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Also very important: the cybertruck is not the only vehicle capable of doing that (the keywords are V2H and V2L, V2H is the more convenient — the car just plugs into the mains and acts as a house battery — while V2L means you have to go and plug your stuff to the car's mains outputs directly)

> Most of the disasters I'm aware of people either get their power back in a short enough amount of time that they can use a normal generator for the gap

TBF an EV car has an absolutely massive battery relative to the electric consumption of a house, unless you're using resistive heating all around. Especially if you ration use.

This is exactly what I do. My cabin is in a rural area that gets a lot of power outages, and it also happens to be < 10 min away from a supercharger. When I was getting quotes for a home battery backup system, every other option was astronomically more expensive than the cybertruck. I don’t know why adding wheels to the battery pack makes it a lot less expensive but I’m not complaining. It’s good to have an extra vehicle I can use in the event of an emergency as well.

Most people (like me) don't have generators. But when I hear "oh, BTW this car can be a used as a generator for 48-72 hours in a power outage", that's a nice little selling point that might put me over the edge if i'm otherwise considering the car. No, this doesn't solve for Hurricane Katrina. But it does solve for a nor'easter.

First, 'nearby' can be a 1 hr drive and still be worth it to commute every few days. Second, tornadoes, storms, and floods have exactly that pattern where damage can be block by block.

But it is still cheaper to stockpile some generators and gas than stockpile a cybertruck. If there's an EV charging station up within a 1 hr drive, gas stations are also going to be up.

Even if you can’t easily recharge, it’s a great way to power your home for a few days. It’s arguably a very cost-efficient home backup solution, assuming you were already in the market for an EV.

A Cybertruck has nearly 10x the battery capacity of a single Powerwall, and to buy that much Powerwall capacity would cost at least as much as a Cybertruck. Even a Tesla Model 3 (which now supports home backup) is over 5x Powerwalls.

You still have to pay to install home backup support on your home’s breaker (at least $10k), but you don’t need anywhere near the amount of very expensive supplemental home batteries.

Also, even an EV with a 120V outlet and no home backup support could be very useful for recharging a portable battery bank.

During a “power cut” there is usually reduced capacity on the grid, not zero capacity. They typically cut power to homes while keeping power on for business. The homes get power on a rolling blackout, so they have power for a few hours per day.

I expect that the charging station will be in an industrial park with an industrial power supply.

Power outages at least where the live are a fairly common occurrence (overhead local power lines get taken out by trees if there is a big blow), power is usually restored in 1-48hrs. A lot of people have backups (generators or batteries) but those are fairly expensive when you amortize them against cost / hour of outage. Having that backup up power available at no incremental cost is pretty nice to have.

This is one of those things that happens in rural areas, "the city" (which is not actually a city in any sense but the legal one) gets power on in a day or so but your neighborhood 10 miles away doesn't get power for another week because the population density is something like 50/sq mile at most. And that's just for the people in actual neighborhoods, if you're on a farm or something where the nearest neighbor is a mile down the highway I don't even know how long it takes them to fix your power lines.

In about 25 years, I've twice been out twice for multiple days and one of those was in summer which was a nuisance rather than a potential really serious problem. (Worst case, I buy ice for coolers and maybe need to toss some food.) But I live just off a (major) country road so I'm probably pretty high on the power restoration schedule.

The whole point of prepping is to prepare for the unlikely events though.

If you can choose between a truck that can’t power your house and a truck that can, prepper mentality is to choose the one that can.

That sort of thing happens all the time. All it takes is, say, a big fallen tree in the wrong spot. Its entirely possible for just your road to be SOL for days, if the local utility is otherwise completely swamped by bigger issues from whatever disaster is going on.

Also you can get that charging station fitted to your house aka solar panels. I've been "off grid" I.e. no import for weeks

In places like Florida its absolutely something that would not be considered niche.

Greetings from Northern California! Multi-day power outages are not at all uncommon (though I've never seen 14 days). We had one about a month ago. Most people just have generators, but if you wanted to use a Cybertruck instead, the nearest superchargers are one hour away and do not go offline when we lose power.

Not niche at all. Loss of power for days is common in areas of strong storms with above ground power lines. States frequented by hurricanes and strong storms can experience days to weeks without power.

Ford has also marketed their hybrid F150 as being able to power home appliances for several years.

I live off grid in Sweden all year round with solar and an EV as battery to power everything except heating which I do with wood from my own property.

I'd have animals too but society is still stable enough to provide me with food.

Living in Ukraine, I can tell you it's not niche here. Most homeowners without power walls already consider buying an EV because you also get to drive it to an area that has electricity at the time.

Preppers are just about as niche as you can get; they're still a valid customer prototype! I'm sure more than a few solar home owners chose it as a PowerWall.

At 6000lbs+ it's a section 179 write off; if you combine that with some of the previous incentives the car was not that expensive to the right population.

> This seems like an awfully niche case, no?

Not really. Some areas in California have multiple PSPS outages during fire season. Many people have gotten gas generators or powerwalls to deal with it, but using your EV would be ideal.

If you're already committed to owning a bigass $100K electric truck this is an inarguably awesome side benefit. It's a truck, so... you have a few hundred miles of range. Slightly better than "down the street."

But for the other 99.99% of humanity, there are certainly more cost-effective ways. A portable power station and solar panels are probably the better move unless you have some really massive power needs.

(Admittedly, a nuclear winter reduces the effectiveness of those solar panels somewhat)

Actually, if my car worked as a whole-house UPS and base smart battery (charging at night when power is cheap, drawing during day when it's expensive), that's a pretty nice value-add for a vehicle purchase.

Doesn't make sense for what they are charging for it. But still!

Yeah... even powerwalls and equivalent don't seem to be a good just-in-case solution. A gas generator costs 5% for the same capacity, and you can just go get some extra gas when the storm comes. I'm all for electrification, but after doing the math, it doesn't work for this particular corner case.

Other commenters are pointing out places where it isn’t that niche, but I just want to call out that there’s a whole cottage industry for preppers that would eat this up. I would consider a 30-pound bucket full of shelf-stable Mac and cheese “pretty niche,” but it flew off the shelves at Costco.

I'm not sure it is. I've considered getting home batteries for power outages (due to fires), and frankly given the install cost, using a car is compelling. Not only do they have enormous batteries (a model 3 has a 57.5 kwh battery and can be acquired for 20k), but they can be driven to recharge every few days if need be.

Where I'm located, in most cases when there is an outage, neighboring areas do have power.

Specifically for my model 3, I've been considering tapping into the HV system manually to keep my Ecoflow battery topped up, but I wish there was a way to directly connect it.

>This seems like an awfully niche case, no?

No. It's like a generator except way more power and mobile. Rechargable via solar. So basically just a much better generator.

Also an american only case. But anyway trucks are not popular elsewhere, little sense to buy it

Well, with climate change and weather getting more extreme, it might happen more often...

pretty standard in honolulu actually. i lose power for 1-3 days on the regular, have to drive to town to do anything

I've got a friend who does it simply to fuck PG&E and avoid an electric bill. He has workplace charging, a Cybertruck, and a powerwall + Tesla solar setup at home. He drives his truck to work, fills up on electricity, drives it home at the end of the day, and uses it to power his house. Repeat the next day. The Cybertruck was cheaper than the 13 PowerWalls or whatever that's the equivalent battery capacity.

Actually no, and in fact almost all EVs are capable of powering a house for quite a while. It would be excellent if this was not just a Cybertruck-exclusive feature since here in the bay area we have shitty infrastructure too and power outages happen several times per winter.

I saw it happen during Katrina. Neighborhoods within an easy drive of each other where one had power, and the other not. Not to mention the fact that vehicle charging stations may well be prioritized to restore power.

It’s niche just because natural disasters are thankfully relatively rare, but I still think having good contingencies is worth it.

Fuck being seen in a cybertruck though.

My silicon valley neighborhood lost power for two days in 2025 starting on Christmas day.

In what universe is backup power a niche use case?

Ice storms in the Midwest can knock power out for several days in rural areas. Urban areas usually get brought back online sooner than the rural areas. A few years ago a bad one knocked out power at a friend’s house for three weeks.

Niche until it’s life/death unfortunately.

Not uncommon in parts of California where certain legs of the grid are shut down for high wind events. If you live in Pacifica, you might have your power out for 3 to 5 days, but there will be reliable power in San Francisco 20 minutes away.

An awful lot Elon’s products seem uniquely capable in extreme niche cases primarily caused by America‘s horrendous track record of maintaining, upgrading, and filling in traditional infrastructure.

Even outside of natural disasters, it's a very useful feature for people in the construction business and similar fields where mains power might not be always available.

Cybertruck uses like a fifth of the energy of a full size gas pickup truck and is only like 50% more than a typical smaller sized EV. The truth is that most homes don't use much energy apart from hvac. The Chevy Bolt can also power a home for several days if you only have the fridge and lights running.

Driving is wasteful. Cybertrucks and Prius's use similar amounts of energy per mile. Cybertruck is 0.4-0.5 kWh/mile, the Prius is 0.6-0.7 kWh/mile.

Of course the Prius Prime on electricity is way more efficient than both, but it still uses a lot more energy than a house.

>For daily driving duty, a car or small suv is much more efficient.

I have a lightning and it averages 0.5kwh/mile and my electricity price is $0.15/kwh, so it costs me $0.075/mile to drive. At current gas prices that's pretty much the same as a very efficient hybrid compact car (55mpg @ ~$4/gallon). If I had solar I could probably offset almost all of the lightning fuel cost based on where I live (sunny) but it's so cheap it's not worth it.

Do you mean "much more efficient" in places where electricity rates are significantly higher than the national average? Or only much more efficient when compared to when you're charging at charging stations?

> Another way to view this is that driving a cybertruck every day is quite wasteful (no different than driving a full size gas pickup every day). One recharge cycle in a cybertruck uses enough energy to power a typical home for 8 days, 130kWh.

Driving in general uses a lot of energy. It’s the physically moving a 1,000 kg or more object that takes a lot of energy. Orders of magnitude more than a few lights or a phone. Same with flying of course; also moving a heavy object.

As someone towing every weekend with a Lightning, I get closer to 150mi.

ICE trucks are equally inefficient for towing. People just don't seem to be able to factor it in.

If the underlying energy is coming from a renewable source, then it wouldn't matter all that much, would it?

I own a pretty typical phev sedan (Gen 2. Volt), and I use more electricity on my 20 mile commute than the rest of my power usage combined.

All cars just use a ton of power moving a lot of mass. It is actually impressive, it's like 100KW at full tilt. I think i saw someone do the math for how much power transfer you would need to get EV charging as fast as gasoline refuelling: It's in the megawatts.

The only way you could signifigantly reduce power usage of vehicles is to reduce mass dramaticially with a motorcyle or autocycle. The Aptera is an interesting autocycle design based on this line of reasoning, but we are also seeing the emergence of a lot of electric motorcycles.

In summer time with a pool and AC, we use 100kw in one day

Yeah the Silverado EV has my attention but it's the same issue: if you, like me, actually use your truck for truck shit, an electric truck is a substantial, notable downgrade from ICE.

That said if you have a Mall Crawler who's heaviest loads are your monthly Costco run, an electric truck would probably be great for you. I still wouldn't recommend a Cybertruck though.

Yeah, wasteful, like one day we will ever run out of energy lol

The caveat is that Powershare is low wattage. You really need to pair it with a Powerwall and have an average draw less than the limited capability of the car to supply it.

To power a house directly from an EV, the main options now are the EV trucks -- Lightning, Silverado, Cybertruck all can have this ability, 240V 30A typically

I have a Tesla Y. It has almost a week of power sitting in it on full charge. There's no hookup. The only power outlet is usb-c pd.

Completely missed opportunity. I won't be buying an electric vehicle that doesn't allow powering my house, ever again.

No association, but something like this is "the right answer", IMHO: https://www.cargenerator.com/pages/use-your-car-as-a-backup-...

1) if you're permanently modifying your home or electric panel you're over $1k. (General Motors "Vehicle2House" is ~$10-20k for hardware + installation... an EXTREME investment unless you plan on regular "emergency" usage of it)

2) if you're buying some portable solar panel "battery boom box" you'll likely run out and the folding solar panel it comes with is more gimmick than reliable

3) if you're buying a "real" gas/diesel generator, you have to run it + change the oil every 6 months otherwise it might not start in your emergency situation

...just buy a thing that clips to your car battery and dangles out the front hood of your car!

You already maintain your car every 3-9 months, you already (should) have at least 1/2 tank of gas at all times (especially in a weather / outage situation), you can generally idle your car for at least 2 days off a tank of gas in an emergency, and if this thing can charge your phone/battery packs, keep your fridge running (kindof?), and run a small space heater overnight...

It makes soooo much more sense to buy a $500-$1000 emergency accessory that piggybacks off the car you already maintain than trying to stand up a whole extra distribution mechanism for "survival-ish power, maybe 1-2 times over 3-4 years".

I don't think the residential power generator is needed anymore if you have an electric car.

As soon as we got the adapter for our Ioniq 5, I sold generator to a neighbor. The car will run what we need for four days, which is longer than the generator and five gallon can of gas is going to last.

If you have an electric car that supports V2H.

Despite the dealer saying the used one I bought supported it, it turned out to not be available in the trim I got. My fault obviously for believing something a car dealer said.

Charging a truck does that? What's that campground going to do with someone plugs in their 50A 43 foot-long tour bus RV?

(I'm sure there's more to the story, and the details aren't important, but if charging a vehicle is tripping breakers for the whole campground there's something wrong.)

If pulling 24 amps through a TT-30 or 40 amps through a 14-50 trips a breaker, then it's the host's fault for the campground having a shoddy electrical system, not the truck driver's fault.

I would definitely be carrying a battery pack or two if going on a rural motorbike trip.

Yea, I hate that the Lightning didn’t work out. I loved the vehicle when I test drove it. I just couldn’t justify the price for the range.

I’ve looked at solar so many times and I’d love to get it…I just can’t make the math work based on the quotes I always end up getting.

But can they also be driven?

This is obviously not the primary reason to get a Telsa. But a full home generator will run you $15k to buy and install where i live, and a whole bunch of hassle to install with permits. I don't have one because my power doesn't go out that much. But if i'm otherwise on the fence about a vehicle, I would absolutely want this as a feature.

In our area, when a storm hit, the roads washed out, so the generators ran out of propane. Then the local propane companies ran out of delivery truck capacity because of the demand surge. Finally, the regional distributors ran out of propane.

Our solar panels kept the fridge running, but we were heating the house with a wood stove (it was very cloudy, so we were getting maybe an hour of sun a day). If we had bidirectional house charging, we could have had warm showers + used the heat pump: We would have been able to fast-charge the car at 100-200kw in town. The house can limp through 20-30 hours on ~ 25kwh, so the charger would charge the house at a few days per hour, including losses from driving to and from town + round tripping through the battery, and also running the house heat pump.

None of the other people around here stayed online. Some propane-dependent people had no electricity for > 2 weeks (with rationing, they managed to keep their generators online for about a week, and PG&E took three weeks to fix their lines).

This was in the outskirts of Silicon Valley, so better-than-puerto-rico infrastructure, but only just.

You forgot "higher maintenance" that goes along with seldom-used things that run on gas. That gas doesn't drain itself, and if you don't do that, well, Amazon has carbs for Honda generators for $30. For something I might use once a year. No, thanks.

It’s nice if the car you buy is made by a company still in business.

The ford home integration setup never really worked as advertised. The idea is that if the home power fails, the truck will output high voltage DC to an inverter that powers the house. No owners have got this failing over reliably.

Most people just plug an extension cord into the onboard inverter. You have to manually flip it on and plug it in, but 240V30A is plenty for an emergency. Doing it this way isn't any different from any other vehicle with an onboard inverter though.

No one is saying they can’t. Drop the whataboutism, please.

Do they now?

> how [can] vehicles can exchange energy quickly?

Currently in pilot on a small fleet of electric trucks in Australia (actual trucks - prime movers for road trains) - large standard swappable battery packs that can be removed and replaced with a fork lift.

Swap time ~ 3 minutes.

God, you just don't get it do you? \s

Yeah, I don't know if I like the look, but I'm glad to see something that's at least different.

Sort of. With my Kia EV9 I can use a V2L adapter to run an extension cord for essential items in my home. I understand in other markets there is a V2H connector so you can connect it to your home mains power but I don’t think it’s available in the US

In theory, yes, but they need to have the hardware/firmware to do it. Pretty sure most of the full-size electric trucks do so, but not sure about any of the smaller crossover EVs.

You also need to have the house setup to run off a generator. You don't want the truck power feeding back into the grid. IIRC, that's usually done with a big switch near the main panel.

No, you can't even do it with most other Teslas. Current models will give you 20A of 120V out from the battery, but most don't have an inverter big enough.

There is a model of Ford Lightning that has power sharing and now that resale values are way down it just might be a cost effective home battery that you can drive around during non-emergencies....

In theory, it requires ONLY firmware changes. V2G/V2H works by establishing a "fast charging session" that directly connects the inverter to the high-voltage bus. And then it just siphons off the energy from the battery instead of charging it.

Car makers are reluctant to support this. In case of Tesla because of market segmentation.

Vehicle to Home(V2H) is unfortunately not super common, but it is being added to a lot of newer models this year and beyond.

High. They typically need heavy power lines that are either underground or way up overhead.

What you are missing is home batteries have INSANE markups.

5kWh of battery cells at the moment run around $500. The rest of the cost of production is in the power electronics (probably around another $500).

It's why you can buy 4kwh worth of battery backups from Amazon for about $2k right now. Yet the same thing sold as a home battery backup costs $5k.

Lack of competition and likely low amount of sells is what's causing the margins to be so high.

Permitting in California more than doubles the installation cost of home batteries + PG&E gets to screw with you if you buy one.

Propane generators here have the same problem.

That still doesn't explain the price gap. You can literally just get a V2H EV and use it instead of a home battery (or, you could if the ecosystem was more mature).

Good question - different markets with different margins and supply chains?

The answer is mostly that the powerwall is an incredibly overpriced home battery.

They want ~9k for a freaking 13.5kwh pack.

I can buy a UL certified, 16kwh, outdoor rated pack for 3.5k (ex - EG4 allweather)

I can buy just the LFP batteries themselves for the new powerwall 3 LFP version (no BMS, no shell, no certification) for $1116... https://18650battery.com/products/byd-302ah-3-2v-lifepo4-pri...

Powerwall is a scammy product. WAY too expensive for the storage it provides.

---

So the summary is: Cybertruck is using a different battery chemistry, Powerwall is a scam.

(I mean - to be clear, the Cybertruck is also a scam, but it's a different kind of scam not directly related to the battery capacity, since it's hauling around a 123kWh NCMA battery pack)

I just checked and prices are going to have to come way down. Who is buying a 2024 Cybertruck for $70k+?

Recycling them to make saucepans from the stainless steel would give them a more practical afterlife then when they were a truck.

Not bad. The shell would also make a nice BBQ.

> A cyber truck as a prepper rig is laughable.

It was. Everything was pathetic. The claims of being bullet proof, being an amphibious car, being all-terrain, rugged, etc.

Sometimes it sounded like it was all for political theater.

Yeah, this is where I landed, too. Except propane bottles only get me about 3-4 hours per bottle and it's pricey. It ran $50 for one day of AC during the last outage.

I just bought a kit to convert to natural gas though. Most people who've done it are happy to not change bottles all the time. It won't help after an earthquake but the regular PSPS outages I get make natural gas a better fit for the moment.

I'm looking into getting a large EV so I can move off of a propane generator. A generator needs service, it will cut power for 5-10 seconds while it starts up (so your PCs and whatnot will power cycle), and it's loud.

I'm running an EG4 system with a decent amount of battery storage. I have a generator port on it that makes it easy to plug in a portable generator to assist the PV and charge the battery. It's really easy for me to roll my generator over and run it a few hours a day to supplement the solar. Even a cheap 5kW generator is plenty because it doesn't need to power the house, just provide a continuous charge to the batteries.

Wouldn’t a diesel or gasoline generator be better? You can carry both in a bucket found on the side of the road which isn’t possible with propane.

It isn't just US manufacturers.

I'd say Koreans are probably the closest to the Chinese, but Japanese manufacturers have fallen behind. Toyota spent too much time with hydrogen. Nissan? Honda? Mazda? None of them have a solid lineup of electric vehicles.

I appreciate Toyota's hybrids, but that is not the future and every model year that they try to delay, they are missing out on developing the technology, experience, internal expertise, and platform refinement.

I hate to see it and I hate to say it, but the last time I was in Europe there were A LOT more giant american vehicles, at least outside of city centers. I really hope this SUV plague doesn't go global.

One state makes up over a third of all EV sold in the country EV’s have a way to go in the United States. Hybrids seem to be doing a lot better in recent times.

California accounts for roughly 35% of all U.S. EV sales, though some estimates put its share near 40%.

> Two years of wasted time

Try two generations. I think it was obvious since the oil shocks that fossil fuels were not a good bedrock of the economy.

Full disclosure: I have been driving an EV for almost a decade. I use an e-bike too. Electric commuting is brilliant. I'm glad for the sake of air quality that EVs and e-bikes exist and are increasingly popular.

That said — let's be realistic and dispassionate.

> There needs to be some creative destruction, ruthless culling of the least efficient manufacturers, so that their best workers can go to the better manufacturers, if the US is ever going to be a top tier car manufacturer again.

Inflicting job losses at that scale is not going to happen. US protectionism (a euphemism for ahem current federal initiatives) is alive and well. The legacy US auto makers have a huge domestic market and their survival is a primary motive for the US trade/tariff war. (Does the thoroughly corrupt administration face any comeuppance? That is a different discussion.)

The lack of EVs has not been a pivotal concern of voters. US voters want cheap fuel. Affordability was a fundamental concern for voters. The mid-term election result is not about loftier environmental goals.

> Their bad leadership and overall inefficiency

Yes, "an American vehicle" is known for grotesque size and high cost of maintenance. And now after two years of a despicable administration, "an American vehicle" is also a Trump-Miller-Hegseth-Bessent-Lutnick-Musk-*.arsehole symbol.

Even so, Tesla sales success is real, domestic and abroad. People who can afford them buy them.

Chinese EV have heavy import taxes in the EU. Also in France, (I don’t know in other countries), you get more subvention when buying an EU-made EV. This heavily distorts the market to try to save VW and friends.

I see sources saying BYD sold 187,657 vehicles in Europe in 2025, and MG sold 307,812. Interesting.

Your source only says: “Top 5 best-selling EV brands in Europe in 2025 Volkswagen – 274.417 (+56%) Tesla – 238.765 (-27%) BMW – 193.186 (+15%) Skoda – 172.100 (+117%) Audi – 153.848 (+51%)”

How long until they are devoured by the Chinese? Geely already owns Volvo.

Things have changed a lot since 2025. In fact in October BYD sold a ton of cars in Europe.

They’ve never been a normal car company. And that’s the problem.

They don’t do a good job at the car company part. They make nice cars, but the company part has issues. Quick example… I was very happy to drive a model 3 for many years. But the constant changes in price of their new cars destroyed any resale value mine had. Every time Tesla was having a bad quarter, the value of my car dropped. That’s not the way to get me to buy another one.

There are certainly other areas where they could improve too. But my point being - they’ve never been all that good at (or interested in) what it takes to drive long term success in selling cars. It’s just too long of a time horizon for them.

The problem is that transition would require a ~95% drop in stock price, and the company isn't going to survive that.

GM - $74.5B market cap (6.2M cars sold annually)

Ford - $50.2B (4.6M)

Volkswagen - $40B (9M)

BYD - $100B (4.6M)

Toyota - $256B (11.3M)

Hyundai - $57B (7.3M)

Tesla - $1.4T (1.6M)

The numbers simply don't add up.

Musk has said Tesla's future is cybercabs and robots, not a normal car company.

Oooh, normal cars. Now there's a concept. Can we get a real EV minivan? Not a gimmick like the Buzz. I've got kids and go on long road trips to visit family. Seats, cargo capacity, range, and 800V charging speed.

Closest thing is like the Ioniq 9 but the cargo space really sucks.

For a polished product that ticks all the boxes, I would pay a premium for this.

I get all my news from Matt Levine and this is what he keeps saying.

They all have someone behind the wheel. Tesla doesn't have a driverless permit in the Bay Area.

In the Bay Area they have human supervisors but in Austin they are autonomous.

Is there data to suggest they are unsafe in Austin - as in less safe than a human?

What makes you say they aren't safe? The numbers say they are about 4-6x safer than a car with a human driver.

Photogrammetry + AI has developed to the degree, that there are 3D scanning apps on iPhone that don't even use the Lidar when available, so you can certainly make do without and get comparable results.

https://www.tesla.com/robotaxi/safety

A fleet of hundreds of cars, right? Maybe even thousands including Austin? All with no LIDAR, and operating perhaps up to 18 hours a day?

So then where are all the horrible accidents if they're not safe?

Why do you assume lidar is must for safety. So far the Tesla auto pilot record is better than human drivers

I don’t see why it’s scary. Most cars on the road have a driver and no LIDAR. The cybercab is no different.

I rented one for a road trip. It was nothing short of magical. Scary to give it control. And I can believe there are edge cases … but it’s real.

I’d guess that it’s going to take a while to catch up because the real world data is the moat. Maybe if someone partners with Waymo but the price point will be higher.

The thing that gives me pause about buying one is: what happens if the company loses interest? Is it like “owning” a game after the company shuts down the servers?

I’ve heard the same but I think the question is “is autopilot worth basing your entire car purchase around it?” and “will competitors be able to replicate Tesla’s success?”.

If autopilot is basically the only thing Tesla has going for it then they’ve got a risky path ahead of them.

It's actually easy. The media would love to print stories about robotaxis having chaotic accidents, so you can trust that you will hear about it if that starts happening.

You might be waiting a while, though... If it's not happening now, it's unlikely to ever happen.

I have it. It is shockingly good but not as good as a person. And anything below 100% is dangerous.

For instance, how it detects pedestrians. Ive had instances where someone is looking to cross, the FSD either ignores them completely or it slows down a little, baits them into going forward, then resumes running them over. It detects car to car problems very well but doesn’t try to interpret pedestrian’s intent outside of the actual road.

I, and many others, could never go back to a vehicle that doesn't have this level of self-driving. It really is such an improvement it's crazy how little people who haven't experienced it understand.

I was under the impression there were teleoperators for their taxi fleet: https://electrek.co/2025/05/16/tesla-robotaxi-fleet-powered-...

Do you ever see any legacy American car companies getting close to what Tesla can do, even with a 10yr timeline?

If he had delivered Neuralink alone, the hype would be valid. Doing that...plus SpaceX, Tesla, Boring, etc.

The biggest knock on him is that he says something will happen at a certain time and then it comes later. Even the sub-$30k EV. Cybercabs cost < $30k.

> a whole bunch of institutional investors are privately thinking these companies are way too risky

What's that saying? "In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone"?

Democrats abandoned the environment in lieu of this weird obsession with socialism- starting with the unions. First, Tesla was repeatedly snubbed when the Biden administration poured billions into every other car company to make them produce EVs- gleefully declaring GMC of all companies to be the Leader of EVs. Then, the COVID situation where the local staff member in government made it illegal for Tesla, and only Tesla, to continue operating. That's when Elon finally got the message that the Democratic party had abandoned him, and cared more about raising money than any kind of environment or progress. He then went on twitter, called it out, and then the entire democratic party reformed under the banner of Anti-Elon (since the whole trans and immigrant stuff was settling down a bit too much to encourage passion).

It's hilarious to me when Democrats crash out over Elon's reliance on EV credits, as though acting on the incentives they created was a moral failure on his part.

This is the most realistic scenario. Hide the stock losses by folding it into SpaceX. Dare the US government to nationalize it. Walk away a “business martyr”.

Lol what ashes? Tesla has the best selling vehicle in America, only faces real competition from Google and China.

And subsidies in California, which he hates, are responsible for an outsized part of sales.

The weird contradiction of musk is that his name is what’s propping up most of his companies/projects but his proximity to his companies is also a threat to them.

Did it fly?

> European sales are going through the roof

A side effect of Trump's war with Iran is that every country which doesn't have sufficient domestic oil production, which is most countries especially in Europe, has accelerated their EV transition. Buyers are grabbing every EV they can get their hands on, and yes Tesla are the leader there.

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-electric-car-registratio...

"Tesla (TSLA.O), led the UK BEV market year-to-date, with registrations up 25.4% from a year earlier and a 9.53% market share South Korea's Kia (000270.KS), and China's BYD (002594.SZ), continued to compete for second place, with market shares of 6.9% and 6.8%, respectively"

The Kia model breakdown: https://www.kiapressoffice.com/releases/1975 (mostly Niro, now withdrawn, then EV6)

If something is growing 20% a week, it should see more than 1,000,000% growth after 1 year. I call bullshit on this one.

> Model Y is the best selling car (of any type) in the planet.

Depends on the year. It and the RAV4 switch places now and then.

> European sales are going through the roof, they are doubling production.

Only when compared to their recent record lows... the broader trend is still downwards. This is disingenuous. They are losing ground to other manufacturers in Europe

Also the Teslas that Europe is buying are made in China not the US.

The countries where EVs are increasing the most are those that have access to Chinese EVs.

> Hundreds of Cybercabs are driving around cities right now with no steering wheel or pedal making money and growing 20% a week

Huh? The cybercab with no steering wheel is only operating in Austin, in tiny premapped areas. There are 45 registered in Texas, and they have only been operating since September.

This isn’t Twitter, you’re generally expected to at least attempt to provide factual information here.

https://www.fox7austin.com/news/tesla-launches-cybercab-aust...

“Printing money hand over fist” is an interesting way to frame the dramatic drop in their margin on every vehicle sold.

Not sure what numbers you are looking at but Tesla vehicle sales peaked in 2023 and have been falling every year since then. The "sales going through the roof" narrative exists on Twitter, not their balance sheet.

Poe's Law is still in effect. You have to add an /s at the end.

It's still week 1 and we're already in full on persecuted mode?

https://bestsellingcarsblog.com/2026/10/finland-september-20...

Seems like your conclusions are wrong

Nailed it. I considered buying a truck for years, but the minivan has everything I want out of a vehicle. I'm so glad we got one. It's strictly better for hauling dimensional or ply, strictly better for long road trips, for gas mileage, etc. It even tows more than my jeep did, but not as much as a full size pickup. and it has a really nice reconfigurable roof rack, so adding a trip carrier on top is simple. Add to that the optional bench in back, the built in vacuum, the built in TV + entertainment, the full length moonroof, on and on.

It's a luxury vehicle that beats SUVs hands down, and most functions of urban trucks as well.

It just gets soccer mom vibes, so it's not $120,000

> The bed was not large enough to readily hold full sheets of plywood

Many trucks are sold as not much more than vehicles to haul around some plants. But, what I would consider 'real' trucks tend to have 8' beds. My old Toyota Tundra was great at towing, had an 8' bed and was generally an all around great vehicle. It was long, but it was meant to be.

This is why I don't get trucks with tiny beds. I've had a few Chevy 1500's and those were great with the full length bed. I've got a 2nd generation Tacoma with its longer bed, and its just on the edge of too small for some things.

I see people with trucks with 4ft beds (like the weird Jeep thing) and they just seem useless. Gimme an 8ft bed, ideally a bit longer! I don't need a big cab, but I have a truck to be a truck!

(Really, my 2nd gen Toyota Tacoma is pretty close to perfect 95% of the time for me, especially with a cap on the back)

Sheet goods fit in my truck, but I don’t want to load/unload them to that height. The bed is mostly good for dirty stuff I don’t want in the interior of any vehicle. Muddy boots, bags of concrete, kids sports gear, etc. for sheet goods and bigger heavy stuff I have a trailer and the truck the towing capacity for most needs. Occasionally I still need a heavy duty and just rent it.

The Tahoe I had last was a great as I keep tools and what dry in the truck. It only had 2 rows of seating and I don’t need more passenger space in my vehicle. My wife has the city vehicle SUV that we keep clean and use for passengers. Mine is the work / utility vehicle.

When I replaced it recently , the same trim level cost twice as much as a Silverado. And they all have 3 rows now, which means I lose most that space.

It’s all about trade offs. No vehicle is a perfect all rounder. I’d prefer the Tahoe but didn’t want to pay extra for it and have to yank out the 3rd row. I could own a Corolla but it would be overly inconvenient, and probably more expensive over time, to rent a larger vehicle every time I need it.

I'm not a car guy, buy there's a car podcast I really like where the host often tells people that even though they think they want a truck or an SUV, they probably need a minivan or a station wagon.

Sports cars are for the track, trucks are for hauling, and most drivers don't need either.

I always encourage people to consider a two door if they're planning to use the truck for utility purposes.

I picked up a 70k mile 2011 Silverado from an Ontario government auction for $3000 and it's worked great. Tows my boat, carries my dirt bikes, and has enough room in the cab for me, my partner, and my dog between us. Who needs a backseat!

I think a lot of the F-150s failure comes down to dealers. You can read myriad stories in the EV subreddits of dealers putting "market adjustments" on the Lightning and Mach-E of tens of thousands of dollars. It was if they didn't want them to sell, and I think we all know why (lower revenue from regular maintenance like oil changes and other fluids).

That’s a hard comparison point though when the ICE F-150 was the perfect substitute it was competing against. To me, that mostly proves that people didn’t want to go electric or pay the premium for it. The F150 design itself, does fit the bill as a truck doing what a truck needs to do.

I also bought a new Chevy truck recently for less than $40k USD, mid tier trim. Other trucks can be very affordable. The trim and budget options are quite wide. Tesla was never going to get to that as it requires volume.

No idea why it "failed" or was discontinued. From what i remember there was a huge waitlist to get one. I know lots of people that wanted on. It looked amazing IMO. I dont think it was a demand issue that caused it to be canceled

The Lightning didn't really fail. It was the best selling EV pickup in the US by a large margin.

I think it was killed for political reasons: They repurposed the plant for AI datacenter batteries. I predict we'll have EV pickup trucks again if the 2028 election looks like the 2026 election.

Anyway, my next full sized pickup will also be a pure EV. If I can't get a Ford, then I'll get something else. (The lightning is far better at truck stuff than our late model GMC and Ram trucks were. Maybe I can get a truck from China + register in Mexico? Is that a thing?)

The new Lightning has a useless serial hybrid setup and gets 700 miles of range (who needs that?). I suspect it'll end up being like other serial hybrids, and an option to omit the gas engine will be available, and also substantially lower the price (or enable a larger battery). In the meantime, they'll tell Trump that he managed to kill EV pickup trucks.

I don't know, seems like there was a lot of demand for the Lightning, still not sure why Ford canned it.

If:

Fuel economy regulations had not been suspended and the electric vehicle credits hadn't expired I'll bet there would still be a Lightning.

Unlike the CyberTrash. The question (to me) is did Ford make a semi-rational short-term financial decision at the expense of its future competitiveness?

And there has been 31% cumulative inflation since the cybertruck launched, so perhaps I should have said if it had been a $49,000 truck. But either way, it’s clearly a luxury vehicle that was disproportionately affected by interest rates.

Do you know what the median price is?

No longer...

That's taking into account farm purchases though, which have a unique shape of "a new truck at any price" in good years zeroing out profits.

I think median, agriculture-excluded would be more representative.

Granted, that's still pushed up by loaded in-town trophy trucks without a spot of mud on them.

I thought their announcement coincided with the Lightning announcement and likely threw a cheap price out there to undermine it.

Yeah, but those ppl want trucks, not an EV "truck"

Worst thing Musk did in context of Tesla is to alienate core demographics for EVs with his politics.

> expectations were tepid to begin with

Tesla projected selling 250k of these a year or $15-20b in revenue per year (20%+ of vehicle revenue for Tesla). This is a big number and would’ve added significant total vehicle sales. Instead, they’ve sold less than 70,000 total trucks over its production history. That’s why it’s a rounding error.

This is an absolute disaster and failure by any rational analysis. Its failure helped puncture “Tesla sales will continue to increase” and stock price justification storyline.

> It is not as big of a deal as people have made it out to be.

No more of a big deal than any other $2 billion loss.

> They started out when manufacturers made “alternative” vehicles look weird to set them apart. The Prius is the classic example.

The 1st gen Prius (97-01) looked utterly conventional though, just like a slightly taller Yaris due to the batteries. It was the second generation onward that looked "weird", I think due to aerodynamicsmaxxing.

> (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.

> It didn't fail

Tesla forecasted selling 250,000 trucks per year by 2025

Actual sales

2024 - 38,965

2025 - 20,237

2026 to date - 11,586

This includes trucks that have been “sold” to other Musk companies.

This product was a complete failure, making the Ford Edsel look like a roaring success

The Model S was released when Tesla had sold a grand total of around 2,500 cars. It sustained the company for years and did most of the work bootstrapping them from tiny niche to a mass market car with the Model 3.

The Cybertruck was released when the company was selling millions of cars a year. It did pretty much nothing for their bottom line, didn’t break them into any new markers, and fell far short of expectations.

> Some people hated DeLorean too, which just made it even more popular as well ..

They sold 9,000 DeLorean's _total_. It was a punchline in Back to the Future, it wasn't seen as cool at all.

> Some people hated DeLorean too, which just made it even more popular as well

If you see CyberTrucks and DeLoreans as successful, I'd hate to see what you call a failure.

Yeah I'm another who actually likes the rough idea of the aesthetics.

A sedan built by another company with similar aesthetics without completely ignoring...well basically everything from safety to build quality, would probably be on my potential list.

Also the things are built like utter shit. The panels come unglued, they rust in the rain, the engine, suspension and steering malfunction, the trim cracks, they leak, they burst into flames, then the door handles don't work when your Cybertruck bursts into flames.

I have to assume that politics or sunk cost are the only reasons people keep these things because they are objectively awful vehicles.

Hating the cybertruck might be tribal for some people, but definitely not everyone. I thought it was stupid and ugly from the moment it was announced, and I still think it's stupid and ugly, and it is demonstrably bad at the job of "being a truck".

You can celebrate Tesla for trying something new while still hating the actual thing that they tried for being bad.

I have an electric Hyundai and you can disable all internet connectivity fairly easily. I have mine disabled and the car works fine. It never connects to any internet connection. I suspect that most other modern cars are similar. The firmware is closed source, but it works fine. It supports CarPlay and Android Auto, which are effectively open standards, so you can replace the infotainment system with whatever you want. This is standard for modern cars.

America is the only country where buying private data is legal so this is a flawed idea. Ford would definitely spy on you for those adbucks.

Heard of Slate Auto? Full electric, simple, no cellular modem at all, hand-crank windows.

IDK. Grok bot works with Tesla’s grok so today I learned I can just ask how’s my house is doing. It responded how much solar I’m making vs consuming, hows batteries are doing, is garage door open and flagged that my heatpump water heater is off (i shut it earlier because it can get little loud).

Yes you can sort of get there with Siri and HomeKit, bug nowhere close to sophistication.

Yes please. Make it a selling point and people will buy it.

Software is everything when it comes to EV's. As an American, I've had many years of experience with software from around the world. No one makes software more suited for Americans, than other Americans.

How well does the self driving work over there? That's the real innovation and personally it seems to work well enough in America so I'm curious what your experience is with that.

China is bringing their more expensive cars first to make money once the market gets saturated then we might see more domination as they try to compete for more market share

I read this as 2 phrases

“I agree with Elon now”

Meaning now I agree, and

“that SpaceX and Tesla are the 'same' company”

With ‘same’ in quotes meaning they are not literally the same but conceptually they are the same.

FTR I do not agree they are the ‘same’ company and I think the circular relationships between Musk’s companies is kind of like a shell game.

They are still distinct public companies and they want to merge them. And even today the amount of cross mingling between those two entities however is quite significant. You would not necessarily know that they are independent from each other.

The roadster uses Space X propulsion tech, the cybercab uses starlink, grok is in all Tesla cars, both companies share Terafab. But then Tesla also supplies batteries and cybertrucks to Space X etc.

They might be confusing X, which is a subsidiary of SpaceX. The IPO was just a vehicle to pay off X’s debt.

There is a rumor going around that Musk is going to merge the two in December before the Democrats take power.

Wow, I'd forgotten about these. Thanks.

Nobody expects an impressive 1/4 mile time from a vehicle towing a trailer. That's not what makes EVs bad at towing.

My towing-capable gas vehicle sees at worst a 30% decrease in range from towing my camping trailer, and my towing-capable diesel vehicle sees closer to a 10% decrease in range.

A while back, I read a comment on here from someone who lived in a trailer full-time as a digital nomad. They were also dedicated to driving an EV. They towed their small trailer with their Model Y. I grant you, the Model Y is not optimized for towing the way that the Cybertruck (ostensibly) is, but they described the process of travelling between Grand Junction, Colorado, and Moab, Utah, a distance just over 110 miles. With the trailer, they had to drive to Cisco, about halfway in between, drop the trailer, drive back to Grand Junction, recharge fully, drive back again, pick up the trailer, and drive the remaining 60 or so miles to Moab, where they could recharge again. Because without the trailer, they could drive the entire 1-way distance 3 times over without recharging. With the trailer, they could not make the whole trip once.

It is reductive to say it is terrible. The issue is that the current range we are putting in trucks, adjusted for the range loss from towing a large trailer, is insufficient.

The Tesla Semi proves that this is the issue: with an extremely large battery and high-speed charging, the Semi solves these problems.

A regular truck that can TOW 300 miles would certainly not be "terrible for towing."

They provided a concrete example: Trying to charge when a trailer is attached.

> As I understand, electric motors deliver instant maximum torque. Isn't that advantageous for towing?

Your understanding is not wrong, but quantity of torque is a minor piece of what matters, so that doesn't move the needle.

Towing lowers the range of an EV by so much that it becomes nearly useless. This is much more important with an EV than an ICE, because EV charging is less available and takes much longer.

It's understandable that you might not fully understand the magnitude of the pros and cons from your LLM prompt, those sorts of responses usually assume certain levels of experience and familiarity with the topic. It'll make more sense when you get older!

The downside of electric motors for towing is that they require electricity.

And towing requires a lot of electricity. How do you bring enough electrons?

I think it matters. There are lots of people who have a camper or a boat or some ATVs or whatever. Maybe they only take the camper out once or twice a year, and so you never see it hooked up. However, on that one week per year, they do need it to be able to tow.

Gas/Diesel trucks lose range when towing too, but dealing with a shorter range gas truck isn't too big of a problem on a trip beyond the extra cost. Gas stations are everywhere and it takes 5 minutes to fill up. At most gas stations, filling up while towing a trailer isn't too big of a problem. Even if your truck only had a 150 mile range while towing, it would only be a minor annoyance, and the reality is that you'll probably get at least 250 miles out of a tank.

If you're towing with an electric though, you probably are looking at less than 150 miles. Now every couple of hours you have to stop for probably an hour or so, even with a fast charger, because you're probably going to want to charge the truck to full, not 80%. You're also probably driving somewhat out of your way to hit charging stations that frequently if you're not in a very populated area.

Make it make sense. A silverado Turbomax can tow 12k and the bed can handle cargo up to 2500lbs and it's around 45k and a cybertruck easy 85k. Don't get me wrong some of what I said was opinionated.

I explained this in my other comment but I'll paste it here:

The thing is that ICE vehicles are so inefficient to begin with, but a towed trailer needs the same amount of energy regardless of what is towing it. Imagine a trailer takes 1 unit of energy to move, and ICE truck takes 5 units to move itself, and EV truck takes 1 unit to move itself.

The ICE truck towing it would go from 5 units to 6 units, reducing the range by 16%.

The EV truck would now go from 1 unit to 2 units, reducing the range by 50%.

So the better your efficiency, the worse you are at towing. Ideally EV trucks would have such a huge battery that even when the range is reduced by 50%, it is still as long as a gas truck's range, but modern battery technology is still too sucky to achieve this.

The charging port is on the rear of the Cybertruck, which means if you have a trailer attached, you would have to find a charger with a long enough cable, or one that lets you pull all the way through.

If the charging port were on the front of the vehicle, you could pull straight in, but now your trailer is probably blocking traffic.

Of course you could disconnect and reconnect the trailer, which adds an extra 5-10 extra minutes to your 15-40 minute charge time depending on your battery level.

Aging Wheels on YouTube basically concluded that EV towing from a handling perspective is actually quite superior, but the charging and range is so much worse that depending on what you're doing it's likely a dealbreaker.

How do I pull into a charging station when I'm towing a camper?

Range is cut in half for starters.

I mean the synergy is there to do some amazing stuff with vehicles.

It'll likely be both

Range is the problem, of course.

5,000 lbs is not some kind of grand feat.

A 3.6L V6 can do that easily and they are dime a dozen.

That’s wild, I’ve never heard that. And to be clear my issue was not that I’m a perma Elon hater, it was Isaacson’s total impartiality to this biography and seeming desire to get swept up in the bubble which has at least in part been debunked.

I’ve heard that before but all searches come up completely blank, unsurprisingly

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.

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

No more flat primer gray cars.

That’s a platform we can all get behind.

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.

Isn't that kind of the dream of Slate? I reserved two, btw, hard agree.

I think you're about to get something similar with the Ford Fathom.

Who wouldn't?

If you build it, they will come.

The pickup in the US is a staple of the plumber, roofer and other tradesmen, and as you say; this use case as a tradesman’s tool is broadly filled by the panel van in Europe.

To some extent you even see this in New York too. Certainly there’s a need for these vehicles in rural areas where road conditions may be poor or absent altogether and the work needs done regardless.

The cybertruck on the other hand isn’t a work vehicle, it’s bought by the same people who buy the super kitted out models and who have no interest in using it for work, let alone taking the thing off road.

Ultimately I think of it as the modern Delorean, but I don’t think it will engender the same level of good will when it ages out and becomes less common due to the increasingly negative profile of Musk and his connections to the politics in which the vehicle was created.

If their range was better this would be my next vehicle purchase…

It looks so smol IRL

I feel like this is less true nowadays. Or at least, less of a concern.

I have a Rivian and my 400mi range gets cut significantly (down to 200 or 300, depending on the trip) when I have 7k lbs on the back, but never enough to stop me from towing. And with good charging in the area, it's a non issue. And waaaaayyyyy cheaper than diesel.

Maybe if I was towing daily, I'd feel different. Your mileage may vary. (Couldn't resist the closer!)

Edit: btw instant torque is a game changer. You can't beat an EV on that front

I used to think this way, but it turns out that EV trucks hold up on range better than one would expect thanks to regenerative breaking. The added weight of cargo requires more energy to get up to speed, but you get most of that back when breaking, so it's not lost energy. Meanwhile, a gas or diesel truck's range plummets when hauling since all the energy used to accelerate the load is lost in breaking. I'm not saying that EV hauling is perfect or a solved problem, but that the trades offs aren't as intuitive as they might seem.

You should watch this video - aero dominates vs weight (factors very little), especially with strong regen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmKf8smvGsA

> A truck that can't haul is just for show.

I borrow my brother’s truck all the time to transport various DIY supplies. I could probably get a roof rack for my car for things like plywood and drywall, but borrowing the truck is easier.

Are you from 2010?

My EV has 470PS, it can hauul plenty heavy for long range. Weights 2.2 tons.

Even the Ford F-150 Lightning was already able to pull 4.5t and has a range of 300 miles.

First, the intended customers of the Cybertruck don’t need to haul anything; it’s a lifestyle vehicle. Second, EVs have solved the torque problem.

A huge fraction of the truck owners barely (if ever) haul anything, so that's not a dealbreaker for an EV truck.

It just has to look manly and rugged, any actual offroad or hauling capabilities are at best a nice-to-have.

Some gas engines have low end torque, big block V8s and anything turbo. But yeah if hauling uphill is your thing diesel is a no brainer. It would be great if our half ton and midsize trucks had diesel options but as usual other countries have better options.

Personally I'm going hybrid truck next time. The advantages of electric (torque, 240V inverter) with the flexibility of gas. Payload is lower but I'm hoping they fix that by the time I need a new truck

As a pedestrian a tesla is the least likely vehicle to actually hit you.

The best collision is no collision.

Some of us just got one because it’s a fantastic self driving electric family car. I have a family and live somewhere nice, life’s too short to get so wound up about politics. And you’ll still be seeing them on the roads for many years to come :)

Probably every third car in my area is a Tesla.

The drivers are like 98% East Asian or Indian. Like half the cars have a "new driver" or "baby on board" sticker.

Teslas are unpopular in rural areas.

So ironically I think the ideologues (on either side) are the only people NOT buying Teslas.

> ideologues committed to the vision of a man responsible for millions of unnecessary deaths

Utterly insane take. Your media sources have filled your mind with poison.

I own one. I hate Elon and everything that he has become. I wanted an EV truck that can drive itself on my road trips.

I hope you find peace and a better use of your time

You sound very ideologue yourself.

Either missing /s or you’re one of those “terminally online” people that the interwebs keeps telling me about.

This is nothing but comic villain energy. Sorry for whatever happened to you.

Emotions from both ends of a spectrum are positive indicators of future's collection value.

Clearly this behavior is not original, but taught. Kids don't "boo" things out of nowhere. They are indifferent as hell to things on their own sure, but not a CB ...

Very clearly behavior introduced and encouraged by the parents, driven by politics, and not the merits of the object itself. Though it is an interesting commentary on the extreme, enforced conformity and politicization-of-everything we see in the world today.

Old enough to be haters, I guess.

Mostly I've seen younger kids love it. I was at the park and a little girl saw a Cybertruck pull up -- "Look, Dad, it's from the future!"

I think Cybertruck is probably ultimately a failure, but the amount of hate it gets when they are at least trying to push things outside of the normal makes me sad. The amount of negativity towards anything new that's not perfect is insane.

Doubt you had anything to do with that

I’m an ultra lib, despise Elon, hope he faces a jury of peers to answer for all he has done, but this seems like learned behavior. My toddler son thinks they look really good (wife and I think they look atrocious and our anti-Elon bias doesn’t help).

>My kids, and any friends of theirs riding with us, will boo whenever they see them on the road

Because adults around them groomed them for those actions. Kids don't just start booing at objects out of the blue, they parrot the learned behavior of the adults around them.

You know what else you don't see with Ferraris? People lining up to spit on them.

https://youtu.be/L3oO510dyVI

I think this is exactly it. They are different and unlike anything else on the road.

s/cocaine/ketamine/

It certainly could, but likely very Ship of Theseus'd. I feel like enough of the parts are DRM'd hard by Tesla you'd need to Frankenstein the thing to do it.

Definitely not, not only is the De Lorean a cooler car (by far) it wouldn't even be a collectors item if it wasn't in one of the most popular movies ever made. The cybertruck has the exact opposite associations, instead of being in a cool movie it's the pet project of one of the most hated humans alive.

I mean the 4680 cells are used in the model Y and the pack assembly isn't that complicated. I don't expect it to be financially ruinous to replace over time.

I can’t imagine why not. EV’s are generally more reliable than gas/diesel vehicles, and Tesla makes the most reliable EV’s.

I think if you were to compare the cybertruck with other things kids like, you'd see that it looks like a hot pile of garbage. There's nothing about it that would attract a kid, it looks like a refrigerator.

I've never met or known a person IRL who cares about Tesla's ownership. I know people who hate Teslas cause they drive in the carpool lane or because they had bad experiences owning one, that's about it.

I suspect you influenced them to feel this way.

Same. Mine like calling out "cyber-yuck!"

Yeah. The kids I coach (1st-4th grade) generally call them 'stupidtrucks'.

My toddler saw one and got really excited "Look, Mama, a barn is driving!"

yeah, my kids will call out, look another "Cyberbarf"

I own a exotic car for the same reason I own mechanical watches. I love the engineering and craftsmanship. (But yes, I had several Lamborghini posters growing up) ;-)

The Harley example is ironic because little boys are exactly the ones to find that cool

That's an interesting take on other people's property.

You want people who spent monies on an item they like, to suffer, and incur loss.

That is not very humane of you. No kindness there.

And Delorean did that 40 years earlier.

Its made from hard steel, which is much harder to scratch and damage than ordinary car paint (or indeed ordinary car bodies, which are made of softer steel).

And you can do that without even being near the vehicle, because the panels fall off.

It’s staggering how much money they wasted because Musk didn’t want to listen to real experts. It was years late because stainless steel is so much harder to work with, especially when it has so many complicated geometries, and every one of those delays was a chance for him to say “maybe the people I hired for their expertise know something I don’t” rather than “I’m the boss, make it work”.

They could’ve done something like the Slate truck a decade earlier.

I mean once you buy the tooling, it’s still probably cheaper to produce stainless steel trucks than paint normal steel. I agree on everything else though

At least it delivered on being bulletproof unless you shoot it.

Would be interesting to know how much the useless steel body detracts from the range compared to a lighter material.

Even more interesting would be how much the steel hurts the tons-to-orbit in the Starship.

They developed, at great cost, the process used for the cars with the giga press and the plastic. It would've been a fine process for an inexpensive truck.

Stainless steel is far harder to work than regular steel. There is no way that process was cheaper.

What happens if you scrape your fridge getting it into the kitchen?

You go to the DIY shop and buy a tin of white spray paint.

What happens if you scrape your brushed stainless fridge getting it into the kitchen?

Well, now you get to either live with it, or come up with some really clever ideas on polishing out the scratch and then sanding it back to disguise it with the rest of the surface which will never really look right.

Stainless would be standard on economy cars, and the Cybertruck would be painted so as not to look like a Ford Pinto.

The original design is what gave them millions of pre-orders, it was the reduction in range and increase in cost that made most people cancel those pre-orders.

Bending stainless steel requires special tooling and strategies to overcome its tendency to work harden and high springback.

The folded steel exoskeleton has no potential, it was a bad idea that was abandoned. It was always going to crack at the folds.

Paint has been well studied. We know how to do it really cheap and automated these days. Cheap is relative. I'm sure that we're talking tens of millions of dollars to get all the equipment needed. But on a scale of factory and for how long it will last, that's cheap.

Flat metal is more expensive than curved metal. Curved metal, you design the curves to help support the stress points: you can get by with thinner sheets. Flat metal requires thicker heavier more expensive sheets of sheet metal in order to be strong enough.

Curved metal also lets you design the whole thing to be more aerodynamic. which is an important consideration even with something as un-aerodynamic as a truck.

They built that truck backwards and upside down. The single-piece forged aluminum frame was basically impossible to repair and brittle. Typical truck frames flex, they're part of the suspension. For small accidents, the frame can be bent back. The CT would just crack, requiring extensive aluminum welding to fix which is waay harder than welding a steel frame.

I thought this is not relevant tbh.

Either you have a modern expensive car and insurance which knows how to handle it properly, or it doesn't matter anymore and you got to a cheap car doctor.

There were no flat panels. That was a sales pitch. In reality, a slight curve to a panel adds so much strength that it can be made considerably lighter/cheaper than a flat panel of sufficient strength. Flat panels also tend to dent inwards very easily, which is not a good look for a car. Then there is the issue of thermal expansion. A pre-bent bit of metal will expand in a predictable way. A dead-flat panel could buckle in multiple unexpected ways.

I had a jeep wrangler once. The window was "flat" but not if you looked at its reflection. There was an almost imperceptible but complex curve, no doubt for strength.

Repair will be easier and cheaper? :D

As the DeLorean community will tell you, repairing unfinished stainless steel to aesthetically pleasing levels is almost impossible.

Take a piece of tinfoil, crumple it, then try to uncrumple it to its factory finish.

Repairing painted bodywork is easy and cheap: hammer it to get a rough shape, apply fillers, then paint & polish to factory finish. Simple as.

how you repair steel panel and also make it look nice ?

...you don't. You replace it in whole. You can't use filler to mask small dents and paint over it, if you want it to look as before, you have to pretty much replace it.

Slate hasn’t made a single delivery yet, so in that sense it’s definitely the truck Cybertruck promised to be.

A “truck” that’s can’t haul, tow, or offroad is a very interesting product decision. Right up there with a two-person taxi.

It’s like they completely forgot the “what do people need” phase of product management.

There's a pattern here: when an Elon Project is successful, he jumps in with Elon innovations, like cyber truck. The next example that will follow this pattern is building a rocket that's too big for orbital payloads, but takes 22 refueling flights to get beyond orbit.

Why would Tesla make "cheap" ? That's not their customer base.

Cheap hackable electric work truck (I imagine chassis with basic cabin that you can expand in various ways, like the EU van options have like half a dozen chassis) would be great but it's not something Tesla ever wants to make

https://www.xkcd.com/37/

I'm curious to see how the Slate trucks work out: https://www.slate.auto/en

I know its not fashionable to have such pesky concerns as priority in US, but pedestrian safety was simply non-present, hence it was banned all over Europe. Not missing it here, not missing that fugly ego whim of a sick man at all.

> When the Cybertruck was first announced, Musk was still the darling of the left and progressive wealthy. It was daring and different and cool, and it was explicitly meant to be an experiment in making cars differently.

People still hated it when it was announced, the online discourse was largely negative surrounding it. I remember being in my tech office at the time and we were all talking about how bad it looked.

The Cybertruck announcement was a couple years after the Thai Rescue Divers "pedo" incident, which was the tipping point for many people (including on the left) to realize he wasn't actually the Tony Stark character he pretended to be and actually a pretty shitty person.

This was well into the Tesla flamethrower/short shorts/funding secured/etc period of $TSLA meme stockification. Also pushing Dogecoin/crypto.

He certainly wasn't the "darling of the left" by then. But you are correct that his image was significantly less tarnished by political meddling and later obsession with woke/trans/culture war of the day stuff.

He was the darling of the emerging meme stock day trader/gambler/WSB crowd which in broad strokes tends to anti-correlate with the "left".

Agreed. When it was first announced, I was kind of interested. I laughed at imagining it as a screenshot from an N64 game.

But it didn't live up to the selling points, it is very expensive, has design issues that weren't necessary for the aesthetic, and the company's owner turned out to be a really horrible person contributing meaningfully to changes in my country that are dangerous.

> Musk was still the darling of the left

I can assure you he was not.

This is rewriting of history. It was ridiculed even by the reddit shitlibs that hung on to Papa Elon's every word. Breaking the glass twice was a meme.

No he was not. Progressive left noticed who he is first, long before that point.

And positive first reactions to that car came only from Musk fans bubble. I was seeing people calling it ugly from basically a day 1.

Have you seen any of the videos where they push fake kids in front of Teslas versus other cars?

I don't think the safety argument holds up here when you're comparing Teslas with standard automobiles.

Exactly so.

It's a massive, gaudy symbol of unfathomable decadence, and every purchase was made to visibly support the passion project of the world's most influential white supremacist.

It's one thing for a vehicle to be "ugly," but this one stands for so much more.

Chinese vehicles are cheap because their manufacturing process is light years ahead.

People forget that Biden put the 100% tariffs on Chinese cars, not Trump.

It's a double whammy. We underfund public transportation so most people need a car.

We then add all types of strange protectionism around which cars can be sold.

No reason I shouldn't be able to order a new EV straight from Shenzhen.

Chinese EVs are not made with "slave labor"

Both look extremely cool to me but Elon's behaviour is the only reason I'll never buy a tesla. Even though the cybertruck looks awesome but it's impossible for me to be seen in this. I wouldn't be surprised if they'd used a cybertruck in a BTTF remake

The cultural element is the difference. It's a suburban vehicle who wants to pretend it's a truck, exactly like the pompous suburbanite assholes who want to pretend they are rugged alpha types just because they drive a truck they don't really need: both would fall apart in a minute when faced with real problems.

The Countach was just the usual Lamborghini luxury scam, and I say that as someone who grew up a few km from the factory. Nobody cared if it was kinda crap inside, because it existed just to look like a cool car. A truck is supposed to, y'know, be a truck.

Having seen both in person, a Countach actually looks cool. The Cybertruck looks like a shitty unused model from a PS1 game.

Just because something is "angular" doesn't mean it's in any way comparable to a Cybertruck.

You don't see how an angled polygonal shape sold in 1974 might be more loved than the same angled polygonal shape sold in 2020?

You realize style evolves right?

That style was futuristic in the 70s. It is not futuristic anymore. A lot has happened since the 70s to change what the future should look like.

Ironically, I am finding myself thinking that all the supposedly "bland" electric cars nowadays finally look like cars from the future, simply by being normal car looking, with very slight and subtle styling accents.

Because that's what a future car looks like: Roughly the same aerodynamic profile but with electric motors. That's literally what everyone wanted in the first place, as was Elon's thesis for Tesla as more than a niche car company.

The Cybertruck aesthetic is stupid because it is literally a middle finger to what people want, as Elon himself noted.

I don't get why people are so stuck on "But it looks different" as a good thing.

It's a car. Why are you so stuck on needing your car to stand out? Why is it a problem for you if cars look the same?

Less than 50,000 of them ever built. And didn't SpaceX and the DoD (thanks, DOGE) buy about 2-3,000 of those between them? (I think SpaceX bought a thousand).

You might see "a lot of them" because they stand out and are "memorable".

Used resale value is around $80,000.

A fugitive ice machine that escaped from Motel 6

There's someone near me who has one with a white wrap over it. I see it parked, and I thought:

"If Kenmore had the wherewithal to manufacture 4wd electric chest freezers...that's what they'd look like."

...but I'm not offended by it. I think that sort of whimsical craziness is all too often missing from modern durable goods, so I'm glad it got built.

I'm even happier that its existence upset mincing, peevish little eurotwee Conde-Nasty scribblequeefs like this Wired author. If it'd guarantee him leaping off of a tall pier, I'd pay MSRP for a Cybertruck.

Self-driving cars have fat-tailed risk.

Some outside factor might cause a signal failure, causing cascading destruction.

I assume you meant full self driving supervised, not actual full self driving.

"Safer than the average driver" is great if all the below-average drivers start buying Teslas. But if you're converting drivers on the other end of the spectrum then the roads become less safe overall.

Obviously it doesn't affect the electric vehicles but light trucks being excluded from CAFE def did a lot to acculturate americans to always buying a big car

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUV#1980s_to_1990s

No, the F150 has great sales numbers but this is mostly due to commercial/work use. And commercial buyers need trucks that can tow, haul, be fitted with large toolboxes, booms/cranes, winches, plows, etc. The F150 electric solved none of those problems.

Plenty of our cities predate cars. We were able to bulldoze walkable neighborhoods to build highways through them because of racism.

Big cars are certainly impractical in SF, but it's more due to parking than anything else :)

cough small dump trailer (<3000 GVWR). Can be pulled by a light SUV. No shoveling those wood chips. Depending on where the trash is going, no having to lift that a second time either. I've carried 25 sheets of 3/4 ply in mine (and unloaded them by myself, as the tilting bed meant I could tilt up a bit and easily slide them off)

I would suggest there are 4 kinds:

1. People who need them for work. 2. People who need to carry bulky loads 3. People who need to tow. 4. People who buy them for some form of self-expression.

The only real use case for electric trucks, imho, is construction site supervisors who do most around-town driving but may occasionally need to haul stuff. Their towing range is absolutely abysmal (F150 Lightning range dropped to about 90 miles when towing a moderate trailer!).

It's pretty economical. Towing about halves your range. So you're still paying quite a low gallons/mile equivalent. However, that decreased range is a killer. So it makes sense why you'd see them doing lighter duty local work like landscaping.

We recently had a guy drive 146 miles out of the cascades, to Oregon City, to get a replacement radiator for a Jeep after a trailside wreck. We don't know how to fix a Rivian when it breaks down, or where to get parts.

People who are towing a lot may like the idea of electric. However they need range, and EVs when towing don't deliver. It is too bad, I'd like a electric truck, but when I tow I'm trying to get someplace and EVs don't deliver.

It doesn't help that nearly all chargers are arranged such that I'd block important parts of the parking lot for half an hour if I was towing when I needed a charge, then I have a complex back out (where something is behind me that I need to avoid). Most gas stations are designed so my trailer might block a pump from someone else using it but otherwise I'm not in the way.

The standard F-150 uses gasoline, not diesel. Not that gas isn't expensive right now either.

Vehicle mass is a significant factor in collisions between vehicles because taking two thirds of the impact is a meaningful increase over taking half of it. Heavier vehicles are much more dangerous to lighter vehicles.

It's basically irrelevant in pedestrian collisions because the pedestrian is already taking ~95% of the impact even from a lighter car and the <5% difference between that and an arbitrarily heavier vehicle is completely dwarfed by any of the other variables like the speed of the collision. For a pedestrian it's better to get hit by a freight train at 35 MPH than a 3000 pound vehicle at 39 MPH.

You think cutting the weight of the truck is going to make it safer for pedestrians?

This is the silliest argument against the Cybertruck, IMO. Its forward visibility is significantly better than other full-sized trucks, yet people continue to bring up pedestrian safety every time the Cybertruck is mentioned.

Yeah something that fits below the large Rivian van. Something similar to the small Nissan work vans.

It’s a status symbol masquerading as a utility vehicle.

I think the Fathom will outsell the Slate 10 to 1 despite costing more, because U.S. buyers have adapted to "luxury" in every trim level of vehicle. I mean, yes base level Corollas still sell quite well (but these days even those have features you dreamt about in a luxury sedan not too many decades ago.)

The Slate represents an ideology that combines the nostalgia of what trucks used to be (especially the Ford Ranger) with a modern EV powertrain, but most people don't actually want the stripped down basic vehicle, even if their eyes light up over the idea.

Everything that's cheap will sell like hotcakes, but that doesn't mean the companies selling them will make much profit from them.

I have a slate preorder but it's a niche vehicle. It's a small 2 door 2wd pickup that can't meaningfully tow and has a 200 mi range.

It's not going to appeal to people who want a truck as a symptom of fragile insecurities around their masculinity and that's a biiiig part of the US truck market

Look at the F150 lightening to see the failure of electric trucks. Chevy, Dodge and Ford all have, and it shows. Chevy's electric Silverado has a lot more range because more people want a truck for towing than the 1% that hacker news claims, and so range became and issue. Ford and Dodge are instead looking at plug in hybrids for the future: use an engine when towing, and battery for acceleration and shorter trips.

Overpriced, not good at being a truck, eDong, yep.

It's also illegal to sell in EU because of how bad it is for pedestrian safety.

bad truck suggests it's bad at being truck not just... at everything related to transport

Hot take. Do doorbell cameras next

I would want one for $40k in Europe.

Well, if you're dreaming, instead of a cyber truck at 40K, wouldn't you want instead a Chauffeured Rolls-Royce and the Swedish bikini team to keep it maintained?

Worth clicking. Ton of people who actually want the cybertruck to continue. I can't believe there are still people who still didn't realize what colossal idiot Musk is.

Even if it was half the cost, say $40K rather than $80K, I think most people in the market for a vehicle would choose something else!

I wouldn’t be surprised if cost were the only reason its sales weren’t even lower. If it’s expensive it’s at least a plausible status symbol. At a reasonable price it’s just an incompetently designed utility vehicle.

Oh man, I was wondering if anyone was gonna bring up Slate.

I try not to get excited about stuff, but the idea of The Next Big Thing in Cars being a total lack of garbage nonsense screens and giving us back CRANK CRANK WINDOWS -- this is pure joy.

Wheels. Seats. Motor[1]. Box to keep rain off. Done.

Oh you attached a bed to that? Double awesome.

[1] Enough top end cruise speed for American interstates.

The Tacoma is more like the modern Hilux. I should've been more specific. The 1980s and 1990s Hilux weighed in at 1000-1200kg. Now it's 1700-2100kg. It's a lot bigger truck. Those 1980s and 1990s trucks were indestructible and so easy to service.

Now I get why the gas powered Hilux has changed. Emissions standards have changed. Fuel efficiency is more important. Modern cars are full of computers and microcontrollers. But an EV is relatively simple. It's one of the big advantages. Yes you have an OS and it's not just turning the ignition but the drive system itself is fairly simple, the thing that turns battery power into movement (compared to ICEs). No moving parts (in the engine), basically.

You could absolutely make a small EV utility truck. Remember that part of the reason why people were excited about the Cybertruck when it was announced was the price point (~$35k). Of course it turned out to be 3 times that.

Look at what BYD is doing [1]. Now these are PHEVs rather than pure EVs. Other automakers are making smaller pure EV trucks.

[1]: https://www.carscoops.com/2025/12/byd-new-compact-pickup-pro...

> A Tacoma is basically the US model of the Hilux.

This is a very common misconception Americans believe about the hilux. I’ve owned multiple generations of both on different continents.

The Tacoma is much heavier, but has a much lower payload rating. It has way less torque, and gets much worse fuel economy. The Tacoma only comes with a regular bed- no cab chassis, no tray back, etc.

The Tacoma is much more expensive. The Tacoma only exists in two countries. The hilux is one of only a few truly global vehicles.

One is a genuine work utility vehicle, one is a lifestyle vehicle.

They have never shared a frame, engine, transmission, axles or body panels.

They are not related, and are not similar.

Lots of people, based on the number of them I see on the road.

They've stopped swinging at the consumer market. I'd argue that they are swinging at other markets though (Cybercab and Optimus).

Hasn’t Musk been clear that he’s abandoning traditional passenger vehicles? He’s retooling for Cybercab and Optimus. Model Y and 3 are selling too well to abandon but there won’t be new models. We’d be lucky for refreshes.

The Y redesign to adopt more of the "Cyber" ethos is such a mistake. It won't age well, but then again neither will the brand.

The DeLorean wasn't taken seriously when Back to the Future was released either... it looks like a cool car now, mostly because of the movie, but back then it was considered a joke of a car and the company went bankrupt less than two years after it began production.

Aw yes, I have it backwards, because I was thinking of the public.

And this strategy isnt Musks. Hes copying politicians and government. It's a very old strategy. Someone even wrote a song about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate_the_Positive

You've got to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive

E-lim-i-nate the negative

Latch on to the affirmative

Don't mess with Mr. In-Between

It's called Supervised Full Self Driving (FSD) and that is an accurate name given it controls every aspect of the vehicle's operation, only requiring the driver to pay attention as a supervisor. And, essentially, the same software and hardware available on a Model 3 and Model Y is present on the CyberCabs that are driving people around a few cities, now, without input mechanisms. Elon is a PoS, and it took a decade longer than he said, but the cars are driving themselves.

It was also mentioned in the Roadster presentation that the Roadster would be the only nonautonomous car produced by Tesla long-term.

It is cool, in terms of it doesn't care what people think and doesn't mind people hating it (like the parent post).

There's nothing wrong with nostalgia and the Cybertruck felt like it was from Hard Drivin' or 4D Sports Driving/Stunts.

The first Tesla was based on a Lotus Elise. It was stunningly good looking. It changed people's minds that an electric car had to look like a glorified golf cart.

Later cars from Tesla looked more generic but still like looked like regular cars.

The cybertruck seems like a throwback to the old electric cars that looked like something out of nerd's sketchbook.

Compared to other pickups on the road, he's not wrong. It wasn't a good design, but the competition isn't very fierce.

> Obviously you are not in the trades and don't know anyone in them.

Well bold of you to assume anything about me.

Where I am from:

- not a single trades person came to my place or anyone I know of - with a truck. It's either van or box truck all the time;

- only personal connection for legitimate truck use I know is electricity line repair, because of true off-road needs and often start-stop type of work;

Only trucks (ala F150) I've seen are emotional support trucks with 6L V8 gas guzzling engines taking 2 spaces in the parking lots and constantly jumping over curbs due to abysmal turning radius and their ridiculous size, that never have seen a spade in their bed.

> If I need to tow something even once every two years then I need to own a truck.

No you don't. Any conventional SUV/wagon can have a hitch and easily tow. How do you think half of Dutch or British tow their mobile homes every July on their summer holidays? It's not 5.7L small block V8 - that's for sure.

A government credit still means Tesla gets paid the full price from a sale. So yes, Tesla got government money.

But yes, those credits have been vanishing for a while.

In what way? That's a strained way to poke fun at someone just because.

"That's gold, Jerry. Gold."

A modern classic, thanks to Bob Zemeckis; without whom it would've been right up there with the Bricklin SV-1.

Setting aside JohnZ's personal failings, the car and its production was a catastrophe.

I don't see a reason why there isn't a market for a EV pickup truck. Maybe the American public simply isn't ready for it. Or the Lighting may have been too expensive compared to its ICE counterpart.

But the CyberTruck is just one man's doodle-after-an-acid-trip kind of design.

I'm actually talking about the people defending the reality of what was released.

It is now, but what if Cybercab demands eclipses it?

Also Model Y/3 battery/charging is ancient at this point. It hasn’t had any meaningful improvements for 8 years now.

Look up a Model Y’s charging curve it’s horrible. There are cars out there with much more consistent ones, 400 kW charging, much more range etc etc

Car companies have long been on a cycle for their vehicles. It varies but generally we could say every seven years they're going to do a major redesign of a car. So I think it's safe to say the Model Y and Model 3 won't be sold in seven years. The question is, in seven years, will they have a different model, loosely based on the current Model Y and Model 3, that carry those same names? Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe Tesla goes bankrupt and the cars aren't for sale. Maybe Tesla continues and the names exist.

how come waymo can buy Chinese cars but i cant?

> A people mover that moves the minimum of people (2)

You meant maximum? Though minimum would be fun, too: taxi won’t start unless you agree to socialize and chat with a random stranger. As soon as silence is detected it pulls over and the ride ends.

90% of taxi rides are 1 person 95% 2 so its based on, you know, business intelligence rather than your hot take which is anti Elon rhetoric like most of this thread or any for that matter here (keep thinking this is reddit)

You are right. I hadn't notice that.. Pick up truck category is different.

Even if one assumes all tesla trucks.. share of electric trucks in USA is 0.3%.

Tesla cyber truck sales are going down from 38k a year to 20k a year. The Chinese net sales of electric trucks is massively more than Tesla's production if you look at the data that I posted.

https://www.centraloregondaily.com/news/consumer/tesla-to-pu...