I'm rooting for it despite it being silly and not a practical pickup, strictly because every car people are buying looks identical (picture a crossover SUV from Toyota, Chevy, BMW etc. Basically shoe-shaped things).
This looks like a concept car that would never come to market. I hope it sells really well and convinces others to bring actually-creative designs to market.
While I appreciate the unique design of the Cybertruck, I have a huge concern with its huge size and the potential safety risks for pedestrians.
The trend of increasingly larger vehicles, like SUVs and trucks, has already raised issues regarding pedestrian safety. The Cybertruck, being notably larger than most contemporary cars in the same category, could exacerbate this problem, especially if it opens the door to similar designs in new market segments IMO.
The Cybertruck is actually rather low for a truck. The edge of the hood would hit a typical person in the gut, not the neck or face as with many other trucks (especially lifted trucks).
I don't know this for sure as I've never sat in one, but from the images I've seen the visibility through the Cybertruck looks awful. That is, the slant of the windshield makes it look like the driver sits rather low, and thus would have huge blind spots in front of them. Perhaps not a huge issue at slow speeds because there is a front camera, but I hate that feeling of having poor visibility as a driver.
I'm 5'10. There's a lot of lifted trucks in my area. I am yet to see one where the edge of the hood would hit me in the face. Apropos of anything else, that's an actual ladder, not even a step ladder to get to things like wiper fluid, let alone engine work.
My mazda has absolutely HUGE a-pillars, which are, in my opinion, a far larger threat to pedestrians, than having a simply larger vehicle. Like you can fit a family of 4 with a stroller in mine, I find myself leaning way forward to check that blind spot every time I turn right.
And even that is second fiddle to people using their phones while driving, which is an absolute plague in general, not just for pedestrian safety, but safety overall.
There’s a lot of evidence that larger vehicles are massive threats to pedestrians.
I’m not sure what the evidence for huge A-pillars as a threat is, but if it’s worse than larger vehicles it does not in any way change the fact that larger vehicles are indeed a massive threat.
Huge A-pillars are a threat because of the blind spot they create, specifically while turning right.
All roof pillars have increased in size in order for the occupants to survive rollover crashes, but the side effect is blind spots. Further compounded by interior trim containing airbags and audio gear.
> All roof pillars have increased in size in order for the occupants to survive rollover crashes
And they've had to get bigger to be stronger, and need to be stronger due to increased size and weight of modern vehicles. I'm not saying it's not an issue. But I am saying "Thanks, Obama" for the CAFE regulations passed under him that pushed OEMs to make larger and larger vehicles - because a larger footprint leads to less stringent fuel consumption requirements.
From [0] (first) or wikipedia [1] (second), if you prefer. From mobile, so I hope you'll pardon any formatting issues
> In 2006, CAFE altered the formula for its 2011 fuel economy targets, by calculating a vehicle’s “footprint”, which is the vehicle’s wheelbase multiplied by its wheel track. The footprint is expressed in square feet, and calculating this value is probably the most transparent part of the regulations. Fuel economy targets are a function of a vehicle’s footprint; the smaller the footprint, the tougher the standards are. A car such as the Honda Fit, with its footprint of 40 square feet, has to achieve 61 mpg CAFE, or 43 mpg IRL by 2025 to comply with regulations. At the opposite end of the spectrum, a full-size truck like the Ford F-150, with a footprint of 75 square feet, only needs to hit 30 mpg CAFE, or 23 mpg IRL, by the same timeframe.
> Starting in 2011, the CAFE standards are newly expressed as mathematical functions depending on vehicle footprint, a measure of vehicle size determined by multiplying the vehicle's wheelbase by its average track width. A complicated 2011 mathematical formula was replaced starting in 2012 with a simpler inverse-linear formula with cutoff values.[9] CAFE footprint requirements are set up such that a vehicle with a larger footprint has a lower fuel economy requirement than a vehicle with a smaller footprint
Here's a video about an intersection that had to be redesigned due to A-pillars. Vehicles approaching from opposite ends could hide in each other's blind spots and crash.
If you recognize that your in a blind spot, are you prevented from adjusting your position because you've pulled too far forward to actually place yourself in the blind spot?
I know I sometimes find myself in positions that I know well to avoid, but sometimes it takes a second for it to be realized. My favorite is being aligned next to a semi's trailer wheels. I will slow down to avoid sitting in that spot when moving, not during stop-n-go. So I understand it's sometimes obvious after the fact.
The problem happens when you're approaching an intersection together with a car coming from your right (or left if left-hand drive). When your speeds match up just right, you are practically invisible because you sit in the blind spot the entire time they're approaching.
You can accelerate or decelerate to solve the problem, or maybe do a little swerve. But you don't know when you're in the blind spot.
Another problem are cars merging onto the road from a stand-still. Driver looks left, sees empty road. Starts merging and whoops they just cut you off. You were hiding behind the pillar in the moment they looked. You can't know this happened until it's too late.
This is why as a car driver I always take one last look at the road while already starting to move but before blocking the road. Most drivers don't do this.
Not to over analyze, but no matter if I'm on a bike or car I've always thought you shouldn't drive alongside or in the blindspot of another vehicle if you can avoid it (by a minute change in speed).
What? Do you mean like way far ahead of them? So far, that you're not really in front of them?
How is that ever safer than being behind someone? You can control the following distance if you're behind someone. You can't make someone behind you pay attention or stop, and you can't make someone beside you not change lanes without looking. Why would you ever want to be in their direction of travel?
Seriously, please explain your logic on this. I'm flabbergasted.
The braking as an out because a bike can brake faster than the car always seemed odd to me because whatever car is behind you will also not be able to brake as fast.
You also have much more room as a bike. If I'm passing someone going uphill, and I don't have enough power to finish the pass on the hill, I have another 8 feet of lateral buffer versus a car before they would come dangerously close to me.
I'm not saying you should hang out next to cars all the time, but it's better than in a car, where you might have 3 feet of buffer.
Huh. I figure it the other way. If the traffic is light, then people think they're the only person on the road. I expect they will change lanes without thinking or looking (Like, _Why would someone be in my blind spot with all of this space?_)
Whereas, when there's heavier traffic, you can't help being in someone's blind spot. In this case, I will usually speed up to being at least next to them, so I'm sure they can see me, and then I'll let the driver pass me, so the last idea they have is, _I just passed that moto/where is that moto I just passed?_
Overall, being in someone's blind spot is by definition, risky. And it serves no purpose, and has a clear remedy. Whatever. Ride you ride.
Interesting video, but I can't help but think the roadway is now worse. It's disjointed and there are two intersections instead of one. Why not install a red light or a roundabout?
For example: Many rural towns put a giant unnecessary corner on the road entering the town. Forcing you to slow down and obey the speed limit. Or the road splits in two just to go around a pretty sculpture someone decided to put in the middle of the road. Again to force you to slow down naturally.
Worse for whom? If it has the intended effect (and apparently it does), it's certainly not worse for the cyclists who were getting hurt.
> Why not install a red light or a roundabout?
Tom Scott explains the reasons for not installing traffic lights or speed bumps in the original video.
On top of those, if drivers are not even reducing their speed at the stop sign, what would make them do that for a red light?
I'm not sure how a roundabout is better for anyone than the staggered junction.
It's certainly worse for the cyclist on the main road, who would have to pay a lot more attention to a lot more places, and also reduce speed.
It's certainly worse for drivers on the main road, who lose their right-of-way.
It's unlikely to be (much?) better to the drivers on the side road, who still have to go through junctions - only this time they're between the road and the roundabout and vice-versa.
People bring this up a lot on Hacker News, but AEB (Automated Emergency Braking) is essentially standard at this point [0] on new vehicles (technically NHTSA just makes recommendations on this right now, but as a practical matter OEM's comply because someday soon it'll be mandatory without an explicit waiver).
Between the forward-facing camera (usually running some version of Mobileye EyeQ) and forward-facing radar, the odds of running over a pedestrian directly like you're thinking on a 2023+ vehicle is quite low. Even cross-traffic/bicycle/cutoff scenarios are pretty extensively covered if you read up on Mobileye's website.
Personally, I'd be more concerned with older cars without AEB hitting pedestrians than the "let's make it more enjoyable when pedestrians do get hit" sentiment that seems so common in these discussions here.
It should be safer than a normal truck to pedestrians, since it doesn't have a broad front. With a car, the most common scenario is that car hits your legs and then you bounce on the hood. IOW, you don't get the full kinetic energy all at once. With a truck your body takes the full hit and you're more likely to fall under the tires.
With a lower, sharper front, the Cybertruck should behave more like a car than a full size truck.
But we really don't know yet. It's a real failure of regulators that we it's not a standard part of testing and that their aren't good standards in this area.
Are you claiming the Cybertruck doesn’t have a crumple zone? That doesn’t make a lot sense. The entire front hood area is hollow, there isn’t even an engine there.
Just because Elon used a bunch of puffery to play up the exoskeleton doesn’t mean it acts like a boulder when it hits another vehicle.
Crumple zones aren’t even relevant to pedestrian crashes.
The outer skin is made of 3mm cold rolled stainless steel, likely the same 300 grade alloy that SpaceX developed. A conservative estimate for the yield strength (based on similar alloys) is 275 MPa, or roughly 1.8x the pressure required to compress a human bone (150 MPa).
Normal automotive skin by comparison is made from 0.65mm steel or aluminum.
The chart shows child pedestrian deaths went from 1632 to 144. So a tenfold decrease. No idea about the stats on child pedestrianship but I’d be surprised if it was down 10 fold.
Why would you be surprised? Even in my lifetime the number of kids you see out and about has decreased dramatically, there's both a lot less to do outside and a lot more to do inside.
Yeah but how many people never ride a bike because of this danger? Or let their kids walk anywhere near a major street? Almost everyone that I know in the US shares that fear, and they aren’t entirely wrong to feel that way (due to the current state of things).
Even when I had to take a break from running due to injury and started cycling, my doctor looked me stone cold in the eyes and asked me to please not risk my life like that.
If you think about it automotive safety is phenomenal if you decide to compare it to something else entirely. Few have the courage to say “disregard children outside of the car and think of suicide”. This is groundbreaking thinking
Gee, I wonder what has happened since, say, 2008, that has caused pedestrians to lose any trace of situational awareness and wander in front of moving cars. It's almost as if they're distracted by something that became a factor relatively recently, around the same time that drivers also became much more distracted than usual. Someone should look into that.
And imagine if only one developed country had this trend, would that be an indictment on that country?
On a more serious note though, because sarcasm is weak person's weapon, the US do have a teen formation issue imho, among them driving lessons. I think the average US citizen born post 70s lack some basis, and I'm also afraid that this seemingly lack of competency feed insecurities. And it's not anybody's fault, the country is made around driving, you can't afford to give 20 to 40 hours of driving lesson to everybody who wants to drive, because everybody _need_ to drive, and for the same reason, you cannot make the driving exam too difficult.
Cars don't always stop at marked crossings. Hell, they don't always stop at marked crossings with lights, or at school bus stops. This isn't an issue of pedestrians just randomly walking in front of cars. Drivers don't always look where they're going, and it's getting worse as people get more distracted by things like massive screens replacing physical controls on the dashboard.
A decade ago, I knew a girl who got hit by a passing SUV while crossing the street to board the school bus. The bus was stopped with lights and signs out on a 2-lane road, it was impossible to miss. The SUV driver just decided not to stop and clipped her going 45 mph when legally they should have stopped. Getting hit was not her fault, and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of cases were similar.
I never jaywalk but I have been nearly run over several times in crosswalks. People run red lights or don't check the crosswalk during unprotected lefts or rights on red all the time.
yesterday on my way to work i saw a guy in one of those huge pickup trucks cut a corner on a right turn, run over the concrete bike lane seperator, which was marked by a row of roughly three foot high reflector sticks (which he also mowed down), and then drive his right front wheels up over the curve onto the sidewalk.
on a perfectly clear morning in a residential neighborhood, with curbs painted with that yellow reflective paint.
The whole concept of roads being "car land" comes from car industry propaganda. Roads existed before cars, and people walked in them. Then cars came along and started killing a lot of pedestrians. Car companies didn't like the negative PR, so they promoted the idea of roads being "car land". They created the concept of "jaywalking" and lobbied governments to make it illegal.
You are the one operating a machine that kills people easily. It is your job to avoid killing people.
Bravo for this accomplished display of victim blaming. If only pesky pedestrians stopped trying to get around on foot and got into their own private steel boxes, they'd be safer!
Your complaint about trucks is misguided [1] and should instead lie with passenger cars until such time as passenger cars are not the leading cause of pedestrian deaths by vehicle type.
The shoe-shaped things are that way because of crumple areas and pedestrian safety requirements (if the car hits a pedestrian, the bonnet is supposed to deform in order to minimize injuries). Contrast that to the Cybertruck, which...
> ...has received criticism from automotive safety groups, including the Australasian New Car Assessment Program and the Euro NCAP, for not conforming to standards for pedestrian and cyclist safety. In its December 2019 form, the truck would likely not be street-legal in either Australia or the European Union.
The ever-stricter fuel efficiency requirements also impose strong constraints.
If the rules were sensible, we would have a taxes on carbon and dangerous features at amounts that reflected their actual negative impact, and the consumer could choose how much they were willing to pay for style. Instead we have a march toward uniform blandness and 99% of consumers don't know why because they never interact with the regulations.
The statistical value of life in the US, which is applicable to small diffuse risks, is ~$10M. When the NHTSA or EPA or whatever decide whether to spend money on clean up a river to reduce cancer risks or impose safety rules, they use that amount (to first order). If someone is willing to pay p*$50M for a p<<1 chance of killing a member of the general public, the gov't can allow them and then spend that money saving lives, leading to both net lives saved and additional freedom/flexibility.
The regulations already function as you describe. Changes in car design reflect what consumers are willing to pay for - or at least what manufacturers believe consumers are willing to pay for.
I think they do not value fuel economy nearly as much as they should because they do not bare most of the costs of externalities from carbon emissions.
Yeah. It's simply too juicy to pursue policies that artificially make cost of using petroleum lower. Many elections have been won and lost based on when fuel prices increased or decreased. This means incentives will never be what they should be to be efficient with use of gasoline.
No, because the size of the penalties do a terrible job of tracking the carbon emissions, e.g.:
> CAFE footprint requirements are set up such that a vehicle with a larger footprint has a lower fuel economy requirement than a vehicle with a smaller footprint
Would you consider a Dodge Ram 3500 large? Then yes. Although not via Dodge but smaller companies importing them. Not sure if that can circumvent the EU laws somehow.
> ...because every car people are buying looks identical...
Why wouldn't you expect this sort of convergence? A bunch of companies trying to solve the same problems with the same constraints are likely to find very similar solutions. We saw it with aviation - over time, jet aircraft look more and more like each other, because certain solutions, once they become available (twinjets demonstrating enough reliability for extended overwater operations) are simply better in about every metric you'd possibly care about.
Because different people need different things from their vehicles, and as such the optimal shape should be different. Moreover because it's pretty clear from consumer preferences that vehicle-profiles are largely a fashion choice, and there still isn't much variation.
A vehicle that I'm much more excited about than cybertruck in terms of shape is aptera [1], with a drag co-efficient of 0.13 (model 3: 0.23, toyota corolla: 0.29). They're giving things up in exchange for this (most notably back seats), but if you don't need the things you're giving up it's a huge win.
Car design is driven more by market analysis / price discrimination than engineering constraints. Engineering constraints explain some aspects of car design but they don't explain the generally conservative designs of a lot of automakers.
Take the new Toyota Prius, for example. The updated model almost looks like a concept car but still has a similar shape to other cars. There's no constraint reason Toyota couldn't have styled the car similarly in previous generations. I'm guessing they made the car look like this because Prius sales were falling and they decided they needed to be aggressive with styling for sales. They may have also decided that consumers that want a car with lots of cargo space are going for SUVs and crossovers anyways, so they could make the new Prius sleeker.
There are also tons of examples of automakers intentionally reserving nicer looking features as more expensive options or for more expensive luxury models. Fabric is not really cheaper than fake leather (both of these materials are just plastic). But automakers always charge more for fake leather.
I get your point but there is also a huge amount of aping what is successful.
E.g., as gas mileage requirements increase, you'd expect things to become more aerodynamic. Separate from that, the Ford Escape was reworked to look like a knock off Subaru and the Ford Explorer was reworked to look like a knock off Range Rover. If it were just a matter of convergent evolution to fit the constraints of US gas mileage regulations, why did the Ford Explorer also copy the Range Rover's hood lettering?
I do wish it was common to have more colours at least, everything on the road being black, white, or silver is really bland and soulless in my opinion.
> because every car people are buying looks identical
It is almost like all other car makers know something Tesla does not. Maybe that big reflective flat surfaces are not safe for other drivers on sunny days.
one very interesting take i hear is those 'armored plates' might become a death trap in a car crash. As hydraulic cutters might not be as effective on them in case firefighters need to cut people out of a vehicle.
I don't know what you want to tell with this, but in that picture every surface I can see looks almost perfectly flat. For the purposes of aerodynamics a curvature you have to measure with a tool is likely not going to help much.
Edit: In case this is a thread you might want to link the exact post/picture we're supposed to see because threads aren't accessible without login.
I would buy the crap out of that, but it will never see actual production looking like that. By the time it's done it'll be round just like every other car.
it's never meant to go to production sadly. it's a test bed for their experimental hydrogen powerplant and new cyberpunkish design language in use on vehicles like the Ioniq.
i too would buy the crap out of it. it's glorious.
Ioniq5 is the other car that genuinely makes me smile to look at.
Although seeing how pathetic that company (Hyundai/Kia) handled security with the Kiaboyz incident (which they to this day have never remedied, let alone made anyone whole for) I harbor a lot of scorn for their ethics. They directly enabled a massive wave of car thefts, just to maybe $80 a car on immobilizer chips that literally every other carmaker has had as standard for 2 decades.
I just wish it weren't so hideous-looking. The car industry already went through a "make everything ugly" phase a couple of decades ago. It'd be nice if they didn't repeat that!
> I'm rooting for it despite it being silly and not a practical pickup, strictly because every car people are buying looks identical (picture a crossover SUV from Toyota, Chevy, BMW etc. Basically shoe-shaped things).
It’s almost like the entire automotive industry converged on that shape for specific reasons… aerodynamics and crash resistance.
I'd wager you're right, similar to a modern DMC Delorean. After all they already share the stainless-steel body and "reputation for poor build quality and an unsatisfactory driving experience".
That's pretty much how I would feel for this or for the Homer Car. Is either one a good idea? Probably not, no. But it's fun to see different things, and trying new stuff is how we learn and grow, even when we do it because the CEO or his brother is making bad decisions.
That's why I like that the Nissan Cube is a thing, though I wouldn't buy one, I like that it's not symmetrical and that they tried something different.
I appreciate your thinking, unfortunately if it sells well I feel the industry will just do the same thing. Instead of shoe shaped things, we will just have cyber truck knock offs. Which ugh I can’t say I would prefer over what we have now.
It would be so easy to make this a practical pickup. I could get past the fact that it looks terrible in person if it had a usable truck bed. But the bed is so small and constrained that is basically useless
I live in a mixed suburban/rural area in the Southeast and I see very few pickups with full-size beds. I know somebody who was in the market for one and had a hard time finding it. Big cabs and small beds are what's popular, and in a lot of cases the beds look smaller than the Cybertruck's.
Japan has a various alternative pickup designs that are difficult to import into the US. They're a lot smaller and lighter than traditional pickups but usually have the same standard bed size.
Cars should look the same, in fact id be ok if there were only a handful to choose from, like a small passenger car, a larger van, and then a truck and that's it.
Do you pick your hammer and wrench based off what color it is or how well it performs for the cost?
When things become price optimized, there really is little left to differ on because of the physics of cars, much like the physics of hammers and wrenches.
Tesla literally didn't realize the steel comes in coils and it naturally wants to warp back into that state. Massive panel gap problems. As usual. The only thing other car makers are learning is what a joke their design operation is.
I would be interested to learn how this works in practice. In many companies separate divisions barely collaborate or take learnings from each other. 2 separate companies sharing learnings is unique.
Separate divisions barely collaborating is not the case at Tesla either (or SpaceX). One of their mantras is "everybody is a chief engineer." They're all supposed to know enough about everything so they don't design parts that make trouble for other parts of the car, or for manufacturing. It's the reason they moved the new production line for the next-gen vehicle to Austin, so the engineers would be there for it.
I don't think it's that unusual for companies to collaborate with each other on projects. And some of the sharing happens by default when you just encourage employees to migrate between the companies and take their knowledge with them.
The original plan was to put the first production line in Mexico. Then Musk realized his engineers wouldn't be commuting or moving to Mexico, and he wanted them to spend time on the factory floor so they could see what was hard to make.
I thought it portrayed Musk's flaws pretty vividly, but I guess if you started out convinced that Musk is a terrible human being with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, it would seem like fawning hagiography by comparison.
In any case, it was widely believed in the investor community that the Mexico plant was where the next-gen vehicle would be produced. I don't think California was ever really considered.
Well, the "investor community" wasn't really well informed. Tesla wanted to pull out of California due to regulations, and was only considering Texas and Oklahoma for the CyberFridge. Texas was selected the year after the initial CyberFridge announcement.
Ok but what I said above was "the reason they moved the new production line for the next-gen vehicle to Austin." The next-gen vehicle isn't Cybertruck, it's the forthcoming $25K car. That's what people expected would be built in Mexico.
(But based on "Cyberfridge" I can see this conversation isn't going to go anywhere productive, so I'll just wish you a nice weekend. Throw in a last word if you want.)
Musk does this routinely, also with the Boring Company or with Twitter - upon his acquisition, he took a lot of Tesla staff with him to Twitter HQ [1] to help out.
That was a specific case where he didn’t trust Twitter employees. And it was absolutely a galaxy brain move, given that Tesla employees had almost no domain expertise.
We are still in the motor cars looking like horse drawn carriages without the horses phase.
Electric cars don't need ICE engine layouts. It will take a few years until the designers realise they can have cars looking much different as they have more flexibility.
I also have hope this truck on the roads will get manufacturers doing something different. Concept cars at car shows should be where we should look first.
Any ideas for how to redesign these? The thought is compelling.
I’m thinking about it and even with EVs you’d still want four wheels, want to put the battery flat on the bottom for various reasons. So the base seems like it’s four wheels with a flat platform.
Building space for 1-6 people on top thought and I seem to arrive at the same designs that already exist. Thoughts?
there were plenty of 'crazy idea' cars prototypes.
The reality is the current designs (tear shaped, front engine, forward facing seats with belts) are result of slow incremental perfections. Safety, fuel efficiency being two biggest drivers (pun intended!). The biggest external factor being the infrastructure (you might have the greatest idea for next personal transportation vehicle) but if it doesnt use roads its pretty much dead .
So people complaining have no idea what they really want. Like Ford said “If I would have asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”.
Electric cars already look a bit different -- many of them don't have a front grille.
But what else would you change?
I'm not sure there's as much scope for flexibility as you think. Maybe when self-driving cars are common and very safe, internal seat layouts could change a bit. That seems a long way off though.
This is what we call vehicle weight inflation. As cars get heavier and heavier, the roads get increasingly more dangerous for smaller cars, which causes everyone to get bigger cars. And the loop continues.
And you'll pay a lot more in taxes to maintain the roads: "an increase in axle weight from 18,000 pounds to 20,000 pounds causes 50 percent more damage to the pavement."
I also think as heavier electric cars become more ubiquitous, they will impose a threat on structures like multi level garages that weren’t designed to take this amount of weight.
If the world did work that way it would be nice, lol. I imagine such a proposal in the US would be met with "we're trying to destroy the EV industry!!!!"
Bikes get out of harms way faster and in a much mire agile fashion compared to cars and the money you save by buying a bike instead of a car can be used to safely practice at a track that is optimized for safety and to make you learn the feedback system of your bike
Everyone gets bigger cars because bigger cars have more room inside so they're really comfortable and practical.
Teslas are heavier because they have to use batteries and batteries are incredibly inefficient compared to petrol. This is the consequence of you asking them to get rid of combustion.
I actually really hate bike lanes. I feel like they are far more dangerous. What I really want are bike freeways and multi use paths because sidewalks are dumb
If you've ever been in the cab of a recent F-150, you'd know that they don't have more interior space than a VW Golf. More practical, sure, but only if the one time per year you haul your boat out to a desert reservoir is worth the countless attempts at parking.
Secondly, battery + motor is actually more efficient than ICE. You might be thinking of power density, which is significantly lower on an EV.
Thirdly, I don't love the pro-car company attitude: people don't have to compromise on low emissions vs. safety vs. practicality. Car companies have forced the choice upon us from a century and billions of dollars of marketing and lobbying.
I have to call BS on the F-150 to Golf comparison. My 2018 Golf has nowhere near the interior space of an F-150. The Golf is (fairly) comfortable, but as a taller person, an F-150 is absolutely luxurious in leg/knee/head room compared to the Golf. It is like riding on a couch vs. being strapped into a race car. Not to mention that there is just about zero rear seat leg room in the Golf when adjusted to my driving position, while an F-150 my 90lb dog can stand on the floor of the vehicle back there.
They're not "inefficient", they're less power-dense in terms of mass. There's many types of efficiencies and where a car is involved, EVs are largely more efficient in those measures than ICE cars.
Everyone gets bigger cars because bigger cars have more room inside so they're really comfortable and practical.
People in the US get bigger pickup trucks, because of market distortions causing manufacturers to stop making the small ones, not because there's no demand for small trucks. This is why importing K trucks is a thing.
Teslas are heavier because they have to use batteries and batteries are incredibly inefficient compared to petrol.
Teslas and EVs in general are way more efficient in terms of energy used per mile. By well over a factor of 2 in most cases. According to Google: "The various versions of the Model 3 are rated between 113 MPGe and 141 MPGe by the EPA."
> Teslas are heavier because they have to use batteries and batteries are incredibly inefficient compared to petrol
That's not anywhere near correct.
With an ICE about 80% of the energy from the gasoline is lost, mostly due to heat.
With an EV about 30-35% of the energy from the battery is lost if there is no regenerative braking. With regenerative braking EVs only lose about 11% of the energy from the battery.
Here's an article with some nice diagrams of the losses in both [1].
Efficiency in cars is usually meant to be energy efficiency, energy out over energy in. And electric cars are usually more efficient by most metrics, even if you count the amount of gas an internal combustion engine uses vs the amount it takes an oil fired plant to charge an electric car that drives the same distance (well-to-wheels efficiency).
Is zeroing in on one single word from a parent post and "but actually..."ing it really a worthwhile use of your time? Pickup trucks are obviously practical vehicles for a whole range of uses. They don't make Technicals out of Corollas.
That would be true only if the use cases were the same. The US is very different in terms of both geography and infrastructure than most of the developed world.
How many European farmers are pulling a trailer 150 miles each way to pick up a load of hay? That's a relatively regular occurrence for my family. That sort of thing isn't at all uncommon in the US.
Streets are narrower in many parts of Europe as well, which means a larger truck isn't practical as a sole vehicle.
Crumple zones exist in cars because it’s better that the car absorbs (and deforms in the process) the kinetic energy of a crash than you the passenger inside.
Depends on the situation. I don't think the race to the top here is a good idea. You definitely do not want tanks on the highway. That would be insane.
Gasoline is ~192X energy dense compared to Lithium-ion batteries. Li-on is the most popular battery due to its cost and weight.
In terms of weight:
Tesla model Y = ~4,500 lbs.
F-150 lightning = ~6,500 lbs.
Rivian R1T = ~7,000 lbs.
Hummer EV = ~9,000 lbs. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Cybertruck = ~5,400 lbs
A human roughly weighs 160lbs (~72kg).
Buying electric trucks IMO is pretty awful for the environment and the road itself. From the energy spent mining the raw materials for that heavy of a battery, to energy spent just moving that battery. The battery weighs more than the passengers.
We're playing stupid games to win stupid prizes in the name of climate change.
Except... you can recharge a lithium-ion battery many, many times before you have to replace it. You get to use gasoline one time.
The absolute best efficiency of a gasoline engine is somewhere around 40% efficiency, with most being a lot lower. So your 48MJ number is a lot closer to ~19MJ. So, assuming you can recharge a lithium battery 100 times (most are going to be capable of many times that), you're break even in terms of 'efficiency' of Li-Ion vs. gas.
Even adding in all the additional costs of product, transport, energy generation costs, etc etc, lithium-ion batteries are still better.
Another way of putting it -- To drive 50,000 miles, a Ford F150 or similar has to consume ~8,500 kgs of gasoline:
> 50,000 miles / 20 mpg * (3.4 kg/gal)
The Cybertruck Battery weighs ~1,400 kgs, and probably lasts at least 100K miles even with poor charging practices
So you would have to compare 1,400kgs of Lithium with at least 17,000 kgs of gasoline over the lifetime of the vehicle.
If you want to be totally fair, you could include your car's share of the weight of fuels used in the electric grid. However, even charging from a fairly dirty grid is more efficient than an ICE, so this wouldn't change things much.
In your metaphor the battery would be akin to the gas tank though, rather than the gasoline that fills the tank. I think my gas tank can be emptied and filled more times than a battery and it doesn't lose capacity the more it's used or when it's cold out!
My metaphor works within the confines of equivalency. Battery aging is essentially equivalent to gasoline engine/transmission mileage, as the electric motors and electronics don't meaningfully age unlike gas engines. You can't run a gas engine forever, as eventually maintenance costs will exceed the value of the engine.
Every gas car I'm aware of loses efficiency when it's colder outside. It's not as drastic as an EV, but it definitely exists. Also, gas engines tend to get slightly less efficient as they age, just as components begin to have higher friction, increased wear, worse tolerances, etc.
If your local electrical grid is powered by oil fired power stations that are so bad that they have similar efficiency to a car engine then this comparison might make some sense. For the other 99.99% of us, it makes none.
I say this very sparingly: this may be one of the worst "numbers-based" comments I've ever read on Hacker News. Typically, such comments don't leave out the critical fact: _you can't reuse gasoline like a battery_.
It's disappointing to see this. Is this kind of comment the result of activism? We typically do much better on HN.
Weight ratio is definitely an issue, but what I want to know is what it will carry. They call it a truck, but is it? Practical truck buyers will want to know upfront if it will carry a full sheet of plywood and how convenient it is to load and unload. If it doesn’t improve upon the current experience, its just an expensive status symbol.
Another thing I’d like to add is that even burning coal it will still break even and deliver less emissions over the lifetime of the vehicle:
> If they drive in Poland, where 90% of the electricity comes from burning coal, then yes, it will take 100,000 kilometers or more to reach parity with a conventional gasoline-powered car.
If it is a great car, but flops because it looks weird, that's a shame.
If it's a terribly-built car, with reliability issues, and a super difficult production cycle, that's a shame, but for a different reason: you'd think after the snafu over the Model X, where certain features (the X-wing doors) were a production nightmare and ballooned the cost and tanked the reliability, they wouldn't make the same mistake again. But if that is the case here, then they did make the same mistake, but even bigger and with worse consequences.
But ignoring all that, at least it's different, and I'm rooting for its success. If it fails, though, most likely Tesla will only have themselves to blame.
FWIW, I have a model X and love the falcon wing doors. I’ve never had an issue with them, but I realize it’s a lot of complex moving parts so wouldn’t be surprised if I do. However:
* they open fully in really tight spots where normal doors wouldn’t (although a mini van slide door would)
* they look awesome (although a mini van slide door never would)
We bought the car because the seats were the only ones that didn’t give my wife problems, as she has various health issues, of all the makes and models we tried from various car makers. No idea why, the seats are fine for me but not the best of any car we tried. But it is what it is. However, despite that practical necessity that chose the car for us, the doors really are awesome and something unique in the world of cars.
Likewise, cybertruck is definitely unique. It has a lot of awesome as well, so I hope it does well, even if it’s a PITA to make and has issues with reliability. Too many cars are generic retreads of generic retreads - it’s good to see new takes and design risks get funding and production.
"they open fully in really tight spots where normal doors wouldn’t"
I don't see how this helps. They're on the back, not the front, so the driver can't get any benefit. So you still always need to have room to open the doors normally.
Gotta put yourself in the shoes of a parent here. If you’re retrieving a child from the back seat, or are letting kids open the door themselves… you want something that is unlikely or basically impossible to smash into a neighboring car. Children aren’t careful, and if you’re trying to wrangle one in or out, you don’t want to also have to deal with the door. The front door you can control yourself, it’s not an issue.
> they open fully in really tight spots where normal doors wouldn’t
Honest question, how do they work in vertically constrained spaces? Like subterranean parking lots. I appreciate the design, but I'm wondering if they have the same issues as some older wing doors.
There’s sensors in them to detect stuff above them so they won’t slam into the ceiling if it is low. No idea about the reliability, though, of the sensors.
By "themselves" do you mean Elon Musk? I wasn't under the impression that Tesla was much of a collaborative environment. Musk bans Kanban and Toyota Production System principles after all.
Tesla has its own principles, and collaboration is a big part of them. One reason so many engineers apply to work at Tesla is that they get to see their ideas implemented quickly and without excessive bureaucracy.
There are very good reasons why safety-critical products do not "move fast and break people". It is generally frowned upon in civil society to disregard safety and human life just to satisfy your curiosity and greed. I understand that the executive team at Tesla does not care given that they push a unfinished, defective, and criminally unsafe product like FSD onto the roads to make their numbers, but it reflects poorly to portray such a ingrained sociopathic company culture positively.
> Tesla's Model Y has been recognized as one of the safest cars of 2023 by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), receiving the agency's Top Safety Pick+ rating for the third year.
> Teslas on non-highways with Full Self Driving (FSD) engaged had just 0.31 accidents per million miles representing an 80% reduction in accidents compared with the average vehicle.
Oh great, the Tesla Safety report [1]. Can you let me know where in that “exhaustive” report I can find the number of accidents or miles driven used in that calculation? You know, the numerator and denominator? You know, the sort of hard-hitting data reporting expected out of a elementary school science fair project?
Almost like they hide that information like how they demand NHTSA redact all pertinent information from the NHTSA SGO database of ADAS crashes [2] so that the public can not fact check them.
Or like how their telemetry just happened to miss 90% of their confirmed fatal crashes which we only know about due to third party investigations as seen in the NHTSA SGO database.
Or maybe like how around 50% of the crashes Tesla investigates are fatal, but they just choose to leave ~95% uninvestigated as seen in the NHTSA SGO database. They are just worried investigating the crashes they caused will show FSD is too safe.
That report and Tesla’s reporting around FSD are gross, criminal malpractice. Only a sociopathic executive team and company culture would encourage safety reporting that intentionally deceptive.
Personally, I think the "electric SUVs are bad for pedestrians" is just there to replace "SUVs are bad for the environment". Basically, this isn't a real argument, just a vibes thing, where big trucks are conservative coded and smaller cars are liberal-coded.
In the grand scheme of things the difference in MPG of an SUV vs. a sedan is minimal when it comes to climate change, and the difference in pedestrian danger from large car vs. small car is minimal. That is: all kinds of cars are dangerous to pedestrians! All kinds of ICE vehicles are bad for the environment! People are splitting hairs trying to turn vehicle body type into a shibboleth for good vs. bad person.
> I think the "electric SUVs are bad for pedestrians" is just there to replace "SUVs are bad for the environment". Basically, this isn't a real argument, just a vibes thing
Actually both of those statements can be true. Trucks have gotten larger and more dangerous for pedestrians and so it has become more common for people to point out vehicle size as a concern in addition to environmental issues.
> the difference in pedestrian danger from large car vs. small car is minimal.
I am not an expert here but from what I have heard, this is false.
> Personally, I think the "electric SUVs are bad for pedestrians" is just there to replace "SUVs are bad for the environment". Basically, this isn't a real argument, just a vibes thing, where big trucks are conservative coded and smaller cars are liberal-coded.
It's not a vibes thing, SUVs are more dangerous to everyone on the road, doesn't matter if it's electric or petrol, they are heavier, causing more road wear, they are taller, killing pedestrians more easily; being heavier also means they carry much more energy at the same speed than a smaller car.
> and the difference in pedestrian danger from large car vs. small car is minimal.
Well, and this is a "vibes thing", all the data shows the opposite, you'll need some supporting data to make this statement.
SUVs are only better for their owners, consuming more space, more road, and more lives than other types of smaller cars...
Not everything is "wokeness" and "muh liberals", there's objectivity in the basics of motion physics, just run the numbers for weight and velocity. Check any study on pedestrian safety regarding cars with much higher ground clearing, it's pretty obvious what the data says.
You may personally think that, but traffic safety data is unambiguous. The higher the front end and the heavier the vehicle, the more likely pedestrians are to die.
Sure, there is a difference, but I'm talking vs. "no car". Driving any car increases chance of killing pedestrians above bike or walking. If you kill 5 pedestrians per million miles in a sedan and an SUV kills 6 pedestrians per million miles, we are splitting hairs.
My point is the people yelling about dangerous SUVs are discounting their own car use as zero harm, rather than considering themselves to be doing something harmful and SUV drivers doing something slightly more harmful.
> Hampton Clay Gabler, a professor in the department of biomedical engineering and mechanics at Virginia Tech, [ ... ] described the vulnerability of pedestrians when struck by an SUV as a geometry problem of sorts because SUVs and pickups tend to be tall compared with pedestrians and have a blunter front end. That positioning is more likely to put someone’s head or chest in line to be struck during the initial impact with a vehicle. “(Not to diminish leg injuries but) serious head and chest injuries can actually kill you,” Gabler said in a telephone interview.
(It is probably true, though, that most vehicles this heavy are tall as well, so weight would still be correlated to how dangerous a vehicle is.)
Do they? Model X weighs 5600lbs, here - https://www.caranddriver.com/tesla/model-x - and that's bigger than any of the other, more popular, Teslas other than the Cybertruck.
Tesla 3 - up to 4065.
Tesla S - up to 4941.
Tesla X - up to 5531.
Tesla Y - up to 4416.
Chevy Bolt - 3563.
Leaf - up to 3853.
Mach-E - up to 4920.
ID.4 - up to 4848.
E-Tron - up to 5754.
BMW iX - up to 5659.
Taycan - up to 5121
Kona EV - up to 3715.
I like how you just excluded all the comparable EVs. Here they are for completeness, most coming close to or topping out the standard 7k where they will post "No Trucks" signs.
Ford Lightning - 6,893
Hummer EV - 9,063
Rivian R1T - 7,148
Lordstown Endurance - 6,450
Chevrolet Silverado EV - 8,532
RAM 1500 REV - est. 7,500
Alpha Wolf - 7,088
"No truck" signs are for semi trucks, not pickup trucks. These semis (just the truck, no trailer) weigh 2-3x more than an average pickup truck/Cybertruck and 3-5x more than an average EV.
This is not true - there are other factors at play. The angle of the bumper and where the bumper comes into contact with a human matters a lot - if it is below the human's center of mass, they are much less likely to be thrown under the vehicle and run over.
You’re off by about 20 years - it was the 1920s when car manufacturers were able to get legislation restricting public streets to their customers[1] - but also this ignores the magnitude: yes, cars have always been a public health hazard but the manufacturers reversed a multi-decade safety improvement trend a decade or two back because it boosted their profits, and that happened only in the United States. If our roads were as safe as Germany’s, while still not absolutely safe there would be an annual death toll reduction in the tens of thousands and 1-2 orders of magnitude more for series injuries. That’s huge even if it’s not perfect.
One person dying does not equate to "unsafe roads" in the way that "widespread adoption of motor vehicles" does. People were frequently trampled by horse-drawn carriages prior to cars, but not at anywhere close to the rate after cars became so ubiquitous.
First, yes, but it’s not like people weren’t killed by horses or trolleys either. The death toll was never zero but it went up sharply when everyone was expected to drive much heavier vehicles at higher speeds.
Before cars it was highway robbers. Being in between places is always a higher risk location and roads are the guaranteed routes someone will go down. Cars make it safer for the people in them, the same way a stagecoach protected people up to a point.
I'm more trying to point out that traveling safety is always viewed as being about the traveller, not the people around them. So of course drivers love safer (for them) cars, while caring less that such safety comes at the expense of pedestrians.
This is a bad comparison. One occurs when travelling in unpopulated areas. But most pedestrian fatalities occur in populated areas which should be safe for pedestrians (and historically were).
I am less concerned with how today's car's relate to roads from 100 years ago and more interested in how today's cars relate to other options we have today, like bicycles and public transit.
They really should. It's a good way not to die. Just like many of the motorcyclists that die should have worn helmets, not gone above the speed limit, and not drank alcohol.
Those 3 things account for something like 60% of motorcycle deaths.
Edit:
The point is, people contribute heavily to their deaths on motorcycles. And I assume on foot too. Wearing ear phones? Chance of death through the roof. Talking on the phone? Way more dangerous. Out at night walking after a drink or two? Better watch out. Don't look both ways, twice? You're in trouble.
This is factually correct (I ride a motorcycle and did a deep dive into the death statistics before getting my license) but your conclusion is tenuous at best.
Motorcyclists consciously take the elevated risk of engaging in a known-unsafe activity and absolutely should take reasonable precautions to keep themselves safe. Even so, it's still a tragedy when someone dies on a motorcycle. Pedestrians, on the other hand, want to walk around their neighborhoods and cities without being killed.
I don't quite know the right words to respond to, "just look at the death statistics and avoid being near cars as a pedestrian," but they're not kind.
The point is, people contribute heavily to their deaths on motorcycles. And I assume on foot too.
Wearing ear phones? Chance of death through the roof.
Talking on the phone? Way more dangerous.
Out at night walking after a drink or two? Better watch out.
Don't look both ways, twice? You're in trouble.
Yeah the driver is usually doing something stupid like texting too. Which reminds me of the Werner Herzog documentary From One Second to the Next (2013) @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk1vCqfYpos
The guy I responded to did basically that, trying to assign blame to drivers. Why would I care what some drivers do when I'm crossing the street? I assume all drivers are bad and act accordingly. The people that don't do that, are more likely to get hit. That's what I meant.
It's not a dichotomy. Both parties are responsible for traveling safely. The argument you're trying to put forth is disingenuous, because controlling drivers as a pedestrian is obviously a ridiculous idea; that's why we have laws.
It's arguing in bad faith to pretend there is nothing to be done about unsafe drivers or vehicles, or to pretend that only pedestrians are responsible for their own safety.
I would say that yes, at any given moment in time, the pedestrian is responsible for themselves if they want to stay safe. It's too late for any laws at that moment. You either notice the car isn't slowing down and avoid stepping out, or you do step out and hope for the best. Not a good way to stay alive.
No, all parties are responsible for traveling safely. If a vehicle wants to kill a pedestrian or bicyclist who is being careful, they can. It's very easy to do.
And it's not too late to discuss laws, because I'm not a pedestrian right now. Again, it's a bad faith argument to pretend we don't have time to discuss laws when we're not walking in traffic.
If someone wants to kill a pedestrian, that's murder. Everything else is an accident due to negligence. You can keep going in circles saying the car is driver is responsible for this and that, but that's just relying on hope that they adhere to it.
If you want to increase the odds of not dying as a pedestrian, you need to be on the lookout. End of story. I'm from the SF area. There is no shortage of people that walk with their heads down in their phone with headphones, whole crossing intersections. IMO, they are waiting to die.
>If you want to increase the odds of not dying as a pedestrian, you need to be on the lookout.
Nobody in this thread is disagreeing with this statement. Again, you are creating a false binary, where you seem to think either one party or the other is responsible for traveling safely. That is false. Walking alertly and safely improves a pedestrian's chances of being safe, but it does not guarantee their safety.
Yes. But it seems actually less dangerous then other pickups.
Other pickups seem to think that having as high as possible as big as possible vehicle front is a great thing.
Going OVER the car is what saves live. If you get hit by a F-150 it more like getting hit by a wall.
The Cybertruck also seems to have better visibility.
So this seems to me to be a case of 'In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king'.
In general US obsessions with pickups is stupid and I hope in my country all of them are commercial license only, not allowed on common parking spaces, ban in certain section of cities, plus very high licensing cost.
I've been seeing a bunch of them in Bay Area, I thought it was already launched and started deliveries. In person, it looks like something out of a movie set.
This seems to line up with the rest of Tesla stuff - there are a few physical interaction points on the steering wheel (which work surprisingly well) and the rest is 100% glass screen. Its enough for the driver to do their normal tasks, but anything extra (e.g. changing AC) requires touching the central screen.
Speaking is so slow compared to finding a button by feeling or through muscle memory. Maybe I just have to try it, but I predict that having to talk to my car to get it to do things would make me feel pretty dumb.
> Most functions were only 1 or 2 clicks deep in the menu
What functions were those? Media controls and such I can accept, but that's 1 or 2 clicks too deep for anything related to driving.
I saw one at the mall last week. Much bigger than I expected. Like bigger than a Tundra. I don’t get it. You can’t fit much in the back. A lot of people like how traditional trucks look and this is a big departure. I hope insurance companies jack up their rates for these things, it’s going to destroy everything it contacts.
I just saw one on the road yesterday here in Chino Hills California, and I was astonished at how incredibly worse the thing it looks in person than in the promo photos. I was pretty ambivalent about this truck before seeing one in person, now it's hard to imagine how anyone thought this was going to turn out well.
The back tailgate is just an enormous grey not-quite-flat slab that looks exactly like a commercial kitchen dishwasher door that someone clicked on in a CAD program and stretched to truck size.
And the stainless steel panels overall, despite being nearly brand new already looked like they had a bunch of fingerprint streaks or some sort of surface discoloration in a number of places, that really detracted from what was, I expect, an intended effect of clean severity. All the proportions read as very ungainly with the weight gathered in awkward visual masses, at least when seen up close from eye level. The panels already displayed just the slightest bit of imperfect matching between adjacent coplanar surfaces. I can't imagine how rough the thing is going to look in two or three years.
I would take a rivian over two of these things any day of the week, even if it does look like Bomberman.
Pictures of the RC models show that the bed walls are sloped; that'll eat up a bunch of space if you're moving crates or boxes.
The thing that I can't get over is the raised walls on the sides of the bed. The appeal of a pickup is that you can easily get things in/out of the bed without having to go through the rear of the vehicle; the raised walls are going to make it so much harder to quickly huck a heavy toolbox into the bed.
Elements like the sloped bed walls and elevated external sides of the bed make it clear that this vehicle wasn't designed to be used as a truck.
Almost seems like the goal was to build a planetary rover, in line with Musk's stated aims. Welcome to Mars, here's your space truck. Maybe that's why it needs to be meteorshower-proof?
It has a longer bed than the shortest bed option of the F-150, but shorter than the other two options. It's about a foot narrower than all of then though.
I just wish they kept the ultrasonic sensors instead of solely relying on Tesla Vision. That was a huge mistake and they refuse to acknowledge it and instead insist Vision is better and all that is necessary. It's an inferior product.
Really glad this ugly POS probably won't be street-legal in Europe. Just look at the old Defender 2016. And that has no sharp edges or reflective surfaces.
These launch countdowns are silly. Yes, you're going to be really cool the first year or so with that Cybertruck. But after you go to a party and five other people have one, (1,000,000+ reservations since 2019) it'll seem much less alluring.
Because it's not a rocket launch operation, it's a announcement of price and specification. You won't magically own one when the countdown reaches 0. The romantic idea of 'launching' everything in tech is wearing a bit thin.
It's exciting! There's built-up anticipation. Even if it's just specs and price, I'm sure the teams who worked on it are excited to share their work with the world!
The outside look of it is really terrible. It's like someone made a rough sketch of a truck and then told the team to build that exact sketch. Which is almost certainly what actually happened.
I understand the nostalgia for those rock solid steel bumpered behemoths people used to drive. Knocking your bumper on the curb and shelling out a few grand for some plastic sucks. But think just for a moment about how the physics of that equation work out. There's 3 tons of rolling steel coming to a stop, and something's gotta give. It's either the car, or you.
Best of luck to anyone who drives ones of these. I'll be interested to see the NHTSA results.
I'd guess that these are probably going to be one of the safest things to drive. It's bigger and heavier than most things on the road, which improves your odds if they do it right.
Yes, but NHTSA doesn't account for the safety of others, nor have they ever. They do have some pedestrian safety stuff, not sure if it's live yet, but, working on it.
In any case, the safety-class thing is really a big issue issue here, because you can buy a compact hatchback with a 5-star rating or a giant SUV with a 5-star rating, but those ratings aren't at-all comparable.
The thing is, making those ratings honest is really only going to make people want larger cars, because larger cars are actually safer. I think you could probably solve this by rating not only the car, but also the likelihood it will injure/kill a driver of the other classes of cars.
You could come up with some slick THIS vs THAT iconography, and that would allow people to realize that they're either driving an 8000lb death sled, or they'd rather not have that liability.
I would suggest exercising caution in using that article as a guide post. The car the author is inspecting is literally the model Tesla chose to put on the showroom floor in front of customers and the general public. I'm sure they ensured it had no major flaws.
The article starts with pictures from the preproduction trucks with awful gaps. Later down the page they have pictures from production trucks without awful gaps.
Placed an order on announce day. My main reason was the 500 mile range (for the tri-motor variant). As much as I'd like to buy the thing, if the range offered doesn't meet or exceed the promised value, I'll cancel my order and get my $100 back. If it does meet spec, I've got a check ready.
Yep. I'm going to let them cancel it though. My position is that I have a reservation for the product that was offered to me when I put down the deposit, and I will wait until they can produce one, or they can cancel the order themselves.
> At one point, Isaacson describes Musk becoming enraged when, working on the Tesla Model S, he finds a government-mandated warning about child airbag safety on the passenger-side visor. “Get rid of them,” he demands. “People aren’t stupid. These stickers are stupid.” Tesla faces recall notices because of the change, Isaacson reports, but Musk “didn’t back down.”
This company and the person leading it doesn't care about safety, and likely even about rule of law.
The article from Euro NCAP discusses the strong safety debut of Asian newcomers in the automobile market, but highlights that the Tesla Model Y stands out in terms of safety. Tesla vehicles are noted for their considerable weight and low center of gravity, attributes that make them difficult to roll over. Additionally, these cars are equipped with numerous built-in safety features and warnings. Another key aspect of Tesla's safety is their relatively recent design, which incorporates modern safety standards and technologies. Given these points, it raises the question: what are the reasons to doubt the safety of Tesla cars?
I love how the Cybertruck looks like something out of a SEGA Saturn game, but I still don't want any EV from any manufacturer until I can get one that won't spy on me.
I know nothing about the actually physics, but all those polygonal, angled surfaces remind me of the chapter in Ben Rich’s skunkworks book about how a lot of the radar-defeating properties of the F-117 was due to the similar-looking geometry of the plane. I wonder if cops will discover it’s weirdly hard to speed check these :P
The stealthiness of the F-117 wasn't just because of its low-poly look. It was that the facets were oriented just right to defect radio wave away from the radar. In fact, the reason for the facets is that computers at the time weren't able to do design such a plan with smooth lines, it is not the case anymore, and that's the reason why stealth planes don't look like that anymore, starting with the B-2.
The Cybertruck is not designed for stealth and its weird shape may as well increase or decrease detection, but my guess is that it will be detected just fine by police radars, like the big hunk of metal it is.
I happen to think that Musk is a loon, but I am rooting for the success of the truck, because, in the US, truck buyers are a super conservative bunch, and if you win them over, then the EV transition really kicks in. Truck buyers cannot afford machines that get between them and earning their livelihood.
The question for me is whether this, and the Ford F150 Lightning, are poser trucks, or genuine work trucks. Its winning at the latter that is important. Can they drive on non paved surfaces like construction sites? Can they carry a full sheet of drywall? Can they tow a horse box? Are there weird protuberances that are going to get a accidentally smashed by a kid trying to load a 2x4? Are there accessories like tool boxes available? Will it start at 4am in a Minnesota winter? I'm more convinced by the F150 here than the Cybertruck, but I'm waiting for real people to allocate real scarce resource to buy it rather than tech bros with excess cash.
> Truck buyers cannot afford machines that get between them and earning their livelihood.
In the city, anyway, most truck owners only use their trucks for commuting and rarely, if ever, actually use it as a truck. They are not relying on their trucks to earn a livelihood any more than car owners are.
My point is that "Truck buyers cannot afford machines that get between them and earning their livelihood" is incorrect as stated because it implies that owning a truck is essential for earning their livelihood. Some truck buyers, sure, but not nearly all truck buyers. I'm guessing not even most truck buyers.
EV trucks will not win over “super conservative” truck normies until they are more affordable, can do 500 miles to a “tank”, and can do that while hauling a load. My old Ecoboost F-150 had a 33 gallon tank and could easily do 650 miles per tank on a road trip. I can fill up while I grab a coke and take a leak and that’s too good to give up.
On all accounts EV is better than ICE except for range and ability to replenish your fuel. Once they are on par in that department the explosion will happen. Time is money and when you can fill up your tank in 5 minutes and hit the road immediately that makes a huge difference. Don’t need to wait for a charge port either. Gas stations are ubiquitous.
The cyber truck is not a truck though. The bed is smaller than what you’d get on a midsize like a Tacoma and we don’t have towing data yet. It’s a fashion statement plain and simple. The only EV truck worth considering is as you’ve said the Lightning but you can’t tow a damn thing with it because the range gets sliced in half, and that’s way worse in the cold.
I think the rivian is a better push towards converting people over to electric. I thought I saw it helped some people win an off road race recently and that’s a good way to catch traditional truck owners attention. Plus the slightly modernized but not ugly design language makes the transition more smooth
I had a chance to see it in person at the local Tesla Charlotte showroom. It's a lot longer than I anticipated but definitely a lot shorter that I thought it would be.
I wonder how much the demand for this vehicle has changed since it was first announced.
I was definitely on the bandwagon from this thing from the first time I saw it. Four years of Elon's dumb antics and I now absolutely will not spend a dime at any company he's associated with.
> I traded a Toyota full size pickup truck in for my first Tesla, a Model S, because Tesla needed to move units to survive. I'm looking forward to closing the loop, trading that Model S (with almost 110k miles on it after driving cross country in six years) in for my Cybertruck. It's ugly, I love it, I don't care what it costs.
I don't need a fancy EV. I want an EV I can beat the shit out of (steel body, no paint issues to contend with), tow with, and has native access to the Supercharger network (I live out of a duffel bag with a starlink dish and am constantly mobile across the continental US). I also don't want to support legacy auto, who had to be dragged to the EV transition by Tesla. Mission accomplished. That is worthy of my dollars. How others spend theirs is up to them.
> as someone deeply concerned about climate change
> I have one, but am looking for a second
I think you are only superficially concerned about climate change if you are planning to buy not one, but two, fully steel enclosed monster trucks weighing 6.500 pounds each.
I‘ve had a fully electric Ioniq for almost 4 years, the most efficient car at the time. I‘d rather people buy a used compact, efficient diesel than bring such a monster into circulation. The waste of materials and power (40kWh/100km at 120km/h reportedly) is ridiculous.
This is my thinking as well. we are currently patting people on the back for helping with climate change when they buy a new 5000 pound electrical vehicle.
Tesla's ability to spin up utility scale battery manufacturing is what is contributing towards the phaseout of fossil electrical generation. That capability is built off the back of its vertical integration and vehicle manufacturing leading to cell production learning rate. It is incredibly simple for someone to assume that giving up cars solves the problem. 90M light vehicles are sold globally annually. How many have been given up? Without scaling up EVs and battery storage, there is no success by pleading everyone take the bus. Some people might forgo a vehicle, and those are small wins, but you aren't going to move the needle on ~16M/units a year in vehicle sales in the US and the global sales I previously mentioned. If people choose to buy cars, sell them EVs.
TLDR Pats on the back aren't going to drive down petroleum consumption in any material fashion.
It is of course incredibly simple, but it is even more simple to claim that buying "Teslas" helps to fight climate change.
That solution simply doesn't scale and is a convenient "feel good" excuse for Tesla to sell more cars and individual that can splurge in a 5000 pounds vehicle full of toxic particles requiring a ton of grey energy to produce.
Is it marginally better than buying an ICE car? Maybe (Some studies show that keeping your old car a couple more years is actually more efficient).
But the real solution is to start reducing the size of those vehicles to something like a one-person car, not buying a "lifestyle truck"
Edit: I have no issue with people buying what they want. I have an issue with people splurging on superfluous items and ALSO claiming they help fighting climate change.
The problem is Tesla are not really good at battery tech. Their 4680 batteries are not competitive, many of their cars just come with blade batteries from BYD nowadays.
I continue to be puzzled by people's strong opinions on Elon. He's says dumb things on social media but there seem to be unusually strong sacred contagion effects from that.
Buying petrol from Shell or cereal from Nestle? No problem. Buying a Model 3 from Tesla? No way!
Honestly, I'd be surprised if there weren't a ton of people with the same views on immigration or trans issues or covid or whatever, each associated with a company you buy from every year.
Though personally, I always thought Cybertruck looked pretty naff.
If you went out on the street and asked random people to name CEOs of nestle or shell I'd guess you'd have a super majority who don't know.
There's a reason most CEOs stay quiet, when you become the face of a company your actions reflect on the companies you represent, and when you spend billions of dollars to make sure that your antics are broadcast as far and wide as possible it's not surprising that your antics affect your companies.
There's a reason most spokespeople for companies have to sign some level of acceptable public behavior contract.
It's Elon Musk that's lucky to have humanity, not the other way around, given that his primary skillset is in deftly taking credit for the achievements of others.
The separation of art and artist is a complex thing that differs from person to person. I think one universal aspect is that one's willingness to divest from art (or product, in this case) is relative to the ratio of disgust felt for the artist to desire for the product. Elon has reached a point of cultural over-saturation while Tesla's products move in the wrong direction on the ladder of cultural cache, the result of their (Tesla vehicles') own foibles and the industry as a whole just becoming more competitive. While plenty of people won't buy his cars, I'm sure they will or would still use a Tesla Supercharger if they could, because the value there is simply too compelling and the relationship is brief but powerful.
Elon in particular has become a liability thanks to his deliberate efforts to be the face and voice of Tesla. For me and clearly others, it's no longer possible to think of Tesla independently of him. His products need to be that must better to work against it and they're just not making the cut.
Other products -- Shell, Nestle -- are reevaluated for disgust-vs-need each time. Most of us have tiny, brief interactions with these companies. There's no meaningful relationship, so I'd have to be extremely furious with a brand to avoid their product. Right now I'll get gas from Shell but not Lukoil, for instance.
Buying petrol doesn’t apply if someone is already looking for an electric vehicle. There’s plenty of cereal brands to choose from. Same as electric vehicles/trucks. Everyone has opinions to what they choose to spend money on…and people generally do that when given more than one choice.
Elon isn't morally worse than my grandparents. It's currently much easier to rally people around things they hate than things they like or support. It seems like that was always true to a certain extent, but social media in particular has dialed it up to 11. Most of my coworkers and family define themselves by what they hate rather than what they like. I put a lot of effort into not going in that direction.
> Did your grandparents buy a company and fire two-thirds of the empoyees
Of the things he's done that's actually one of the least questionable.
Twitter was going to have to fire those people soon any way due to not making enough money to keep paying them and they've gone on to do better things any way.
He's indicated he thinks that Twitter's liberal censorship was an existential threat to man. I think boosting his own messaging has to have been one of the motivations (though maybe not the most pressing one).
ah yes the "you live in society yet you criticize it" logic, you think i have a choice in the fact that we live in a fossil fuel car dependant society?
what a shallow unnuanced "critique", on brand for this website
It’s hard to divorce the man from his companies. Recent revelations about labor abuse/accidents at his factories. Forcing his companies to respond to media queries with poop emojis. The shitshow that is self-driving (and the marketing thereof). The scammy auto insurance offered by Tesla. The list goes on.
There are definitely times I’ll take on a personal cost because of my principles. But he’s pretty far removed from your actual life and there are other factors. There are good people in the company and it’s the best current shot at competing with eg China. Fair chance almost all electric cars are made by China in 20 years. I’d rather deal with a flaky CEO who also happens to generate massive economic benefits for my country. (But that’s me, obviously everyone has that choice to make. And if Tesla was Russian I’d be right there with you so maybe I’m full of it :)
There's an argument for the CEO's ethics and values to strongly guide the company.
If engineers sharing your views and concerns don't want to work there, how are you expecting those cars to fulfill your expectations and perform on the points you value ?
If this were something like bread or water, then yes. But it's not. A Tesla is a luxury purchase, not an essential purchase. Nobody who chooses not to buy one because of Elon's stupid antics is going to suffer in absolutely any sense.
Sure but there's still plenty of time to see if those histories will be the fawning sycophancy required by the totalitarian regimes he openly advocates for, the story of a brilliant businessman who was batshit insane (a la Ford) or the humorous tale of a fool who lucked into a few $billion and then squandered it all on an empire of trash.
Musk may be an asshole boss and he may post cringy right wing opinions on X, but trying to boycott his businesses based on those actions is quite disproportionate compared to the behaviors whole industries are engaging in regularly. Elon and his companies are in no way worse for the world than the average car manufacturer or businessman.
People factor a lot of things into major purchase decisions, and it's really not a big deal to refuse to purchase a vehicle from one or more car companies. Some people will only buy a Honda, for example.
Personally, I don't want to fund Elon Musk's culture war bullshit. I don't like being lied to (FSD, and vehicle reported range). And I don't like their doing away with all of the instruments in favor of voice control and a single display.
how common do you think this perspective is? outside of places like this one, of course. as far as I can tell, the average person's perspective of the guy likely hasn't changed much in the past few years at all.
At least where I live, a lot of people I know are turned off by him. Including expressing opinions like the OP where they intended on buying a Tesla but now are looking elsewhere. Granted I live in a bubble, and one's friends & acquaintances are another sort of bubble. But it's different than HN.
I'd expect somewhere in between the strong negativity on the Internet and total obliviousness.
Average person probably doesn't consciously register all that is happening and can't tell you about the past weeks' drama, but I think there's a certain point where too much negativity attached to a brand starts to drag it down, and Tesla might have reached that point.
I'm not saying it certainly has, but a few years back the outlook on Tesla was so overwhelmingly positive, you'd have to actively seek out criticism on your own. At least nowadays sentiment on them seem to have returned back to Earth.
I think you're underestimating how much people love drama. Average people don't give a shit about what CEOs do, except when they fire half of a very public company and there's stupid stories to be shared for weeks and weeks.
Same way people still remember Carlos Gohn, when they probably couldn't name WV's CEO.
A decade ago most people I knew thought of Elon neutral or even positively, he was just a figure that was doing good stuff with cars for the environment. At this point everyone I know thinks he's pathetic and a disgusting person.
I don't know when the Cybertruck was announced initially, I believe Elon had already started to enter the public eye a bit more aggressively... but sentiment has definitely changed over the last ~8-9 years.
The risk is that he will go much farther than he already has. If he comes out as a full-fledged neo-Nazi, which I wouldn't bet against given how erratically he has behaved lately, the value of Teslas on the used market will plummet.
If you think Elon is a neo-Nazi, where are you getting your news from? Obviously, not from a primary source or you’d realize what you are saying is ridiculous.
There was no reason to think he would bid $54.20/share for Twitter, either.
There was no reason to think he would call a guy a pedophile for criticizing his submarine idea.
There was no reason to think he would name his kid with nonstandard characters.
There was no reason to think he would offer to trade horses for blowjobs.
There was no reason to think he would _______. I'm not saying he's a Nazi, or that he is especially likely to call himself one. It's impossible to say whether he is more likely to wake up one morning identifying as a Zen Buddhist, or a Laveyan Satanist, or a Nazi, or a Methodist.
You don't know what he'll say or do to hose the value of your car, and neither do I, and neither does he.
have you ever noticed how odd it is that the anti-Musk rhetoric is functionally identical to the anti-Trump rhetoric of 2016–2020, and also how no new Reichs were started 2016–2020, such that one can conclude that perhaps takes like this are possibly a hair hyperbolic in nature, and should maybe be reevaluted a bit before terms such as "neo-Nazi" completely lose any remaining weight they might have?
I don't think anybody missed it, but many people experienced far worse in their own cities during the "Summer of Love" in 2020. Nobody I know cares about J6 except as a political football.
Man, you guys would be so screwed if you didn't have the "Summer of Love" to fall back on when someone criticizes your personality cult.
You should contemplate that sometime, just as an exercise. What would it be like to live in a world where whataboutism doesn't amount to a cheat code to summon the easily-led? One where your beliefs, opinions, arguments, and actions actually have to stand on their own, without reference to unrelated crimes committed by other people in a different time and place.
this has nothing to do with it though. it's not that most normal people like him—it's just, most normal people don't spend any portion of their daily lives ruminating on how much they hate someone they've never met, who is much wealthier and more successful than themselves, to the point of repeatedly expressing said hate on the Internet... well, at least, since about 2020 or so.
Almost everyone I encounter dislikes Elon Musk. I'm not even talking about tech people, although I do live in Silicon Valley and that might bias things. My hair dresser, my wife's make-up artist friend and stay-at-home moms. My kids' teachers.
For better or worse, even random Joe Q. Public knows who the richest man in the world is, and has some opinion on him. Everything he does is scrutinized by the media and put into some political or moral framework. Just like Bill Gates in the '90's, he's inescapable.
But unlike Bill Gates and other prior holders of the richest-man title, Musk eschews any personal PR department and instead broadcasts to the world unfiltered takes. And by and large, people don't like what they see.
I don’t care about Elon one way or the other. But the fact that he’s skewing more right wing in the last couple of years probably makes the truck more acceptable to drive in rural areas. It’s still gonna look weird, but I suspect people will not throw rocks at it the way they might have previously.
I really don’t know how useful a comment structured like this is. Were you trying to be helpful or hurtful? I think it’s better for you rather to +1 GP’s comment by adding your observations instead of only measuring their values against yours. Do better please.
How much to purchase the reservation from you? Early model numbers will go for a premium and I'm going to flip as many as I can. I guarantee no additional money will go to Elon Musk. I'll keep it myself.
Can you name the specifics of Elon's dumb antics? I can think of a couple of dumb Tweets, but on the whole, I think he is more right than wrong on his takes, he just has less of a filter than most people.
Turning his sexual harassment allegations into a cultural red vs blue issue by front-running a story about said sexual harassment allegations
Totally unnecessarily inhumane behavior toward employees during the Twitter acquisition
He just seems increasingly like a truly awful person by almost any definition of “awful person” except the one “has a lot of money.” Character really, really matters, and culturally important people exhibiting horrible character should be aggressively laughed at and disparaged. A less public, equally atrocious, equally wealthy person actually does have less of a negative impact on the rest of us by mere virtue of being less public. Elon could’ve been awful in private and frankly I wouldn’t have cared all that much. But as it is now, generations of people — young leaders — are learning that you can be as awful as you want so long as you’re powerful. What does that foreshadow for our culture, if unchecked?
There's not enough characters in a single HackerNews comment to truly show every fucking insane thing he's done over the last X (ha-ha!) number of years
You seem to be getting downvoted, but I agree with you to a large extent. He does say a ton of stuff I disagree with, sometimes strongly, but I also know if most other CEOs were as public and unfiltered they'd probably fair even worse in aligning with my positions on many issues.
When I'm thinking where to spend my money, I do appreciate that Tesla (and SpaceX) push the boundaries in high-tech industries, and that much of the R&D and manufacturing spend goes to employees in my home country.
He used to be politically neutral but seems to have adopted a right-wing viewpoint that is getting increasingly right-wing over time. Not an extremist by any means but a definite shift. It started around the time he got into a scuffle with the Democratic administration over union issues so maybe it isn't a real shift just being opportunistic. Maybe it is just perception and I'm off-base.
As an investor in Tesla's IPO I find some of his behavior erratic and worrying. I certainly can't diagnose anyone and don't know the man personally. But sometimes he gives the impression he's abusing stimulants to stay awake for 72 hour stints. I worry about his health. I worry about how some of his decisions might negatively affect Tesla or SpaceX.
In the past he was known for appreciating contrary views and opposed yes-men but it seems like he is surrounded more and more by such people who say what he wants to hear in an attempt to leech off him. Again I don't have any personal knowledge but it is another worry that any rich person has to face. I hope I'm wrong about this.
The thing I'm most disappointed about is his moving from CA to TX to avoid income taxes.
The startup ecosystem, local infrastructure, education system, and many other factors that make California the global center of startups and innovation are paid for by those taxes. Or at least the region needs to pay for infrastructure, housing, etc to make it possible for such a system to function. Elon effectively declared "screw you future generations, I got mine".
Did moving to avoid income tax make him immoral? No. Was it illegal? No. But I hate that kind of thinking. You made your bones here in CA, now that you have more money than you can ever spend in a lifetime you want to bail to avoid paying into the system that made it all possible?
I want to be clear here: Elon is within his rights to do that. I'm not calling him a sinner. I just personally find it incredibly disappointing and demonstrative of a lack of appreciation for the factors that made him successful.
edit: I still own a Tesla vehicle. I still own shares. I still support SpaceX's mission. I don't fault anyone for being a fan of his, I'm just not as much anymore and I find that regrettable because he used to be focused on such grand and important things.
edit2: Twitter is also such a massive and pointless distraction born out of being personally offended that they were fact-checking and moderating some of his tweets. The world would be better off if he were focused on Tesla and SpaceX. Instead he's out there swearing at advertisers and doing petty things like removing verified checkmarks or banning prominent people who say bad things about him on Twitter - despite his purported support of "Free Speech". All of this is demonstration of extremely thin skin and lack of perspective.
He recently posted, then deleted a tweet about "Pizzagate." Previously, this hyper-political conspiracy theory got a random pizza place assaulted by a man with a long gun looking for children in their non-existent basement.
He posted another insane conspiracy theory about the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband. [0]
He keeps promoting the concept of "civil war" in the EU, due to immigration. I am in the EU, and this sounds absolutely bonkers to me. Maybe different parties being elected at best/worst, but civil war? That's not a rational take, and seemingly just projection.
> Musk, who has never reserved his social media posts for business matters alone, drew attention to a tweet that said Jewish people “have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.”
> Musk replied to that tweet in emphatic agreement, “You have said the actual truth.” [1]
I greatly respect SpaceX which he actually founded, what he has done with funding and running Tesla, but it appears to me that he has now truly lost his mind. Today he behaves like a politically deluded troll. This saddens me deeply. At one point, he seemed like the best of us, above any of that dangerous silliness.
These guys care about superficial things when likely the current car they brought has a similar “bad guy” that had a hand in making his vehicle. Ignorance at its best
I don't think I disagree with you in principle, but it's interesting to note that Henry Ford published a four volume book "The International Jew, the World's Foremost Problem". And Volkswagen was founded by the Nazis.
And what does that have to do with the people buying those cars now? It would be one thing if people were buying those cars and that was still going on. That's why this is different.
I don't see how he would be a grifter. I just think it's a hilariously stupid, ugly car, that seems to lack a crumple zone. If people want to buy that I'm not going to think less of Elon, but I'm going to wonder how people can look at that thing and not think it's super cringe.
If it fails I'll think fewer people have embarrassingly bad taste, which I guess would be nice.
I checked the market a month ago, and didn't find anything acceptable. The dealbreakers were: insufficient headroom, insufficient range for winter road trips in the US midwest (heat on, 2-3 hour trip duration, de minimis charging infrastructure), built-in internet connections, mandatory subscriptions, and no CarPlay.
Exactly, when you are starting with a fuel about 100x less energy dense than gasoline and 10x more expensive due to current economies of scale, you have to be creative in flipping the system.
Then they should make the equivalent of a corolla or a camry. The Volt, prius, etc. are what's needed, not model X and cybertrucks. Model X is worse for the environment than a small gas economic bevausr it uses so much damn electricity
I'm saying that if one's goal was to save the environment they would focus on making those small cars, and as many of them as possible. Not Model Xs, not cyber trucks, not roadsters, etc
Improving efficiency of the least efficient cars is actually better at making a meaningful difference. Replacing a 20mpg average car with an EV that gets 80mpge makes a proportionally bigger difference than replacing a 35mpg car with one that gets 115mpge.
The least efficient vehicles have the biggest impact on the environment.
There's room in the market for both of these types of vehicles. Asking people who typically buy big luxury cars to 'just buy a smaller car' would be nice in theory, but isn't going to happen in practice. There are many reasons, valid or potentially invalid, to own a larger car or a truck, and often you're not going to change people's minds on that.
But, no, that's not right. If someone is typically a buyer of a ... Range Rover, or a BMW X5, or something like that, then replacing that car with an EV of equivalent size makes a proportionally larger impact on the environment than someone who replaces their Corolla with a small EV.
This looks like a concept car that would never come to market. I hope it sells really well and convinces others to bring actually-creative designs to market.