None of the CTs are available today, they're all at some unspecified point in 2024.
The cheapest CT is ostensibly available in 2025, but estimates from this company that far out are hilariously worthless.
A better estimate might be the cheapest Model 3, which the CEO promised to deliver in July, 2017, but actually delivered beginning February, 2019.
> same 250 mile range but AWD standard
That "(EST.)" next to the range is doing a lot of work!
Range estimates should be informed by the company's sordid history of inflating range-meter projections, creating a "Diversion Team" to cancel service appointments related to range issues, regulatory scrutiny and fines for misleading advertising about vehicle range, Edmunds finding that Tesla models often fail to meet their advertised ranges, etc.
> None of the CTs are available today, they're all at some unspecified point in 2024.
>> same 250 mile range but AWD standard
> That "(EST.)" next to the range is doing a lot of work!
You misread my comment. My statement about availability today and range of 250 miles refer to the F150, not the Cybertruck.
It’s a slower version of how computers felt back in the 90s to early 2000s. Ie as soon as bought it was quickly obsolete.
I'd like to nitpick "doing actual pickup truck work". The Lightning gets terrible mileage, to the tune of roughly 100 miles on a charge, while hauling which ICE trucks do not unless under immense load [1]. It comes standard at 7,700 lbs towing or if you pay extra 10,000 lbs. At a $50k+ price an F-150 Lightning is not even barely resembling a truck doing truck things.
For context, my Tacoma cost me $32k, has 6-7k lbs towing, and is much more compact. My point is neither the Cybertruck nor the Lightning are capable of doing truck things; they are rich peoples toys - which is fine until it's conflated with why people who use trucks buy them.
I would love to buy an all electric version of my Tacoma or maybe even a Tundra that for ICE price + $10k can do the same hauling and mileage. There is absolutely a market here, but the technology to do so has not showed up yet.
1: https://www.businessinsider.com/ford-f-150-lightning-range-t...
In cases where he has to haul more (eg. clearing out a huge amount of overgrown plants) he might rent a utility trailer to tow. Which the Lightning is also perfectly capable of handling.
For the truly heavy-duty job requiring several yards of rock, he’s going to pay someone with a dump truck to deliver it.
Since all of his clients, suppliers, and the dump are local, he’ll never need to tow anything 100 miles. This is the only edge case where he’d need to wait around at a charger during a job.
If there are used Lightnings for sale at a competitive price when we needs to replace his truck, he might buy one.
How easy is it to supercharge a F150 electric while towing a 20 foot trailer? The way I see most Tesla superchargers oriented, it seems like it would be a pain in the ass.
But also, depending on where landscaping jobs take you, you might be well out of range of a supercharger when you need it most. You might need to finish 5 jobs in an afternoon, and make 3 hauls to the dump and two stops at a supply store and then get to the other side of town as quickly as possible or lose a job. A gas car can be refilled in 3 minutes. You can get another 100 miles of range from 5 gallons, which you can even carry with you for emergencies.
The reason I bought a Tacoma was because I have six feet of bed area, ~7k lbs towing, and 4x4. The general utility of the truck meant it could tackle most things I needed to do.
Most superchargers have one stall oriented so that you can pull in to it (with the charger on the left side of the stall), with the rest of the stalls designed to be backed into.
?????????
My truck does 12l/100km highway without hailing, 30-35l/100km while hauling.
Ice trucks definitely feel it.
Real work gets done with utility vans or 15 year old trucks the size of a modern midsize suv.
Maybe it’s like with the Model S. First they have to prove it’s cool and remove all the excuses (too slow, too weak, not enough range), then they can scale down to the smaller more mass market options at lower price points.
Correct.
It's because of "...the fine print of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards adopted in 1975, Gerald Ford’s reluctant response to a crippling Middle East oil embargo that sent gas prices soaring. To protect American commerce, work trucks and light trucks were subject to less-strict CAFE standards than family sedans. Trucks are also exempt from the 1978 gas guzzler tax, which adds $1,000 to $7,700 to the price of sedans that get 22.5 or fewer miles to the gallon.
Those incentives encouraged American car manufacturers to double down on trucks. But the CAFE standards also had a more subtle and far-reaching effect: They pushed carmakers to broaden the definition of truck.
“'Cars and light trucks had two different standards. It became easier to meet the standard with trucks. So automobile manufacturers thought of ways to basically build trucks that are really cars, and that’s what generated the SUV,' said Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Christopher Knittel, who has spent much of his career tracing the unintended consequences of government fuel regulations."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/04/07/trucks-ou...
The correct answer would have been to increase the number of companies manufacturing vehicles, not passing laws that constrained a market and possibly lead to an overall decrease. Now we have a market that's almost entirely bound to congressional whim and mostly disconnected from consumer demand.
Agree 100%
>mostly disconnected from consumer demand
Disagree. Sedans are still around (Camry, Corolla, Civic, Accord), but consumers are voting with their wallets for crossovers. Ford killed the Focus and Fusion because they simply couldn't be sold for a profit since most people didn't get the high end models, and to be honest, I'm surprised Chevy still makes the Malibu. The Company Formerly Known As Chrysler doesn't even make a car anymore.
They stopped providing it as a model to the American market. It's based off a Ford platform, though, and other automakers are continuing to use that platform. The Focus also continues to be a model in European markets.
During the beginning of the pandemic there were also parts shortages. Many manufacturers stopped making their lower end vehicles and only produced the higher end ones with the limited parts they could get, because, they can convert those parts into higher profits.
I think these decisions are best viewed as the awful intersection of short term wall street thinking combined with latent and intentionally imperfect measures of consumer demand.
This is objectively true but it’s happening against three decades of marketing pushing SUVs hard and especially the messaging that if you drive a small car you’re putting your safety at risk. I think there’s an arm’s race here which is going to be hard to stop absent something causing gas prices to spike or a shift in insurance requirements.
Something kind of like this is already done with stickers for electric cars in many states: Doing that for every car is just extending the program. It won't happen though, because a lot of people would be angry to internalize the cost of their choices
But you're right that there's far too little choice in smartphones. They're all fragile thin big touch screens. In the early days, you had smartphones made out of steel with sliding keyboards. What happened to that?
Dodge Charger
Even the differences in height are often overplayed by making bad-faith comparisons: https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads...
The main difference is that nowadays, there are more factory and aftermarket configuration options available, and people have more money, so you see more people driving heavy-duty trucks with 35,000 lbs towing capacity, which have big engines and thus are rather beefy. But conversely, you also see more people buying small trucks with "stub-length" (4-5 ft) beds.
It's interesting that you don't really have a market of mini-pickups that are seen in Japan, but that's probably partly a matter of weird fuel efficiency regulations, of import restrictions, and cultural factors (few people in the US want to be seen riding anything golf-cart-sized, and it's not exactly a guy-only thing.)
Old ones can't be registered in all 50 states. New Hampshire will let you register one; Vermont is not as accommodating. They're also pretty pricey for a 25 year-old car.
Oh, and they top out at something like 50 mph. Which would be terrifying if you managed to keep your foot planted long enough to get up to that speed.
I've driven one that was a summer camp vehicle, and I'd love to have one, but I live on the wrong side of the Connecticut River :-(
Here’s the first article I found when I googled the issue. https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2012/10/how-cafe-killed-co...
Cars can be driven with a car driving license.
Trucks can be driven with a truck driving license, or CDL, or have to be registered by a company, or _whatever licensing requirement makes it perfectly feasible for people who need one for work but enough of a PITA that private individuals don't bother getting it_.
I live in an area where the Cybertruck is heavy enough that the annual registration fees will be 2-3x higher than a regular car. But then again, if you are a "farmer" then all the truck stuff becomes cheaper. You know that all the largest cities in the US are located in states (New York, California, Illinois, Texas) with huge agricultural areas. And they all have lots of laws to protect and help farmers.
That's only a part the reason. The more important half is that bigger vehicles, whether trucks or SUVs, have much higher profit margins.
> Qualifying businesses can claim a deduction of up to $28,900 when purchasing a new Tesla vehicle with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of at least 6,000 pounds. To qualify for the tax deduction, vehicles must be operated for legitimate business use >50% the time.
Of course it backfired so now 6500 pound SUVs (and even luxury sedans!) are easily acquired.
Wow.
Nobody wants 150mj range cars anymore because they suck for day to day use. 20-80% means you’re realistically getting 60% of that range usable. You better plug them in every single day otherwise you might have trouble.
Fuel regulations have been around for decades but trucks are getting bigger and bigger.
This really excites me. I had 2 Cybertruck reservations, I cancelled them and ordered an Aptera. I think this is what we really need: smaller car with efficiency in mind.
People own trucks because while trucks might not be particularly good at some things, they're also not particularly bad at them. If you need to move large or heavy items occasionally, it's really handy having a truck...and the thing is, it won't be bad at doing car things either.
To the specific example here, you also have the obvious missing part: people are having to drive from home to the parking lot, to catch the bus to the site. The failure is pretty obvious.
Pile onto that that most construction workers generally have to assume that they might need to use the truck for work sometime, and it's an obvious purchase: you can't afford two cars, but you can afford one slightly more expensive one that will be as good at everything you need as a smaller one.
People complain about trucks without even trying to understand where the motivation to own them comes from.
The Porsche getting ripped by the CT is also pretty cool IMO.
Also the onboard 220V is like a PTO on a tractor, expect many cool things from this apparent swiss army knife of a truck.
> Only 7.0% of truck buyers frequently use their trucks to tow. About 2% of people use their trucks to tow occasionally, while 63% of owners rarely or never tow.
> But at least 28% of owners frequently use their trucks for personal hauling, while 47% of owners occasionally haul. Nearly 32% of owners rarely or never haul personal items.
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/most-pickup-truck-owners-dont-a...
> Only 7.0% of truck buyers frequently use their trucks to tow. About 2% of people use their trucks to tow occasionally, while 63% of owners rarely or never tow.
So that's 72% not 100%.
> But at least 28% of owners frequently use their trucks for personal hauling, while 47% of owners occasionally haul. Nearly 32% of owners rarely or never haul personal items.
That accounts for 107% of truck owners.
The rest of the numbers seem to add up well enough though. Not sure if maybe I'm missing something or the author is.
Also, not all trucks are good for towing. Pick-ups/utes are notorious for yielding where the cab meets the chassis, right in front of the bed, because they're designed to take a load in the bed, not at the rear of the vehicle. We don't tow with our truck for that very reason.
Things trucks are particularly bad at: - Fuel efficiency - Safety (for pedestrians and everyone in smaller vehicles) - Noise
Any of these vehicles is easier to park (parallel especially) than my 2007 Acura TL personal vehicle. Good mirror design goes a long way.
Agree 100%. I have a Ford Ranger on order, and I am not a construction worker. I've already fielded some "hurr durr what do you need a truck for / it will never be on a construction site" comments. The thing is, even if I only need the adjustable roof rack for 5m lengths of timber, or the 3.5-ton towing capacity a few times a year, it's worth it for me. The common argument I hear is "just rent a truck when you need it" - do the people saying this have any idea how much of a PITA it is renting a vehicle vs using one you already own?
Construction and hauling aren't the only uses for a truck and without my Ranger my numerous moves would have been significantly more involved and annoying. Plus for road trips having the extra space over a car is more comfortable with the added benefit of the bed, which carries way more than a trunk.
I think the HN folks tend to forget about how spread out the US is and how many people drive for trips. Or maybe they've just forgot how to have fun. Btw the Ranger is great.
I drive a unibody suv with full time four wheel drive. It drives like a truck and has many of the same benefits and many of the drawbacks. It's a lexus gx470 if that helps. I have given trucks careful consideration and often observe how people use them when they are driven around loaded and unloaded in the city and on the highway. My brother owns a huge ram truck which I have driven. I am also a homeowner who has made more trips to the hardware store than I would like, including buying/replacing appliances, water heater, flooring, hauling heavy lumber to build a 100 foot fence using large ten foot 6x6 posts, installing sod, and so on. I have moved across country and back and up and down the state. So maybe there are people who complain without trying to understand, but I was not complaining, nor do I lack understanding.
But I think truck culture and ego is a very real thing and when someone jacks up their truck so they now need a step to get in and out, it ruins it. There are other modifications that also ruin its utility and that is some of what I had in mind when I made my comment about ego. Also, one can see in another comment here I compare and contrast truck ownership with van ownership.
Man, this comment got rather lengthy and if anyone actually read up to this point, appreciate it. Not hostile in any way, I just find the discussion around transportation very interesting as I grew up as a car enthusiast and I find myself always looking at optimization problems and trying to come up with improvements.
Smaller than an F150? Maybe it's because I live in the Bay Area where there's more money being thrown around but trucks of that size and larger seem to be common for trade workers.
I drive a Chevy Bolt EUV fwiw and love it.
And a number of construction jobs in our house were performed by a gentleman who arrived with a Vespa unless he specifically had to transport something sizeable.
This entire site is becoming more or less insufferable. Eternal September has nothing on the Reddit diaspora.
> This entire site is becoming more or less insufferable. Eternal September has nothing on the Reddit diaspora.
I don't see the link with the subject.
I don't know who this is supposed to belittle, but I've been on HN quite a bit longer than on Reddit.
Most trades workers don't need full-sized pickup trucks. They do need an 8 foot bed. An amazing number of full-sized pickups come with 6.5 foot beds by default, and cost extra for the 8 foot. They won't put 2 tons of gravel in there; they will put plywood sheets and lumber and power tools; boxes of nails and air compressors; the toolbox that they always want, the toolbox for this job, and the toolbox with backup tools that you lend to the guy who 'forgot' stuff. (Not the guy who 'loses' stuff.) None of that needs the big V8.
If you've got a 4 seat cab, you'll be asked to take a couple people out to the other site, but if you've got a 2 seater, maybe you don't get asked.
Four wheel drive and big wheels mean bad fuel economy. If you need them, there's something wrong because the mud is supposed to go on your boots, not your wheels. Your pickup is not an earthmover or a wrecker. One exception: if you've got a really big truck, you might get wintertime snow-plow jobs. They really aren't fun.
Source: neighbor is a contractor.
The one exception was the HVAC guy who had an old 90s-size pickup, which he liked due to the better mileage. He needed to fit bulky stuff, not massively heavy things.
If something medium - a van could tow.
On European highways it is common to see van like Mercedes sprinter full of goods and also towing a car carriage with something huge like WV Passat.
A small truck would not work for me though. And 3/4 plywood on a roof rack is just begging for an injury when I'm an hour or more from the hospital.
The three things are bed capacity, max bed weight load, and towing capacity.
Weight in bed can matter, but once you’re above a few thousand pounds, you need to consider getting a dump trailer. Max carrying load matters more for conversions (e.g. to ambulances, adding toolboxes, etc). Towing matters for moving lots of weight.
In the cheap 150/1500 ICE class, Ford wins these days on bed capacity (3000lbs), due to having aluminum frames. Ram wins at towing capacity (10,000lbs).
As much as I like dunking the cybertruck for its impractical bed and Musk’s shenanigans, it can tow 14,000lbs, making it best in class for quarter ton trucks (assuming you count it in the same class as the ford F150 lightning).
So, I’d like one for driving to and from our local rockery, except that using it for that will beat it to hell, and a used truck + nice EV sedan will cost less, be more fun to drive, and win on total CO2 emissions. The sedan uses much less electricity than the cybertruck, and would be driven many more miles than the truck. I’d only put a few tanks of diesel into the truck per year.
Eventually, the grid will be more decarbonized, and batteries won’t be scarce. At that point, the cybertruck would probably be a better choice for me.
Source: We bought a 1500 truck that is slightly too small for our use cases.
Has this claim been independently verified? If not, why trust it? And even if it's true, how far can it tow 14,000 lbs?
If you don't know why I'm asking, well...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/doj-subpoenas-te...
Work trucks should be making you as much money as possible while costing as little as possible, so as to increase your profits.
This one comes to mind: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/04/28/what-does-your-wo...
Four wheel drive is more necessary in specific climates (before the snow tire scolds come in, I run snow tires in the winter) and because an unloaded truck has a light rear end. Many trucks with 4wd can switch between 4wd and RWD. My truck has RWD, 4A (4 auto, aka AWD-ish), 4 high and 4 low as an option. I drive mostly in RWD unless I need power to all wheels for traction in snow and ice or when I am accelerating quickly off an incline (think uphill a dirt road onto blacktop where you have a blind corner) and then I drive in in 4A. I have needed 4 high and 4 low a handful of times. I have a "big v8" and get 21-22 MPG on the highway in RWD and and 18 or so around town. I drive heavy all-terain tires or my MPG would be better.
Anyone who uses a truck a lot will have a 150+
---
How many programmers do you see with MacBook Airs
> How many programmers do you see with MacBook Airs
The people working on some of the most complex projects of our times rely on compute that isn't available in a laptop, so they're perfectly fine taking an Air. I personally used an M1 Air for a couple of years.
The Maverick can tow 4,000 lbs - which is pretty prohibitive with a small bed and the weight of a trailer. You're better off getting a modern Tacoma, of which there is an entire subreddit of people who will gleefully show you they too can haul.
I mean, this isn't even hard to figure out: the F-150 is the best selling vehicle (not truck, but vehicle) in the U.S. for what, a decade or more?
https://www.ford.com/trucks/maverick/
It’s a Subaru with a truck bed
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaru_BRAT
Owned an '86. It was a riot.
Think auto shops shuttling parts around, or needing to toss dirty parts in the back of the truck without needing the hauling capacity.
And the current F150 is much bigger than one from 10 years ago, so even an older F150 would be smaller than the current monstrosities.
Take a 10-year old california pickup to anywhere with winter and people will be amazed.
Odd for me all my friends who farm or do construction own either the F150 or the equivalent dodge RAM truck.
The other trucks either don’t have cabs big enough to fit multiple workers or fit full sheets of drywall.
Now I’m in Canada, perhaps you’re European?
From what I've seen at local lumber yards, new F150s and Rams are the trucks that the boss usually drives, not the workers who are actually picking up the material. They are buying and driving cheapest truck that gets the job done. It's an F-150, it's an older one. A lot of Toyota Tacomas though.
> Now I’m in Canada, perhaps you’re European?
I'm in the US.
> The other trucks either don’t have cabs big enough to fit multiple workers or fit full sheets of drywall.
Large sheet goods either go on the lumber rack or if it's enough, is delivered on a delivery truck. Usually not in the bed. That's for tools, bags of material, etc.
Unless I'm reading Ford's website wrong, 4x4 is not included at the $50k price... but I'd be happy to be wrong because that would be good value.
It's a happy day for you. All F150 Lightnings come with AWD standard, including the basic one:
https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/f150-lightning/models/f150-...
They just want you to put down a deposit, and says "reserve" not "buy".
> So they collected at least $100MM of customer money based on completely made up pricing/specs. WTF.
Correct and correct. And not every manufacturer does this, by the way. The price/specs of the EV I pre-ordered (Volkswagen) did not change much by the time I purchased it.
I'd be extra pleased if the FTC issued a fine in conjunction with the above, for false advertising.
https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/31/11335272/tesla-model-3-an...
https://www.tesla.com/blog/35000-tesla-model-3-available-now
It's a shame they never made any significant improvements on the range. After degradation, the range on the i3 ends up pretty abysmal. The REx was a fun idea too and even let me take the car on multi-hundred mile road trips, without recharging, after coding the REx to one of the buttons in the car.
anecdotally, the lighting seems to be a pretty popular work truck. maybe not with independent tradespeople, but i've seen quite a few recently across BC and alberta in municipal government fleets. Parks Canada has a bunch, and BC ferries is using them to drive around their terminals. I'm assuming it's part of some government madate to electrify their fleets.
AWD is much less important on a truck than most people think. I spent my youth driving my family’s farm trucks around in the mud and driving large cattle trailers to auctions. No one in my family could afford a 4WD, but there was maybe one or two times ever that I felt like I needed it. Mostly it’s just huge cost and a large amount of weight and fuel economy lost for rural people to signal their high status.
I dont understand, there are millions of 5 door hatchback evs being sold at the moment, from all different manufacturers, its the most popular form factor for evs by far.
Can you actually buy it at that price?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38460281
I wonder if the price-gouge-EV-customers and complain-about-EV-subsidies groups overlap... Hmm.
It might be a "legacy dealers can't sell even good EVs because they don't know enough about them" issue though. Really hard to say, but that definitely would match my personal experience talking to a number of them.
They can make smaller EVs that are more popular than the larger and more luxurious vehicles, but they can't sell them as profitably as the larger vehicles.
I happen to own two Rivians (S & T), definitely dubious purchases.. but not compared to a Cybertruck!
Btw the Tesla graffiti font is extremely disappointing, completely illegible and not even cool looking. How did marketing sign off on this?
Edit: @LightBug LoL!
“Prototypes are easy, production is hard.”
For video cards they got to the point where average consumers could buy them and then that started the road to accelerator cards. Saying that people shouldn’t buy something is naive and disingenuous. People will buy things regardless of anything else.
FWIW, I just checked, and I can't find any Lightning base models for sale in my metro area. Are these actually available or is it just marketing? That kind of thing is routine in the auto industry, where dealers never seem to have the base model in stock ("But for just a little bit more, see what you get!").
Whether or not the weird-looking space truck succeeds or fails is yet to be seen, but I really don't think it will be on price. These numbers look very competitive to me. Tesla is slightly more expensive at the low end, but likely makes up for it with the supercharger network. Probably the make/break item is going to be the body styling, which we all suspected.
We don't actually know what the Cyberjoke's range will be. Given Tesla's history with range claims, there's no reason to trust the numbers on that website.
See: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-ba... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/08/angry-tesla-cust... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/doj-subpoenas-te...
Just read the article: >Tesla vehicles failed to accurately account for external factors impacting battery performance and vehicle range, leading to a gross overestimate of the vehicle's range.
So, Karens want tesla to account for a/c temperature preferences, rain, wind, snow on the road, and other factors. No other manufacturers do so.
You have an EPA range, and if you decide to speed 85 m/h while having a 10% charge, you will dramatically lose your range. It's the same with any car.
>Testing is done at EPA's NVFEL facility and by vehicle manufacturers at their own facilities. EPA audits the data provided by vehicle manufacturers and performs its own testing on some of the vehicles to confirm the results.
The only reason it is "estimated", they didn't finish EPA testing yet.
What?
> So, Karens want tesla to account for...
Tesla customers. People who paid $50,000+ for the privilege of owning a Tesla. Being dissatisfied with the performance of the car makes them "Karens"? Gee, I hope you guys remembered to formally excommunicate them from the Church of Musk.
Edit: Ah, I think I see the problem. Have you considered that the range is really important for a vehicle that can only be "refueled" either at home or at a handful of proprietary charging stations? Having a bad range estimate could really fuck up a road trip, especially before the charging network was built out to a reasonable density.
Nobody who's paid 50k for a car wants to limp to the next charger at 45 MPH with the windows rolled down (or worse, run out of power) because the manufacturer couldn't (or didn't want to) make a realistic range estimate.
EPA range is standardised. Any OTHER car other than tesla also loses range if you use the AC or drive fast.
This isn't some grand lie by Musk to sell cars, as you want to believe. The range is measured in a standardised way.
No, it's extremely common to be driving an F-150 or bigger in construction.
Of course, most of the buyers of either the Cybertruck or the F150 Lightning probably aren't getting much dirt under their fingernails. Everyone I know doing construction/trade work tends to drive much smaller pickups.
We need a lot more Chevy Bolts and electric buses, and a smaller electric pickup truck with 2 doors, but instead this is what we will get due to the cultural moment we are at, and because of who has the money to spend on new vehicles today.