Comment by specialist
21 hours ago
Yes and:
Tesla scaled up CyberTruck production before finding product market fit. Somewhere tween SUV and truck, and without a clear purpose. (I thought Tesla's initial market segment was going to focus on who ever buys Jeeps, boondocking, outdoorsy stuff.)
IMHO, CyberTruck would have been a modest hit if first production run was 100. Treat CyberTruck like Roadster. A niche vehicle for a niche market. Grant enthusiasts the earliest access to the best technology.
I honestly thought that was the plan.
It would have been the cheapest, fastest way for Tesla to de-risk all of the innovations used in CyberTruck. Major stuff that Tesla's could not gracefully, incrementally add to their other models (eg 48V).
And a perfect precursor of for the Robocab (neé Model 2), that would benefit most from the innovations.
Oh well. What do I know? Musk is a trillionaire and I am not, so clearly not much.
> (I thought Tesla's initial market segment was going to focus on who ever buys Jeeps, boondocking, outdoorsy stuff.)
I'm part of that market and was initially curious about the cybertruck but it was clear that tesla was totally unserious about building an actual 4x4 overlanding vehicle. I'm not sure EVs are even there yet for a true exploring vehicle since it's the extreme end of the range problem. There are places people go that are a couple hundred miles from the nearest supercharger, and I bet rock crawling kills the range like towing does.
The actual target market was probably a guy who spends 100k on a heavily upgraded Rubicon that never drives on dirt or gets a scratch, and happens to be a huge elon fanboy.
The overlanding issues are range and lack of major customizability. Overlanders rarely go more than 100mi out, what they love is the community and talking about all the upgrades they've done.