The Cybertruck is coming from a leader with a history of hasty, half baked communication. If you think the Cybertruck will be out this year or exactly as pictured and specified... well I think that is extremely unlikely.

A production prototype doesn't even exist yet.

The Cybertruck is going to end up being a sales disaster after the initial sensationalism rapidly wears off. Sales will fade, it'll end up as a gimmick. Large numbers of consumers don't want to drive/use/own something that looks like that, they want something that looks like a normal truck.

Cybertruck is Musk's equivalent of the Mac G4 Cube ego mistake, except far worse. He understood that electric vehicles should look like existing conceptions of vehicles, things people can easily identify with as being vehicles they'd want to drive, but electric and maybe sexy + better in various boring functional ways. He abandoned that with the Cybertruck, and it'll bomb accordingly over time. Meanwhile Ford will sell a bazillion electric trucks, and humiliate Tesla's efforts in the space (in his inability to be humble, Musk will fall back on claiming Cybertruck is superior, even as it doesn't sell very well).

Tesla should have acquired Ford in a stock swap, left it an independent operating entity, and electrified their trucks; or acquired a huge minority position (in a stock swap) if the Ford family wouldn't go for a full acquisition. They should have done that years ago. They were too self-absorbed to see the obvious opportunity. The electrified trucks would be enormous profit centers. Now, instead, Tesla will almost entirely miss out on the zillion dollar electric truck market, which they could have had a big slice of. Tesla's only shot is to abandon Cybertruck and build a normal looking truck, which they won't do for several years until the pain from the embarrassment overwhelms Musk's ego problems (otherwise they'll just leave Cybertruck as a low volume trinket in their lineup, or abandon the space entirely).

I believe Tesla will sell the initial batch of trucks, with crazy futuristic styling, while improving their production scale at a high premium to the early adopters. Once they have the factories/scale setup, they will just re-skin them with a non-futuristic/conventional body and be able to mass produce (at Tesla levels) the trucks to the wider audience that F-150 owners would buy. And at a more reasonable price as well since they early adopters would have already paid the ramp-up cost. This is similar to the first launch of the high performance Tesla series and makes sense overall. I personally would love to have an electric F-150 for the reliability that they could have with the years of experience Ford has had in the market. Job site users would be all over this.

Cybertruck preorders have passed 650,000 units. While a lot are definitely just doing it for "fun" since it's refundable, it's still an insanely impressive number.

It's not impressive specifically because it won't follow through. There will be an initial sales surge (which will be very loudly touted), and it'll rapidly implode because it's a ridiculous vehicle that the masses of consumers will not want. The curiosity and gimmick of its look / design will implode very quickly, as is always the case and without exception when companies do things like that. It'll melt down to being a low volume sales space for Tesla, until or unless they do a normal or quasi-normal looking truck (and by that time they'll be running from behind).

I don't know but... I want a goddamn car that looks like it's from the future. Car companies always build the coolest looking prototypes then dress them down and make them ugly.

I have a pre-order Cybertruck and may or may not be in a position to buy one when they land in Australia (if they land at all) but man it's cool.

Think of the Lamborghini Countach [0], it was designed decades ago and it still looks like it's from outer space!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamborghini_Countach

EDIT: Saying that, if this new F150 came to Australia (or say an all electric Raptor) I'd probably go for the Ford. I currently drive a 2019 Hilux and it's a very handy do everything car, but the F150 is quite a lot larger and not really suited to the (very few) Australian cities.

I thought Tesla was primarily a battery company?

Tesla doesn't make batteries. Panasonic does.

Then why is it selling cars for a loss?

This same old story gets warmed up ever fucking time. With the Model S, with the Model 3. Its so fucking tiered.

Even at 20% conversion of preorders (and that is way lower Tesla usually gets) they have plent for the first 1-2 years of production and that is assuming that they don't get more orders (again as they did with ever other car).

This is just your personal taste and you have formed your opinion on that 100%. Not a single actual state about the Cybertruck or its release indicates anthing like what you suggest.

> humiliate Tesla's efforts in the space

Ford wins in a space Tesla doesn't have a product in. Wow. Amazing.

> Tesla should have acquired Ford in a stock swap

That you believe that shows how you have absolutely no understanding of the car market. That the worst possible idea.

> Tesla's only shot is to abandon Cybertruck and build a normal looking truck

Or you know if your outrage claims are actually true, they could build a 'normal' turck and the Cyberturck. Crazy that a company could produce two different trucks.

The battery availability is the fundamental constraint.