Tesla's Cybertruck speaks almost poetically to two distinct but orthogonal archetypes of threatened masculinity: the tacti-cool milspec dork, and the showboating rich guy.
(Disclaimer: I’m not a Tesla/Elon fanboy. This comment is in no way in defense of Tesla’s scummy business practices or Elon’s general bigotry. Anyway,)
He’s going to be losing money on every truck
It’s really not rare at all for automakers to sell their flagship cars at a loss because of the huge amount of organic advertising the cars bring in on the road. The Porsche 911, Cadillac CTS-V, and Dodge Demon (amongst plenty of others) were all sold at build-to-sale losses at MSRP, but they have the effect of people seeing them on the road and saying “Wow, that cool car says ‘Porsche’ on the back of it, and this crossover says ‘Porsche’ on the back of it. It must be cool, too!” Meanwhile, the profits made off Cayenne sales more than make up for the loss from a few thousand 911 sales per year.
What I see happening is, after this run of Cybertrucks are sold, the Cybertruck we see today will enter limited production and Tesla will sell a Cybertruck-lite vehicle designed with cheaper, streamlines production lines.
Maybe. It’s hard nailing those stainless steel bodies though. They have a great tendency to snap back after bending. I think we’ll see even worse issues than the teslas with those panel gaps.
These ugly tanks are only meant for the rich. I don’t think time will be kind to all of those powered moving parts. Owners will be putting these in for a ton of maintenance. Tesla will get their money back there.
(Disclaimer: I’m not a Tesla/Elon fanboy. This comment is in no way in defense of Tesla’s scummy business practices or Elon’s general bigotry. Anyway,)
It’s really not rare at all for automakers to sell their flagship cars at a loss because of the huge amount of organic advertising the cars bring in on the road. The Porsche 911, Cadillac CTS-V, and Dodge Demon (amongst plenty of others) were all sold at build-to-sale losses at MSRP, but they have the effect of people seeing them on the road and saying “Wow, that cool car says ‘Porsche’ on the back of it, and this crossover says ‘Porsche’ on the back of it. It must be cool, too!” Meanwhile, the profits made off Cayenne sales more than make up for the loss from a few thousand 911 sales per year.
What I see happening is, after this run of Cybertrucks are sold, the Cybertruck we see today will enter limited production and Tesla will sell a Cybertruck-lite vehicle designed with cheaper, streamlines production lines.
Maybe. It’s hard nailing those stainless steel bodies though. They have a great tendency to snap back after bending. I think we’ll see even worse issues than the teslas with those panel gaps.
These ugly tanks are only meant for the rich. I don’t think time will be kind to all of those powered moving parts. Owners will be putting these in for a ton of maintenance. Tesla will get their money back there.