- https://www.theautopian.com/the-average-full-size-truck-now-...
- https://www.ceicdata.com/en/united-states/new-vehicle-averag...
It's an electric vehicle sold by a racist, fascist, trillionaire Trump supporter. The Venn diagram of people who want an electric vehicle and who want to give Musk even more money is vanishingly small. My next vehicle will be an electric SUV, and I'm never touching a Tesla.
The median wage in S.Cali is literally double the median wage of the midwest, but they don't pay twice as much for their cars or consumer goods.
That said, these numbers DO exclude luxury pickups like the Denali, King Ranch … which would send the average even higher.
I think median, agriculture-excluded would be more representative.
Granted, that's still pushed up by loaded in-town trophy trucks without a spot of mud on them.
But the cost is steep when I'm more in the market for an SUV or offroading vehicle than a truck. Not to mention that the extent to which Musk and Tesla are intertwined with politics is really not an easy sell for me.
A sedan built by another company with similar aesthetics without completely ignoring...well basically everything from safety to build quality, would probably be on my potential list.
I have to assume that politics or sunk cost are the only reasons people keep these things because they are objectively awful vehicles.
It certainly did not "fail" on aesthetics. Few people would not take note of it, and it wasn't overly impractical. Some people hated DeLorean too, which just made it even more popular as well ...
They sold 9,000 DeLorean's _total_. It was a punchline in Back to the Future, it wasn't seen as cool at all.
Tesla forecasted selling 250,000 trucks per year by 2025
Actual sales
2024 - 38,965
2025 - 20,237
2026 to date - 11,586
This includes trucks that have been “sold” to other Musk companies.
This product was a complete failure, making the Ford Edsel look like a roaring success
If you see CyberTrucks and DeLoreans as successful, I'd hate to see what you call a failure.
The Cybertruck was released when the company was selling millions of cars a year. It did pretty much nothing for their bottom line, didn’t break them into any new markers, and fell far short of expectations.
When it was announced, for those who wanted an electric truck, it was going to be the only game in town. By the time Tesla delivered, there were several options already on the road from various companies. The people who really wanted an electric truck were already happy customers of another company by the time the cybertruck shipped. I see a fair number of Rivian, F-150 Lightning, and Hummer EVs around me.
When it comes to price, I expect to see a lot of Slate trucks once it starts shipping, with its low price.
Tesla scaled up CyberTruck production before finding product market fit.
IMHO, CyberTruck would have been a modest hit if first production run was 100. Treat CyberTruck like Roadster. A niche vehicle for a niche market. Grant enthusiasts the earliest access to the best technology.
I honestly thought that was the plan.
It would have been the cheapest, fastest way for Tesla to de-risk all of the innovations used in CyberTrucks. Major stuff that Tesla's could gracefully, incrementally add to their other models.
Especially for the Robocab (neé Model 2). Design and production of the CyberTruck was a saavy precursor to all the things Robocab needs to be successful (eg cost savings, serviceability).
Oh well. What do I know? Musk is a trillionaire and I am not, so clearly not much.
I'm part of that market and was initially curious about the cybertruck but it was clear that tesla was totally unserious about building an actual 4x4 overlanding vehicle. I'm not sure EVs are even there yet for a true exploring vehicle since it's the extreme end of the range problem. There are places people go that are a couple hundred miles from the nearest supercharger, and I bet rock crawling kills the range like towing does.
The actual target market was probably a guy who spends 100k on a heavily upgraded Rubicon that never drives on dirt or gets a scratch, and happens to be a huge elon fanboy.
No more of a big deal than any other $2 billion loss.
Tesla projected selling 250k of these a year or $15-20b in revenue per year. This is a big number and would’ve added significant total vehicle sales. Instead, they’ve sold less than 70,000 total trucks over its production history.
This is an absolute disaster and failure by any rational analysis
Which undermines / invalidates your point.
See: F150 Raptor: 20-25k units per year (estimate), avg price: $100k
Worst thing Musk did in context of Tesla is to alienate core demographics for EVs with his politics.
You don't need to argue the intent of the salute; you can just see which candidates he supported and donated to.
(It's fine to debate policy on things like incentives, but that is at least part of the reason why we see China making big leaps here because the government has aligned the incentives with buyers and manufacturers to make electrification the default)
Then Tesla makes an electric car that’s just a car. Surely, they put their own design touches on it, but it mostly looked like an ordinary sedan. Then they made something that mostly looked like an ordinary SUV. And then more ordinary-looking models. They looked distinctive but they didn’t look weird and didn’t make a statement the way a Prius did.
And then they make the weirdest weirdmobile that there ever was. And released it right before making a loud statement of “I’m driving an Elon Musk car!” became really unattractive to a lot of people.
The 1st gen Prius (97-01) looked utterly conventional though, just like a slightly taller Yaris due to the batteries. It was the second generation onward that looked "weird", I think due to aerodynamicsmaxxing.
huh? what aesthetics? That's exactly what I liked about the cybertruck was how ugly it was because I figured if I got one I wouldn't have to like it or care about it. That felt appealing for an everyday use car. It was way over priced though. Probably that Slate truck is a better fit for this use case but I don't like that the body is plastic.
The cybertruck was built in an era of high truck prices driven by zero interest rates. It bet on the price of trucks going up, just as the Ford F150 electric did. That was the wrong bet.
If it was a $40,000 truck, it would have a much bigger market despite all the other explanations of its failure. The market moved under it.