Comment by grouchomarx
5 hours ago
>I think the timing of the Cybertruck starting deliveries roughly aligning with when Elon got heavily involved in politics
That and also it's just a bad product.
>That said, even though it's not to my taste, I do admire that they dared to do something different and took a big gamble on it.
A pickup truck should just be max utility, especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one
edit: agree there's a market for the raptor off-road tremor package thing, but it wasn't ford's first and they've been selling commerical trucks for 75 years. A true tesla f150 competitor would have sold like crazy, I think
> A pickup truck should just be max utility, especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one
The modern US pickup truck isn't built for utility. It's a $60,000 four-door lifted luxobarge with leather interior and a short bed. It signals (perceived) wealth while preserving working-class alignment. It can also be justified by way of having to pick up used furniture for TikTok refinish and flip projects or bimonthly runs to Home Depot to buy caulk and lightbulbs. Independent tradesman can write them off as work vehicles or, allegedly, use COVID-era PPP loans to buy them.
It's the suburban equivalent of a yuppie's Rolex Submariner. Investment bankers generally don't go scuba diving and if they did a dive computer would be vastly preferable.
I say all of that to say that making a pickup truck for that market segment isn't a bad idea from a numbers perspective. You just can't market it as a luxury vehicle because the whole point is that it is but it isn't.
Bingo.
Sprinter vans, utility vans, or even minivans are far, far more useful for trades than modern pickups. Heck, my minivan was the goat for home renovations—it’d easily fit a dozen full 4x8 sheets of drywall/osb/ply/mdf/etc and I could still close the rear gate. I always got chuckles from guys awkwardly wrangling/securing sheets onto a pickup’s bed at the supply yard when I’d easily slide the sheets off the cart directly into the van by myself.
A heavy duty pickup makes sense when you have regular towing, or large bulky transport, needs. While on this topic, I’ll take a moment to lament the demise of the light duty pickup that provided a bit of extra utility while still fitting in a normal parking space.
You're out of touch with the working class. Some people practically live in these trucks. A little comfort goes a long way toward making their day bearable. Leather is easy to clean, power adjustment makes the seat more comfortable. Auto wipers, climate, etc., help them focus on the calls they're taking. And so on. Fleets of these are bought for commercial purposes as well. Companies wouldn't spend that kind of money without a reason.
There's a reason these "luxobarges" are the best selling vehicle in the U.S., and the answer is not virtue signaling.
Brother, people are scraping by right now. Auto loan defaults are nearing all-time highs. Car loan lengths are longer than ever. The average age of a vehicle on the road is something like 14 years old now.
I promise you with all my heart, those luxobarges are not being purchased because they’re practical in any way, shape, or form. It’s 110% virtue signaling.
I don’t get the recent internet trend of trying to excuse any bad behavior by saying it’s all actually very logical and simply a tragedy of reality. Nobody is buying a gigantic vehicle because it has seats that are easy to clean. Nobody is buying an expensive ride because they just NEED those auto rain wipers.
People are bad with money, and keeping up with the Joneses has always been a high priority in American culture. I see people making $20-25/hr driving brand new Cadillac SUVs. I talk to my car selling friends, and they have the loan rates for 6-10 years memorized, not 3-5 years. Nobody does those anymore.
Of course there is an enormous amount of virtue signaling around cars. It’s one of the strongest social signals people purchase.
The venn diagram between people who say what you just said (which to be clear, I'm not disagreeing with) and people who screech about safety if they see a pickup being anywhere near full utilized is way too close to a circle for me to take either seriously.
As someone who's just been trying to buy a crappy used truck to haul some crap to the dump a couple times a year, you're absolutely spot on. I even live in the southwest US where trucks make up a considerable portion of vehicles on the road.
Crappy used trucks simply aren't up for sale. And even the rare listing I do come across, the asking price is ridiculously inflated.
I was looking for the same thing and a friend gave me some advice.
Get an SUV with a trailer hitch.
worked out great. Maybe better than a pickup.
For example - taking mountain bikes somewhere to ride - you can put them in the back, go ride, and leave them there while you go eat without someone stealing them. You can even load them the night before.
dirty stuff can use a trailer (I've never needed one)
and suv carries lots of people - which has worked out many many times more than I predicted.
(it is a gas guzzler, but was cheaper because of that, and didn't compete with higher-priced pickup market)
7 replies →
Consider a Honda Acty - they even have models with a dumping bed.
2 replies →
If you only need a truck a couple of times per year, maybe it makes more sense to rent one?
1 reply →
I have had good luck with farm type auctions just check the rust. IronPlanet is also really good but a little more expensive.
Consider a trailer if you have even a mildly acceptable tow vehicle that can take a 2 inch receiver. Use what UHaul will rent you as a rough limit for what your vehicle can handle, and then if you want to save some weight get your own because it will be lighter than UHaul's brick shithouses.
Having said that, I'm still in the market for a larger vehicle with a better tow weight rating as I use the trailer more than a handful of times per year, and my current tow vehicle is getting a bit long in the tooth.
It is utility, just not the utility you're thinking of. Try spending all day, every day in a basic, rough riding pickup truck, then compare it to spending all day in a "luxobarge" that can still tow a 7,000lb trailer.
To the people I know who drive trucks like that, they're basically mobile offices.
They can be luxury vehicles with reasonable running costs - regular gas and less depreciation than the usual luxury brands. They also have utility in case you need it. Pickup trucks aren't my cup of tea but it can be very rational to buy one even if you don't need it as a work truck.
The modern US pickup truck still has the utility image and they make sure they sell a bunch to people who want utility to ensure that the image is not lost. That is why the lightening came in a cheap pro trim clearly targeted at the things pros are likely to want. (I don't know how well it worked, but they seriously tried to sell to that market)
Of course the real money is in the high trim levels that sell for twice as much but don't really cost much more.
Yes, and they're awesome. Also much closer to 100k.
What's 100K? My Lightning was just under 51K out the door, and it is not a base model. You must be referring to something else? Maybe pickups in general? It's true that they do tend to be expensive.
Edit: OH, you mean the CT. Silly me.
Class tourism is a succinct term here. Blending in with hardworking blue collar Americans is a whole marketing industry in itself.
Blending in with imaginary people, you mean. Every single actual blue collar worker who needs a truck for that purpose drives a 1997 Toyota Tacoma.
3 replies →
> max utility
As the owner of a rusty 1985 pickup with manual windows and no radio, I can tell you there is great demand for utility pickup trucks that the manufacturers WILL NOT MAKE.
The first problem is CAFE rules. Congress legislated the light pickup truck out of existence. To get around CAFE rules, manufacturers increased the size of trucks and added a back row so they could be reclassified in a way that skirted CAFE rules.
However, there's a big demand for pickups, so people bought these because they needed trucks, and nothing else was available. Manufacturers took advantage of demand and started adding features normal pickup drivers didn't want or need, to access a high-market class of buyers. "Where else are you gonna go?"
$100k pickups, here we are.
Manufacturers are in no hurry to go back to the low-margin pickup days, even though that is what classic pickup buyers actually want.
> A pickup truck should just be max utility
A working truck should be max utility. Around the core market of "working trucks," there are various wannabe truck products that do not have to be max utility. For example, a Subaru Brat or a Hyundai Santa Fe. Niche products compared to an F-150, but they had/have their fans.
I personally can't stand the design, but the idea of an impractical "halo vehicle" that appeals to a niche audience but burnishes the brand as "forward-looking" is not a bad one. It's just the execution of this particular halo vehicle that I would have a problem with were I in the market for a lifestyle look-at-me vehicle.
All trucks should be working trucks. There is no reason to drive something that large and heavy that isn't better served by smaller vehicles that don't damage our shared infrastructure while being safer to drive.
Oh sure, but look at the vast popularity of these monstrosities that never even see gravel. I get how you (and I) find that abhorrent, but there's clearly LOTS of folks that find a blinged out useless luxury pretend truck to be very attractive.
I was in the market for a pickup recently. I had wanted to like the Cybertruck, but ... too damn ugly, too version 0.3, too many dweebs driving them, too many teething issues even for a first cut. Plus it's as heavy as an F-250. There's almost no actual reason to grab one besides it being electric. Since I drive so little, I'd never pay back the embedded energy it takes to make the thing - so even that isn't a selling point.
So instead I got a used Tacoma, and disappeared into the ocean of Tacomas that exist here in the PNW. It could be worse :)
13 replies →
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/opinion/marie-gluesenkamp...:
> It’s all but impossible to go into any rural bar in America today, ask for thoughts on pickup trucks and not hear complaints about the size of trucks these days, about touch-screens and silly gimmicks manufacturers use to justify their ballooning prices. Our economy, awash in cheap capital, has turned quality used trucks into something like a luxury asset class.
> It’s often more affordable in the near-term to buy a new truck than a reliable used one. Manufacturers are incentivized by federal regulations, and by the basic imperatives of the thing economy, to produce ever-bigger trucks for ever-higher prices to lock people into a cycle of consumption and debt that often lasts a lifetime.
> This looks like progress, in G.D.P. figures, but we are rapidly grinding away the freedom and agency once afforded by the ability to buy a good, reasonable-size truck that you could work on yourself and own fully. You can learn a lot about why people feel so alienated in our economy if you ask around about the pickup truck market.
> Instead, the authors of “White Rural Rage” consulted data and an expert to argue that driving a pickup reflects a desire to “stay atop society’s hierarchy,” but they do not actually try to reckon much with the problem that passage raises — that consumer choices, such as buying trucks, have become a way for many Americans to express the deep attachment they have to a life rooted in the physical world. A reader might conclude that people who want a vehicle to pull a boat or haul mulch are misguided, or even dangerous. And a party led by people who believe that is doomed among rural voters, the Midwestern working class and probably American men in general.
> This approach to politics governed by data and experts is what we mean when we talk about technocracy. It’s a system that no longer really functions today because the broad societal trust that once allowed data and experts to guide political choices has broken down. Democrats, increasingly, live in a world where data and researchers convincingly show that low-wage immigration raises the economy and our gun laws are reckless and misguided.
5 replies →
The Santa Cruz is about the same size as a Santa Fe and weighs less.
The Ford Maverick is a smaller vehicle but also a truck. It is a working truck for some, and a rec/handyman vehicle for others.
11 replies →
There are different sized trucks for different purposes. A Maverick or Kei truck is lighter and safer than a lot of cars on the road while being way more useful.
1 reply →
Tragedy of the commons.
3 replies →
The reason is personal preference. Same reason people buy sports cars. I also wish their preferences were different
10 replies →
I can't speak for the Santa Fe, but most Brat owners admit they have no intention of using it as a utility vehicle. The same cannot be said for most F-150 owners I know.
These days Brat owners are classic car collectors...
>A pickup truck should just be max utility,
The problem is as soon as you go EV, you use a lot of utility from the get go. With a truck specifically, because its a brick aerodynamically. There is no reason to buy a Cybertruck or Lightning when you can get a gas or hybrid F150 (or a Raptor) for a little bit more, and be able to sit at 80 mph on highways without worrying about range.
The biggest suprise about the lightning is that Ford didn't put in a gas engine in it as a range extender. They have 3 cylinder ecoboost engines that would have been perfect for that.
Here's a different aspect of utility: The F150 Lightning includes 120V and optionally 240V outlets, so it replaces the need to carry a separate gas-powered generator.
That's probably more relevant to fleet vehicles for construction and maintenance firms than to individuals towing boats. But just to offer an example of how the F150 Lightning is a great fit for certain uses.
You can also get a standard hybrid F150 with the "Pro Power(?)" package, and the hybrid drive-train turns into a 7.2kW generator.
1 reply →
I'm surprised it didn't sell based on that. 20 years ago when I was in construction the truck drove at most 130 miles per day (we made sure to work 14 hour days when we were going to spend an hour on the road - the crew hated those jobs), but typically more like 30. The the first thing we did was pull the generator out of the truck and started it. If would could just plug into the truck that would have saved a lot of space/weight in the truck, it seems like a no-brainer.
Then again, all the construction sites I see these days have mains power on a post, which we never had back then (I don't live in the same state so I don't know if this is universal or just this area has always been different).
It's great for rural folks or others with power issues. For a few thousand bucks, you have a backup generator in your garage.
1 reply →
> Here's a different aspect of utility: The F150 Lightning includes 120V and optionally 240V outlets, so it replaces the need to carry a separate gas-powered generator.
A small generator costs few hundred bucks and fits comfortably in any truck actually used for work. It's a small perk that some pro users would probably pay for, but it's not a selling point for a radically different car design.
2 replies →
My brother has one, it is an amazing vehicle with better range performance than Tesla. It's dramatically better in the snow. Towing of large loads is a valid downside, but reality is that most people don't tow, and people who do are probably fine with 80% of the use cases (construction trailers, lawn trailers, etc).
The business problem Tesla solved at Ford cannot is the dealer network. He pre-ordered his, and the dealer he was stuck with tried to rip him off like 4 different ways.
The other issue is that car guys are afraid of electric, as the entire supporting industry is essentially obsolete. It's hard to get excited about something that will take away your ability to pay your mortgage. Every car dealer employee and mechanic knows that.
Electric cars still need maintenance. They don't get regular oil changes, but they wear out tires sooner. They have more recalls in general than ICE (this will likely change, but manufactures are still learning how to make EVs reliable). The parts of a car that are not common with EVs don't break for the first 100k miles, and almost nobody is using the dealer for cars that old. There is plenty of other work that is common that dealers will still need to do.
4 replies →
Next generation of lightning is doing exactly that with a smaller battery, they're claiming 700+ miles of range: https://www.fromtheroad.ford.com/us/en/articles/2025/next-ge...
> The biggest suprise about the lightning is that Ford didn't put in a gas engine in it as a range extender.
They announced that along with the EV Lightning cancellation: https://www.fromtheroad.ford.com/us/en/articles/2025/next-ge...
You have one reason listed, which is going 80mph (which is illegal in most states). They also can't tow long distances easily, but are superior in nearly every other way.
You also gain some utility. Infinite torque at idle, cheaper 4wd, better traction control, fewer mechanical problems, etc.
They tow way better aside from reduced range. And the near perfect 50/50 weight distribution means they handle better than a truck should.
> pickup truck should just be max utility
Except the main demographic buying F150s is suburban dads driving to their office job.
I think the reason this take gets push-back in discussions (including here) is that it's highly regional.
I've lived in parts of the US where I doubt more than 10% of pickup trucks on the road (and there were a lot of them) were really justifiable purchases as trucks. They were aspirational purchases, and/or were selected for status/class/politics signaling.
I've lived other places in the US where the whole region had far fewer trucks (but a hell of a lot more Volvos... like, easily 10x as many as the other place) where I bet at least 50% of pickup trucks saw enough truck-use to really be justifiable.
This. Where I live the suburban dads wouldn't be caught dead projecting the "fullsize truck owner" image. They buy a Tacoma. Or they did until the Maverick came out.
And using the truck on weekends to tow the boat, or do other work with it. Not every weekend, but once a month in summer.
There are 5x more households with trucks than households with boats, so this hardly explains it.
1 reply →
Gas doesn't cost enough.
I think the problem is Trucks are a visible lifestyle preferences that does not align with yours.
2 replies →
> A pickup truck should just be max utility, especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one
That's very unrealistic considering the market.
I don't know much about car economics but I'd think Tesla probably should have built a truck to sell as a fleet vehicle first. There are very few car brands that aren't part of a larger entity doing b2b vehicle sales.
> That and also it's just a bad product.
I want whatever the v3 equivalent of the Cybertruk would be. Assuming they improve on it.
That's basically the F150 or a rivian
That's... a very uneducated take, even according to those car's CEOs RJ and Jim.
3 replies →
> A pickup truck should just be max utility
Yet we are in a thread where one with max utility has been cancelled and one flop of the century continues to sell.
> it's just a bad product. So you've never driven one?
> A pickup truck should just be max utility You don't know much about trucks? What does this even mean, max utility? Trucks are designed for different purposes. Should we eliminate all programming languages besides bash or python?
> especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one Seems like you don't know much about business either. Most new products should NOT try to do everything at once the first time.
>A pickup truck should just be max utility, especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one
I don't think this is actually true, most pickup trucks aren't designed for maximum utility. They're designed to sell a lifestyle.
Heartbreaking but true. The most popular pickups today are not the most useful pickups. There are no more basic utilitarian pickups any longer, at least in the US.
Pickups are a little bit interesting in this regard. For any given model (eg: Tacoma, Frontier, etc.) the more premium the truck, the worse it is at being a truck. Each feature you add reduces its payload, and in the case of the Frontier, you could drop from a 6' bed with ~1,600 lbs of payload on the base model all the way down to a 5' bed with ~900 lbs of payload for the most premium offroad model.
I would be willing to say that a small Japanese kei truck is more than the average American would ever need for hauling furnishings, appliances and lumber. If you really need something bigger renting a trailer or truck is dirt cheap
10 replies →
The Ford Maverick is pretty utilitarian, inasmuch as any new US vehicle is.
The Slate is utilitarian, but remains to be seen if it actually ships. https://www.slate.auto/en
5 replies →
these trucks are still a thing; Toyota sells a 10k stripped down work truck for places like Thailand
https://www.roadandtrack.com/reviews/a45752401/toyotas-10000...
wouldn't fly due to chicken tax + other safety and emissions. they plan on selling em in Mexico tho, so maybe we'll see some float up...
> There are no more basic utilitarian pickups any longer, at least in the US.
What makes you say this? The F-150 series has a pretty serviceable option in their XL trim. 8ft bed, 4x4, "dumb" interior (maybe not, looking at their site looks like the most recent is iPad screen, sigh) - but what else would you look for to call it utilitarian?
You're right that each feature is further limiting, but I would argue premium and utilitarian are reaching for opposite goals.
3 replies →
The most utilitarian truck is probably the Hilux champ and it’s not even sold in the US.
Lifestyle sells.
I drive a wagon. Of course wagon owners talk about the utility. And yet, you can buy a wagon with a twin-turbo V8 engine. What's the "sportwagon" segment all about? Certainly not going to Home Depot to buy four toilets for the new house, it's about putting your $15,000 Cannondale Black Ink MTB on the roof and swanking up to the trailhead.
It's about drag racing on the way to your Jiu-Jitsu club with the baby seats in the back. And still being able to fit that new vanity from Home Depot in on your way back home!
The brain is a confabulation/justification engine.
In reality ideal utility is likely found in the shape of a 2008 Toyota Camry and a U-Haul truck rental when necessary.
4 replies →
I struggle to think what vehicle has more all around utility (by my own definition) than my Lightning. The only things it does not do well is tow 300 miles, and drive in NYC. Neither of which are on my requirements list.
> ... most pickup trucks aren't designed for maximum utility. They're designed to sell a lifestyle.
Yes, but that lifestyle can and sometimes does include actual needs for some of the utility. There is a great observation from Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat from Washington’s 3rd District in an NYT piece a couple of days ago. I included a perhaps too long quote in lieu of apologizing for the paywall.
> “Spreadsheets can contain a part of truth,” Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez told me. “But never all of truth.”
> Looking to illustrate this, I bought the recent book “White Rural Rage” and opened it more or less at random to a passage about rural pickup trucks. It cites a rich portfolio of data and even a scholarly expert on the psychology of truck purchasers, to make what might seem like an obvious point — that it’s inefficient and deluded for rural and suburban men to choose trucks as their daily driving vehicles. The passage never does explain, though, how you’re supposed to haul an elk carcass or pull a cargo trailer without one.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/opinion/marie-gluesenkamp...
If I mostly trim my hedges, but sometimes, very rarely, need to cut down small trees, am I best served by simply owning a hedge-trimmer and renting a chainsaw or other appropriate tool when necessary, or by buying a katana for both jobs?
Everybody knows why you bought the katana. We know you have a story to tell yourself, it's just not convincing.
5 replies →