Tesla is losing money on every truck sold at this point. The recall is just another multimillion dollar deficit on the books now.
Whether this product line will be sustainable (or exist) 1 year from now is unlikely.
Lackluster sales. Poor public perception. Truck would likely need another overhaul (more money burned) and another 1-2 year loss leader phase to test the market, and get their build processes updated to scale.
Tesla could have owned the entire EV truck market currently, if they didn't choose to make a truck that required a big amount of R&D and is hard to build. Why Tesla chose such a path completely baffles me.
Tesla's mission was "to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy" which they were doing by making solid and affordable EVs and electric storage solutions.
One of the biggest reasons of the success of Model S was because it had a modern but conventional design unlike the other toy-like EV cars on the market at the time. Model S proved that it is possible to build a modern conventional EV car that people can buy.
It feels like Cybertruck is coming from a completely different mission statement. Actually most of the decisions they have been taking for the last 2-3 years feel like it.
I don't think your first sentence can hold true as soon as the designs were released. The way to capture EV truck market is to make something that looks like a truck. Cybertruck is ugly as all get out.
I saw a Ford F-150 Lightning the other day, looks practically the same as an ICE F-150.
> Tesla's mission was "to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy" which they were doing by making solid and affordable EVs and electric storage solutions.
Since far before Tesla, selling cars at high profit margins has ultimately been about selling power/attention/sex-appeal, not to advance an objective like "accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. That's a nice side effect, but it's not ultimately what sells them. Otherwise, all of the original fan base of Tesla would have bought Nissan Leafs (which preceded Tesla).
Trendsetting companies need hero products that capture (or even set) the zeitgeist.
Teslas older models once played that role, but no longer, since they are so common at this point in their primary target markets.
To recapture customer imagination, the Cybertruck is promoting the "faux survivalism" hero narrative. It's the same narrative that is selling Rivians and F150, but taken to the aesthetic extreme.
Tesla building the Cybertruck is their attempt to get people to buy something specifically because it is "cool", and not because it is "an EV".
If the customer buys it, they switch to an EV platform, thereby accelerating Tesla's mission of "transition[ing] to sustainable energy".
Leading with "it's an EV" is the primary reason why "legacy auto" has been scaling back their EV manufacturing, because people generally don't care about "EV". They do care about something "cool" though.
Reports from YouTubers who own the Cybertruck is that (at this stage) owning one makes you feel like a celebrity. People come to you constantly to take ask questions and take pictures with the CT. So, people seem to disagree with you.
If that's not enough, there's a long list of celebrities that now own cybertrucks, including Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Jay Z, Steve Aoki, Pharrell, and more. Might not fit your definition of "cool", but clearly, it does for a lot of people.
Affirming that I have even less in common with the likes of Kim Kardashian and Steve Aoki than previously understood is perhaps the nicest compliment you could have given me. Thank you!
I would encourage you to watch any recent YouTube video produced by any Cybertruck owner. Middle America, who is generally anti-EV, disagrees with you. That is why Tesla is doing this.
Model S, Model 3, Model X and Model Y are also cool cars, and they have the advantages of being EV. And this formula was working with these models, increasing EV adoption massively. Why change a winning formula?
Cybertruck tried to be over the top cool, and sacrificed some basics like time-to-market, easy production, range, safety... And it was a totally unnecessary change of strategy. Cybertruck really didn't need to be stainless steel or low-poly in order to sell. Model Y being one of the best selling cars in the world proves this.
It was working for people who were willing to buy an EV. Those people generally fall into two groups: 1) They specifically want an EV due to $reasons or 2) They are looking for a new car, and are willing to consider an EV. Both of these groups are fine with the current S3XY lineup because they resemble "normal" cars. That's why the Model S originally had so much success - it was a normal car, but electric. Even then, it was still a hard sell in 2013 to early adopters.
I'm going to stereotype a bit here, but Tesla YouTubers/Tweeters/Fanatics and the two groups above aside, everyone else is generally "against" EVs. If you own one, you know exactly what I'm talking about. The Cybertruck is Tesla's attempt to change that. Don't convince them on the green-ness or potential cost-savings of home charging, convince them because it's cool. It's something that no other manufacturer can compete against. (for now)
> Tesla could have owned the entire EV truck market currently, if they didn't choose to make a truck that required a big amount of R&D and is hard to build. Why Tesla chose such a path completely baffles me.
I often think this, but then I think about how it would have actually happened. Right now, Tesla doesn't have enough domestically produced 2170s to supply both 3 and Y production. The 4680 ramp has been so slow that it is barely ahead of CT production anyway.
I think some of their failures on the battery supply chain side are bleeding over into product failures at this point.
I've seen rumours here and there (albeit nothing particularly reliable) that the Cybertruck might be a platform used to learn about this design/manufacturing approach. It's hard because it's hard, but the Cybertruck is how they learn how to make it easier.
The thinking being, of course, that if/when they get it nailed, they've potentially got an advantage to leverage over other manufacturers for future cars such as the Model 2.
Only time will tell whether this is the case, and whether it worked.
This is nonsensical, the Cybertruck is a terrible platform that had serious Chassis design issues that any other automaker would have killed the design over, but because Musk's ego is too big, there was never an option to say "we need to go back to the drawing board".
There was never a snowball's chance in hell that once Ford and GMC got involved in the EV truck market that Tesla would be anything but an afterthought.
It's literally the meme truck. That meme has sailed and died. People will still hoot and holler when they spot you driving one in the wild but that's different from people wanting to pay the steep sticker price for what the car actually is.
I don't see moms picking up their kids with these trucks. I don't see people using them for camping. The unnamed companion ATV seems to have been recalled for not being roadsafe and doesn't seem to be coming back any time soon.
It's possible there will be a revised Cybertruck eventually but this thing has so many design flaws and underdelivers on so many promises (e.g. "you could use it as a boat" when taking it to the carwash voids your warranty) that it's not mass market compatible. Heck, it's not even possible to make it street legal in Europe without massive changes.
As far as Musk's ventures go, the Cybertruck is up there with the Hyperloop in terms of what it is and what was promised. Remember the unprovoked throwaway claim that it'll let you use it as a source for compressed air to drive pneumatic tools? Or the talk about selling a version of it to the military as an APC?
I’m definitely going to be picking up my kids in this truck and camping, but maybe I’m just a weird tech bro. In the arms race that is American roads, it’s objectively safer for my family to be driven around in a massive steel tank. I also love the look.
How do you arrive at lackluster sales conclusion? They are obviously just production limited as they scale up a new line. Can you place an order today and buy a cybertruck? No there is still a year+ long wait list of people wanting to buy.
> Tesla is losing money on every truck sold at this point
Is it just me or many people don't seem to understand fixed costs vs. variable costs that I learnt about in high school while growing up in the third world?
Don't people have to take Econ 101 in the USA or whatever the equivalent is in their countries? Or is it optional.
Not even going to bring up "advanced" concepts like COGS that I know about while being a CS major and never taking an economics course.
What you said doesn't many sense, because, say they sell 100 million trucks, according to your logic they would end up with a huge loss. But in reality they would make a big profit.
Some companies will literally sell products for less than the cost of the components that go into them.
Sometimes that's a supermarket selling 'loss leaders' to get people into the store where they'll hopefully buy other things - or a games console manufacturer planning to make up the loss because they get paid for every game sold.
Other times a manufacturer wants to hit a promised launch date, and hopes to get manufacturing costs down later. Maybe they haven't had time to set up certain cost-saving automation, or a planned lower-cost component wasn't ready in time for launch. Maybe their widget supplier has promised a lower cost when they're ordering 10,000 a month but right now they're only ordering 500 a month.
Of course, without access to insider information we can only guess if this is really occurring...
Whether this product line will be sustainable (or exist) 1 year from now is unlikely.
Lackluster sales. Poor public perception. Truck would likely need another overhaul (more money burned) and another 1-2 year loss leader phase to test the market, and get their build processes updated to scale.