On the surface, it seems to take the wind out of their sails.

They told us the cybertruck was awesome.

They told us flying cars soon.

Now we see the fate of the first promise.

I would have delayed this announcement for as long as possible after the flying car show from a PR perspective.

Which makes me think this announcement is throwing a bone to the financial bean counters ahead of the potential merger with SpaceX.

Cleaning the companies books of fat before the big game.

And Model 3 and Y have always been 95%+ of the cars Tesla delivered.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/31x-4YJUBNE

Literally nothing Tesla promised is coming true.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...

I live in Europe, and here its not called Full Self Driving because regulators disagree with you that the car is driving itself. Therefore your original statement of "It's called Supervised Full Self Driving (FSD) and that is an accurate name given it controls every aspect of the vehicle's operation" is not true here at all.

If the US is happy with Elon lying about his cars abilities then thats on them. Not surprising really judging by the mess that is the USA in recent years.

Trumps current mess with huge increases of cost of living, and subsequent popularity decline is an example of what happens when you let business run free.

The Musk strategy is to quietly drop failures/broken promises from a previous hype cycle after kicking off a brand new hype cycle to take its place.

This is entirely consistent with his tried and true strategy to constantly redirect attention forward to the distant future, and never stay idle long enough to encourage looking back at the ever growing pile of ideas that didn't work out.

And this strategy isnt Musks. Hes copying politicians and government.

Hah, feels like when someone says they're going to stop dating the unemployed slob to focus on dating the alcoholic.

A taxi with only 2 doors, what an improvement!

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.

Seems like that might have something to do with it.

No added information, with a thread full of ad hominem attacks

Also i wonder whether in 5-7 years Model 3 and Y will be around

But with such strong sales, the incentive is not to rock the boat. Incumbents refresh more often because they have a lot of competition. Tesla's biggest competition for the Model Y is an ICE vehicle, the RAV4. That's a unique situation.

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

The Model Y charging curve is notably bad, I agree, in particular when equipped with the big Texas batteries Tesla wanted for the Cybertruck. But the counterpoint is that even peaking out at 250kW, I usually only spend 10-15 minutes charging my Model 3. The weak charging curve only exposes itself as an issue on marathon road trips where you are running it up from 10-80 repeatedly on a tight schedule.

And in any case, the better charging curve hasn't helped the competition put a meaningful dent in Model Y sales. The leading competitor is the Ford MME, and the charging curve on it is possibly weaker than the Model Y. It still outsells the Ioniq 5.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j76f6E0oOW4

Then you need to get our and do more real work of lots of different types. Exposed bed is often an advantage!

I have a welder, the safety instructions include "Never carry the gas tanks in an enclosed vehicle" -if there is a leak the gas tanks (nitrogen, argon, helium) can quickly displace the oxygen inside and I'll die before I know what happened.

Most things I carry don't need to be inside constantly. A little rain won't hurt anything, I wouldn't want to store anything outside but just a couple hours won't harm most things.

Also it is a lot easier to load things in a truck than a van. I can lift it over the sides (perhaps with a forklift). I can stand up in the back while arranging things - even when it is full I can stand upright.

I have used both trucks and vans to carry things over the years. Both are a compromise - and like all compromises there are negatives where something else would be better. Overall I fall on the truck is better side for what I do most often - but that is overall and I recognize there are good reasons some will choose something else.

I used to think trucks were mostly useless, but have found that many people have weekly uses that make a lot of sense.

I do question the logic of lifting your truck so high you can't reach into the bed.

This is something so many people don't realize.

When you hold your breath for too long, that feeling of suffocation isn't caused by a lack of oxygen, but the build-up of CO2.

If you replace the oxygen in a room with an odorless gas non-oxygen gas, your body doesn't tell you. You don't feel like you're suffocating. You just start suffering the effects of lack of oxygen. Dizziness, confusion, lightheadedness, but you likely won't realize anything is wrong. Your judgement and ability to react goes away and you lose consciousness without ever experiencing the desperate urge to breathe.

Another good example of this is when pilots fly too high without supplemental oxygen or adequate cabin pressurization and become hypoxic. They become confused and lose coordination while feeling perfectly fine. By the time they realize something is wrong, they may no longer be able to do anything about it.

I repair farm machinery, I design datacentre networks, and I design and build extremely complex electronic equipment. I'm good for the "real work of lots of different types".

I just don't see the point of a vehicle that gets my tools and equipment rained on.

Also they are much easier to load items with heavy machinery.

e.g. it’s easier to use a front end loader to dump mulch in a truck than it is a van.

During the winter, range plummets. That 200 isn't getting me all the way from A to B. Having a hybrid fueling option is just much more practical for me.

I'm not saying I couldn't get it done, I could, but sitting for hours waiting for some slow-ass EV charging station in the middle of winter is not bullshit I'm signing up for.

Unfortunately a lot of people only really have a level1 class charger at home and that's a 10+ hour charge on a F150. Probably somewhere around 5-7 hours for a level 2 charger but that's only a "given" on new construction.

If you live close to a level3 charger than you can get topped up in under an hour but that also isn't as convenient as plugging in when you get home and forgetting about it since you have to drive to the charger.

Leave home at 100%/200mi

Drive to destination (approx 3 hours) arrive with ~0%/0mi

Charge while at destination to 80%/160mi

Begin driving back home with a 20%/40mi deficit of range.

Stop anywhere/anytime after you get below 60%/120mi

Charge for 20%/40mi (~10 minutes)

Complete drive home and fully charge again.

Total extra time on 400 mile trip vs gas (assuming 300 mi tank range, so 1 fill-up): ~5 minutes (or 8 minutes if you stop for a quick charge on the way so you don't have to white knuckle down to 0%).

For cold driving in the winter, it would probably be closer to an extra 20 minutes.

If you can. I have some family that doesn't have any power near where I park when I visit. I'm also there for less than the _many, many_ hours it would take to get an EV from ~0 to ~80% on a standard 15A/120v outlet.

In one case, they have a pretty big tesla super-charger something like 40 miles from them so I can top all the way up just before I get there if I go slightly out of my way. In the US, we still have a long ways to go in the US before _high current_ charging options are as ubiquitous as gas.

You're not actually going to get 200mi from 100% when you have 2 people and baggage loaded and traffic exists, and no one sane would be comfortable arriving with literally 0% battery. Charging stops take minimum 10 minutes just accounting for getting off & back on the freeway; usually more like 30-40 minutes because why would you not just charge back up to 80% since you're stopped anyway? Your destination hotel almost certainly does not have a charger, or if they do they charge an idle fee, so you can't just leave it overnight, so really that has to count as another charging stop.

Realistically you're talking probably two 30 minute charge stops in each direction. That's not completely unacceptable (eg just have some lunch at one of the stops) but your 5-8 minute quote is absolutely not realistic.

The only way I can make this happen is the combination of driving in freezing temperatures, with the heat blasting the whole time, while doing ~80mph.

Also using heat instead of seat warmers just hurts you for the same level of comfort.

I keep it at 65 and let the heater do whatever it wants to do so that people are comfortable. Temperature, elevation differences, and wind definitely change things.

There's a section of the drive where I average something like 1.3 mi/kWh on the way up the mountain, but something like 6 mi/kWh on the way down. On the return trip, it's kind of fun to see the guess-o-meter show 110 miles remaining over the course of 25 miles, or have it actually increase.

I'm sure that gas vehicles follow a similar pattern, but I don't pay attention to usage like I do in an EV.

> Stop anywhere/anytime after you get below 60%/120mi

This is the aspect which isn't really possible in very rural areas. There is nowhere to stop at to charge, or the options are very limited. It's getting better, but it's the reason why people want more range.

Plus, in the midwest, the ranges tank in the dead of winter, due to sub-zero temperatures and headwinds.

Lithium nickel batteries suffer accelerated aging at high charge and at low charge, so it is usually recommended to stay in the 80-20% range, only going to 100% shortly before a road trip.

A Slate with a 200 mile range operated 100-10% would give you 180 miles between charges. That would be the same range as a lithium nickel battery EV with a 300 mile range operated 80-20%.

Even gasoline trucks are stupid no low end torque, you need to rev it. I had a 6 cylinder Cummins diesel and at 500rpm idle on a hill it could move the 10,000 pound truck up the hill.

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

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!)

Yes that's why diesel engines are superior to gas/petrol and also for efficiency. An EV with all that torque is even better.

It's the loss of range in cold or when loaded, the weight of the truck even with no load, combined all those cons. Charging stations here outside towns are sparse, it gets cold (-20C), and most of the region is flat. Someday maybe but for now I don't think a $100K EV truck is my thing.

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.

Theres been plenty of F150L towing tests and the results are… bad. Maybe 100mi of range if you’re towing something big?

I mean for sure, if you are the person who constantly need this, EVs might need a little bit more advantages, but what does an avg F150 owner would tow 100mi every day / regularly?

More than 60% of truck owners use the bed to haul at least once per month; but it's difficult to determine the percentage who could have used a car instead. A small car can fit quite a few bags of soil in the trunk, for example.

But I've done a 600 mile each way trip with the bed fully loaded and it's completely fine

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

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.

The US style pickup is pretty rare. There are some Ford Ranger/Raptors, which look comically large but are apparently smaller than the common F150 (??). People who need a truck bed get a Ford Transit or similar with the bed variant.

Agricultural use cases are handled with actual tractors (who can use the cheaper "red" diesel!)

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.

I work with a lot of plumbers and sparkies and approximately zero of them have a truck. They all have expensive tools and a panel van to keep them in.

Trucks are for the bosses to ponce around in and pretend to work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxus_T90 (EV version)

It's also an ugly-ass car. If it had turned out to be super-reliable and cheap and "hackable" that would make up for it, even earn its strange look a cult following, but no it just ended up as an overpriced weird ugly-ass car.

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

95% of their cars sold have been in the $30k to $60k range. They have long been the best bang for the buck electric car (in the US, since BYD isn’t allowed.

Just because the big batteries are so dangerous?

Quite literally, I was just reading they had years of poor sales in few markets

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

At some point this gimmick misdirection nonsense has to stop working.

Oh look, if you have a transport-truck sized massive compressor in your garage and use 100kWh to spend a day filling a tank, your ComingSoonNow(TM wink) Roadster can do some silly stuff if you dedicate much of the interior to a giant explosion hazard.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=gRBDLE06qNY

Today, we'd called "founder mode".

The cybertruck was an early example of what someone on bsky called the "everyone is twelve now" theory: it looks like it was drawn by a small boy's idea of "cool", with zero further thought.

In once panel, there's the Cybertruck whose owner bragged about it carrying a large round hay bale (weighs around 1,500lbs) with the suspension looking like it was about to die. Next to it is a shot of a circa-1980 Ford F250 carrying three of the same bales and sitting perfectly level. TBF, the F250 probably had air bags in the rear suspension, but still...

That thing is only a "truck" because they decided to call it that.

Most people should just buy a sedan. :-/

For a company, matching products and services to demand is what matters. Being able to get more mass into orbit only matters if enough people are willing to pay to get stuff there. The analogy is that jumbo jets exist, but almost no passenger flights bother with jumbo jets because it's not economical. Unlike with civilian aviation we have yet to observe a natural experiment which would allow us to place an economically practical ceiling on rocket payload size, but it very much still remains plausible that something Falcon 9-sized is actually the sweet spot, especially given that Starlink is the only commercial offering that's pushing the existing Falcon 9 capacity.

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.

Painting cars really is a hugely optimised process that materially affects performance characteristics such as weight.

Its very difficult to appreciate just how many cars are made worldwide wide, but just think if a completely optimised fully robot optimised line cost a billion dollars, in only needs to process a few million cars to fully pay itself off. Just look at how much a “paint option” costs. Enough people paying for a premium colour would completely pay for the entire production painting line.

At the scale of Tesla the millions of dollars on a fully automated setup is cheap because amortize the cost of so many cars

Very common to use a mix of both strategies in practice.

I had a jeep wrangler once. The window was "flat" but not if you looked at its reflection. There was a slight complex curve for strength.

...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.

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.

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.

Not sure I follow your ford pinto comment either.

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.

Also painting IN THE FACTORY isn't expensive. Re-painting the part on repair is because of all of the prep work required (take apart, clean, color match etc).

Might be break-even, but I doubt it would be cheaper

"It will be cheaper" is a perspective of ignorant "smart guy" that thinks because he got successful in one thing that they can weight in on industry processes they have no idea about

The end result is a vehicle with all of the costs of a normal unibody design plus the costs of dealing with cutting, folding, and attaching thick sheets of stainless steel.

It never delivered the promised $40k starting price or the promised 500 mile top spec range either.

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

"real experts" are not always correct. A bet a lot of people told him that the original Teslas were a bad idea or SpaceX would never...wait for it...take off.

But sometimes people win when they push the boundary of what might work, push the problems to the surface and then solve them.

I don't like the guy but you can't really deny his ethusiasm and single-mindedness.

Musk has enthusiasm, yes, but he’s let his luck at PayPal and successfully buying Tesla from the original founders go to his head. Nobody is right all of the time, and no serious project goes perfectly according to the original vision without adjustments. There’s nothing wrong with the idea of an electric truck — companies with better engineering culture are making great ones — but the Cybertruck failed exactly the way everyone who isn’t a superfan expected: it’s designed in a way which guarantees high costs and it just doesn’t deliver corresponding benefits for most people. Diving into the culture wars against a large chunk of potential Tesla buyers was a bad idea but even if he hadn’t, there just aren’t that many people who have that kind of money to spend and the ones who do usually won’t accept so many limitations and flaws.

No executive in the established "expert" car companies had any reason to rock the boat. Establishing EVs as a credible alternative to ICEs required a build-out of charging infrastructure that none of them were willing to commit to. But non-established companies had no such risk, and the emerging companies in China would have developed no less quickly even if Tesla never existed.

> none of the clever brains spending billions in NASA, ULA, ArianeSpace, et al made a reusable commercial rocket a reality

All of them would have told you that there's nothing impossible about a reusable rocket, only that their customers were happily served by their current offerings. Without Starlink, there would be no commercial demand that would make up for the cost of R&D.

> Without Starlink, there would be no commercial demand that would make up for the cost of R&D.

Not sure about this analysis.

a) SpaceX developed the Falcon 9 relatively cheaply - ~$300m to it simply being a viable launch platform (i.e. without reuse, Dragon, etc.)

b) NASA contributed to some of the costs.

c) SpaceX was already offering launch services cheaper than their competition before perfecting reuse or conceiving of Starlink.

Therefore it's likely that they'd have had a positive (albeit lower) business case and made back R%D costs over time, simply by offering launch services and capturing a majority of the market thanks to their lower prices. Reusability lowered their launch costs, when it came. Starlink was an answer to the question of how to capitalise on all of the cheap surplus launch capacity they'd made available.

Yes. And in fact, Tesla existed before Musk, who merely invested in the company and then rewrote the history to make him a “founder”.

The world is scattered with the skeletons of failed car startups. Outside of China, there hadn’t been one to succeed at a meaningful level for a long time, and no one gave any new entrant much hope of survival, much less one that was also trying to create a whole new sector and the infrastructure to support it.

Like it or not, Tesla’s survival let alone its level of success has been extraordinary.

It’s impossible to know whether it would have succeeded without Musk’s involvement; but… the probabilities suggest perhaps not.

> Fast forward 20 years, and now we have musk shills calling people “revisionists” when they just state facts.

I assume this barb is aimed at me.

I’m far from a Musk “shill”. I strongly dislike the person he’s become, the way he behaves, and the huge opportunities he’s squandered as a result and along the way. I refuse to buy his products.

However, I’m just not emotionally involved in either direction and try to be factual and neutral. He’s a horrible person who has led companies that have achieved extraordinary things.

Ironically, people who can’t see past their emotions and spend time on the internet throwing insults around in discussions exist on both sides, whether they’re a “shill” or an anti-shill, or hater, or whatever terms fits (you) best.

https://www.alphaxiv.org/@lars-blackmore

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Blackmore

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xZvK9z0AAAAJ&hl=en

That's why you should always hire someone unqualified.

I want you to know that.

Musk came into Tesla as funding. People were trying to make the cars.

With regards to SpaceX, he was looking for people to build rockets to go to Mars. But no one wanted to sell to him. So he hired rocket scientists to build the rockets.

And yes, while there will always be some asshole who says "That won't work", there were plenty of ""real experts"" who were working at those companies.

They could have done what Musk did with Falcon 9 in the 90's. Instead they chose to mess around more with solid fueled heavy lift vehicles, all the while proclaiming that they were the experts/science.

(I don't necessarily disagree with you, but there's a difference between thinking outside the box and trying new ideas, and literally ignoring factual reality and repeated clear feedback from people who actually know what they're talking about.)

His initial success, PayPal, was just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Online payments are an obvious thing and a natural monopoly. He guessed right that PayPal would be the one that succeeded.

That gave him the opportunity to place more big bets that paid off. Neither electric cars nor reusable spacecraft were obvious wins the way online payments were, but it's also no sign of genius to have happened to place bets on companies that succeeded.

The evidence for that is that his luck ran out. He keeps backing audacious projects, and they keep failing. Anybody else would have been bankrupted a dozen times over. He keeps going because he got lucky the first time, with so much money that it's almost impossible for him to lose it all.

That is to say, I think it's more survivorship bias than the merits of his "enthusiasm and single-mindedness". A decade ago he had such a string of successes that I would consider the case that he was actually smarter than average, but he's had such a string of conspicuous and obvious catastrophes that the net result simply seems average at best.

They could have Roadstered it.

Buy Ford Transit 350 "gliders", work out how to make them FWD, RWD, or AWD using your own transaxles and batteries. Pickup, van, or just a bare chassis-cab to go to a coachbuilder, it doesn't matter.

The Transit has been around for 61 years. Sticking electric motors in it that you already have is a no-brainer.

Seems to me like a pretty easy to understand sentence.

Lars Blackmore was doing self-landing rocket research before he went to spacex. Musk's reusable rockets (who doesn't want that, this is why the shuttle exists) wanted to use parachutes.

The highest number though is like 30 uses and Starship still hasn't profen itself.

Also the boring company, Doge, Solar City, the cybertruck etc.

So what do we get out of this? Musk is for sure not just an idiot, he for sure sees sometimes good opportunities, but also he had the money to invest in these and he got lucky a few times too.

Btw. the cybertruck he announced, never came.

How much money have Americans gifted NASA to pay Russia for launching payloads ton Soyuz rockets?

Do you frame all government funding as "gifting"?

Let me criticsize NASA for paying / gifting Russia for launching payloads.

So we are now back to square one.

Pls continue

https://www.facebook.com/61572338938589/videos/in-june-2013-...

Pathetic argumentation in this thread, to be real.

(I have a very slight visibility on 48V car audio R&D, for example. Most digital electronics could be adapted with a different DC-DC converter but the audio power amp stage takes direct supply voltage)

Steel is heavy, you have to paint the frame anyway, people like cars with colors, the steel has to be maintained too (scratches etc.).

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

No doubt there is some demand for an "out there" design, but I'd have to guess that the projected $40K price was itself a large part of the attraction.

2019 USA annual car/pickup sales were ~17M. I find it very hard to believe that 10% (2M cybertruck pre-orders) of those purchasers were seriously interested in a cybertruck - it really is not a design made for mainstream tastes.

$100 is also a trivial amount of money for a larper with half the budget required to complete the purchase.

Entertaining the idea of a new car purchase is an upper-middle class thing, and a fully-refundable $100 is impulse buy territory for most of them.

OK, but I think it is. So can we agree to disagree, is that ok with you that I have a differing opinion?

Thanks very much, have a great day! (Didnt read anymore of the post as it was unnecessary)

I thought the early images looked amazing but I see them all the time in real life (a few people in my neighborhood own them) and they just look so stupid on the road.

With false but great looking renders and false but great sounding promises, the hype and interest was real. It was only when the real product became apparent that it became a joke and interest was lost.

You would think maybe Musk would learn something about overpromising from this fiasco, but judging by things like DOGE I guess not!

You're talking about the guy who has a fake twitter account tweet at him things like "you're such a good father, Elon, your kids are lucky to have you".

He's absolutely desperate for attention and approval, because not being perceived as cool is crippling to his sense of self-worth.

Of course he won't learn from overpromising! He inhabits a different reality, surrounded by sycophants and yes-men.

I live in the UK so I'll likely never be able to get one, but I'd love a car I can just buy new panels for and wrap them with minimal tools.

I don't know any item where the unpainted stainless steel version is cheaper than the painted steel version, thinking about kitchen appliances for instance. For cars, the most famous car with a stainless steel body is the DeLorean DMC-12, which was notoriously expensive, even without the time circuits.

It turns out that sitting in your office wearing an adult nappy and snorting cat sedative until your bladder no longer functions might give you a lot of quite "creative" thinking, but it doesn't make you an engineer.

At some point Elon has to climb out of the K-hole and realise that these things are better left to proper engineers.

Elon talks about a lot of things. Consider if you might be part of the media ecosystem that enables that strategy.

A press brake is generic and cheap. Molds for presses are cheap if the cost can be spread over many vehicles, but are expensive for low volume manufacturing.

Paint shops are similar. They're not expensive if you're running a lot of cars in the same color through it, but at low volumes with custom colors they are fabulously expensive.

Of course the final production Cybertruck didn't use the exoskeleton design so it was the worst of both worlds, but it does feel like the original design wasn't expected to sell well and was designed for low volume manufacturing.

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

Replacing a well-known manufacturing stage with a completely unproven one for no good reason is rarely a good idea.

He only wants government subsidies. He'll make a tiny Rainbow city car for 2028 and the Democrats will take him back. Mark my words.

user: 12993877

created: 14 minutes ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=12993877

Successful companies well understand they don't know exactly what maximizing shareholder value requires. They are always making small experiments to see what really works in the market. Many of those they know will fail and in turn cost shareholder value because of a bad investment. But you have to try bad investments in order to find one that is good.

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

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.

I have debated this extensively with some friends. I *jumped* at the slate pre-order precisely because it doesn't have any 'luxury' trim options. I don't want to pay out the nose for a fancy infotainment system that will use the cheapest possible under powered electronics from a decade ago, run a 10 year old version of android that spies on me, gets no useful updates...etc.

I certainly have my biases but I suspect that most people only _tolerate_ most of the painpoints w/ the various 'luxury' items in their cars and if given the opportunity to start simple and upgrade they would.

> but most people don't actually want the stripped down basic vehicle

Perhaps. But if you put two options side-by-side and show people what they get at the two different price points, I'd bet that the ~30k slate compared to the ~ 50k typical new car price will get a decent chunk of people thinking about what _else_ they could do with 20k in savings.

The overwhelm majority of new car purchases is the US aren’t based on sales price, but monthly payment.

For the vast majority of buyers, an extra $50 a month for some luxury features is the easiest upsell in the world. They simply don’t think through the savings, they think “I want heated seats, better sound, etc”

However, people are talking about the same truck as if it is a truck. And it's a terrible truck for people who need a truck. On the other hand, a lot of other trucks are also terrible at being a truck for the people who need a truck. You have to go into the three-quarter ton or one-ton range to find a decent truck these days, even though a modern half-ton probably has more power and weight carrying capacity than a 30-year-old three-quarter ton truck. The way it's set up means it's not going to work as well as a truck. The 30-year-old truck is going to have a longer bed, which is something that someone who needs a truck is going to want in the truck.

For imports “light trucks” get a nice extra 25% tariff (been around since 1963)

If you own a business and actually use it for work then you a bigger tax brake if it weighs over 6000 pounds.

This is specifically about the Tesla Cybertruck, which has been shown to be fairly shoddy in construction AND is tied to a very, very divisive figure.

The Cybertruck is weird and a "status" symbol, but most people want to fit in, but also have the "nicest" looking status symbol, so they convince themselves that "this particular truck" is really nice. (And also if I own it, it's clear I do lots of hard physical things.)

People who buy trucks as a status symbol want to be "tough". And Tesla clearly intended to appeal to "tough guys", it is big, powerful, and supposedly indestructible. Elon even twitted at some point that it would destroy the other car in a collision, a morally questionable comment, but the implications are clear, a though vehicle for people who don't give a fuck about others.

And then, they managed to break the unbreakable window during the presentation, followed by the rusty trucks, and most importantly, the whole fiasco with glued panels that came off. So, you market a tough vehicle, but it falls appart. Who is going to buy that?

Btw have you seen the roadster??

Those people are just as loud as others, but never actually buy, because a $40k CyberTruck never existed.

When I want to go to the symphony I want a chauffeured Rolls-Royce. I don't care how it is maintained, that is the chauffeurs job. If I want to see under dressed girls I'll go to a strip club after if, or maybe hire an escort to sit next to me.

When I want a truck to "go mudding", the fun is driving it through the mud. Maybe my chauffeur is tows the truck to the mud pit, but I'm getting it stuck in the mud myself. Sometimes the local cheerleaders are holding a fund raiser and I'll pay them to clean the truck after I'm done.

When I want a truck because I need to haul things - I want to pay someone else to take care of it when I'm not around.

In reality I'm not rich enough for the above. I do a lot of maintenance myself because I can't afford to pay someone. I have one vehicle that is a bad compromise for everything because I can't afford more.

In reality I have moral objections to under dressed girls and so I'm not going to the strip club or hiring escorts. But if I was that type I wouldn't be paying them to maintain my car. I have had the cheerleaders clean my car while I watched, but I wasn't paying them to be "eye candy" even though I did enjoy looking, and the next week is was the boys wrestling team (which I don't enjoy looking at) that got paid just as much for the same job.

In reality I'd prefer public transportation, but that is a different story.

Tesla took over 2 million preorders for the Cybertruck before they closed the program due to high demand.

> Musk was a fool to mistake the hollering of a small group of enthusiasts for that of the truck-buying U.S. population. Nobody was actually wanting for the CyberTruck. He should've listened to his marketing people and not be guided by social media and his right-wing instinct.

It wasnt social media and his 'right wing instinct' whatever that is. Is was massive amounts of paid pre-orders feeding their opinions that it was going to be popular.

EDIT: Oh I see you have edited your comment since I wrote mine. The massive amounts of pre order cancellation came after it was released, so how does that factor into their initial opinions that it would be popular during development?

Even very ugly cars will sell if they give you a really good deal for the money. The Cybertruck at $39,999 was a shockingly good deal. It was just a lie.

This anecdote might indicate why: We recently had a bunch of work done on our house. The siding crew had a pickup truck, and every morning the very first thing they did was unload the entire contents of the truck into our back yard. The plumbers and electricians would just get the stuff they were actually using and then lock the van.

There was nothing "new" in cybertruck. Delorean had bare metal panels! It wasn't a good truck, vehicle, EV, anything. It was Elon's crayon drawing turned car. That's not "innovation" we should applaud

Not even close - there are probably at least a dozen 4 wheel steering cars going back to the mid 80's starting with things like Nissan Skyline, Honda Prelude, etc.

However, I do not know if any of those was series-produced.

They may have been only demonstration prototypes.

https://evwire.com/etrucks/market-share

Tesla cyber truck sales are going down from 38k a year to 20k a year

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

> Zero-emission trucks over 12 t ·

(Cybertruck is still in the <3.5t class afaik)

> Zero-emission Class 7–8 trucks

These seem to be the classical cargo carrying trucks, not the pickup trucks.

The Model 3 was a masterpiece of design, the Cybertruck is more like Cybercuck.

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

I did buy a Model-Y shortly before his Trump endorsement, and then sold it for technical reasons.

On a cold January morning, I was pulling up to a stop-sign, didn't have any autopilot turned on, and the car accelerated.

I think there is just too much software between gas pedal and the machinery of the car. They're honestly kind of dangerous vehicles. The average person can't handle the responsibility of a self-driving vehicle.

I told all of my friends and family that I would not recommend the vehicle yet to a non-technical person, even when I was myself driving it and loving it.

It will be interesting to see if the substantial safety margin decreases as more people buy in.

I do know that there is not much better than average driver! There is much worse than average: people who drive drunk, and a few other classes of people who shouldn't drive at all. However the vast majority are all about equal: in reasonable mental health and limited to the same eye and reaction times. A few people have and follow better training and so are slightly safer - but this is slight. Most people think they are better than average because they excuse their mistakes as a "one time mistake", while confusing "the other guy's" mistakes with the other guy must be a bad driver.

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

There's a shit ton of software between the gas pedal and the machinery of just about every car on the road today whether that be an ICE, hybrid, or EV. We're a long ways away from the go-go pedal directly pulling a cable opening the throttle plate.

Electric vehicles obviously don't have the hurdle of meeting emissions standards so Tesla, or any other company really, had (and has) the opportunity to create a small, cheap utility truck that no gas-powered vehicle can compete with. This is what the Cybertruck should've been.

There have been breakdowns of the Cybertruck and it is such an incredibly bad design. Things like the weight of stainless steel panels but with an aluminum frame. Why is that a problem? Because aluminum is prone to catastrophic failure with the up and down motion of towing a heavy load than stainless steel simply isn't [5].

The rumor has been that the only thing propping up Cybertruck demand is Elon forcing his own companies like SpaceX to buy them [6]. Other than that, the Cybertruck became a weird political statement [7]. Those people are getting crucified on resale. It's even a trend on Tiktok and elsewhere to watch these trade in videos. People who paid $150k+ are getting <$70k less than 2 years later.

Anyway, I'm shocked no US manufacturer is tackling the EV small utility truck market. Yes there was the F150 Lightning but it's still too big (and thus expensive).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Hilux

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War

[3]: https://www.octane-magazine.com/articles/features/usa-25-yea...

[4]: https://www.thedrive.com/news/heres-how-regulations-accident...

[5]: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nZcb9TTyneFbxiDav/the-giga-p...

[6]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-16/tesla-lea...

[7]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/02/12/tesla-...

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.

A Tacoma is basically the US model of the Hilux.

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...

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.

It can never shake the "Ugh, get a load of this guy" factor.

(The history of John DeLorean is quite the read!)

The 3/Y and the screens had lots of design and product innovations. Iterating on those lines would’ve been quite nice.

The only guaranteed way to lose is if you stop swinging. And Tesla has stopped swinging. They haven't revealed a mass market consumer vehicle since 2019.

There is some incredible technology in the Cybercab that allows them to be built cheaply in high volume. Instead Ford looks like they are going to be the first Western consumer vehicle out of the gate with the unboxed production method with their Ford Fathom. Unsurprisingly, the Chinese are ahead here too.

Good riddance.

What's most frustrating is that I had to trade in my Model 3 for a 3-row SUV, and Tesla just didn't have anything competitive in that segment.

You rarely see them, probably because they're so dog-ugly that hardly anyone buys them.

Hilarious but a logical end state option for them.

Something new and fresh can be accepted and loved, but it still needs to be familiar and somewhat iterative. A radical change like the cybertruck is hated for that reason.

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.

By the time of its delayed release, Musk had become deeply unpopular with many of that original coalition of fans and buyers, the truck was more expensive than originally promised, his new ‘base’ probably couldn’t afford to buy many of them, and it was structurally a fairly normal car underneath the steel panels. It also suffered plenty of embarrassing issues, which people were of course gleeful to publicise.

It could have been a cool funky status symbol, but Musk screwed it all up.

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.

None of this materialized. The truck that ended up in production was a traditional body construction, but with unpainted steel panels so it looks like the truck Musk presented. It ended up with all the drawbacks of a steel body, while being expensive and hard to manufacture

Once the structural body concept failed (has it ever been adequately explained why they failed?) it would have made sense to either drop the Cybertruck altogether, or pivot to a more traditional design. But ego prevailed, sadly.

IMO the big missed opportunity was a follow the model 3 with a 'model 2' - a smaller, cheaper car - probably in the VW Golf / BMW 1-series class.

I can assure you he was not.

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.

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

He certainly definitely 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".

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.

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

To me, it’s more like answering a complaint about the blandness of pop music with electric bagpipes and nails on chalkboard: if you can’t be different and good, maybe don’t try so hard to be different.

The product failed because it was a shit product. In the grand scheme of unreliable American built cars, it was just another one. It was certainly not as bad as a Jeep. But it was ugly, and did not do what it was supposed to do; be a truck.

This is every top comment ITT, and I am checking user's post histories to confirm they are real. I understand I might be in the minority, but this belief that just being different is a merit unto itself is ridiculous.

It doesn’t give me the impression of “radical change.” It felt familiar and iterative of the modern, oversized F250-style pickup truck in all of the worst ways.

Trucks don't look quite the same because they have different standards to adhere to.

To me trucks are the most useless type of vehicle apart from niche utilitarian cases in farming or construction. Super heavy, gas guzzling, open bed, compromised handling, pedestrian crushing death machine.

If you want big family hauler, grocery getter: mini-vans, wagons.

If you are in trades: van, box truck or flatbed box truck (where bed is useful shape and size, and all sides can be removed if needed).

No, you don't need 3 tonne vehicle with bajillion horsepower as a daily, because you may need to pull a trailer with your inflatable dinghy once in a two years.

If you want truck adjacent vehicle, get Toyota 4runner or Highlander. Humongous cars, vast and closed cargo space. It will pull a trailer, it will haul all your stuff and family.

> To me trucks are the most useless type of vehicle apart from niche utilitarian cases in farming or construction. Super heavy, gas guzzling, open bed, compromised handling, pedestrian crushing death machine. If you want big family hauler, grocery getter: mini-vans, wagons.

Minivans and trucks get similar fuel mileage. For the average family there are not enough kids to need a minivan.

> If you are in trades: van, box truck or flatbed box truck (where bed is useful shape and size, and all sides can be removed if needed).

Obviously you are not in the trades and don't know anyone in them. I've heard plenty of people in the trades debate the merits of truck vs van. They are compromises and there is no clear winner.

> you don't need 3 tonne vehicle with bajillion horsepower as a daily, because you may need to pull a trailer with your inflatable dinghy once in a two years.

If I need to tow something even once every two years then I need to own a truck. I've tried to rent a truck to tow something - turns out most rental contracts don't allow towing. There are exceptions, but the cost is so high, and finding a place to rent is so inconvenient that I will just own my own truck instead - it is worth it.

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.

I still remember years ago seeing one in a grocery store parking lot, with a banana yellow wrap and the Zelda unlock sound as its lock chime. A brief moment of inconsequential joy.

Lastly, having the cyber truck drag race a Porsche 911, while towing a Porsche 911 (and win) has to be one of the best marketing stunts of all time.

A bad design that costs too much, the only people who bought these were ideologues committed to the vision of a man responsible for millions of unnecessary deaths, the gutting of the American state, and some of the most destructive politics of hate in living memory.

I celebrate their passing.

  >the only people who bought these were ideologues

We see what modern republican party does - literally last two years.

Republicans are the ones that insist on protecting police no matter how much they trample on people's rights.

- Speech controls (they wanted compelled speech, which is a line the Americans have so far managed not to cross - Biden managed to get it in to Title IX)

- Rabid, senseless, confusing opposition to gun rights, a civil right in the U.S. Gun ownership does not result in more or worse crime, it's very clear.

- Totally opposing widespread, bipartisan support for voter ID

Let me be clear, I'm no fan of either side.

Like the Jan 6 pardons and Trump's immunity?

> Speech controls (they wanted compelled speech...)

https://democracyforward.org/news/press-releases/ooo-win-law...

"A federal court today ruled that the Trump-Vance administration unlawfully compelled civil servants at the U.S. Department of Education to transmit partisan political messaging from their government email accounts during the ongoing federal shutdown — violating core First Amendment protections."

> Rabid, senseless, confusing opposition to gun rights, a civil right in the U.S.

As is their First Amendment right. Do you oppose that civil right?

> Totally opposing widespread, bipartisan support for voter ID

Why not? When put to the people for a vote, it fails. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/6178993-california-pro...

The question was actually, and I quote:

"In what way is the Democratic party more authoritarian?"

So I'm left wondering why these authoritarian acts don't count in a comparison between the two.

... while republican party and administration openly supported it.

Now apply to this thread.

I mostly agree it's not as simple as good guys and bad guys, but if anyone's a bad guy it's the most judgmental townspeople and the priest who lets Hester take the full brunt of judgment while he pretends he's squeaky clean.

I am confused. Are you suggesting that parent is a likely target based on their car purchasing habits? If so, US has some fun times ahead.

As for Europe, it is possible. I have not visited in a while so I will take your word for it.

Outside of Mad Max it’s hard to conceive of a more dangerous car to be involved in a pedestrian collision. The cybertruck is a symbol of staggering ignorance and selfishness.

We’ll probably still see them on the roads for many years to come—and laugh at the lickspittle Elon toadies who gleefully bought them, knowing full well what they symbolize.

[^1] https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-shutdown-has-led-to-hund...

It's absolutely valid to expect more from politicians and people who hold power over our lives than we do from regular people.

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.

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

I'd trade this princess in for a hi-lux or a road-worthy late 90s ranger any day of the week, but try finding that on the market.

I own a large truck for logistical reasons (mostly hauling water and equipment and egressing a snowy area). I had a 2wd 4-banger tacoma prerunner and was going to sell it, but it's a lot better for actually driving the oil field roads where I live and much easier to park than the long bed.

I don't see why anyone would drive some giant truck when they don't have to- it's not a fun vehicle to drive, certainly not safe for other folks, and I avoid driving it in places where there are humans.

Having lived in the truck bed for a while it's nice to have some space.

I'm on off-grid solar and am looking forward to paying $90K ($14k in 2026 dollars) for a chinese fully electric when they become sale-able in the US.

I don't really want a second vehicle as it would get rare use. Urban driving with it is just an unpleasant experience. I am forced to be hyper-aware of any and every corner a tyke COULD have walked out of and entered into my driving range without me seeing, especially when running errands for the kid to places where other kids are around. Cannot relax for a moment.

The best collision is no collision.

> Tesla: Rank #3 with 42.8 incidents per 1,000 drivers

Ah.

Those cars did have uses, but those uses revolved around drawing attention ( think advertising ). Whenever I saw one in my neck of the woods, they were selling something.

I suppose, if you don't really like cars much, this was interesting. No one debates the ability for EVs to have absurd 0-60, 0-100 times, but there's almost no overlap between why you'd buy a Cybertruck versus a 911 besides status symbol, which gets back to... maybe it's neat, if you don't really care about cars much.

I'm not an Elon fan in the least, but it does feel like most cars are designed by committee and converge on a few well-defined shapes and segments. And they sell a ton of them, so sure, of course.

But there's certainly some charm when you see a weirdmobile that doesn't conform and somehow got by the bean counters and into existence. The MINI Clubvan, for people who needed something compact and cargo-focused. The Cadillac CTS-V wagon, for people who wanted to haul ass ... and the family. The Toyota MR2, which felt like Toyota engineers decided "let's take these Corolla parts and build them in the shape of a Ferrari".

With the high costs of certifying a new car for sale it seems like we see fewer and fewer of these oddballs, and that feels like a shame.

So even though I'd never personally consider driving a poorly rendered dumpster from a 1980s video game, perhaps the world is a bit more interesting due to its existence.

- The emissions credit market (where Tesla made most of its money) is dead due to lowered standards.

- Manufacturing costs haven't come down.

- EV sales share in the US is down to 6% (and falling every quarter).

- Chinese EVs are dominating every market outside the US.

- All the hyped moonshots (sub-$30K car, unsupervised autopilot, autonomous robots) are nowhere to be seen.

It's hard to see where Tesla goes from here as a company. The stock is surviving on Elon hype but has been stagnant for 5 years. The day he gets bored and decides to resign to focus on SpaceX full time the company is basically done.

That EV market share direction in the US, though .. really bad compared to non-petrostates (except Norway)

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 what it takes to drive long term success in selling cars. It’s just too long of a time horizon for them.

Personally I'm with you. I love my car because its exactly enough car for my needs. I bought it new (in 2016) and I never want to sell it. I'd get so much less (or more to the point I can't buy a new car) for the same money I spent on it.

And even if you do keep cars indefinitely, it can still be an important consideration because it affects how things work out when you need to make an insurance claim. It means your car is both more likely to be declared a total loss and more likely to be worth less than what you still owe for it when it does get totaled.

But look at this from Tesla’s point of view. They want to sell as many cars as possible. If they sell me a car, that’s just one sale. However, every marketing book will tell you that it’s easier to sell to an existing customer.

If my car (an asset) has more resale value, I’m more likely to sell it to buy a new one. They should be trying to protect my resale value — if they want me as a repeat customer.

Or, what I’m leasing the car (reasonable for an EV and used to have better tax incentives)… if the end of lease value is low, I have to spend more on the depreciation over the lease. That makes my monthly payment higher. Instead, if the end of lease value is higher, I have a lower monthly payment and I’m more likely to buy the car.

Either way, Tesla was good at selling one car. They need to get better at selling the second or third one.

Remember, this is from the Tesla point of view... and it's a long time-horizon perspective. It's a much easier decision from the customer's point of view.

(And there are other ways for companies to incentivize sales with discounts and promotions that don't obviously impact the "value" of the car).

Speaking as someone who mostly drives 20 year old cars.

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.

2. compare growth opportunities, ie https://www.tesla.com/robotaxi - rollout is going well, and every cybercab produced nets what ? $25k/year? $75k/year? vs $5-8k once per car sold?

I don't know if robotaxi will take off, but if it does, it massively undercuts Waymo because the vehicles are just so much cheaper to make and are made in house.

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.

*XPeng X9* - Seven seats, 800V charging, and a third row that folds into the floor. The long-range version has 382 miles WLTP range and charges 10–80% in approximately 12 minutes under ideal conditions.

*Li Auto MEGA* - Seven seats, 800V architecture, 441 miles CLTC range, and manufacturer-claimed charging that adds 311 miles of CLTC range in 10 minutes. Li Auto says its trunk holds four 28-inch suitcases with all seven seats occupied.

*Zeekr 009* - Seven-seat versions, up to 460 miles CLTC range, and 10–80% charging in as little as 10 minutes on the upgraded 900V model. Very luxurious, though some versions offer less rear cargo space.

*Denza D9 EV* - Seven seats, 115-kWh battery, up to 497 miles CLTC range, and BYD Flash Charging claims of 10–70% in five minutes using compatible ultra-high-power chargers.

China is years ahead of the West (EU/US) in terms of EVs.

They are running a fleet of taxis around the Bay Area. It's kind of scary because they aren't that safe, given the lack of LIDAR. But they are doing it anyway.

And also, they are driving fully autonomous in Texas and Florida.

So let me guess, fully unsupervised self driving is rolling out "next year" right?

This seems like a pretty hostile response to a well answered question. Weird.

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

> Miles Driven Autonomously

https://www.newsweek.com/doge-cuts-watchdogs-investigating-s...

> Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) reportedly cut 30 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) workers in February, disproportionately affecting regulators tasked with assessing self-driving vehicle risks, according to a Financial Times report.

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

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

how does your brain work?

The implication seems to be that Tesla are lying about accidents. It seems like that would easily get caught out. Accidents tend to be things that happen in public.

Overall, I doubt that there's a problem. If there were substantial numbers of significant accidents occurring on public roads that weren't being reported, I think someone would be catching reporting errors. There are a lot of very interested parties watching autonomous vehicles. (competitors, media, etc.)

It’s not hard to be better then an average human generally, the issue is liability as when a driverless taxi hits or hurts someone you can’t just go “but we are safer then human drivers!”

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

Probably will get acquired by SpaceX to hide the poor financials

Cybertruck was a mistake but rest of the business is printing cash hand over fist.

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)

It's actually 4th in ev sales in Europe.... https://cleantechnica.com/2026/10/03/europe-ev-sales-report-...

And that's when ranked by manufacturer, which is only slightly less arbitrary than by model as auto groups just use it for market segmentation. If you rank them as groups (e.g. VW group), then Tesla isn't even in the top 5.

https://www.reuters.com/business/tesla-registrations-surge-a...

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.

About as many cybercabs driving around as Waymo, and this doesn't count the Model Y Robotaxis:

https://robotaxitracker.com/cameras?kind=cybercab&metric=veh...

~300 cybercabs in service in TX

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

But that is over a baseline of 2-7 sightings.

There's a reason why we don't go all in on penny stocks when they go up 200% in value, you know.

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.

They are primarily from Germany. There are some imports from China but they are subject to tariffs.

Seems like your conclusions are wrong

Not so in Europe. In the Netherlands, the top 10 EVs sold in 2025 [1] has not a single Chinese car.

[1] https://www.anwb.nl/auto/kopen/nieuwe-auto/best-verkochte-ni...

They should just be the Toyota of EVs -- mass produce quality vehicles people want to drive -- instead he's trying to be Tony Stark and keep pumping it as a meme stock.

Tesla remains excellent at engineering and manufacturing. They need not seek the exotic.

He's a liability to that company, not an asset, at this point. And his name has become a brand liability.

If Musk left, the stock would crash. But the company would be profitable.

It makes for an interesting argument why executive comp should be capped - so they can focus on the product as the product (to benefit consumers) instead of the stock as the product (to benefit execs especially in short term)

It's not every quarter, but it's steady and that spells absolute disaster for US car manufacturers:

https://www.coxautoinc.com/insights/q3-2026-ev-sales-report-...

US car companies have been protected and bailed out too many times and are now not only completely uncompetitive on the global market, but set up to be completely demolished as EVs take over.

Their bad leadership and overall inefficiency mean that either investors are going to pay a massive price, or US consumers are going to pay a massive price. If we keep on pushing up consumer costs by propping up bad manufacturers with protectionism and bail outs, the US's entire economy is drug down by that.

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.

I hadn't followed just how bad US manufacturers were failing at EVs the past two years, what with all the other disasters unfolding, thanks for the wake up call. Two years of wasted time, of the US falling even farther behind... such a massive fail and yet not the most massive.

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

Solar panels are an even more remarkable example of compounding a thousand different 1% improvements.

But they aren't really. In terms of efficiency, a 2x increase is a lot yes but the thing that has finally made them really viable is simply the cost dropping like a rock.

I don't care if I have to buy 2x as many solar panels when they cost as much as a fence post.

That cost reduction was entirely investment into production capacity. None of that couldn't have been accomplished decades ago.

That's the saddest part. If we had been adults in the 70s, we could already be done the green revolution basically. We could have seriously prevented global warming.

But a bunch of idiots rejected that and instead voted for people who doubled down on fucking up the middle east and burning liquids.

PV entrepreneurs are the real heroes of the climate movement, IMHO. They figured out markets that would have enough demand to push forward with developing the tech. Germany's government is a major hero too, they pushed the tech forward so far at a crucial time. Then China took up the mantle.

Both supply and demand need to build together for the industry to grow. Government subsidies played a huge role in accelerating this, and will have paid for themselves so many times over. We're going to live in a world of super-cheap technology thanks to the modest tax-cut-based investments of governments the world over.

It does suck that so many powerful people were against the obvious-in-retrospect good idea of solar PV, but I'd love to focus on all the heroes that pushed through anyway and made it happen. They deserve a lot of thanks!

As you said, subsidies played a huge role. Look at the timeline when Germany and then Spain set up their subsidies and the following ramp up in PV production.

Sure, it was an idea at the right time, but the right time needed decades of political groundwork.

While the entrepreneurs deserve some credit, they generally got cash. The movements got massive backlash by conservatives and some got terrorism charges for protesting non-violently.

With the strangle hold that these industries have on getting the government to bail them out, we are in a really bad position on the national level when we let bad politics and weak management override good economic decision making.

The Big Three have not figured out how to make compelling EVs, without a doubt, but it's not the technology that's the problem, it's the leadership's product choices and failure of implementation.

Meaning that the entire industry will be pushed farther and farther behind in the race, only to be completely disrupted.

This will happen far slower than the transition from Palm to iOS-style phones, because the lifetime of cars is far longer than phones and are far larger investments, but the trend is inevitable. EVs are superior on so many different fronts that there's ~0 chance that gas and diesel engines persist except for a tiny fraction of future market share.

US manufacturers are trying to delay the transition as long as possible, which only ensures their own doom.

Koreans look competitive. It's interesting that the later the entrant to the market, the faster they are to adapt.

Your comment would be like if 85% of the market was EVs and you said that cars with manual transmission are still doing great, better than autos.

Wyoming‘s population of 600,000 people is less than one percent of total US population, for example.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48586250

Here’s mine:

Interactive: Visualizing Median Income For All 3,000+ U.S. Counties - https://www.visualcapitalist.com/interactive-median-income-u... (blue is better, red is worse)

Seriously though, everywhere I've lived there have been at least some doctors, dentists, college professors, business owners and suchlike; even Mississippi has hospitals, or so I'm told.

If we expect Rural America to buy EVs, someone will have to force them to be affordable. Allow Chinese imports, or nationalize an automaker as they approach failure.

We should watch how poorly its going trying to have NYC own something as simple as a few grocery stores. If the government is stepping in to make things cheaper they're destroying competition in the entire industry. They either inadvertently end up owning the entire industry by driving out all privately owned companies, or they subsidize those private companies so they can compete with the state owned ones.

Mamdani has a ~70% approval rating, and a long list of wins, New York City is doing phenomenal. If you think it isn’t, well, you’re ignoring reality. That’s a choice. Do so at your own peril.

Mamdani's approval rating is beside my point. My point was simply that we have a current example of a government in the US attempting to nationalize (well its in a city but I don't know what that form of the term would be) a portion of an industry and it already ran aground. The publicly owned version can be run not for profit, meaning it beats a competition in price. Either the competition all leave or the state ends up having to subsidize their entire profit margin so they can compete.

People can approve of Mamdani and the city as a whole can be doing very well under his leadership. That doesn't change the outcome of the grocery store program of the topic.

I do agree though, time will tell if this fresh round of socialism fairs better than past attempts. History shows it fails miserably every time it is attempted, if the US were to make it work they would be the first.

The people who complain about socialism and communism are the ones looking for a right to exploit others under an economic system for their own economic gain, socialism and communism cram down what these exploiters would be able to achieve while achieving a more solid floor under the poorest and most disadvantaged. A tale as old as time.

Exploitation is always a challenge. As you said, those today often yelling for capitalism are actually wanting to exploit those not paying attention or small enough to he steamrolled. In socialism, its those at the top that end up exploiting the rest of the country.

Here's a table of states with median, top 20%, and top 5% figures: https://beforeview.com/income-percentile/state

Mississippi, the lowest one on the list, has a top 5% at over $200,000/year. That's ~150,000 people in households who can comfortably afford a nice new EV, in just one small, poor state.

The states defined by the Census Bureau as being in "the midwest" (a subset of "flyover states") contain about 70 million people. The top 5% would be 3.5 million people who can afford a nice new EV. And this is conservative: someone in the top 6% can probably afford one too, but I'm not counting them, and there's plenty of "flyover state" territory beyond the midwest.

California is big enough and rich enough to have a huge amount of market power. But it's not so big and rich that it makes 100+ million Americans in the middle of the country completely irrelevant and ignorable.

Cool, build rail and solar.

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.

    > It's a shame __________ didn't lean harder into EVs 

Nissan seems to be scaling back their EV push in the US, though — but not in Europe, as far as I know.

Nissan is also making EVs for the Chinese market, which are not being exported anywhere else.

I'm not sure where they think the market for this exists in sustainable numbers.

It is genuinely insane how divorced SV is from actual people and reality.

And that SLS launched first isn't surprising it started to get 2 billion $ a year funding long before SpaceX had any money to invest in such projects.

And what matters for a rocket isn't 'first to orbit' that's only how idiots compare rockets. What matters is first 10 or even 100 flights.

And as for R&D, fine do R&D, but you still have to produce what actually sells. The simple fact is, hydrogen cars, either fuel cell or ICE are rounding errors. They have been rounding errors for decades and have made essentially no progress despite 50+ years of continuous government funding and R&D.

They are not just doing R&D, they have literally spend marketing money demonizing EVs. They have encouraged and leaned in to all government lead efforts to delay the EV industry. They have lobbied for regressive legislation. To act as if 'all they do is some nice R&D' is pathetic.

Toyota has not done like Tesla and invested in infrastructure, like hydrogen fuel stations. Because they know this is delusional and will never happen. Their hope has always been that government is going to build all the infrastructure for them, and pay for their R&D. They have been grifting government R&D money for literal decades. Even while with just a fraction of that money the EV industry was established. They have been lobbying Japans government for decades and have used that to prevent more beneficial R&D and infrastructure investment.

And Toyota is barley even selling these 'diversified portfolios'. Go and actually try to buy a hydrogen ICE or hydrogen fuel cell cars. In literally 99.9% of the world you can't buy them.

Hydrogen is a pipe-dream propped up by government budgets and anybody that believed in its wide deployment in 2000 was a moron, anybody that still believes in it in 2027 is straight up delusional. So if anybody is divorced from reality its you.

While most others are wasting money on failed forays into the EV market, Toyota has quietly made their entire fleet (modulo trucks) hybrid.

At this point anyone can design a chassis to accommodate a skateboard battery and some drive motors. The only thing Toyota would need to wholeheartedly jump into EV is the supply chain and production capability for big battery packs. Admittedly this is a biggie, but don't discount the possibility that batteries are not at the end of their evolution and early entrants might get burned by some new chemistry or form factor.

the iphone is an outlier imho, and i dont think EV will replicate this.

The manufacturing capacity of batteries in china will continue to be a dominant force, and prevent competition in other countries from really setting up properly.

Not to mention the chinese EV giants have the R&D budget to be the ones to discover new chemistry.

China will have a critical mass of research, scientists, manufacturing, engineers, and the right government buy in to stay ahead because there's so much demand.

They are surviving because of massive scale but they are losing ground.

> The only thing Toyota would need to wholeheartedly jump into EV is the supply chain and production capability for big battery packs.

So the only thing they need is the hardest part of the supply chain. At Toyota scale building that supply-chain is fucking gigantic. It takes a decade to build that.

All the battery companies already have large multi-year of-take agreements. And they are not building massive new capacity without new demand.

> but don't discount the possibility that batteries are not at the end of their evolution and early entrants might get burned by some new chemistry or form factor.

We haven't seen new form factors in many decades.

As for chemistry, everybody is working on that. Toyota has burned billions and achieved nothing.

Yes new chemistry are constantly coming in, but the reality is, each new chemistry innovation needs a decade or so to scale. And it mostly builds on existing supply chains and suppliers.

Take a look at things like silicon additives, they have been talked about for a long time, and it has been increasing. And it will continue to increase, but its not a magical pill that makes all existing battery factories obsolete.

Battery companies sell their new state of the art batteries to their long term partners first. And those partners are the first to learn of new innovations.

Tesla is stuck with a cylindrical battery supply chain because they built that out. Basically their undoing since their cars are crappy enough where they need to compete on price alone. They give away their margin by buying 3p prismatics for their bottom end offerings. So being first can and does burn you badly.

Its absolutely possible that they did all miss the boat, but even the stats just in this thread point to a drop in EV sales and economic challenges with regards to price and demand. The Chinese keep prices low with very low labor costs and subsidies from a totalitarian government, our goal isn't and shouldn't be to compete with that on price.

Lower labour costs per hour can be balanced against lower cost of living for workers.

Industrial Policy Spending for China’s EV Sector (subsidies) have dropped from $13,800 USD per vehicle in 2018 to $4,700 USD in 2023 and are less today in 2026.

How do these subsidies compare to US subsidies to the fossil fuel oil and gas industry?

The oil industry is irrelevant here and feels more like a whataboutism deflection. We can debate the oil industry, based on your comment we'd likely agree on much of it, but that's a separate discussion.

Happy to be wrong here, but my timeline would have expected US subsidies in those industries to begin somewhere around the 70s give or take a decade, as both industries consolidated heavily.

The company would not exist as it does today without such funding.

That's.. completely sensible? Don't we all want a world with lower carbon emissions?

Whether we want lower carbon emissions, whether carbon emissions is the only metric that matters, whether moving from ICE vehicles to EVs, etc are all interesting topics in their own right.

Xiaomi YU7 is $30k new, and much nicer than a Model Y. Never subsidized.

And they do have plenty of flaws to call out, though living in the US today I don't want to throw stones in a glass house...

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.

I realize that some of it is just a cult of personality, and that part will be unusually sticky because of things like cognitive dissonance. But that can’t be all of it. My next best guess is a bunch of it is a whole bunch of institutional investors are privately thinking these companies are way too risky, but keep it to themselves because it’s not their money they’re putting on the line and taking a contrarian position would risk angering a presumably vocal subset of clients of unknown size. Which isn’t a great way to make yourself popular with your boss.

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.

"We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead."

This is the richest man in the world being GLEEFUL abut destroying an organization that helps the poorest people in the world. Musk is basically Ebeneezer Scrooge.

In an interview when asked about it he insisted their was vast amounts of fraud in USAID.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886307316804263979?lang=en

1. https://oig.usaid.gov/node/7283

Which you "prove" by linking to a story how $9 million was "diverted" (although the person responsible was caught and charged) out of a total of $12 billion.

That's 9 parts of 12 thousand or 0.075% that you are describing as "a lot".

So far all you have demonstrated is that US AID loses less aid money than CBH loses in grain to parrots each year.

If you think think that millions of tonnes of grain should be not transported because less than 1% is eaten by parrots then you're committed to starving millions of food.

There are others but I suspect there is no quantity or quality of examples that would change your mind.

Keep in mind that the fraud that is discovered and prosecuted is usually only a small fraction of what actually exists.

What makes you think this is the Trump administration lying about fraud versus them shining a light on actually fraudulent organization that you believe was doing a good job?

You tell me: what kind of Valid Evidence would convince you one way or the other?

"What makes you think this is the Trump administration lying about fraud"

Because they lie constantly about absolutely everything.

"what kind of Valid Evidence would convince you one way or the other?"

Evidence that comes from people not involved with destroying USAID.

(I literally just asked Gemini "how many deaths are verified to be caused directly by the sudden shutdown of usaid?" to find some articles I had read featuring actual journalists tracking deaths on the ground.)

I have read multiple other articles to the same effect from different publications. Aid got cut off instantly, people could not access medicine and food that they needed, and people died. Horribly.

Get out of your bubble before you destroy your soul.