Comment by RobotToaster
1 day ago
As much as I dislike Musk, it was nice to see someone try something that didn't look identical to every other car/truck on the road.
1 day ago
As much as I dislike Musk, it was nice to see someone try something that didn't look identical to every other car/truck on the road.
This take is widespread on this venture capital fan forum, but it's both incorrect and a retreat. The Cybertruck was poorly thought out, sold teribly, and is now dead. By example it has discouraged future diversity in automotive design.
Good design that breaks the mold and then succeeds for that reason is what changes the world. Bad design that starts from the desire to be different without understanding the forces that led to the preexisting equilibrium is what we got. If you start out with hundreds of billions of dollars you can fake it for much longer, but if your premise is fundamentally economically incorrect then it will only last as long as you can subsidize it.
It is impossible for someone's statement of preference to be incorrect. You may differ in your opinion, but the gp is not wrong for having their own opinion.
I read their comment as meaning, "If you really care about design that doesn't look like anything else, you should be wary of the Cybertruck, as its commercial failure actually discourages future innovation in automobile design."
1 reply →
They weren't stating their preference for the form of the vehicle itself. They were stating their preference for designs that break the mold. But if what you desire is cars that break the mold, the Cybertruck has set the world back.
> It is impossible for someone's statement of preference to be incorrect.
I prefer to believe that this statement is incorrect.
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I am tired of grey painted eggs too. The design language has gone downhill.
My understanding is more that economy and safety standards have driven us towards these aerodynamic and impact absorbing shapes. I may be quite wrong though!
The cybertruck had good enough safety ratings, but kinda just decided to not care about the aerodynamics and economy side. Which freed Elon up a lot in terms of style.
Personally, I also agree that it was refreshing to see something bold out there on the road. It's just that the final product looked just 'off' enough to make it look bad in the end.
Like, it's wheel base is about 6 inches too long and the ride height is about 6 inches too low, making it look a bit toddler-y to my eyes. The bed was also just not practicable and too small (something I see on a lot of trucks these days). The speed was good, the torque was great, the giant screen you can't feel when driving was not. The seats were uncomfortable for my build.
Overall, the car was a statement, one that just barely missed the mark to my eyes, but it did miss
The US safety ratings are incredibly easy to game. I have a sibling who used to be a crash test engineer, and we used to get bored of them endlessly ranting about it at family gatherings.
In many other countries it wasn’t even street legal because it couldn’t meet minimum safety standards.
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If this thing had good safety ratings, then there is something wrong with those ratings.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/18/tesla-cyb...
> The bodywork of the vehicle is particularly problematic: the sharp-edged, rigid stainless steel panels of the Cybertruck violate EU safety regulations, which primarily serve to protect vulnerable road users.
https://www.heise.de/en/news/Cybertruck-remains-banned-in-Ge...
The real issue is that every car maker tries to be as global as possible so they default to mostly safe and flat and boring designs.
And that's not just in cars but technology, furniture, lighting choices, clothing, etc, we're just converging to the same styles globally.
No more flat primer gray cars.
That’s a platform we can all get behind.
Except it is very ugly and the triangle profile created a impractically large windshield and caused the bed cover to completely block the rear window when closed.
Thr angular Cybertruck design was actually not primarily for show. It comes from the fact that its body is made from cold-rolled, full-hard stainless steel that can't be stamped into arbitrary shapes. Ordinary car bodies are made from steel that can be stamped but is not stainless, so they require paint.
The original design was that the body would be made from these panels. The exoskeleton structure.
The Cybertruck that was released did not have that, instead the panels are just normal body parts connected to a standard car frame underneath - like any other car.
Most cars use a unibody design and there's no frame underneath it all. The body is the frame.
Most pick up trucks are body-on-frame style.
The Cybertruck is a hybrid. There is an aluminum frame for the tow hitch and battery pack, but the body panels are also structural (unibody).
Nice? It's a machine thst kills pedestrians. I rather no one try anything different if that keeps pedestrians safer.
They didn't go for looks though. The whole premise was ease of manufacturing. An interesting idea that soon proved to be invalid. But they pushed forwards anyway for some reason (and we all know that reason).
I prefer not to drive next to dangerous art projects.
Instead they ripped off the design of a garbage container.
Meanwhile all other Tesla models look exactly the same. Doesn't help that people buy them like the other appliances in their lives, meaning that they're almost all white too.