something. After all, it’s impossible for people to be safe without their machine guns… (groucho-roll-eyes.gif)
Thanks!
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@rikyrah: I remember reading Greg quite often when he was at TPM. (He seemed to have a mania there for synonyms well past the point of overdoing it.). He’s seemed to be much, much more in straight-ahead-facts-and-let-the-bothsiderists-cry mode at WaPo than he ever was at TPM.
Good, good.
Cheers,
Scott.
Suzanne
I hate all pickups with the hot, hot fire of a thousand suns and since this seems like an epic troll of pickups…. I like it.
Suzanne
Did you ever see the Pontiac Aztek? AKA the Asstek? This looks way better than that.
Chris T.
@rikyrah: Greg Sargent is right. The R’s who keep pushing this Ukraine line are criminals and traitors.
ArchTeryx
Good Lord, Musk made the 6000 SUX in real life, didn’t me? Oy.
different-church-lady
Elon Musk is the Andy Kaufman of Thomas Edisons.
sukabi
@Suzanne: the Pacer and gremlin and vw thing we’re also quite fugly…but at least none of them looked like low res unskinned badly rendered 3d models
Amir Khalid
@Suzanne:
Well, we don’t see a lot of Pontiacs in Malaysia. I think a few years ago you could buy Chevys here — my brother had one — but even those are not very common anymore.
Jager
Musk needs to understand the truck market better. His tow ratings look good, but what’s the range drop to when you are pulling a 4,000lb trailer, food, water, etc, 2 kids, your loyal dog, Mom, and Dad? I’ll bet it’s cut in half. Is he going to install a Supercharger up in the Sierra Nevadas? How about in northern Minnesota or Maine? Family recreational use pickups are a huge part of the market. I wonder if Ramon, my yard guy will be interested in a used one 6 or 7 years from now to pull his trailer full of lawnmowers and trimmers.
We’re on our 2nd Volt, so I’m not anti-ev, but people buy pickups for a lot of reasons beyond dick extension or coal rolling.
BTW, you can buy a Ram 2500 4×4 Cummins Diesel that will tow close to 20,000 lbs for 60k, you can work it to death for 10 years and sell it for 15-20k. And unloaded they get 23-25 mpg at 65 on the highway.
Amir Khalid
@ArchTeryx:
6000 SUX is a car model name for the ages.
chris
@Suzanne: Some friends had a white Aztek. They named it Moby’s Dick.
Another Scott
Given Musk’s background with PayPal, this BBC story about the rise and fall of OneCoin might be interesting:
“Hey, buddy, wanna write a blockchain for us? We’ll make it worth your while…”
Cheers,
Scott.
Amir Khalid
@Suzanne:
So I did an image search for the Aztek. It’s no beauty, sure; but it makes at least some feeble attempt at style, and I still think the Cybertruck is uglier.
Suzanne
@Jager: I am anti-pickup because they are big, difficult to see around, and their drivers often seem to have trouble parking them. And upwards of 95% of the ones I see on the road aren’t hauling or towing anything. I understand that it doesn’t have to be this way.
Sebastian
@rikyrah:
Finally someone saying it. They are all traitors. Treat them as such.
mj
I need a monopoly gamepiece that beats th fuck out of the racecar.
Suzanne
@chris: Funniest thing about that car was when they tried to give one to one of the contestants on Survivor. They unveil it and he said, “Oh my God, it’s a new car….thing….”. I LOLed.
Mai naem mobile
The Tesla truck is one ugly looking vehicle. Its looks like that ugly ass Pontiac or Buick monstrosity around in the 90s or 00s.
Timill
Well, you have to remember that Elon doesn’t want the CyberTruck to take over the US pickup market, at least not in the short term, because the capital cost of the GigaFactories required to build them would kill Tesla. He needs to make inroads and use the profits to set up the next Tesla truck.
That said, if I were in the market for a truck, I’d definitely consider it.
Jay Noble
The truck end of the truck with the new electric ATV
https://www.engadget.com/2019/11/22/cybertruck-atv-tesla/
Jager
@Suzanne: get on I 10 or 395 on the weekend and many of the pickup you see during the week are hauling kids and dogs somewhere for the weekend. BTW pickups are easy to drive and park.
OSweetMrMath
The worst part is that Simone Giertz already built a Tesla pickup that looks like a pickup.
Viva BrisVegas
Is there a way to arrange things such that Tesla succeeds but Elon Musk doesn’t?
Keith P
I look at that truck and see Musk’s response to all the production issues with the model 3. This thing looks like they could actually fire half their bodywork line and replace them with welding robots. No more paint, no presses, just sheet metal and welds.
lgerard
@Another Scott:
That podcast looks interesting, thanks
Suzanne
@Jager: I’m on I-10 every single day.
Sister Golden Bear
I see the Cylons have planned their infiltration of Earth.
In fairness Telsa* does have a fair number of charging stations in the Sierras including couple of Supercharge stations, in addition to other public chargers that are available. Admittedly, there’s parts of the Sierras and good chunks of the West where a combustion engine is still necessary.
*I don’t own one, but I’ve thought about getting one, and the practicality of road trips is something I’ve been looking into.
khead
Not thrilled at the SNL opener.
Omnes Omnibus
Who is this thing expected to appeal to?
NotMax
Comparing with the Rivian.
IMHO, front end of the Cybertrunk looks like Gort‘s head was plastered on after being run over by a steamroller, front end of the Rivian like what would result if Las Vegas and the Edsel had a child.
mrmoshpotato
@khead: This week’s SNL opener was lame. So was Will Ferrell’s monologue.
mrmoshpotato
@Omnes Omnibus: Those with no sense of sight or touch?
Omnes Omnibus
@mrmoshpotato: You are dead to me.
Omnes Omnibus
@mrmoshpotato: And you are back.
mrmoshpotato
@Omnes Omnibus: Didn’t see much in the minute I was dead.
Jager
@Suzanne: I get it you hate pickups
Ohio Mom
@Kamala.Harris.2020: Hey, “autistics should not be used as a slur.
NotMax
The mob will find the sliding cover in the Musktruck’s bed handy for performing decapitations while on the go.
Omnes Omnibus
Why?
Raoul
That truck looks like a garbage one-off for a low budget direct to TV movie from the early 90s.
On the other hand, William Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy was crafted with some care and panache. So, um, please don’t equate Elon Musk’s POS Delorian + Chevy Avalanche mashup to Gibson’s books. Thx.
Martin
@Another Scott: Yep. Tooling costs and expertise is a big barrier for entry for new carmakers, and metal forming and painting is expensive to set up and adds a lot of steps to the cost of making a car – particularly an EV that is already vastly simpler than an ICE car.
Now, I’m not sure I buy Musks solution to this problem, but we’re not really going to get new competition in the auto space until we get a solution to the problem. I had anticipated composite panels over tube frames, but maybe this is the right path – we’ll see.
I think it’s ugly as hell, but I give him credit for taking a big swing at the problem.
Martin
@Viva BrisVegas: He’s said he’s planning to step down soon to focus on SpaceX. We’ll see if he follows through on it.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: I take it this mob is a character in a mid-80s DOS computer game.
Major Major Major Major
I keep telling everyone we’re thiiis close to living in Snow Crash…
Martin
@chris: I’m trying to figure out how you’d haul long goods with it. At first I thought the slope was for that purpose, but anyone who’s had a big gust blow in under a sheet of 4×8 would hesitate to slope it up in that manner.
Omnes Omnibus
@khead: I liked King Princess though.
Kent
Honestly I don’t get it. I’ve owned trucks and have been around them all my life. I don’t see something like this breaking into any kind of work-truck market.
I doubt many people will ever buy something like this for any sort of work purpose. It will probably take the place of all the Humvees that people used to like to drive around suburban freeways and malls.
They could actually have made a really great electric powered truck cab that would have actually had a huge market.
mrmoshpotato
@Omnes Omnibus: Weekend Update was good.
mrmoshpotato
@Kent: I want to have more money than sense.
NotMax
And the light bulb over the “What does this remind me of?” box just lit. The short range rover from the short-lived mid-70s kids’ show Ark II.
piratedan
@mrmoshpotato: explains the hummer sales, lets drive a vehicle that gets shitty gas mileage and even failed in its primary purpose to protect soldiers against IED’s and sell it! There’s always a niche market for the affluent, as they obviously can afford not to give a shit about things like utility or cost. Nothing else matters, if Joe Blow can’t afford it, then I’ll buy it to show how much money I have.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Jager: I think Musk is trolling the pickup truck market; remember people buy those trucks to be awesome and scary and they are pissed that the Tesla’s has more pulling power.
Ruckus
@MazeDancer:
It may have room for a sheet of plywood, how many do you think ever get hauled in that $70K truck?
Where I live in socal, in the east end of the San Gabriel valley, a wild ass guess is that about 40% of vehicles are pickup trucks. I see a few of those real expensive things every so often but mostly they are jacked up, extreme tires, another 20K in suspension work and the bed is not 3 ft off the ground but 4 ft. Who is going to load anything in the back and haul it? They are toys. Expensive toys. Cheaper than a Lamborghini and actually about as useful.
mrmoshpotato
@piratedan: I saw a Hummer parked on the street earlier today. Chicago’s streets are that bad?
Additionally, I love the souped up engines here. Where the hell in Chicago are you going to be able floor it without getting pulled over or getting into an accident?
ETA – and I’m talking about Honda Civics that sound like supercars.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
It’s not bending it, you have to make a die for it. And they are hugely expensive if big enough for a car piece. I made molds and dies for 30 yrs and still on occasion work on small ones. A car die will involve thousands of pound of metal. I’ve worked on molds which weighed about 7000 pounds and they were no where near enough to make a fender.
This is a concept car, seemingly rushed out for some reason(s), I’d bet none of the reasons are actually reasonable.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
82 and going STRONG. Gives me some hope that it’s possible. Of course I’m not sure I’ve ever been able to dead lift 225 lbs. Or at least do it without injuring myself. Which I have done at work.
sukabi
@Ruckus: rushed out as a diversion is my guess….there will likely be some negative story breaking in the next week or so.
phdesmond
@rikyrah: wonderful story.
oatler.
Anyone remember “Duel” with Dennis Weaver?
Robert Sneddon
@Martin: Stainless steel is a lot more difficult to work with than regular sheet steel used in car production lines today. Drilling and pressing stainless require quite specialised tooling, spot-welding stainless properly is another pain-in-the-butt.
As for the “straight-line” design concept of Musk’s Pedestrian Murder Machine (tm Charlie Stross), sharp corners on sheet metal exposed to vibration from, say, driving on roads encourages fracture propagation. Rolled curves introduce stiffness and fracture resistance with no weight penalties and materials cost as well as having aerodynamic benefits.
Oh, and stainless steel costs four times as much as regular sheet steel used in car manufacture. Sure you can recoup some of that money in the paintshop and corrosion control but there’s still a finishing process required on the surface before it can go out on the road — imagine an Arizona car park full of stainless steel mirror-surface cars and what that would do to the unprotected eyeball.
Robert Sneddon
@piratedan: The HMMWV was never designed to be armoured other than against light rifle fire, maybe. The attempts to up-armour it to defend it against bomb attacks added mass high up on a chassis with suspension and brakes designed for a much lighter vehicle with the result there were a lot more accidents, roll-overs and fatalities from just driving it around.
What the US Occupation forces in Iraq needed was a Brute Squad vehicle like the old South African police Casspirs used to cow the locals in Soweto and elsewhere but it took them a few years to get son-of-Casspir MRAPs into service.
Shalimar
It reminds me of the planet rover from Starflight, a 1986 space exploration game from way back when vehicles had to be boxy because computer graphics were so limited.
Anonymous At Work
The real debate online is: Playstation or SimCity?
Ken
@Robert Sneddon:
Coming this spring, from director Michael Bay…
Chris Johnson
I’d want them to make a sports car and use that styling on it.
When I was a kid I was super into the Lamborghini Countach. Like that. They would barely have to change anything, and ordinary Teslas already stomp supercars in various ways, so they would have performance, they would have styling, they’d have it all. Only thing remaining would be to sell it at less than the cost of a comparable Honda Civic.
I like all this insane electric vehicle hype. Let’s get a lot of solar happening and burn less hydrocarbons. This truck madness is a direct play for coal rollers. It’s trying to out-obnoxious the belching of black diesel smoke into the atmosphere, and it just might work if the Matruk is extreme enough. Does it have the truck version of Ludicrous Mode? That might help.
debbie
@Suzanne:
I’ve got a couple dents in my bumper from those assholes trying to back into a parking space. Once while I was still sitting in my car!
chopper
yeah, the doors can take a bullet, but i’ll bet someone could just push a knife through it. ‘the slow blade penetrates the shield’ and all.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@oatler.: Yes! Saw it when it first aired on TV. I was so impressed that the guy from McCloud was in an actual movie. Scary as hell.
It was directed by a young unknown named Spielberg. I wonder what ever happened to that guy?
Matt McIrvin
The thing about all these science-fictional cars that people are posting pictures of is that they all look better and, weirdly, more realistic than the Cybertruck. Among other things, they’ve got what model makers call “greeblies” all over them, bits of random detail often scavenged from model kits to convey a sense of scale and make them come off as real technology. (The Last Starfighter Starcar less so than the others, because it was literally designed to be rendered with low-poly CGI, but it’s still got more detail than the Cybertruck.) This thing obsessively hides its greeblies to look as featureless and unreal as possible, while still being ridiculously aggressive-looking. It’s in an uncanny valley of car design.
And even the nearly featureless ones, like the tanks in Battlezone, have better proportions.
Timill
@Omnes Omnibus:
1. Because it outperforms the equivalent trucks from Ford, Chevy and Ram.
2. Because it’s cheaper than them.
3. Because it’s efficient – the shape and the bed cover make it much more aerodynamic than an F-150 or similar.
3. Because I’ve been reading science fiction for about 60 years.
4. To own the local rednecks ;-)
Brachiator
Coming late to the thread (and an earlier post attempt somehow disappeared)
Yep. Ugly. And I am curious to see how it does basic truck stuff. And also how it handles, how comfortable it is, road worthiness, how it handles crashes.
This may be a waste of time. Or it could lead to interesting automotive design. The mockery and doubt is understandable, but who knows, it might also be premature.
kindness
I question calling anything with a 4′ bed a pickup. That’s more El Camino size.
JaneE
I have been waiting for an electric vehicle with a range large enough to get me to where I need to go without recharging. 500 mile range is very acceptable, close enough to our hybrid now. AWD is a requirement for at least one of our vehicles, because snow (getting rarer, but still happens). A pickup is useful and we did a lot of hauling in one and have talked about needing a truck again.
Why in the name of all that is holy did Tesla put that monstrosity on the road? I have no doubt that they will find buyers, probably lots of them, but of all the things I need and want in a vehicle, the only one that thing fills is going place to place. Not enough bed to haul a bed. Maybe enough rear headroom for my cat, who hates to travel anyway. Probably need a ladder to get in, with my knees. And ugly to boot.
Tehanu
How is that … thing … a truck? How does it have room for, you know, the stuff people haul in trucks?
Timill
@Tehanu: Same way the F-150 does. Both trucks are 80″ wide. The F-150 has options of 5.5′, 6.5′ or 8′ beds; the CyberTruck bed is 6.5′ long