The Death of the Cybertruck

It should be of no surprise to anyone that Tesla's roll out of the Cybertruck has gone more poorly than anticipated by really anyone involved. While much of that blame has been saddled on its CEO Elon Musk, the death of the Cybertruck is at least in part, due to factors completely unrelated to its CEO.

I've always maintained that electric cars; dating back all the way to the production electric cars of the 1960’s, have been handled in a rather illogical manner. The entire concept of the electric car, or the rather the personal electric vehicle, was a contentious one, prone to egregious setbacks and infrastructure deficiencies. Certainly, the Cybertruck has not benefited from these facts continuing to plague the EV industry to this day.

Battery technology, for the most part, is still not in keeping with what consumers would expect in terms of longevity or range. More recently, the environmental and social impacts of manufacturing has been under increased scrutiny. The truth is that consumer-grade high voltage rechargeable EV batteries are still in their infancy. Manufacturing them is both a labor intensive and expensive process, requiring rare earth metals that are as finite a resource as petroleum. I guess recent trade wars have shown a massive spotlight on the downsides of these types of batteries, specifically the contemporary lithium ion high capacity batteries.

In the recent decade, it's also come to light that while on the surface, environmentally and ecologically friendly, electric cars are a matter not to be taken at face value. Constructing them does not offset nearly as much environmental pollution or energy consumption as has been openly advertised. And in truth, many electric vehicles in the 21st century failed to recoup their energy costs in their lifetimes. With recent news that tens of thousands of Cybertruck’s are languishing in storage lots, unsold and unsellable, the standing average of all EV’s sees a harsh reversal of the environmentally agenda surrounding EV’s.

Within Tesla Motors, the manufacturer behind Tesla vehicles and the Cybertruck, there were certainly many factors working against creating a viable pickup truck, especially such an esoteric truck. For one thing, Tesla has rarely designs a vehicle from scratch under Elon Musk's leadership.

In fact, Tesla has made very few vehicles from a blank slate. From a manufacturing standpoint; they have largely made luxury sedans. After their original Roadster design, the Model S, X, 3, and Y are all Sedan’s with largely the same iterative design philosophy as most other automotive brands.

This highlights many problems with Cybertrucks as a new vehicle. Implementing so many new technologies; especially when so many are integral to the manufacturing, represents a massive number of points of failure. This is the case given that in its first 15 months, all Cybertrucks underwent multiple large scale product recalls.

The Cybertruck itself is a bit of a chimera, a pickup truck created from a luxury car brand, but not having pedigree of either a luxury car or of a marketable pickup truck. Given that luxury cars and pickup trucks are diametrically opposed in terms of many market conditions and consumer needs, there isn’t a tremendous market for Tesla to service. Even with its relatively low manufacturing numbers, the Cybertruck exists in a market that never really had sustainability and would have probably been better off embracing a more pragmatic approach.

A practical approach would have been to designing an SUV or a non-luxury pickup truck similar to the announced Slate Trucks.
Whereas the Cybertruck delivered so many unusual aspects in its design that it was a struggle to fit it to any solid category.

Inevitably the design philosophy that went into the creation of the Cybertruck created three district deficiencies in the actual product.

Cybertruck was not marketable as a luxury truck. Its design was too eclectic to fit into the niche of high end cars or SUV’s. When we look back at the explanations for Cybertrucks “futuristic” design there a noticeable absence of any sense of opulence, only a vague sense of surface level aesthetics. By the time real people got behind the wheel there was no hiding the gimmicky nature of Tesla’s “improvements”. With the various mechanics faults to crop up with the Cybertruck, Tesla didn’t produce a quality vehicle let alone a luxury one. The steering, power train, suspension were all sub-par for a luxury truck and even the basic vehicle and safety mechanisms were marred by convoluted implementations to the extent that sub-standard door latches and floor pedals have created dangerous conditions for motorists.

On the opposite side of the spectrum there is the concept of the Cybertruck as a functioning pickup truck. While the Cybertruck is a large vehicle and in theory has the features you’d expect from a workhorse truck. None of those features manifested it into a quality truck; the suspension and power train have been shown to be ill-suited to off-road terrain. The truck bed is small and doesn’t conform to standards set by comparable vehicles. This leaves the Cybertruck as an overly heavy light truck and not utilitarian enough to stand against entrenched members of the light truck industry (Ford, Dodge, Toyota).

There is also the issue of it’s shortcoming on the international market. While the high weight and large wheel base make the Cybertruck ill-suited for many tight European roads it couldn’t be certified under E.U law. The E.U requires vehicles to be built with pedestrian safety in mind to be considered street legal. The angular body; a defining part of its futuristic appearance, and the stainless steel cladding also makes the Cybertruck a hazard to pedestrians. Since these aspects of the Cybertruck are innate it would be impractical to make modifications to meet E.U safety standards.

The weight of the Cybertruck also exceeded the weight limit allowed with a standard E.U driver’s license. Essentially the Cybertruck required a commercial drivers’ license to operate legally.

But what does this mean for the cyber trucks future? Well, this is difficult to predict. Certainly, it's been dealt a more than a few serious blows, whether it will simply be a complete financial flop for Tesla and the industry remains to be seen. Certainly, the fallout is most likely not complete. The risk of additional recalls, and mounting competition don’t bode well for the Cybertruck's future.