Comment by lnsru
12 hours ago
The gamble with Cybertruck failed. It’s common sense, that such a vehicle will fail. The successful cars are made for masses and not for niche buyers. Common sense product could be something smaller than Model 3 for Europe and this car would eat Chinese for lunch. Expensive experiment failed, it’s time for consequences. Does Tesla have resources for another car experiment? Will it stay a car company?.. Or it will be now a manufacturer of robot soldiers?..
> Common sense product could be something smaller than Model 3 for Europe and this car would eat Chinese for lunch.
Yeah, that would be the Model 2, which Musk cancelled, then denied he cancelled, then has made no effort to review whatsoever so it exists in a limbo state of zero people working on it but it not being officially cancelled. Either way, it didn't come out in 2025 as planned.
https://www.cbtnews.com/tesla-execs-raise-red-flags-after-mu...
For a normal company, this would be disastrous. For a meme stock, this makes total sense since anyone claiming the Model 2 is dead can be shouted at by fans saying Musk himself disputed it was dead.
The completed original line up was
S 3 X Y
The C didn’t fit that, nor would a 2. Unless he’s aiming for a lineup of products that has you seeing someone next Tuesday.
I thought it was
S 3 X Y C A R S
Cybertruck, ATV (?), Roadster, Semi
They could have expanded the lineup to 2 S 3 X Y 4 U
2 S 3 X Y?
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And he couldn't get E (the original intended name) because Ford had it trademarked.
CyberS3XY was what I always figured he was going for.
Why? I think a lineup with a 2 could have been S3XY 2!
Lol I didn't even connect the dots together until this comment. For a dickhead rich memelord this one is at least somewhat clever.
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> smaller than Model 3 for Europe
A few years ago, perhaps. But the brand has become tainted to the point where the exact people who would buy such a car are now avoiding Teslas. Instead, European manufacturers are filling that niche with cars like the Renault 5.
> the exact people who would buy such a car are now avoiding Teslas
The traditional fix for this is to license the technology and do manufacturing for another carmaker to brand.
It's super common for brand X of car to actually be a rebadged Y with slightly different shaped body panels.
However, it only works if your product is good and you have decent margins. That means you have to compete with china cars, since the obvious thing for a western brand to do is to rebadge a chinese designed car and split the margins with the chinese designer/manufacturer.
> the obvious thing for a western brand to do is to rebadge a chinese designed car and split the margins with the chinese designer/manufacturer
Actually this is already happening with the Dacia Spring/Renault City: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dongfeng_Motor_Corporation#eGT...
> However, it only works if your product is good and you have decent margins.
Not sure if the product has to be good. Look at the lineage of my wife's car The 2019 Chevy Trax, based on the Buick Encore, based on the Opel/Vauxhall Mokka. It isn't a good car under any of the badges, but it does run, and is small, but the crazy thing is my Ford Ranger gets roughly the same milage as it. Note: the gas milage is probably an American issue, because it runs a naturally aspirated i4 gas engine instead of a more efficient turbo diesel.
Why would a small Tesla "eat Chinese for lunch" - the brand is tainted (to put it mildly) and the Teslas I've been in didn't seem to have great design or build quality?
There are people like me who still buy teslas. Buddy picked up his new Model Y couple weeks ago. The price and the whole package is fine. Zero interest financing is absolutely nice. Elon showed his real face during children rescue drama in Asia. With this defamation story it was well known who he is for years. Political involvement was the visible tip of an iceberg for everyone.
Now if you ask me if the German car managers are better I doubt it. Gassing apes by Volkswagen in US is on the same level as Elon. Mercedes guy was complaining about lazy workers too much. Only BMW guy was able to keep acceptable silence. Overall German equivalent of model Y is at least 20000€ more expensive than Elon‘s car.
Personally I don’t buy anything from China if I can. I am not brave and as the Ayways story showed clearly, that great Chinese car can quickly be without any service. Maybe it’s ok to lease such car for couple years, but I don’t want to have car after small accident for what no replacement parts are available.
Several years ago I wanted to buy an electric car. I didn’t like Musk, so my plan was “anything but Tesla.” Chevy Bolt was unavailable due to the fire problem. Cadillac Lyriq and Hyundai Ioniq 5 weren’t out yet.
I drove everything available to buy in my area. My real options were the Mustang Mach-e, Volvo XC40 Recharge, Hyundai Kona, Polestar 2. I decided to test drive a Model Y for completeness.
And CRAP.
The Model Y was obviously the best car. So much more refined than the other options. Way better charging network. 7 seat option. The only real downside was the zany CEO.
Fine, I thought. I’ll live with it.
I bought a Model Y and love it.
But.
I’ll never buy another Tesla. I have a bumper sticker disavowing the CEO. I paid off its loan so nobody would make money from me owning a Tesla. I honk support at the No Kings protestors outside the local Tesla facility.
I think the only thing that can save Tesla is a crash/buyout/relaunch. Get Musk out of the picture. Reset the stock price to something sane. Ditch the distractions. Release a Model 2. Keep expanding the SuperCharger network.
That’s a long hard road. Nobody involved makes money in that scenario. It’ll only happen when there are no other options.
As for me, I’m driving my Model Y until the wheels fall off. With the bumper sticker.
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> Overall German equivalent of model Y is at least 20000€ more expensive than Elon‘s car.
What?!? VW id.4 has the same starting price as a Tesla Model Y if I look it up on their German websites. Don't see where the swasticar would be cheaper.
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I spent a month in Spain driving a BYD daily and it was fine. I just don’t like the tackiness of the interior and not in love with the exterior either. The handling is also ok, nothing exciting. There’s something still very Chinese about these cars. Not saying that matters if you just want an affordable and reliable EV that takes you from point A to B. BYD can do that perfectly fine. I personally like the design of the Model Y (own one) very much, it also feels much more “alive” particularly the dual motor. There’s no comparison with the BYD I drove. Also never had any issues with build quality other than the charging port malfunctioning, and it was fixed outside my house, all I had to do was touch a button in the app to call service. FSD is pretty damn amazing. The tech is great and the updates do make the car better in many ways. I hope Tesla finds its way because apart from all the controversy they can make good cars.
Regardless, owner is a nazi and utter POS to be polite, basically same material as trump. Nothing in the world is going to change that, not now not in 40 years. He keeps insulting whole Europe (meaning all of fucking us living here) and our leaders almost daily, looking down on us very publicly.
Why the heck would I buy such car, even if it costed 1 euro? Have some self-respect and morality ffs, do you also go to restaurant where you know they will spit on you and insult you, just because they have cca same stuff as all other places, often worse while more expensive? [1]
[1] https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tuev-report-2026-tesla-mo...
> Teslas I've been in didn't seem to have great design or build quality
Design is subjective (I like it), and build quality. Not sure, I don't have issues with mine except one where after 2 years frunk latch started failing. It was replaced in an hour when I went to service center.
Teslas are the cheapest EV for the features offered in Europe. I would gladly buy another car, but they are either more pricey, or lack features. (I did market research 2 years ago when I was buying Model Y, the closest one was ICE - RAV4 for similar price, but I didn't want ICE).
not having door handles in an obvious location is such a subjective "feature" that people have been killed in fires because of the door handle placement.
I've lost count of the number of times i've seen tesla drivers "defrosting" their door handles. You may live in a sunny desert but many people do not.
[dead]
Today probably not but there was a time where Tesla doing a rush to electric car market dominance was not totally far fetched. This would have required them to have cars filling the important segments.
because there is still 2012-era belief hanging around many people that Tesla's EV tech is superior to anything else
yeah, they legitimately used to be but the rest of the world has definitely improved and Teslas weirdly haven't that much. They're cruising on name brand and a really decent charging network, but even that moat is being breached.
Even without Musk's public persona, the Tesla build quality is infamous. I would never.
The entire car is a surveillance machine and the company is happy after a crash to taint the driver in the public’s eye if it will improve the image of their AutoPilot. It’s bad enough having to deal with car insurance after a crash without your car’s manufacturer blaming you in public, sending the recipients to news outlets.
Tesla has a monopoly on their car repairs, which reduces the number of mechanics qualified to work on it, increasing the cost and the wait time.
Teslas are a very expensive platform to service being largely an aluminum frame. Difficult+expensive to repair and replacements are expensive compared to cheaper cars which usually have more plastic. This means insurance is also expensive.
And this doesn’t even begin to get into the weirdness of their reputation for hiring private eyes to stalk employees and call the police to in an attempt to get an employee killed. Having an exec who has a ketamine problem and mania issues doesn’t lend itself to long term stability.
What I've seen so far from Chinese car makers (BYD and MG, to be precise) is, to put it bluntly, the bare minimum. Build quality so-so, design is… unconventional and software is just bad. It drives, but only just.
Maybe the more recent models, like the Xiaomi thing, are better. But at the moment, Tesla is at least on par, if not better. The brand being tainted is very relevant though.
You see electric Volvo's everywhere in the more electrified markets in Europe like Norway and the Netherlands. Especially the smaller models like the ex30 and ex/xc40. They fit very well design-wise and I think software quality wise in the European market and they are essentially Chinese (Zeekr). I think it helps that they use Android Auto as the main interface and some of their designers are still located in Sweden. Korean electrics are also taking over marketshare hand over fist.
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BYD already have the Atto 1 (sub AUD30K here) as do other EV manufacturers (eg Nissan Leaf).
Tesla could stop spending money on bullshit like the Cybertruck and spend it on vehicles that people actually need/want.
Don't forget Renault 5!
And the Renault 4, the Hyundai Inster, and the Dacia Spring, and the Citroën C3, Fiat 500e, Kia EV3, Leapmotor T03.
There are heaps of small/subcompact EVs on the European market now, all with very competitive prices. The newer ones seem to be getting cheaper and cheaper.
Honestly I reckon a Tesla M2 will have a hard time succeeding in this market.
Interestingly, the Renault 5 Turbo 3E is more Cyberpunk than anything Tesla is making!
Is it an good car ?
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All the big European car manufacturers also have EV cars too.
Plus there are plenty of popular options for high-end EVs that are far more glamorous as well as practical than the Cybertruck.
> The successful cars are made for masses and not for niche buyers.
When Tesla got started, full EVs were extremely niche. They were known for their short range and nothing else. Tesla defeated common sense. This is what supports their anti-common-sense stock price.
Is there any indication that they're going to "defeat common sense" again? They're cancelling products, making marginal improvements to old models, alienating their customers, etc.
Tesla as a car company seems dead-set on a continuous downward spiral.
Maybe the switch to robots will pay off and you'll be right. Somehow, I'm skeptical.
> Is there any indication that they're going to "defeat common sense" again?
If you equal Elon to Tesla then there are plenty of - SpaceX dominates near-earth orbit payload launches. A private company competing against and replacing NASA would have been a laughingstock idea 30 years ago. xAI made competitive SOTA models despite a very, very late start.
Of course Elon isn't Tesla. I think the biggest risk of Tesla now is the investors realizing he's more into AI and politics and will siphon resources from Tesla to his other companies.
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Everyone knew that was the future and that the big auto manufacturers were deliberately dragging.
No-one (serious) thought there was a market for the cybertruck.
The stock price is pure madness, it's like it's priced in robotaxis, but that's clearly not going to happen for Tesla. And if it did, it would be a small-ish market, their brand has become toxic in so many big markets.
> No-one (serious) thought there was a market for the cybertruck.
If they'd hit the price and performance of the launch announcements they might have. $40k base for what he initially talked about is a vastly better proposal than $61k base for what he actually delivered.
> Everyone knew that was the future and that the big auto manufacturers were deliberately dragging.
Definitely not. Car electrification was definitely not obvious, and Tesla had to do many semi-impossible things to make it even slightly feasible.
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What I could see happening is Alphabet getting an exclusive lock on Tesla (probably not buying because the stock is too high) and then quasi-merging it with Waymo for a fully integrated, functional robo taxi company. A bit like when they bought Motorola phone division.
> Common sense product could be something smaller than Model 3 for Europe and this car would eat Chinese for lunch
The Chinese EVs selling in Europe are mostly bigger cars.
And the only reason they don't sell more is because we tariff the hell out of them.
It will be a manufacturer of vaporware if you look at how much they announced over the last years and how much of that has actually materialized...
But yeah, I guess Tesla lives by its CEO (and his grand promises that keep the stock price up) and dies by its CEO (who alienated Tesla buyers by, amongst other things, throwing his lot in with a regressive fossil fuel supporting administration and by personally supervising the dismantling of agencies such as USAID).
The Cybertruck was very clearly designed to be a low production model to figure out teething issues in manufacturing and design. Think Plymouth Prowler. Like seriously, nobody makes a body out of heavy gauge sheet metal with simple shapes if they're planning on volume, it doesn't pencil out vs more die complexity and thinner material. But the future growth to justify that never seems to have materialized....
Elon Musk said he estimated 250k to 500k yearly sales
So he's off by, what Elon might say is an "order of magnitude"
I write that off as marketing BS. They very clearly didn't design it based on those expectations though.
To be fair, robot soldiers are the only robotics and ai problems that need to be solved to pretty much eliminate labor problems across the board.
I suspect China is going to beat him to the punch on this one too.
Cybertruck was /the/ sign that things with Elon had... changed, IMO!
Idk, his twitter account was enough to sort out he had lost control over himself.
Eat BYD for lunch?
It didn't fail imo - it was intended a low-volume product for next-gen Tesla tech - Ethernet based fieldbus, 48V systems, area controllers etc. The philosophy is the same like other high-end cars - you field test your latest experimental tech first in a car with lower sales but high margins - if your fancy stuff has a 1% failure rate, in a 100k production run, that's 1000 vehicles - high but manageable.
If you sell millions and its your main product, your company is over. This is the same playbook German manufacturers followed since forever. I bet the next gen Model 3 and robotaxi will get the cybertruck tech.
It failed based on the sales projections that Tesla set. Also, several reviews have not exactly been kind, along with lots of comments from owners about annoying issues and malfunctions.
If Tesla needed beta testers for things they hadn't figured out yet there would have been better ways to go about that.
I think the real issue was that Cybertruck required way more structural parts (body) than Tesla originally thought. It was originally supposed to have a load bearing exoskeleton.
> it was intended a low-volume product for next-gen Tesla tech
If this is true that's not what Musk was saying beforehand.
That is the opposite story that Musk told when hyping the Cybertruck, though.
Musk projected that the Cybertruck would sell 250k annually. It's selling around 20k. Even for Musk, that isn't normal exaggeration; that's a huge difference.
... but they aren't canceling the Cybertruck?
Re: Robots bla bla: yeah, of course. FSD bla bla. Meh.
That's weird too, maybe they just have some preorders they need to fulfill. They did stop its production for a while last year and reduced the number of models available.
> could be something smaller than Model 3 for Europe
Lol... not with those tariffs. In fact, I'd be willing to bet we see higher growth of Tata than Telsa in Europe over the next 10 years.
Tesla has a factor in Germany.
Yes but the factory seems to be struggling to find staff, and the job adverts I see around Berlin suggest the hiring team is out of touch with what appeals to the German job market:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46710328
Any discussion of Tesla without mentioning Musk's actions is missing the most important piece. I heard someone on this site use the term "mind share", as in before Musk decided to alienate his main customer base, Tesla had the biggest "mind share" of any company in the world. I looked forward to buying a Tesla one day. Now, with Musk licking Trumps boots and actively doing very real damage with his work in DOGE and other things, I will literally never buy anything from that company ever again. It doesn't matter what Chinese car companies are doing. It matters that he stands for everything I don't so I will not give him my money.
Cybertruck was supposed to be for the masses. The just weren't able to hit the price point required because of overly optimistic engineering assessments. I think the whole stainless steel construction concept didn't work as first designed.
And of course, Cybertruck design might not have been mass compatible buy being ugly. But that is subjective, if it was cheap and functional and without the political connotations it might have been different.
But it was certainty a risky bet.
To be "for the masses", it would need to:
- be smaller
- have an actually usuable truck bed
- be painted (so rust isn't an issue)
- have a body that's not literally duck taped together in some places and can easily snap in others
- use steel (which bends) for body construction
- be suitable for towing hauls
- not be ridiculously overpowered (...to the extent where engine can overpower the breaks)
- have good visibility with a windshield that isn't at a sharp angle to the ground and body geometry which doesn't maximize blind spots
- not have sharp corners that the cut you or doors that can decapitate your dog
- have door handles that make doors openable in case of emergencies/no power situations/electric shorts
- not have bulletproof glass (WTF, "for the masses"?) which makes makes it harder to rescue people when accidents happen
- be easily repairable, or at least amenable to repairs in local non-Tesla shops, with customers being confident it their warranty won't go poof (as the law requires)
- be easily customizeable for different applications (particularly when it comes to the bed)
- not look so different from other trucks without any reason other than "Elon Musk wants to be edgy": ugly is subjective, being a billionaire's fashion statement isn't
...to start. That's off the top of my head.
And, of course, being priced for the masses, which doesn't just happen. It's a design requirement.
As it stands, the Cybertruck is, and has always been, a rich boy's luxury toy — and it was designed as one.
It really seems like something got to Musk's head that he thought the world has so many edgy rich boys.
You want to see a modern truck "for the masses"? That's Toyota IMV 0, aka Hilux Champ [1]. Ticks all the above boxes.
And hits the $10,000 price point [2]. A literal order of magnitude cheaper than the Cybertruck.
Speaking of which: a car "for the masses" isn't a truck. It's a minivan (gets the entire family from one place to another), it's a small sedan/hatchback (commuter vehicle), a crossover/small SUV to throw things, kids, and dogs into without having to play 3D Tetris in hard mode.
But not a pickup truck, which is a specialized work vehicle.
The masses aren't farmers and construction workers (most people live in the cities, and only a small number needs such a work vehicle).
The popularity of The Truck in the US is, in a large part, a byproduct of regulation which gives certain exemptions to specialized work vehicles.[3]
That's not even getting to the infrastructure part: trucks shine in remote, rural areas. And while one can always have a canister of gas in the truck bed, power stations can be hard to find in the middle of the field or a remote desert highway.
But again, it's not impossible to make a truck for the masses (at least for certain markets). That's the $10K Hilux Champ.
For all the luxury aspects of the Tesla sedan, it's been one of the most (if not the most) practical electric vehicles on account of range alone. It also looked like a normal car at a time when EVs screamed "look at me, I'm so greeeeeen!" from a mile away (remember 1st gen Nissan Leaf or BMW i3?). It was conformal and utilitarian, while also being futuristic and luxurious enough for the high price point was fair for what was offered.
The public image of having a Tesla was good: you are affluent, future-forward, and caring for the environment.
The Cybertruck went back on everything that made Tesla a success: it's conspicuous, impractical, overpriced, and currently having publicity rivaling that of the recent Melania documentary.
It was not a risky bet. It was an a-priori losing bet. The world simply never needed as many edgy toys as Musk wanted to sell.
And driving a car shaped as an "I'm a Musk fanboy" banner really lost its appeal after a few Roman salutes and the dear leader's DOGE stint.
Overly optimistic engineering assessments? Perhaps, but they are much further down on the list of reasons of Cybertruck's failure.
[1] https://www.roadandtrack.com/reviews/a45752401/toyotas-10000...
[2] https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/2025-toyota-imv-0-pickup-...
[3] https://reason.com/2024/02/02/why-are-pickup-trucks-ridiculo...
>>The gamble with Cybertruck failed.
Has it? I really don't know but I see these every day in my major city and there was a closed mall parking lot filled with cybertrucks the local dealer used to park there which were quickly turned over.
Yes. It's a flop:
https://insideevs.com/news/784715/tesla-cybertruck-ev-sales-...
A flop is not a truck that was the best selling in the world two years ago and then 3/4 as many as Ford's EV truck and more than everyone else (according to your link).
And since when is HN just like Reddit when one is downvoted for asking a question for clarity?
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