Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Celebrate the fucking wins.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

This really is a full service blog.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. Do not congratulate. This is not business as usual.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, it’s door #2)

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

“woke” is the new caravan.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Alternative history is always a weak argument. Always.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

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Sunday Evening Open Thread: Qwality Contrails Is His Passion

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  3. 3.

    RAVEN

    I just got my 66 Chevy truck back after having a hydraulic clutch installed. I was hoping against hope it would make a significant difference in my ability to push the clutch pedal in. I had a heavy duty clutch installed when I put the 350 in about 12 years ago. IT WORKED!!!!

  4. 4.

    Other MJS

    Because firing people who actually know what they’re doing worked so well at The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter.

  5. 5.

    dmsilev

    We need to be at 10 micron precision, give or take about 25,000 microns

    (25,000 microns is basically an inch, for those not fluent in Metric). Single-digit micron precision, on a piece the size of a car panel, is literally impossible. Why? Because metal objects change size with changing temperature and if you need the dimensions to be accurate to ten parts per million, which is what Musk was calling for, that means this truck will have to stay in a climate controlled garage with no more than a degree or two of variation.

    Okay, maybe not ‘literally’ impossible, but effectively so.

  7. 7.

    MattF

    Just do a search on ‘Tesla build quality’. It takes a good five seconds to find out that this has been a problem for years— very much not a big secret. The question is why it took years for these issues to become common knowledge.

  8. 8.

    dmsilev

    @Ken: And good luck keeping the finish even vaguely uniform after there’s a dent which needs to be smoothed out. Stainless is horrible for that.

  9. 9.

    Suzanne

    So in my field, it’s pretty common for architects to do renderings that make the project look awesome. And then the actual built project looks….. fine. Much less cool.

    But this…. the original rendering looks bad.

  10. 10.

    Suzanne

    @MattF: I rode in an Tesla once while taking an Uber and the interior was terrible. I had to ask for help with the cup holder. And then it didn’t hold my coffee cup adequately and sloshed on my pants.

  16. 16.

    Jay

    Anybody who has had a stainless steel kitchen appliance knows how much of a PITA they are to keep looking clean.

  19. 19.

    Phylllis

    @Suzanne: I had a Tesla Uber ride in DC last Spring. I remember thinking ‘this is the crappiest vehicle I think I’ve ever been in’. And I say this as a former owner of a Chevy Cobalt.

  21. 21.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I know < 0 about automotive design or rocket engineering or running a social media platform, but even I can tell that Elon is a idiot. Also a asshole.

  22. 22.

    dmsilev

    @Suzanne: Yes, but I’ll guess that the renderings you and your colleagues create can’t be executed on a 1995-vintage PlayStation 1 the way this can. That’s worth something, right?

  25. 25.

    Barney

    Camo Cybertruck – for people who really don’t want others to notice they bought one. Or, maybe, for those who want to be more likely to be hit by one of Musk’s self-driving cars.

  26. 26.

    Another Scott

    When I was about 12, I “designed” a nuclear-reactor powered car. It had all sorts of safety features, like if the car was in a wreck, the reactor would be ejected to protect it (not sure about protecting wherever it would land).

    Lots of straight edges, sharp angles, and a fancy set of wings on the back to give it plenty of down-force for super duper handling.

    I think my reactor-powered car was more practical, and better looking, than this “truck”. And I think the machines I built with my Erector set had smaller panel gaps.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  27. 27.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    Teslas have the build quality of a 1980 Chevy Citation.

    Now, this truck is perfect for those wanting to cosplay as Xylons from Battlestar Gallactica (ABC series version back in the day).

  28. 28.

    kalakal

    That’s laughably ugly. A vehicle that will get you noticed, heads will turn as you pass people by, and the sound of derisory laughter will greet you where e’er ye go.

    Any colour you like as long as it’s  mirror rot

  30. 30.

    Jay

    @TaMara:

    Most Zamboni’s have a propane tank fed flame torch to melt the ice slightly to allow the Zamboni to push the liquid around to fill gouges and create a smooth surface.

    So, yeah, with out careful repair, they go boom.

    Don’t understand why Tesla’s have the same problem. No propane, no fuel,…..///

  31. 31.

    Brachiator

    Musk’s decisions about his truck are so stupid that it leads you to question his judgement with respect to Tesla automobiles. Still, the Tesla Models Y and 3 are the most popular EV cars sold.

  32. 32.

    Jay C

    Dunno why Pastor Jack was “laughing” * at the difference between Cybertruck’s prototype v. production model: AFAICT, the only noticeable variation is in the angle of the rear body panels, and the visibility of the door pillars.

    * Actually, the laughing is easily understandable: the thing is still hideously butt-ugly, poorly designed, glaringly badly-built , and almost certainly prone to various flaws, bugs and glitches when in actual operation.

    IOW, the perfect Elon Musk project…

  33. 33.

    Phylllis

    @Jay: Yes, I wish I could catch the gremlin who manages to leave a crumby fingerprint on the fridge within minutes of my cleaning it with the stainless steel cleaner.

  38. 38.

    oatler

    I’d put ‘Lego’ on the back burner until I’d figured how to impress the grownups with Xeets.

  40. 40.

    Geminid

    @Jay C: There has long been a need for a small pickup truck like Toyota used to market. If Tesla had cut down a Model 3 and put a bed on it five years ago they would have cleaned up.

    But this big piece of crap will remain a novelty vehicle, I believe. It’s just not a good truck.

  41. 41.

    bjacques

    @frosty: and that reminds me of a 1974 Chrysler Newport my brother had *cough*ty years ago. We christened it the Bondo Bandit. One day the U-joint went and the driveshaft dropped to the pavement. Happily we weren’t driving very fast; otherwise I could picture the car leaping like the Mach 5. We had to tow it with a rope from southwest Houston back to Nassau Bay (near NASA-JSC).

    That poor beast still looked better than the Cybertruck.

    TaMara #18: A song of ice and fire?

  43. 43.

    Delk

    Look at a half dozen or so listings on Zillow to see how nasty stainless (LOL!) looks. And those refrigerators aren’t doing 80 mph in the rain. <— insert is your refrigerator running joke here.

  45. 45.

    Jay

    OT,  a week and a bit ago, noticed a Ladybug larvae crawling on the patio glass. We are 22 floors up, so WTF?

    Because of the season, I scooped it up and put it on the boxwood.

    A couple of days later, noticed there was a 5 spot pupae on a boxwood leaf.

    Today, I noticed that the pupae had split open and a few leaves over, there was a Ladybug adult, hardening out. Then I noticed a second Ladybug larvae crawling on the glass,……….

  46. 46.

    Geminid

    @schrodingers_cat: I will likely never own an electric vehicle, but my landlord is very happy with his Chevy Bolt. Now he wishes he’d waited for the new Hyundai EV though, because it can be charged so quickly.

    I think the Bolt will be discontinued.

  47. 47.

    Steeplejack

    “We need to be at 10 micron precision, give or take about 25,000 microns.”

    “I said ten-ish.”

    Twitter snark is great snark.

  48. 48.

    Yarrow

    Can’t wait for the first time that stainless steel gets so hot in the sun it burns someone and/or reflects the sun and catches something on fire.

  53. 53.

    Yarrow

    @Geminid:

    There has long been a need for a small pickup truck like Toyota used to market.

    Absolutely. Or the old Ford Rangers. I saw on the other day and it looked so tiny. I bet whoever owns it will never get rid of it. So practical and now impossible to replace.

  55. 55.

    Another Scott

    @schrodingers_cat: What’s your commute or typical driving distance?  My daily commute is about 23 miles round trip.

    I recently got a 2023 Kia Niro PHEV.  It’s rated at about 31 miles all-electric range and I typically get around 40 miles before the engine kicks in (I drive gently).  I charge it at home (on a 120V circuit) overnight every other day when I’m driving during the week.

    It’s just about perfect for me.  I’m not dragging around an extra 1000 pounds of batteries that I’m not using, but still can go on long trips and get decent mileage (around 50 mpg in hybrid mode).

    I wish it was a little smaller, but operationally it’s been a great vehicle for me.

    HTH a little.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  56. 56.

    Yarrow

    @Jay C:  True. But this stupid truckish thing can also catch other things on fire. That’ll be fun. Maybe they’re only useful in places where it’s usually cloudy and rainy.

  57. 57.

    kalakal

    Mercedes make concept cars that are

    works of art

    vision 111

    Musk makes a concept car that looks like the sort of art I put on my fridge with magnets and then makes a production version that looks like the fridge door rejects

  58. 58.

    Barney

    @Jeffg166: Or the 2023 DeLorean – the similarity in looks is there (was Musk a Back to the Future fan?). DeLorean had build quality woes too.

  59. 59.

    BeautifulPlumage

    Is that really some kind of tape on the hood edge, really?

    I read an article awhile back about the tesla semi tractor. One flaw was the long sloping windshield would be harder to remove snow & would get dirty faster than a less-sloped window.

  60. 60.

    Brachiator

    Musk is not a total idiot where it matters. From Bloomberg…

    Tesla discounts Model S by $30,000 and Model X by $41,000 to gain EV tax credits

    Tesla Inc.’s latest discounts will newly qualify one of its models for federal subsidies that Elon Musk said years ago the U.S. should scrap.

    By dropping the starting price of the Model X to $79,990 — a $41,000 reduction from the start of the year — Tesla made the sport utility vehicle eligible for the federal tax credits revamped by the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s signature climate bill.

    Musk in December 2021 called for the Biden administration to get rid of the incentives, citing concerns about government spending and the deficit. At that time, Teslas were no longer eligible for the tax credits because the company had already reached a limit that triggered a gradual phase-out of the benefit.

    “I’m literally saying, get rid of all subsidies,” the chief executive officer said during a Wall Street Journal conference. When asked if his opposition had anything to do with the effect this would have on competitors, Musk replied: “Maybe they need it, I don’t know.”

    With the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden discarded a cap on how many vehicles each automaker could sell before the credits began to wind down. The administration also set maximum retail prices at $80,000 for electric SUVs, vans and pickups, and $55,000 for cars.

    Tesla’s Model X is a bit player in the company’s lineup, with the cheaper Model 3 sedan and Model Y crossover making up 97% of first-half deliveries. The carmaker also dropped the starting price of the Model S sedan to $74,990, from $104,990 at the start of the year.

    Tesla dropped prices of the Model S and X after unveiling a refreshed version of the Model 3 with a sleeker front end, more battery range and a new rear touch screen.

    It will be interesting to see if Musk can move more vehicles.

  61. 61.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Jay: Several times, as a kid tromping through the woods, I found ladybugs swarming by the hundreds ( thousands? they’re small) on the south side of trees…..so….there’s that to look forward to, maybe?

  62. 62.

    Geminid

    @Yarrow: Volkswagon had a really nice, small 4 cylinder diesel truck in the late 1970s. I read that they stopped selling it here because it might take so much market share it would attract tariffs.

  63. 63.

    Steeplejack

    @MattF:

    The Tesla crap build quality has been common knowledge. This is just the first time we’ve seen (a big display of) the Cybertruck iteration of it.

  64. 64.

    Jay

    @Geminid:

    Toyota imported a Tacoma into the 2020’s into North America. Single or extended cab, a 4 banger or small V6, 2 or 4WD about the same size as a 1970’s SR5.

    It didn’t sell.

  66. 66.

    Another Scott

    @BeautifulPlumage: The manufacturers often put tape and stuff on new vehicles when they’re shipped (e.g. big white slabs of tape to protect the paint).  Not sure what the tape on the truck is doing here, but it might serve some similar function.  Or not.  Hard to know.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  67. 67.

    Ihop

    For holy Jesus and mary and Joseph and Jerry! Fucksake, how is it possible that the smartessedless worthlessness crapbaginess piece of stupid is as rich as he…..oh wait

    Cybertruck. Cybertruck.  Oh for fuck sake.

    I wish I was a poet. Spellcheck keeps redounding to cyberpunk.

    We’re not all fucked,  but I don’t know which blessed and good bunch is gonna burn for this shit.

  68. 68.

    BeautifulPlumage

    @Another Scott: I thought of that but couldn’t see why that spot needed protection compared to the rest. It looks like duct tape from the pic, not the metallic kind.

    It’s still an ugly vehicle.

  72. 72.

    Jay

    @MagdaInBlack:

    The adults hibernate. I had a bit of a horror decades ago, when cutting down a dead tree for a fire while steelheading, I pulled off a chunk of loose bark and found hundreds of torpid Ladybugs underneath.

    I came up with a solution. I put the bark in my cooler, picked up carefully all those that had fallen on the ground and put them in the cooler.

    Took them home and put the cooler in the garden shed.

    When it started to warm up in the spring, I would check on them every day. When they started crawling around the cooler, I left the lid off. After a week, no Ladybugs in the cooler, not a single dead one, just the chunk of bark.

  76. 76.

    m.j.

    I’m certain that if they ever remake Back to the Future this will be the vehicle Doc Brown uses.

    Incidentally, I don’t believe there is enough camouflage in the world to hide the ugly.

  78. 78.

    Ken

    @Another Scott: When I was about 12, I “designed” a nuclear-reactor powered car.

    Randall Munroe’s “What If” calculated you’d need about that level of power if you wanted to melt the snow in front of your vehicle as you travel at highway speed.

  79. 79.

    unctuous

    The “prototype” was actually a concept mockup. They still had all kinds of things to figure out, which an actual prototype was supposed to do.

    This the modern software development approach applied to physical objects. They’re selling the beta version.

    And I knew there would be issues with those large flat body panels. And that they’d stain, discolor and micro-dent and be hard to keep clean just like every stainless steel refrigerator.

  83. 83.

    Dan B

    @schrodingers_cat:  We’ve leased Nissan Leafs for seven years.  Their charging apparatus is being phased out so this is our last.  We may get a VW next.  The current Leaf has 250 miles range.  We’re charging it off a 110 circuit which takes 30+ hours but fast chargers will do it in an hour.  I love the car and we don’t plan to drive an ICE ever.  There’s almost zero maintenance – rotating tires.  The acceleration is amazing and it’s very intuitive with buttons where a touchscreen would be difficult.  We’re at the ocean after driving from Seattle on a 75% charge.

  84. 84.

    oldster

    One description I read — can’t remember where now — said that the “cybertruck” would look about right hanging on the wall of a public toilet, dispensing paper towels.

  85. 85.

    Tony Jay

    “The Tesla Cybertruck? I heard about that, let’s take a look at what all the fuss is ab…”

    Assumes Mike Pence-level expression of constipated confusion. Rubs eyes. Takes long walk through autumnal park. Stops to throw some stones into a lake. Watches sunset from the deck of a lakeside bungalow. Sits in the dark in an upright leather chair, face illuminated by each pensive drag on a cheap Albanian cigarette. Walks back through park. Stops in front of picture of Tesla Cybertruck.

    “That’s just about the worst hand-tooling I’ve seen since ‘Bi-Lander 2: The Queerkening’.

  86. 86.

    Another Scott

    @Ken: :-)

    Way back then, I actually wrote a letter to NASA asking how big an RTG I’d need to power my car. A few months later, I got a GPO paperback book on RTGs and a nice letter from some NASA engineer doing the calculation for a 100 HP car and he let me conclude that it really wasn’t practical but was an interesting problem!

    I’ve still got the book around here somewhere, I think…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  88. 88.

    unctuous

    @Suzanne: It was not much more than a parti sketch.

    As an architecture professor once told me, your parti and any sketch models from your design process belong at your desk, not in your presentation.

  89. 89.

    Tony Jay

    @Jay:

    I smoked an Andorran cigarette once, tasted like an elderly dog was watching me from the shadows and laughing knowingly.

  90. 90.

    Jay

    @Another Scott:

    your flaw was using nuclear power as the source of power.

    You should have used the channeled thrust of thousands ( one by one) of tiny nuclear bombs going off in a combustion chamber or rocket tube,

    figuring out reverse is solvable,…..///

  91. 91.

    Wag

    The camo-clad cyber truck in the last photo looks way better than the stainless steel ones.  Still looks like crap, just not quite as crappy.

  92. 92.

    oldster

    @Another Scott:

    The plug-in hybrid model makes a *lot* of sense, and for the majority of drivers they make more sense than full-electric vehicles.

    As you point out, your daily commute is only in the 20+ mile range. 90% of all trips in the US are under 20 miles. 90% of trips could be handled by PHEV’s without ever burning a gallon of gas.

    And for the longer trips, you have the gasoline engine to take you 300, 800, 3000 miles, however far you have to drive, with the quick and easy refills provided by gas.

    The trouble with the full-electric vehicles is, that everyone wants a bigger and bigger battery in order to be able to drive 300, 500 miles. (This is also why Tesla has been lying about their range for many years.)

    The push to get bigger and bigger batteries means that fully-electric cars are expensive, heavy, and very costly in their use of rare minerals.

    And here’s the thing: the materials that go into one Tesla battery could instead be used to create 5 PHEV vehicles. Instead of one Tesla and 4 gas-powered vehicles using gas all of the time, you could have 5 PHEV vehicles that use electric for 90% of their trips.

    At the national level, it would reduce gas-usage more quickly to have people switch to PHEV’s, sooner, than to wait until everyone can have a fully-electric car with a giant battery that can overcome their fear of range.

    (Another option for those who have multiple cars would be to have a full-electric in-town car with a small battery suited for up to 30 miles, and hang on to your ICE car for long road trips.)

    Anyhow — sounds like your usage is a good example of the strengths of PHEVs.

  93. 93.

    Jeffro

    @WaterGirl:This vehicle says I AM AN ASSHOLE just as much as a MAGA hat does.

    At this point, anyone buying a Tesla is outing themselves just as much as if they stood on a street corner screaming “WOKETY WOKE WOKE WOKE” or dressing up in a blue suit and red tie every single day at the office.

    Or, what you said, shorter and better.  =)

  94. 94.

    azlib

    @Yarrow: I have a 93 Ranger pickup with over 200K miles on it. Only thing I have had to do is replace the master cylinder and the starter motor. It did throw its timing belt soon after I bought it at about $150K miles, but the repair was easy and was only about $300.

  95. 95.

    Jay

    @Wag:

    the camo is a film skin. Adverts, solid colours, pretty much anything that can be achieved with mylar.

    It’s a thing now, that when you buy a high end vehicle, you get it skinned.  When you go to sell it, you pull the skin and the factory paint has no rock chips or scratches, unless you have really po’d somebody off.

  96. 96.

    SFAW

    @dmsilev: ​
     
    Yeah, I saw Skum’s “sub 10 micron” comment, and thought “what a fucking moron.”
    Having designed stamped and machined metal and injection-molded plastic for a number of years, and having to get those designs produced economically, I feel comfortable opining that “sub 10 micron” tolerances are OK for chip-level design (actually, I’m guessing that’s too loose, but I wasn’t a chip guy), but not feasible for production quantities of more than, oh, I dunno, 10 per year? If that.

  97. 97.

    SFAW

    On the plus side, however, I hear it has “near infinite” towing capacity.
    ETA: But it is the ugliest damn vehicle I’ve seen in awhile, possibly ever. And how is it a truck? Does it have an invisible bed, into which I can put some 4 x 8 sheets of plywood?

  98. 98.

    Suzanne

    @unctuous:

    As an architecture professor once told me, your parti and any sketch models from your design process belong at your desk, not in your presentation.

    YAAAAAAS.
    No one needs to see brain farts.

  101. 101.

    Kent

    Try to imagine mounting a canopy or camper on that thing with the slanted bed.   You can’t.  Or carrying a load of lumber.  Or with a ladder rack.  Or carrying lawn mowers like all the landscaper trucks.

    Tesla could have cleaned up if they had just made an ordinary electric pickup that does all the normal pickup stuff.  Like the Rivian or new F150 electric.  But no, they gotta go full douche bag and make something that looks like it is from a 1990s video game.

  102. 102.

    S Cerevisiae

    I can’t believe they are actually selling that ugly POS, I had a 1980 Citation that moved everything I owned including my records and stereo back in the day and it was a faithful car for several years, I doubt that Cybertruck could do any of that.

    I also had a 1995 Ranger that I loved, bought it new for 11,500 and ran it for over 20 years, I sold it to a friends nephew and it’s still running strong, great little truck.

  103. 103.

    Wag

    @Jay:   Yeah.  Wraps can be pretty cool.  In the mountains of Colorado we frequently see camo wrapped test vehicles. I remember seeing a pair of wrapped updated VW Beetle prototypes driving over Loveland Pass a couple of years before the release of the New Beetle.  Did a double take when I passed them.

  104. 104.

    Princess

    Anyone who has ever tried to keep a stainless steel fridge looking decent knew this was a bad idea.

  105. 105.

    Jay

    @Princess:

    if it’s the right stainless alloy, (316), fasteners, frame with isolation where dissimilar metals would make contact. and the exposed stainless is regularly waxed, it’s a good but expensive idea.

    If not, it’s a heavy  future unrepairable rust bucket.

    You would do better with aluminum. Always LMAO seeing “yachties”, not sailors, having their aluminum masts polished. That white film they were having removed, is aluminum’s self anodizing ability. It stops corrosion.

  106. 106.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    If you want to be the Ultimate Dick, buy one and polish the stainless to a mirror finish. That fucker will blind people while driving around on a sunny day…lol!

    ETA: That thing is as fugly as fucking ugly can get.

  107. 107.

    Jay

    @Odie Hugh Manatee:

    even a couple of decades ago you could get a silver or gold reflective mylar car skin.

    So yeah, assholes turning their bling rides into blinding bling is a long tradition.

  108. 108.

    oldster

    @Kent:

    Co-sign all of that.

    Pickups sell for a reason — they are super useful for many things.

    This look like it will be useful for none of those things.

    (As well as ugly as sin.)

  109. 109.

    Uncle Cosmo

    When I was a smoker, the only time I can recall where I actually discarded a pack more than half-full was on my first trip to Europe. Gitanes. I could (barely) hack Gauloises, but the Gitanes…I didn’t throw them away, just left them on a bench in a rail station. Whoever wanted them was welcome to them.

  110. 110.

    The Pale Scot

    @RAVEN:

    Pictures G,

    & I wuz  a Toyota sales dude back in the day. My repeat customers told me they looked at Hondas and BMWs. Toyotas had the best fit and finish hands down. I buy a Camry a few years old and drive it until I decide it’s time. My uncle drove a ’78 Corolla for 400gs, just replaced the clutch twice

  111. 111.

    Eyeroller

    @Dan B: We had a Leaf that we loved (the newer version but not the Plus), but when I had to go from two cars to one, I traded the Leaf in along with my nearly 15-year-old ICE vehicle.  I bought a Volvo XC60 Recharge.  It supposedly gets about 48 miles per charge but I find 40 or so miles is more realistic.  Still, I have not bought gas for over two months, though admittedly I do not drive much.  I have been quite happy with the Volvo so far.  I did not consider the Volvo BEV models since I don’t yet want my only vehicle to be a BEV.

  112. 112.

    E.

    @Jay: I’ve got a 2000 4wd Tacoma with stick shift as my daily driver. Surpassed 250k this year. Very very very low maintenance. I’m considering getting a new engine when this one dies. That’s how much I like the thing.

  113. 113.

    Fair Economist

    Those Cybertrucks look like they’ve been driven 20 years the moment they roll off the delivery trucks. Dingy and misaligned.

  114. 114.

    wjca

    @Jeffg166:  The 2023 Edsel

    No way.  The Edsel design/look was horrible.  But the engineering under the skin was actually quite good.  This thing appears to only have the first.

  115. 115.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Jay:

    Yeah but just picture those large flat panels reflecting large patches of eye-frying sunlight all over the place.

    You could probably see it from space…lol!

  117. 117.

    Jay

    @oldster:

    the truck market has diverged.

    on one side, you have work/utility trucks.

    on the other side you have bling.

    There is an F-450 twin cab that shows up in the Safeway parking lot from time to time. It’s pristine. It also has a hydro pneumatic sub suspension that can lift it 4 feet into the air at either end.

    It looks like it would be a badass off road vehicle, ( if you are a moron) but it’s useless. It doesn’t have a Chilcotin Cut Polish, so you know that it’s never gotten the slight bit dirty.

  119. 119.

    2liberal

    @Phylllis:  I had a Tesla Uber ride in DC last Spring. I remember thinking ‘this is the crappiest vehicle I think I’ve ever been in’. And I say this as a former owner of a Chevy Cobalt.

     

    I had  a Lyft ride in one.  I was just hoping it didn’t catch on fire and lock me in.

  120. 120.

    Hoppie

    Late to the party, so apologies if redundant, but the early-model Azteks are relieved to now only be the second ugliest vehicle…

  121. 121.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Tesla Fremont pays like 50% of industry standard for Silicon Valley, so as the build quality shows on the Cyber Truck shows, they are worth every penny Musk pays them.

  122. 122.

    Jay

    @E.:

    Get a rebuild, but only Toyota parts.

    When my 2.4 blew on my ’81Hilux on the Coq, I had it rebuilt with all the TRD go fast/offroad parts and converted to fuel injection.

    Driving like a Grandpaw, fuel economy went up by 25%, and with no load, acting like an idiot, I could smoke all 4 tires in 4WD. Real wheel dyno’d horsepower went up to 140 and torque went up to 98 flbs.

  123. 123.

    Nukular Biskits

    If Musk offered to give me, free of charge, one of these “trucks” and $50K to boot, I’d decline and keep my 2002 F150, complete with rust, busted tailgate, scrape down the entire passenger side and duct tape around the cargo light (temporary leak repair).

    IOW, even my truck isn’t as ugly as the cybertruck .

  124. 124.

    CliosFanBoy

    It looks like the reject of a model of a futuristic vehicle made for some low-budget 70s SciFi movie.

  125. 125.

    YY_Sima Qian

    If the Cybertruck prototype is spray painted in a non-reflective color, the dimensional variations would not show up sore thumbs.

    Still, it always looked like a poorly made, dirty cheap, & possibly dangerous (due to the sharp edges) toy. I am not particularly impressed by the other Teslas (X, Y, 3), but at least they are proper looking cars, even if the quality of fit & finish is rather lacking. I am told the Teslas built in the Shanghai factory has better fit & finish than those out of Fremont, CA.

  127. 127.

    M31

    @Yarrow: hahaha friend of mine had a ’56 VW Single cab truck — Same front seat as the van, but with a pickup back, it was a cool little thing. 36-hp engine with an actual crank start (in the back, lol), I think rated for 50mph top speed and even that was iffy

    But I guarantee you could haul more stuff in that than Elmo’s stainless steel fridge panel thing

  128. 128.

    M31

    someone is going to park one of these in Phoenix, and the sunlight reflecting off the panels is going to focus on a propane tank and cause a KABOOM

  130. 130.

    topclimber

    @Brachiator: So, if you leased one of these Teslas eight months ago, does such heavy price cutting not wipe out much of the secured value of the vehicle, making it a much riskier loan? I think we are going to see some unhappy bankers out there, not to mention consumers who will only wan to pay what the car is worth NOW.

    Perhaps Tesla handles all the financing itself. If so, I am sure Elon will make his customers whole again. Call it the MuskWhole promise.

  131. 131.

    Kent

    @Nukular Biskits:If Musk offered to give me, free of charge, one of these “trucks” and $50K to boot, I’d decline and keep my 2002 F150, complete with rust, busted tailgate, scrape down the entire passenger side and duct tape around the cargo light (temporary leak repair).

    Well yes, if the caveat was that I was actually required to drive it as my daily driver. For sure.  Couldn’t pay me enough.

    On other hand, if I was able to sell it to some incel cyberdouche elon fanboy then maybe I would take the deal.

  132. 132.

    JaneE

    Stainless steel that will show every fingerprint.

    Solid metal that will be too hot to touch after an hour or less in the summer. 

    No thanks.

  133. 133.

    Soprano2

    @Yarrow: We have a 1987 Chevy S-10 that’s two-tone because of switching a panel and a door with a wrecked one. Several people have tried to buy it from us, because they don’t make small pickups anymore. Found out tires for it are expensive now, which explains why someone tried to steal them a couple of years ago. That’s why it’s parked in our backyard inside the 6 ft chain link fence now.

  134. 134.

    Hoppie

    Other brag, now that the thread is prolly dead, we put 455,000 miles on a five-speed Voyager.  Found out later only about 700 hundred were ever built.  Had the engine rebuilt once.  Ghod, that was a great huxtermobile.  Sold it for $250.

  136. 136.

    RaflW

    @WaterGirl: My thought after watching the cammo ‘cyber’truck (and all I can think when I see that name is TFG saying “the cyber”, as the utter dolt that he is) was, “Wow, now the handful of guys still driving Hummer H2s will not look the the absolute douchiest guys on earth!”

  138. 138.

    RaflW

    @oldster: Yes, this. We’d love to have a plug-in hybrid. But as upper midwesterers who also snowboard/skibike out west, we want/need AWD and an area behind the front seats that can hold the bike.

    We’re now a 2X Subaru household (one Outback, one Crosstrek) and we’d be over the moon for a plug-in hybrid. Maybe we’ll eventually have one ICE Subie and one of the all-electrics once they’ve gotten past teething age.

  139. 139.

    Ked

    So I’d forgotten about this design again, and… eh. I don’t hate the styling as much as most people, but bare metal is pure ass. Now, if it was composite sheets molded/sanded to perfection and then painted a bright glossy red – about a shade darker than Ferrari, please – with perfect black windows like the prototype had, I’d have a serious case of automotive lust.

  140. 140.

    Hoppie

    @Gin & Tonic: Mostly interstate miles, less wear on the gears.  Got about 27 mpg overall.  And carried lotsa stuff.  Loved that “car”.  Our replacement automatic Caravan only did 270,000 before it died.  Yes, we were assiduous about service intervals, and had a good-old-boy Kentucky mechanic

    Ah, those were the days…

  143. 143.

    Ruckus

    @Jeffg166:

    Why are you dissing Edsel so badly?

    The look better, are likely more useable, and you didn’t have to scrub them with scotchbtrite to clean them.

  144. 144.

    Ruckus

    @dmsilev:

    I haven’t dealt in microns in a while but the last job I did before retiring was to grind 6 hardened steel pins to +/- 25 millionths of an inch on the diameter. Now the interesting part is that if you got them too hot grinding them they would grow over 25 millionths of an inch and be undersized. Also that tolerance is a bit tough to measure reliably. But in any event I was able to make 6 pins that fit in the holes they had to fit in. So close enough. And one of the reasons that I really wanted to retire. Now when I get the urge to make something I build furniture for myself. The tolerances are just a bit looser. OK quite a bit looser. And the purchaser is quite tolerant of the results.

  145. 145.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    Back in the 70s and 80s, when Elmo was growing up, there were a lot of very nice angular car designs – I discovered that many of the sleek, sharp designs I liked came from the Italian designer Giorgetto Giguiaro. He was responsible for cars like the Lotus Esprit (the James Bond submarine car), the original VW Golf and Scirocco, the BMW M1, and – probably the biggest influence on Elmo’s Cybertruck – the DeLorean.

    Elmo’s Cybertruck looks like it was designed by a child who was enamored of those designs. The problem is that child is now 52 years old, with a dangerous amount of money and clout at his disposal, and a worrying inability to take “no” for an answer. And if the internal engineering is on par with the exterior … I wouldn’t want to be on the same road with one of those, never mind inside one.

  146. 146.

    different-church-lady

    Still looks like a Delorean and an El Camino had a love child, but this time the Delorean was a serious alcoholic.

  147. 147.

    Warren Lorente

    Anybody who’s reached over the side of the box of a pickup to grab a tool or a six-pack can see what’s wrong with the Cybertruck. The first generation Honda Ridgeline had the same problem, with sloping sides on the box. When Honda redesigned the Ridgeline for the second generation, they made the sides of the box flat, like a regular pickup.

    On the other hand, the Cybertruck has plenty of room in the bed for Doc Brown to build a time machine!

    If you’re foolish enough to buy one of these things, you should get a can of Bar Keeper’s Friend for your detailing kit.

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