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Comment by tiahura | Hacker News Reader

When the picture leaked of the Cybertruck not even being able to load a bike in the bed, you could hear the Tesla billions going down the drain.

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Your expectations about bed size might be off. You also can't load a bike lengthwise in a 4-door F-150 or a 4-door Ram 1500, both of which have 5.5 foot beds. I personally think it's kind of silly for a truck, but that's what the market is apparently asking for.

If we want Tesla to make a low-profit margin work truck to actually get things done, you’re talking about a 4 cylinder Nissan Frontier with an extended cab.

That’s not the market for a $60,000 luxury truck.

Indeed. The Ford Maverick base model is $23k (edited: was $21k which was the base price in 2022). Despite being "not really a truck" in many ways, it actually demonstrates a lot more utility per dollar than most pavement princesses. Every white Ford Ranger or Toyota Tacoma fleet vehicle you see out there hauling parts from store to store, doing groundskeeping/facilities/security work, and doing small household hauling can be replaced with a Maverick. In a world where $50k gets you a base model "full size" truck, the Maverick is going to clean up (in my opinion).

The Maverick is a great product but if I were a shareholder I’d want to be selling the $50k profit machines instead.

The margins on the Maverick are tight. It’s really just the Toyota Corolla of utility vehicles. Completely different buyer, and that’s okay.

We’re still waiting for the economy car EV breakthrough that has the kind of range needed for long North American drives.

One interesting thing is that you can also easily spend $50k on a luxury-spec Maverick. I drove one a couple weeks ago that was $52k out the door, fully 100% over base price. I'm sure the profit margin on those packages is pretty impressive. I ended up buying a bare bones one that was under $25k, silly miniature bed be damned.

Did that $52k include dealer markup? Pretty sure they top out around $40K fully-loaded.

Not that I recall, but it did have a lot of what I'd consider "above-and-beyond" extras, like a $400 console safe and powered moon roof (oh and lol, it was red!). Plus the $52k included all the seattle local charges like insane registration and sales tax, so those shouldn't really be counted.

Just as a note, "insane" registrations and sales tax are not "insane." Driving a vehicle has negative costs on society that neither the owner of the vehicle nor the producer pay for, and fuel taxes do not fully cover these costs.

Seattle/Washington charges you money based on the weight of your vehicle, which is reasonable since weight is the primary driver of road wear. A lighter vehicle costs the city and state less money in maintenance.

Sales tax in Seattle is also relatively typical for a city, and applies to every product you buy. It has a very similar sales tax rate to cities like Nashville, Memphis, Phoenix, and New Orleans.

Would clean up if everyone could get one. I placed an order for a 2023 and had to place another order for a 2024. I am still waiting. In the meantime I had to buy out my existing lease since the used car market was nuts, and I am pretty sure I am now under water on that lease.

For people not caught up on this, picture at link below.

https://www.threads.net/@iamspecialized/post/CzpC3-0OuEc

Damn, that bed surely looks small

The way the truck segment works, it's pretty inevitable. More and more people buying them with no intention to use as trucks, means cab encroaching into the bed space.

It's ridiculous. I tried to find a standard cab (or extended cab at most), standard 8' bed truck, and was referred to the fleet vehicle sales at our local ford dealer. They only sell that kind to large businesses who dump the standard bed and install custom box beds or tool beds.

People want quad cabs and 4' beds, apparently. I don't get it, even slightly.

An 8' bed with a mere extended cab won't fit in a whole lot of garages.

Many people can't fit a Smart car in their garage. I can't think of a single person I know that parks a truck in their garage.

Sure you can. You just get the rail that mounts at the front of the bed, take the front wheel off, and attach the bike to the rail by the fork.

You can also get a 4 door (crew cab) truck with a 6.5 foot bed.

> You just get the rail that mounts at the front of the bed, take the front wheel off ...

... which makes the bike ~14 inches shorter, meaning you can do that in any truck with a 5.5 foot bed. The discussion is whether you can put the entire bike lengthwise in the bed, not whether it will fit when partially disassembled.

You can get a 4 door F-150 with a 6.5 foot bed. I own one.

Yes, I have actually confirmed that they exist, but in my area (seattle) there are exactly 0 of them available at dealers and special orders take forever. The 5.5 foot bed is apparently what sells. I'm jealous. That thing must be a mile long. :)

I just bought mine from a used dealer. The F-150 is already huge, might as well get a bed big enough to fit common items in

I think that the popularity of the Ford Maverick and so on mean that the bed isn't for that kind of thing.

Also, for those upset with the inability to find a modern truck with a long bed and short cab, the answer someone suggested is a van. It's a pretty good substitute.

Pickup trucks are for the "work boots with heel lifts" market. The average hatchback can carry a bike or two while the average pickup cannot, but the pickup sure looks meaner. Everyone knows trucks are an expensive fashion accessory intended to signify contempt for fashion. Enough people pretend not to notice that they still do their job.

The Cybertruck's problem is that it doesn't keep up the pretense.

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