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Tesla Cybertruck
Tesla unveiled the Cybertruck. Apparently, many people think it's ugly. I absolutely love it. It took the jellybean esthetic of modern vehicles and ran it over. Twice. There's simply no point in saying anything about this truck -- you have to look at the pictures:
In order to make this TFS less short, a few specs, but really, they don't matter until you see if it appeals to you which it either will or won't in spades. The low end 250 mile range version is supposed to be about $40k. The body is unpainted cold rolled stainless steel. Upmodels will have a towing capacity variously described as 10-14k pounds and at the top end, a 500 mile range. They'll cost a lot more.
"Bulletproof" Musk Cybertruck fail
Elon Musk bragged that his "cybertruck" was bulletproof to a 9mm round, but two separate attempts to demonstrate just how tough it is failed when ball bearings thrown by hand literally caused the windows to come crashing down in pieces. So much for safety glass; even on cyber trucks, windows sucks.
We created an exoskeleton," Musk said to rapturous whoops from those attending the Los Angeles launch. "It is literally bulletproof to a 9mm handgun."
Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla's chief designer, asked Musk if he could lob a metal ball at the window of the vehicle. "Really?" said Musk. The window smashed. "Oh my fucking God," said Musk. "Maybe that was a little hard."
Showing confidence in the vehicle, Von Holzhausen then suggested he should lob it at a second window. "Try that one? Really?" asked Musk moments before the rear window was also smashed. "It didn't go through, that's the plus side," a stunned Musk said.
Also at Ars Technica and Wccftech.
See also: Hot takes as opinion cools on Tesla Cybertruck
Tesla trademarked Cybertruck and 'Cybrtrk' ahead of its planned debut
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday November 23 2019, @12:11AM (4 children)
Not nearly as ugly as the early-mid-90's Dodge Ram redesign and the faggotorious effects it had on Ford and other copycat truck designers thinking that feminizing their pickup trucks was a good idea. The pickup truck is supposed to be a boxy utilitarian vehicle, not a fucking vintage Rolls-Royce sedan. Even Chevy, who resisted feminizing their trucks and held onto decent aesthetics for a few more years, succumbed to preferring ugly truck bodies.
If we were judging purely on aesthetics, I'd much rather take the Tesla than a dodge. But the way I see it, the Tesla truck is nothing more than a mall-crawler for Silicon Valley yuppies who are too fat to fit in a standard sedan and are hiding behind "utility" as an excuse to get a trendy vehicle that they can enter and exit without wheezing and losing their breath.
The point of getting a truck, before it was to accommodate fat Americans and Mexicans packing their ride clown-car style for their family trips to Wal-mart, was utility. And utility is often simple and durable, not something with gazillions of sensors and valves and little niggling complexities of which any could go wrong with even the slightest tow and render the truck almost unusable.
Elon wants to make a point with this new truck, trick it the fuck out and race it in a real truck race like the Baja 1000 -- even if only for the range of the battery -- something like that would give a lot of cred to the Tesla truck. As it stands now, Tesla owners are the new Prius owners: insufferable smug douches who buy overpriced and underperforming trendy crap with Hillary 2016 and Apple stickers on the back, who have problems paying attention to the roads.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday November 23 2019, @01:13PM
You may or may not be right about the attitude. I don't know enough Tesla owners to say. The Hillary and Apple stickers you see on them could be a function of where you live more than the brand of car. In my experience BMW drivers are always the ones tailgating, swerving in and out of traffic, cutting others off, and generally behaving badly and dangerously on the road.
I would say you are demonstrably incorrect with "underperforming," though. Teslas can out-accelerate almost anything out there, and are further ahead on autonomous features than everyone else. Their fetch feature, where you can call the car in the parking garage to come get you, is awesome. The self-park feature, where you can get out and let it squeeze itself into a narrow spot, is awesome. And of course there's autopilot.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Informative) by toddestan on Saturday November 23 2019, @06:36PM (1 child)
I'm not sure if we live in the same universe, or are you just being sarcastic? Are you referring to the 1994 redesign of the Dodge Ram where it adopted the semi-truck look? I'd argue that's the complete opposite - that's the start of where pickup trucks started becoming overly macho - testosterone-fueled, overly aggressive, form over function styling designed to appeal to those that desired a truck as a lifestyle choice as opposed to those that bought a truck because they needed a truck. The 1994 Dodge Ram arguably started us down the path that has led us to the huge, butch, overstyled, and hideously ugly pickup trucks that the big three sell today.
With that said, I actually consider the 1994 Dodge Ram a rather handsome, attractive design that has aged well. It was kind of out there in 1994, but by today's standards it's tasteful and restrained. Dodge really hasn't given us anything but constant reiterations of that design ever since either. While none of the followups match the good looks of the original, that the current Ram is basically a ripoff of the 1994 Ram makes it far better looking truck than what the other two of the big three are offering at the moment.
If anything, it's Ford that made the most feminine truck when they redesigned the F150 in 1997. The previous F150, which was basically a new front clip on a design that otherwise dated back to 1980, was arguably the last "real" pickup truck on the market with its simple, no-nonsense design, base I6 engine and manual transmission. The 1997 design was a very much a product of the 1990's with its jellybean look and extensive use of plastics where there used to be steel. Not a bad looking truck, especially by today's standards, but was a big turning point for Ford in terms of their design language.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 24 2019, @06:27PM
i agree. the reason the 94 dodge sold well is because it had a dick nose and all the buyers were like "i, being dickless need to show may massive dick nosed truck to the world!".
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday November 23 2019, @08:18PM
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