It’s Looking Like the Cybertruck Is the Biggest Flop in Automotive History

How you fuck up making a truck so badly?

Yeah the electric pickup is such a no brainer for the US market and it was one of the first.

But what if it was horribly ugly and made everyone hate you? Surely it will sell even better then!

An electric pickup isn’t a no-brainer for the US market. It’s a big-brainer.

Most EVs are shaped like running shoes for aerodynamics. Pickup trucks are big air smacking slabs. Larger pickup trucks advertise towing capacity as a major feature, EVs are bad at towing, again because of aerodynamics. The additional batteries and such required to make an EV pickup work are large, heavy and expensive. I think the technology needs to cook a bit before we get there.

Now on the compact pickup truck front…those are basically extinct. The Slate is almost a good attempt, the problem is it’s almost the anti-cybertruck. The Cybertruck is what you get when a billionaire nazi notices how thoroughly the drugs have emptied his scrotum. It’s the costume a truly awful male wears to cosplay as a man. The Slate is almost the equal and opposite, it’s what r/fuckcars thinks of when they start a sentence with “Can’t you just make do with…” A 20 year old S10 kicks the Slate’s ass in every way because the Slate is designed mostly to play dress-up like a barbie doll. They’re taking pre-orders but they won’t show you where the tie down points in the bed are.

I don’t know enough about physics or cars to really rebut you but this doesn’t seem plausible to me.

I don’t think aerodynamics are particularly relevant to towing? Prime movers (tractor trailers?) are about the least aerodynamic vehicle there is but they regularly tow more than 100 tonnes at highway speed.

If I had to guess I’d suggest the primary problem is the relationship between system weight of the vehicle and load, battery capacity, and the battery’s weight. As in, if you want to be able to cart 1 ton for 200km then the additional battery requirement is another 300kg so that’s really only an extra 700kg so you need more battery and heavier frame and so on.

Another problem I suppose, and I emphasize that this is supposition, is optimising motors for both torque and speed. The torque required to break inertia with lots of weight in sandy or muddy terrain.