Comment by nordsieck

>This thing is Pontiac Aztec bad.

Is it just me, or DDG really shows an image of a turd when searching for "Pontiac Aztec"? :D

I'm 100% with you on this. That c-pillar makes it a non-starter for me.

One thing that could really hurt Tesla down the road is the new platform-architectures existing car-makers are coming up with. Pick-Ups in the US are one example, another one is the new Peogeot / Opel Corsa plattform in Europe. The latter one, while not a dedicated EV-plattform, is able to be used for both, EVs and ICE-powered cars. Granted, these small EVs are still rather expensive but offer a ton of extras and are with sibisidies under 35k €. Big bonus, they are produced at the same assembly lines as the big-volume ICEs. So once demand for EVs increases they can easily switch, with economies of scale these small EVs are becoming cheaper and scaling volumes won't be such a big issue neither. I guess the same can apply for pick-ups in the US. And than again, Tesla never had one single face-lift or model replacement behind them.

Said it before and I stick with it: It's a race between tesla coming up with a sustainable and profitable way to mass produce EVs before money runs out and incumbents figuring out the design of EVs that can be mass-produced at existing facilities. tesla had a huge head-start, but incumbents are catching up and the window of opportunity for Tesla is closing but not closed yet.

That's what I thought when the young kids started lifting their trucks. But now it's common.

and you can get this thing with 3 motors.

It’s incredibly masculine looking and that coupled with the power seems like a no brainer for a lot of people around me (I also live in a rural area)

>The Tesla truck thing has always surprised me a bit since it feels like a misreading of the audience.

I watched the stream. My impression was "someone made a truck, designed and marketed it based on my preferences when I was 19."

If they had done this in 1999, I totally would have bought it.

But then I wasn't the sort of guy who bought pick up trucks. I was the sort of guy who got beat up by the sort of guy who bought pick up trucks. (I mean, by 19 I had a real job in a much larger city and was away from all that, but... the memories were very fresh.)

But that's the thing, even if this is totally unappealing to the sort of people who currently buy pickup trucks... this is appealing to a completely different group of people who currently would not consider a pickup truck.

This might explain the bad goth 'neuromancer' cosplay. to get someone like 19 year old me to buy a pickup, you need to overcome the associations with pickup trucks. and... yeah, that's going to alienate the existing pickup truck drivers.

While they may stand out, only a tiny percentage of pickup truck drivers are like this.

There are so many people who have desk jobs or jobs where they don't really need or only occasionally need a pickup, but they still drive one (at least where I grew up, in Northern California). Because of the Tesla truck's performance, and many other EV advantages, my guess is that this pickup truck will indeed appeal to a large number of pickup owners, including showboaters, occasional towers, occasional use daily drivers, as professional/hardcore customers.

I largely agree with your points, but anecdotally, I want one.

I have wanted a truck for a while since I like the look/'pretend' utility (but don't like the tribal-association of trucks). This is so ugly its a statement item, but its a Tesla so its still a status symbol. Its fast (so I don't have to compromise on that bmw/audi) and it can haul shit if I ever need that.

Hi, F-350 owner here. My wife and I's other car is a Prius.

In addition to woodworking and desiring a truck bed for that, we tow a camper with which we can boondock (dry/off-grid camp) via solar power. I purchase carbon offset credits for our trips. Not ideal, but better than nothing. I have not modified my truck in any way, especially not to "roll coal", and I report others that I see doing that. I take pride in my truck passing emissions tests and would never attempt to defeat ("delete") those controls. I would never consider blocking a charging station, and in fact we almost bought the Prius Prime plug-in hybrid when it was first released but it wasn't available in our area yet at the time. Otherwise my other car would need those chargers. We also take the Prius as much as possible, and only use the truck when necessary. I enjoy hypermiling in the Prius, too. I hate that diesel trucks like mine create other non-carbon pollution like NOx so I try to only drive it when needed, and would gladly adopt new hardware to reduce those emissions further if it didn't hurt overall efficiency. I also would love for carbon-neutral (or at least carbon-reduced) biodiesel that doesn't come from destroying palm tree forests to be an option until EV trucks are more available. I have other truck-owning friends that are also not obnoxious intentional polluters that hate EVs. Anecdotally at least, my friends and I are the exact market for the Tesla Cybertruck. My gut feeling is that there are more truck owners that think Teslas are cool and want one than those that block charging stations.

I guess my point is, next time you pull up behind a heavy-duty truck, it could be me, a vegetarian EV/hybrid lover driving a carbon-offset, emissions-compliant truck on their way to go off-grid camp via solar power, waiting for the Cybertruck to launch.

I think this is going to be more of a fleet niche -- companies and gov't agencies that have a ZEV requirement for some percentage of their fleets, such as in California.

For rural/agricultural uses... EV doesn't make sense until range is fixed. 500 miles is certainly good enough for most applications, though, so maybe my thinking is out of date.

For urban contractors/builders etc., an EV truck does make sense; they're not typically going to drive more than 50-100 miles in a day. Then it comes down to cost, though; your average plumber or electrician isn't going to plop down $70K for the 3-motor AWD 500 mile range model.

For general rough-and-ready pickup drivers, the Tesla comes across as too exotic and weird looking. Those guys (and I think it's almost all guys) are going to wait until their F-150 or RAM wears out, then buy another one used. Or they're going to wait for a more "normal" looking EV truck that has decent range and off-road capability.

Have you considered that your assumptions may be heavily flawed?

> When I think of the people that like big trucks, I think of the people blocking super chargers or blowing black smoke out the back onto Teslas. People that hate EVs because of a tribal political affiliation. This is the group that cares about status and argues over Ford vs. Chevy.

That's a surprisingly narrow minded world view. Are there walking stereotypes of comically evil rednecks who blow black smoke and hate on gays 10 times a day while being racist? I've met some, very few in fact and I live in a place where I go to see rodeo 3 times a year. Is that majority of truck owners? Not even close.

Where I live trucks are a sort of "I make good money I can afford one" vehicles. All young men want to have one! Tesla's truck fits the bill so well with young city dwelling men who grew up on 80's sci-fi, who love new tech and toys, and who want to proclaim "I am successful! I can afford this ridiculous over the top TRUCK"

I was waiting for something similar to the early sneak design that took a conventional pickup design and pushed it a bit.

https://www.cars.com/articles/the-week-in-tesla-news-tesla-p...

This truck design is too far out for most people. I suspect tomorrow morning Detroit will have a good laugh at Tesla's expense. Will this prove to be Tesla's Edsel?

I know what you mean. I think of the "rolling coal" type of person too. Maybe they hate Teslas because they felt excluded by the trend...

That's the thing people miss. A lot of people that buy Teslas don't really care about CO2 emissions that much. Really it's just a bonus. That's kind of the point of Teslas, make a car so fun and cool that you buy it "despite" being electric. I bought mine because of the performance and technology. Only after having it do you realize how nice it is to recharge at home, etc.

It is only asking for a $100 deposit.

The 35K model 3 is available and better than what was originally announced.