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Comment by crawshaw | Hacker News Reader

There are a lot of lenses through which to view the failure of the cybertruck: aesthetics, not enough truck not enough SUV, size, association of aesthetics with politics, etc. But I think the main one that is ignored is price.

The cybertruck was built in an era of high truck prices driven by zero interest rates. It bet on the price of trucks going up, just as the Ford F150 electric did. That was the wrong bet.

If it was a $40,000 truck, it would have a much bigger market despite all the other explanations of its failure. The market moved under it.

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The average price paid for a full-size truck in the US is north of $65,000.

- https://www.theautopian.com/the-average-full-size-truck-now-...

- https://www.ceicdata.com/en/united-states/new-vehicle-averag...

No longer...

Is it higher now?

And there has been 31% cumulative inflation since the cybertruck launched, so perhaps I should have said if it had been a $49,000 truck. But either way, it’s clearly a luxury vehicle that was disproportionately affected by interest rates.

Do you know what the median price is?

I'm unable to find published numbers on median price. Kneejerk, a median price 15% lower than avg still gives us a $55,000 truck.

That said, these numbers DO exclude luxury pickups like the Denali, King Ranch … which would send the average even higher.

That's taking into account farm purchases though, which have a unique shape of "a new truck at any price" in good years zeroing out profits.

I think median, agriculture-excluded would be more representative.

Granted, that's still pushed up by loaded in-town trophy trucks without a spot of mud on them.

I think what you're saying is there's likely a significant number of "cheapest possible truck" purchases in this data that means the median price is actually _higher_ than the average - the median is dragged down by cheap farm trucks. Given that this $65k figure already excludes luxury trucks, that might be the case.

“New truck at any price” is a reference to the tax year-end buying surge of over-6000 lb vehicles for commercial purposes, and farms have the biggest tax breaks I believe. This will pull the average prices higher as the higher price protects more money from taxes.

I think another big one was the time from announcement to release.

When it was announced, for those who wanted an electric truck, it was going to be the only game in town. By the time Tesla delivered, there were several options already on the road from various companies. The people who really wanted an electric truck were already happy customers of another company by the time the cybertruck shipped. I see a fair number of Rivian, F-150 Lightning, and Hummer EVs around me.

When it comes to price, I expect to see a lot of Slate trucks once it starts shipping, with its low price.

I thought their announcement coincided with the Lightning announcement and likely threw a cheap price out there to undermine it.

Yeah, when they said $40k I thought I might get one. $100k, no, not me.

True still thru today: Trucks priced higher than the Cybertruck sell at higher volumes than the cybertruck.

Which undermines / invalidates your point.

See: F150 Raptor: 20-25k units per year (estimate), avg price: $100k

Yeah, but those ppl want trucks, not an EV "truck"

Worst thing Musk did in context of Tesla is to alienate core demographics for EVs with his politics.

Musk's politics? It was Biden that chose Unions over Environmentalism and American manufacturing. Almost everything spiraled after that, to the point where people were unabashedly claiming the whole Nazi salute thing. Looking back, it was wrong to let the crazies have their way.

You don’t think that thing was a least a homage to the Nazi salute?

Not only that, Musk straight up decided to support Republican candidates who are vocally anti-environmental, anti-electrification, anti-incentives to shift consumer and industry change. He supported candidates and ideology that do not align with the buyers most likely to associate themselves with EVs.

I am not making a judgement here at all and I'm making zero comments on Musk's ideology or character, only that he made a poor branding decision by supporting a voting base and politicians that to not represent the folks most likely to buy a Tesla.

You don't need to argue the intent of the salute; you can just see which candidates he supported and donated to.

(It's fine to debate policy on things like incentives, but that is at least part of the reason why we see China making big leaps here because the government has aligned the incentives with buyers and manufacturers to make electrification the default)

Unions and environmentalism are two orthogonal issues. I'm not sure how you tie those two together.

There isn't even a need to discuss the intent of the salute; just look at who he donated to and who he supported as candidates. The problem is that buyers who want EVs are much, much more likely to align with the opposite ideology.

The article even said it was a rounding error in terms of Tesla’s earnings, and expectations were tepid to begin with, and other brands such as Ford also failed with electric trucks. It is not as big of a deal as people have made it out to be. The cars are Tesla’s main business by far. The Cybertruck was a distraction basically.

> It is not as big of a deal as people have made it out to be.

No more of a big deal than any other $2 billion loss.

> expectations were tepid to begin with

Tesla projected selling 250k of these a year or $15-20b in revenue per year (20%+ of vehicle revenue for Tesla). This is a big number and would’ve added significant total vehicle sales. Instead, they’ve sold less than 70,000 total trucks over its production history. That’s why it’s a rounding error.

This is an absolute disaster and failure by any rational analysis. Its failure helped puncture “Tesla sales will continue to increase” and stock price justification storyline.

I think the aesthetics are quite important. One thing that set Tesla apart was that they didn’t build weirdmobiles. They started out when manufacturers made “alternative” vehicles look weird to set them apart. The Prius is the classic example. The Leaf was another obvious one. This weirdness has an important impact on the market, because it meant that you called attention to yourself when you were driving one. When you drove a Prius, you weren’t just getting great gas mileage, you were figuratively shouting to everyone around you “look at me, I drive a Prius!” (With an implication of “I’m saving the planet,” and a further implication of “and you’re not, you philisitine.”)

Then Tesla makes an electric car that’s just a car. Surely, they put their own design touches on it, but it mostly looked like an ordinary sedan. Then they made something that mostly looked like an ordinary SUV. And then more ordinary-looking models. They looked distinctive but they didn’t look weird and didn’t make a statement the way a Prius did.

And then they make the weirdest weirdmobile that there ever was. And released it right before making a loud statement of “I’m driving an Elon Musk car!” became really unattractive to a lot of people.

> They started out when manufacturers made “alternative” vehicles look weird to set them apart. The Prius is the classic example.

The 1st gen Prius (97-01) looked utterly conventional though, just like a slightly taller Yaris due to the batteries. It was the second generation onward that looked "weird", I think due to aerodynamicsmaxxing.

It’s pretty easy to buy a $80k full size ICE truck.

Yes and:

Tesla scaled up CyberTruck production before finding product market fit. Somewhere tween SUV and truck, and without a clear purpose. (I thought Tesla's initial market segment was going to focus on who ever buys Jeeps, boondocking, outdoorsy stuff.)

IMHO, CyberTruck would have been a modest hit if first production run was 100. Treat CyberTruck like Roadster. A niche vehicle for a niche market. Grant enthusiasts the earliest access to the best technology.

I honestly thought that was the plan.

It would have been the cheapest, fastest way for Tesla to de-risk all of the innovations used in CyberTruck. Major stuff that Tesla's could not gracefully, incrementally add to their other models (eg 48V).

And a perfect precursor of for the Robocab (neé Model 2), that would benefit most from the innovations.

Oh well. What do I know? Musk is a trillionaire and I am not, so clearly not much.

> (I thought Tesla's initial market segment was going to focus on who ever buys Jeeps, boondocking, outdoorsy stuff.)

I'm part of that market and was initially curious about the cybertruck but it was clear that tesla was totally unserious about building an actual 4x4 overlanding vehicle. I'm not sure EVs are even there yet for a true exploring vehicle since it's the extreme end of the range problem. There are places people go that are a couple hundred miles from the nearest supercharger, and I bet rock crawling kills the range like towing does.

The actual target market was probably a guy who spends 100k on a heavily upgraded Rubicon that never drives on dirt or gets a scratch, and happens to be a huge elon fanboy.

The overlanding issues are range and lack of major customizability. Overlanders rarely go more than 100mi out, what they love is the community and talking about all the upgrades they've done.

It didn't fail, more than Model S did, which saw the same fate.

It certainly did not "fail" on aesthetics. Few people would not take note of it, and it wasn't overly impractical. Some people hated DeLorean too, which just made it even more popular as well ...

> Some people hated DeLorean too, which just made it even more popular as well ..

They sold 9,000 DeLorean's _total_. It was a punchline in Back to the Future, it wasn't seen as cool at all.

> It didn't fail

Tesla forecasted selling 250,000 trucks per year by 2025

Actual sales

2024 - 38,965

2025 - 20,237

2026 to date - 11,586

This includes trucks that have been “sold” to other Musk companies.

This product was a complete failure, making the Ford Edsel look like a roaring success

> Some people hated DeLorean too, which just made it even more popular as well

If you see CyberTrucks and DeLoreans as successful, I'd hate to see what you call a failure.

The Model S was released when Tesla had sold a grand total of around 2,500 cars. It sustained the company for years and did most of the work bootstrapping them from tiny niche to a mass market car with the Model 3.

The Cybertruck was released when the company was selling millions of cars a year. It did pretty much nothing for their bottom line, didn’t break them into any new markers, and fell far short of expectations.

I think worse than just selling poorly, it served as a massive distraction to their development team, keeping them from releasing or updating other, more important cars.

I like the aesthetics a lot. It recalls the DeLorean, which is one of my favorite automotive designs.

But the cost is steep when I'm more in the market for an SUV or offroading vehicle than a truck. Not to mention that the extent to which Musk and Tesla are intertwined with politics is really not an easy sell for me.

Yeah I'm another who actually likes the rough idea of the aesthetics.

A sedan built by another company with similar aesthetics without completely ignoring...well basically everything from safety to build quality, would probably be on my potential list.

Also the things are built like utter shit. The panels come unglued, they rust in the rain, the engine, suspension and steering malfunction, the trim cracks, they leak, they burst into flames, then the door handles don't work when your Cybertruck bursts into flames.

I have to assume that politics or sunk cost are the only reasons people keep these things because they are objectively awful vehicles.

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