I think the timing of the Cybertruck starting deliveries roughly aligning with when Elon got heavily involved in politics hurt it quite a bit. It is such a distinctive vehicle with a strong association with Elon, that there was an immediate brand association. It may have had poor sales anyway, but it certainly didn't help that many folks on the left, who are typically the most 'pro EV', had a large 'anti-Elon' shift around its launch.
That said, even though it's not to my taste, I do admire that they dared to do something different and took a big gamble on it. So many vehicles, especially in the truck space, are almost indistinguishable and lack any kind of imagination. Kudos to Tesla for trying to break the mold and push the category somewhere new.
>I think the timing of the Cybertruck starting deliveries roughly aligning with when Elon got heavily involved in politics
That and also it's just a bad product.
>That said, even though it's not to my taste, I do admire that they dared to do something different and took a big gamble on it.
A pickup truck should just be max utility, especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one
edit: agree there's a market for the raptor off-road tremor package thing, but it wasn't ford's first and they've been selling commerical trucks for 75 years. A true tesla f150 competitor would have sold like crazy, I think
> A pickup truck should just be max utility, especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one
The modern US pickup truck isn't built for utility. It's a $60,000 four-door lifted luxobarge with leather interior and a short bed. It signals (perceived) wealth while preserving working-class alignment. It can also be justified by way of having to pick up used furniture for TikTok refinish and flip projects or bimonthly runs to Home Depot to buy caulk and lightbulbs. Independent tradesman can write them off as work vehicles or, allegedly, use COVID-era PPP loans to buy them.
It's the suburban equivalent of a yuppie's Rolex Submariner. Investment bankers generally don't go scuba diving and if they did a dive computer would be vastly preferable.
I say all of that to say that making a pickup truck for that market segment isn't a bad idea from a numbers perspective. You just can't market it as a luxury vehicle because the whole point is that it is but it isn't.
As someone who's just been trying to buy a crappy used truck to haul some crap to the dump a couple times a year, you're absolutely spot on. I even live in the southwest US where trucks make up a considerable portion of vehicles on the road.
Crappy used trucks simply aren't up for sale. And even the rare listing I do come across, the asking price is ridiculously inflated.
Not even. When I lived in the boonies trash service was ~$75 a quarter, the local hardware store would deliver pallets of mulch for free, and furniture stores offered free delivery above certain purchase amounts. My buddy's dad would haul your boat between the marina and your house for a flat fee. Hell, I was able to cram a full PA with floor monitors and a few guitars into my Corolla for weekend band gigs.
I started looking into getting a trailer or hitch hauler but it didn't seem to make much sense. I could usually pay somebody on-demand to move stuff around and it always worked out to be cheaper than owning and maintaining a truck. I presently work from home and don't even own a car anymore; the math is quite similar with rideshare and motorcycle maintenance coming in significantly cheaper.
These are quite expensive for what you get and are slooooooow. It's fine if you want an expensive, quirky neighborhood runabout, but you'll be made very aware that this is a product not at all designed for the US market (there's a good reason most examples do ~1000 miles a year). The ACTYs I found online were in the $7-20k range, for a ~30 year old model - more for a nice van.
The best used work truck is actually a van. They lack the coolness factor of trucks, but are far more versatile. You can pick up a <10 year old Transit with under 100k miles for like 10-15k. That price point will get you a >10 year old F150 in the 100-150k mile range.
Plus, there are good options if you want something smaller can car-based, like NV2000s and Transit connects. Which don't really exist for trucks outside of newer (maverick) or niche (Ridgeline) options.
Bonus points, a nice Transit is a great daily driver too.
Harsh did a tipper conversion for the Daihatsu Hijet, which had an 850cc triple with a lot more poke than the Acty's 660cc twin, and had a "true 4WD" variant.
In the UK, Truck and Driver Magazine featured one so equipped in a head-to-head AWD tipper test (AWD in the sense of all wheels driven regardless of number of axles, not Subaru AWD/Audi Quattro type AWD), alongside a variety of extremely large trucks. Proper trucks, not F150s, we're talking 18-tonne Scanias and stuff here.
Everyone wanted one of the little Hijets to take home.
Consider a trailer if you have even a mildly acceptable tow vehicle that can take a 2 inch receiver. Use what UHaul will rent you as a rough limit for what your vehicle can handle, and then if you want to save some weight get your own because it will be lighter than UHaul's brick shithouses.
Having said that, I'm still in the market for a larger vehicle with a better tow weight rating as I use the trailer more than a handful of times per year, and my current tow vehicle is getting a bit long in the tooth.
I had a 2008 Tundra I sold when I moved to the EU not too long ago. Still miss it. It was big, but could easily tow my boat or haul anything I needed. Was a 4 door and had a full sized bed. Had 125k miles when I sold it, and still ran great.
I would have gotten a Tacoma, but I need the extra towing capacity.
The modern US pickup truck still has the utility image and they make sure they sell a bunch to people who want utility to ensure that the image is not lost. That is why the lightening came in a cheap pro trim clearly targeted at the things pros are likely to want. (I don't know how well it worked, but they seriously tried to sell to that market)
Of course the real money is in the high trim levels that sell for twice as much but don't really cost much more.
A working truck should be max utility. Around the core market of "working trucks," there are various wannabe truck products that do not have to be max utility. For example, a Subaru Brat or a Hyundai Santa Fe. Niche products compared to an F-150, but they had/have their fans.
I personally can't stand the design, but the idea of an impractical "halo vehicle" that appeals to a niche audience but burnishes the brand as "forward-looking" is not a bad one. It's just the execution of this particular halo vehicle that I would have a problem with were I in the market for a lifestyle look-at-me vehicle.
All trucks should be working trucks. There is no reason to drive something that large and heavy that isn't better served by smaller vehicles that don't damage our shared infrastructure while being safer to drive.
Oh sure, but look at the vast popularity of these monstrosities that never even see gravel. I get how you (and I) find that abhorrent, but there's clearly LOTS of folks that find a blinged out useless luxury pretend truck to be very attractive.
I was in the market for a pickup recently. I had wanted to like the Cybertruck, but ... too damn ugly, too version 0.3, too many dweebs driving them, too many teething issues even for a first cut. Plus it's as heavy as an F-250. There's almost no actual reason to grab one besides it being electric. Since I drive so little, I'd never pay back the embedded energy it takes to make the thing - so even that isn't a selling point.
So instead I got a used Tacoma, and disappeared into the ocean of Tacomas that exist here in the PNW. It could be worse :)
Trucks don't have to see gravel to be working trucks.
If you use a truck for work purposes once a year it is likely cheaper to just drive a truck for everything than have a second car. Don't say rent a truck is an option - you probably can't rent a truck for most work purposes - most rentals have fine print against that, even if you can find a place to rent a truck the cost quickly gets to more than just owning your own truck.
Are you in the US? Most Home Depot locations will rent you one of several sizes of work truck for as low as $20 for a quick there-and-back of 75 minutes, or ~$100-200 for a day. I understand Lowe’s to do something similar. U-Haul does trucks.
And if your needs are more ambitious, there’s Sunbelt Rentals through much of the country and Enterprise’s Trucks arm as opposed to their more consumer-familiar operation.
If I’m using it once a year, I’ll splurge for a bigass 1 ton 4x4 which Enterprise Trucks is currently listing for $139 a day including 150 miles… and in 100 years, have spent the $13,900 difference between a dweeby little smarte car and owning my own pickup
Not that there’s the least thing wrong with just preferring to own one, just options that I wish I’d known about earlier in life.
Have you read the contract with Home Depot? You can't use their trucks for anything other than hauling your purchased from Home Depot home.
I haven't see the contract with enterprise trucks, but I suspect it is similarity restricted against the type of damage this is normal from using a truck for work. You can at least tow a trailer with them. Their locations are not convenient for me either.
even if you can find a place to rent a truck the cost quickly gets to more than
just owning your own truck.
What? I regularly rent a Lowe's truck when I need one (tends to be every year or two) to move mulch, furniture, whatever. I don't understand this take.
I hope someone fully capitalizes on what Edison is trying to do up in Canada.
That is a fully electric drive train hybrid. That way you can charge it at home and charge it with a generator under use. Problem is our current laws are making certifications a mess.
> It’s all but impossible to go into any rural bar in America today, ask for thoughts on pickup trucks and not hear complaints about the size of trucks these days, about touch-screens and silly gimmicks manufacturers use to justify their ballooning prices. Our economy, awash in cheap capital, has turned quality used trucks into something like a luxury asset class.
> It’s often more affordable in the near-term to buy a new truck than a reliable used one. Manufacturers are incentivized by federal regulations, and by the basic imperatives of the thing economy, to produce ever-bigger trucks for ever-higher prices to lock people into a cycle of consumption and debt that often lasts a lifetime.
> This looks like progress, in G.D.P. figures, but we are rapidly grinding away the freedom and agency once afforded by the ability to buy a good, reasonable-size truck that you could work on yourself and own fully. You can learn a lot about why people feel so alienated in our economy if you ask around about the pickup truck market.
> Instead, the authors of “White Rural Rage” consulted data and an expert to argue that driving a pickup reflects a desire to “stay atop society’s hierarchy,” but they do not actually try to reckon much with the problem that passage raises — that consumer choices, such as buying trucks, have become a way for many Americans to express the deep attachment they have to a life rooted in the physical world. A reader might conclude that people who want a vehicle to pull a boat or haul mulch are misguided, or even dangerous. And a party led by people who believe that is doomed among rural voters, the Midwestern working class and probably American men in general.
> This approach to politics governed by data and experts is what we mean when we talk about technocracy. It’s a system that no longer really functions today because the broad societal trust that once allowed data and experts to guide political choices has broken down. Democrats, increasingly, live in a world where data and researchers convincingly show that low-wage immigration raises the economy and our gun laws are reckless and misguided.
> A reader might conclude that people who want a vehicle to pull a boat or haul mulch are misguided, or even dangerous.
How about I just conclude that while pulling a boat or hauling mulch are completely OK things to want a vehicle for (*), one does not need a F150 with a front end that reaches my chest and has gas mileage to prove it.
As many have noted, pickups like the 90s Toyotas did these things just fine for almost everyone, but most US based manufacturers have stopped making them.
Me noting that doesn't make me part of the doom of the political party I always vote for.
(*) to the extent that we live in a society where private ownership of vehicles is completely unremarkable, that is. And we do, for the foreseeable future.
A Maverick is hardly a working truck. It's got the same towing capacity of an older Kia Sportage. It's got front wheel drive (or awd). It's a car with a bed, not a truck.
There are different sized trucks for different purposes. A Maverick or Kei truck is lighter and safer than a lot of cars on the road while being way more useful.
Maverick has a tiny bed (4.5 foot) whereas kei trucks can have up to 7 foot beds. I really wish we did small trucks with bigger beds here in North America. Really all I want is a hilux champ.
Some of the motivations to get vehicles like that, like being up higher than everyone and having more mass in a collision, are solidly tragedy of the commons.
Reply to the sibling comment about little to no negative externalities:
Sports cars sure do have negative externalities. I live next to a custom car mod shop in the boonies. People hoon around here like there's no one else alive. They put my life and the lives of my family at risk on the regular. That is most definitely a negative externality.
Sure, if you’re talking about high-power trucks (F350, Ram 3500). A Ford Maverick hybrid will get far better fuel consumption.
I think more sports cars are burning out, revving loudly (or getting modified to take out their mufflers), and the damage from going a lot faster creates more damage.
It’s crazy to me. If you hate automobiles, trucks still make the most sense- if you’re just carrying people and a grocery or two you should probably be on a bike or ebike.
I can't speak for the Santa Fe, but most Brat owners admit they have no intention of using it as a utility vehicle. The same cannot be said for most F-150 owners I know.
The problem is as soon as you go EV, you use a lot of utility from the get go. With a truck specifically, because its a brick aerodynamically. There is no reason to buy a Cybertruck or Lightning when you can get a gas or hybrid F150 (or a Raptor) for a little bit more, and be able to sit at 80 mph on highways without worrying about range.
The biggest suprise about the lightning is that Ford didn't put in a gas engine in it as a range extender. They have 3 cylinder ecoboost engines that would have been perfect for that.
Here's a different aspect of utility: The F150 Lightning includes 120V and optionally 240V outlets, so it replaces the need to carry a separate gas-powered generator.
That's probably more relevant to fleet vehicles for construction and maintenance firms than to individuals towing boats. But just to offer an example of how the F150 Lightning is a great fit for certain uses.
I'm surprised it didn't sell based on that. 20 years ago when I was in construction the truck drove at most 130 miles per day (we made sure to work 14 hour days when we were going to spend an hour on the road - the crew hated those jobs), but typically more like 30. The the first thing we did was pull the generator out of the truck and started it. If would could just plug into the truck that would have saved a lot of space/weight in the truck, it seems like a no-brainer.
Then again, all the construction sites I see these days have mains power on a post, which we never had back then (I don't live in the same state so I don't know if this is universal or just this area has always been different).
The only question is range when those rural folks go to the big city (if less than an hour they do this once a week because groceries in the suburbs of a big city are so much cheaper. If farther than that they still go once a month because of things they can't get. Though I don't know anyone who lives so far out that they can't get to a city and back in a long day.
Otherwise rural folks often have something to fix on the other side of their property that needs tools. Cordless tools do a lot but sometimes are not enough.
> Here's a different aspect of utility: The F150 Lightning includes 120V and optionally 240V outlets, so it replaces the need to carry a separate gas-powered generator.
A small generator costs few hundred bucks and fits comfortably in any truck actually used for work. It's a small perk that some pro users would probably pay for, but it's not a selling point for a radically different car design.
it's a few hundred bucks, an extra thing to remember, takes up bed space, requires bringing gas, and is loud and annoying to use. It's not the biggest thing, but it's a pretty nice value add.
My brother has one, it is an amazing vehicle with better range performance than Tesla. It's dramatically better in the snow. Towing of large loads is a valid downside, but reality is that most people don't tow, and people who do are probably fine with 80% of the use cases (construction trailers, lawn trailers, etc).
The business problem Tesla solved at Ford cannot is the dealer network. He pre-ordered his, and the dealer he was stuck with tried to rip him off like 4 different ways.
The other issue is that car guys are afraid of electric, as the entire supporting industry is essentially obsolete. It's hard to get excited about something that will take away your ability to pay your mortgage. Every car dealer employee and mechanic knows that.
Electric cars still need maintenance. They don't get regular oil changes, but they wear out tires sooner. They have more recalls in general than ICE (this will likely change, but manufactures are still learning how to make EVs reliable). The parts of a car that are not common with EVs don't break for the first 100k miles, and almost nobody is using the dealer for cars that old. There is plenty of other work that is common that dealers will still need to do.
Your argument hinges on any level of maintenance being enough to maintain our current level of investment. The truth is always more complicated.
Take for example DVD rental. The market completely evaporated, while there is still a small lingering community that could be serviced by rentals. My local library is proof that there is a market. But there are, bar some weird exceptions, no remaining DVD rental stores.
If an EV needs 50% of the maintenance, then it stands to reason that you need 50% of the staff. That's the easy part. But what about all the other staff? Can you afford as many staff in front of house when your main profit centre shrank massively? Can you keep the same amount of cars in the lot if you don't have the cash to pay the manufacturer fees?
You have one reason listed, which is going 80mph (which is illegal in most states). They also can't tow long distances easily, but are superior in nearly every other way.
I don't know much about car economics but I'd think Tesla probably should have built a truck to sell as a fleet vehicle first. There are very few car brands that aren't part of a larger entity doing b2b vehicle sales.
> it's just a bad product.
So you've never driven one?
> A pickup truck should just be max utility
You don't know much about trucks? What does this even mean, max utility? Trucks are designed for different purposes. Should we eliminate all programming languages besides bash or python?
> especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one
Seems like you don't know much about business either. Most new products should NOT try to do everything at once the first time.
Heartbreaking but true. The most popular pickups today are not the most useful pickups. There are no more basic utilitarian pickups any longer, at least in the US.
Pickups are a little bit interesting in this regard. For any given model (eg: Tacoma, Frontier, etc.) the more premium the truck, the worse it is at being a truck. Each feature you add reduces its payload, and in the case of the Frontier, you could drop from a 6' bed with ~1,600 lbs of payload on the base model all the way down to a 5' bed with ~900 lbs of payload for the most premium offroad model.
I would be willing to say that a small Japanese kei truck is more than the average American would ever need for hauling furnishings, appliances and lumber. If you really need something bigger renting a trailer or truck is dirt cheap
>If you really need something bigger renting a trailer or truck is dirt cheap
It’s neither convenient nor cheap to rent a trailer in much of the US. Major cities have options, rural areas less so. Full disclosure I have a mid-sized pickup, but I recently looked into renting a trailer for a landscaping project that was above the weight limit for my truck. First issue I ran into was that there were not any trailers available for rent anywhere near my location. Second issue was that after factoring in driving distance + rental cost + dump fees, it was ~ the same price just to pay a junk company to haul the materials…and it was not cheap. Anecdotally, my pickup was cheaper than most other vehicle options at the time I bought it, my commute is short (so fuel economy is less an issue), and as a homeowner I use the bed to haul something at least once/month (Unfortunately kei trucks weren’t available at the time). So the cost/benefit/convenience factor of owning a truck over renting a trailer works for me. YMMV.
I found out a couple of years ago that you cannot rent a vehicle and use it to tow. This is a major barrier to the argument "when you need to tow <X> just rent a vehicle that can do that" (an argument I would like to support).
I found this out recently as well, and it's really interesting since it must mean that a lot of these "just rent a truck when you need to tow" claims must have been unfounded.
Except most people also use trucks as daily driver vehicles. You can't exactly fit the wife and kids in a kei. Sure you could also own a car for that but now I need to own/store 2 vehicles instead of one.
Yeah let's not pretend every family with a truck only owns one vehicle. Most families already have a second car anyways. Especially people spending $60k+ on a truck.
That is my argument for EVs as well. One truck with an ICE for take the whole family on long trips, or towing. Then an EV for everyone else - whoever is making the long trip that day gets the truck.
Truck works well for those role because it can do so much. It isn't the best for most of those, but it can do them.
I decide if you need to have a step on your bumper because the truck is too high to get anything in and out of it. Lowering my truck made it way easier to load and unload.
Yes, with room to spare. I assume the grandparent was referring to a stud, i.e. the nominal "2x4" that is 1.5x3.5inches in cross section and 8 feet long :-) Sadly I cannot fit 4x8 sheet goods though I haven't tried very hard. I can definitely fit them if I ask nicely for a lengthwise cut, so I end up with 2' wide 8' strips. Those I can fit and close the hatch.
> There are no more basic utilitarian pickups any longer, at least in the US.
What makes you say this? The F-150 series has a pretty serviceable option in their XL trim. 8ft bed, 4x4, "dumb" interior (maybe not, looking at their site looks like the most recent is iPad screen, sigh) - but what else would you look for to call it utilitarian?
You're right that each feature is further limiting, but I would argue premium and utilitarian are reaching for opposite goals.
A F-150 from the previous century is much utilitarian than today's F-150's. The bed height and rail height are much more reasonable heights -- you can reach into the bed from the side.
I drive a wagon. Of course wagon owners talk about the utility. And yet, you can buy a wagon with a twin-turbo V8 engine. What's the "sportwagon" segment all about? Certainly not going to Home Depot to buy four toilets for the new house, it's about putting your $15,000 Cannondale Black Ink MTB on the roof and swanking up to the trailhead.
It's about drag racing on the way to your Jiu-Jitsu club with the baby seats in the back. And still being able to fit that new vanity from Home Depot in on your way back home!
You may underestimate how much consumption some people in the US have and why a Camry wouldn't work. Hell, for the amount of hobby project stuff I bring home on a bi-weekly basis a car just doesn't cut it. Then again, I'm not sure where I fit in the average population.
> ... most pickup trucks aren't designed for maximum utility. They're designed to sell a lifestyle.
Yes, but that lifestyle can and sometimes does include actual needs for some of the utility. There is a great observation from Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat from Washington’s 3rd District in an NYT piece a couple of days ago. I included a perhaps too long quote in lieu of apologizing for the paywall.
> “Spreadsheets can contain a part of truth,” Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez told me. “But never all of truth.”
> Looking to illustrate this, I bought the recent book “White Rural Rage” and opened it more or less at random to a passage about rural pickup trucks. It cites a rich portfolio of data and even a scholarly expert on the psychology of truck purchasers, to make what might seem like an obvious point — that it’s inefficient and deluded for rural and suburban men to choose trucks as their daily driving vehicles. The passage never does explain, though, how you’re supposed to haul an elk carcass or pull a cargo trailer without one.
If I mostly trim my hedges, but sometimes, very rarely, need to cut down small trees, am I best served by simply owning a hedge-trimmer and renting a chainsaw or other appropriate tool when necessary, or by buying a katana for both jobs?
Everybody knows why you bought the katana. We know you have a story to tell yourself, it's just not convincing.
> and renting a chainsaw or other appropriate tool when necessary,
I don't think most people realize how expensive and time consuming tool rental is.
This is where things also get kind of messy in the US. In manicured suburbs you probably don't need a chainsaw. But in older growth and places with larger lots you really do need one. If you wait till you need one after a big storm, you may travel 100 miles out of the storm damage to find one to rent or have to wait for weeks as your driveway is blocked and contractors are booked up.
For me the utility function is somewhere in between a car and a truck, hence why I have an SUV. I can carry the large boxes/items I seem to have at a regular basis. When I need something bigger I can rent a trailer to hook to it. Trucks themselves are way too expensive now, and I don't need that much capacity. A car would have me constantly renting or borrowing one from someone else (which I did when I owned a car and it was a pain in the ass).
We recently moved to a more rural location that has needed more tools. It is shocking just how expensive and inconvenient it is to rent tools (and even vehicles to some extent) and just how much worse it is being even just a little bit rural.
The big box store in our town doesn't rent tools or vehicles. You have to drive 45-60 minutes to get to a store that does. This means the 4 hour rental prices (which for something like a wood chipper or chain saw might be sufficient for a lot of jobs) become nearly non-viable or highly stressful rushing through unfamiliar power equipment that really shouldn't be rushed.
A full day tool rental is often 1/3 to 1/2 of the price of a new mass market version of the tool. A week rental is almost always more. The tools are rarely in great shape. You are almost always way better off going to an estate sale or local marketplace and buying a used tool. If there is a job you end up doing 2-3 times or need for more than a week its even cost effective to just buy new ones. You save so much on labor doing things yourself that even with new tools you basically always come out ahead.
The best case is that you have a community run tool library that lets you check stuff out cheaply for a week and can have a relationship with the folks that run it. Similarly, getting to know the neighbors and being able to swap/borrow stuff. For vehicles this is a little more dicey because of liability & insurance issues.
We've definitely struggled with the vehicle for long and sheet goods. We really don't need a pickup truck and it would honestly be a hazard on skinny mountain roads... but we do need to move lumber, sheet goods, appliance sized things just enough that it's a pain without one. We settled on a midsized SUV with passable towing power (as an aside, EV power and control makes towing a breeze as long as your round trip fits in one charge). Renting a trailer is still annoying, but at least can be done close by. For larger orders delivery can sometimes be cost effective (vs renting a vehicle or buying and maintaining a truck) especially because places often subsidize delivery to win business.
>A full day tool rental is often 1/3 to 1/2 of the price of a new mass market version of the tool
For sure. I had to dig some post holes in limestone that was very hard. Rental was going to be $200 for a tool that would do it in a day.
Instead I went to harbor freight and bought a tool closer to $100 even though it took me a bit longer, and I get to keep the tool which is still working to this day.
Heh, and labor costs in the Austin area are off the hook. I did a project for around $5000 that a neighbor had a similar but smaller in scope project quoted for $21,000.
People seriously underestimate how much trouble a pickup truck rental from U-Haul can be.
I’ve wasted so much time trying to track down which location near me has one available on the exact day I want to do major yard work. Often I have to reschedule my work or plan out super far in advance. Or take a day off during the week because everyone else also wants to rent trucks on the weekend. Then I’m running against the clock the whole time.
An extra $100-$200 a month car payment to have a truck instead of a crossover is totally worth it.
Politics or no, the price point ultimately dictated its maximum sales. By that measure it's a reasonable success, and if Elon was forecasting that they would sell multiple tens of thousands of vehicles per year at a $80,000 price point he needs to lay off the drugs. Elon sometimes seems like the living embodiment of "How much could a banana cost, Michael, $10?" parody of out of touch rich people.
I think if people who like trucks didn't see videos of things like the bumper ripping off when towing or minor failures leading to whole vehicle shorts it might have done better. The people who want trucks want resilience and ability to self-service more than the average car buyer.
Cybertruck offroading attempts were also a hoot to watch. The whole vibe is that it is merely a truck-shaped Tesla EV that's terrible at most truck tasks. Sure, there's a market for mall-run trucks with pristine beds and never get any mud on them, but it's not a big one.
It's an amazing vehicle well suited to many normal tasks and more, and is an absolute pleasure to drive off road. I think you were subjected to either misinformation or very biased clips that were intended to warp your opinion.
> I do admire that they dared to do something different and took a big gamble on it. So many vehicles, especially in the truck space, are almost indistinguishable and lack any kind of imagination.
I 1000% agree with this, in fact I love the way it looks, like something out of a SEGA Saturn game. But I would never buy one for the same reasons I would never buy any Tesla, or in fact any EV, or any post-2014 car at all. But the looks of it are not one of those reasons :)
I do have to laugh every time I see a Tesla with one of those “Bought this before we knew Elon was crazy!!” stickers, because to me they just read as “Wahhh I bought my car to make a statement and now it makes the wrong statement and I am self-conscious about it!!”. It's weird to me to think that other people are thinking that way about their automobiles, because I bought mine (Prius C) based on its features and how they fit into my needs and my life. I guess the Prius line was a popular “statement car” of the pre-Tesla era, though, like how Brian drives one on Family Guy, or the “Smug Alert” episode of South Park, but it was never that for me.
> Wahhh I bought my car to make a statement and now it makes the wrong statement and I am self-conscious about it!!”. I
I read it exactly the opposite. Somebody bought a car not because they were making a statement but just because they thought it was cool, only to find out later Elon was a nazi nutjob, and they don't want people to think they bought it because they share the same views.
Let me get this straight. You bought a "statement car" but not for its statement, and then you assume that other people driving a different "statement car" bought it because of the statement?
Yes, anybody who puts a sticker on their car apologizing for owning it is somebody who bought it to make a statement. I bought mine because I researched best gas mileage, lowest ongoing maintenance cost, and dimensions that fit the the city, and that's what I came up with.
>Yes, anybody who puts a sticker on their car apologizing for owning it is somebody who bought it to make a statement.
Or the opposite, buying the car wasn't a statement at the time and they don't like that driving it feels like a statement now so they got a bumper sticker to acknowledge that their continued ownership is not a statement of support for Musk and his ideology.
How are you defining "real ones"? Because it seems like you're implying that someone can't have political opinions while also occasionally making apolitical decisions.
Until someone who hates Elon (not saying that's wrong per se) throws a brick through the window (which IS wrong per se) and you're on the hook for paying for it.
So it all boils down to "No True Scotsman"? How about I offer you an alternative:
We don't try to guess why you bought what you bought, or why you need to so actively rationalize it, and you stop assuming that those stickers are something other than "Please don't key this car" signs. Less dramatically some of them are also "I bought this before the guy started throwing celebratory HiterGruß on stage and carving up important parts of the government for nonexistent savings."
Which... for people outside of your bubble is something important.
> “Wahhh I bought my car to make a statement and now it makes the wrong statement and I am self-conscious about it!!”
The correct interpretation for most people is "I bought my car because it was a good car and now for reasons beyond my control it may appear to be a political statement. Also sorry for giving that guy money, I didn't know he would spend it on Trump."
I understand you don't think it's a good car, which is fine, but most people who bought one did not agree with you.
Your comment is a little confusing because you obviously understand this concept, you bought a Prius because you thought it was a good car, not because of a political statement others may have projected onto your purchase. The same is true of most Tesla owners.
They may not have put it there because they were "self-conscious" about their "statement car." They may have put it there in an honest attempt to avoid having their car vandalized for something they had nothing to do with.
> I guess the Prius line was a popular “statement car” of the pre-Tesla era, though, like how Brian drives one on Family Guy, or the “Smug Alert” episode of South Park, but it was never that for me.
... So you admit to falling for Toyota product placement in cartoons.
Have we completely forgotten about how Tesla dealerships were shot up, firebombed? Video after video showing cybertrucks vandalized with scratches and spray paint?
It may be a terrible car from a terrible program, but these events at least bear mentioning. If you saw it happening in 2025, would it have a cooling effect on your decision to purchase? Who would want the trouble?
I'll applaud anything that tries to move us away from the current stale design trend where every car looks like the same boring bar of soap and every truck looks like the same aggressive, drivable, mechanized fist.
You can attribute the failure of this vehicle to politics if you like, but it's fairly obvious to anyone watching why it failed - it came out at double the proposed priced with half the proposed range. It's not even the hideous design, there were hundreds of thousands of "pre orders" who knew about the horrible design. It's the price and range.
I mean as with most "product" things related to Musk, it's more about the meme stock than any fundamental coupling to finances in the real world.
Ford is a car company. They sell cars. The Lightning was a poorly selling car, so they stopped selling it. Pretty simple!
Tesla is a lifestyle company. They make line go up by owning the libs, catering to edgelord identity, and triggering speculation. The Cybertruck probably gained the company more memetic shareholder value than it lost as a real product.
I'm one of the few people that love the cybertruck design, but even I can't look at one these days and not think "swasticar". It's terribly disappointing, really. Fully self-inflicted.
The thing with Cybertrucks losing panels certainly didn't help.
A big part of the Cybertruck marketing was the robustness of its unusual design: exoskeleton! space grade materials! They smashed the door with a hammer and it didn't dent (just avoid pétanque balls...), Elon Musk commented that it would destroy the other vehicle in an accident. Morally dubious arguments sometimes, but it appeals to many potential customers.
And then, the vehicle that is supposed to be a tank falls apart by looking at it funny. And the glued on steel plates, is it that the exoskeleton? Not only the design is controversial, but it failed at what it is supposed to represent.
> I think the timing of the Cybertruck starting deliveries roughly aligning with when Elon got heavily involved in politics hurt it quite a bit. It is such a distinctive vehicle with a strong association with Elon, that there was an immediate brand association. It may have had poor sales anyway, but it certainly didn't help that many folks on the left, who are typically the most 'pro EV', had a large 'anti-Elon' shift around its launch.
IMO the sort of person who wants a vehicle like Elon's dumpster has a strong overlap with Elon's politics. Basically everything about its design and marketing was aimed at the sort of person who is focused on presenting a masculine image, who thinks they're going to be in a war zone on their daily commute, who wishes they could drive through a crowd of protesters, etc.
Basically the only thing "left wing" about it is the fact that it's electric.
> Kudos to Tesla for trying to break the mold and push the category somewhere new.
The only thing it actually did new was the drive-by-wire steering, which is by all accounts impressive but could have been done on any normal vehicle as well. The "unique" styling is mostly just re-learning lessons that John DeLorean taught the rest of the industry decades ago.
> IMO the sort of person who wants a vehicle like Elon's dumpster has a strong overlap with Elon's politics. Basically everything about its design and marketing was aimed at the sort of person who is focused on presenting a masculine image, who thinks they're going to be in a war zone on their daily commute, who wishes they could drive through a crowd of protesters, etc.
Elon is an ass, but this is still the most crudely and childishly stereotyped thing I've read on the internet today. Congrats.
I'll always give Tesla, SpaceX etc props for the work they accomplish, even though Elon is at the helm, he's not a perfect dude but I will give him props when he gets something right too. At the end of the day his employees are doing incredible work and it should not be written off because of Elon. To any Tesla / SpaceX employee whether you agree with Elon or not, thank you for helping to build a more interesting tomorrow.
Honestly, both the Lightning and the Cybertruck are just bad trucks. Some review of the Lightning I read said it has less than a 100 mile range towing a full load.
> Some review of the Lightning I read said it has less than a 100 mile range towing a full load.
Because of course towing long distances is the only reason you'd ever want a truck.
Obviously we can start by acknowledging that the vast majority of F-150s (and other half-ton pickup trucks) sold in the US these days are purchased by people who maybe haul a load of mulch or dirt once a year and otherwise use them as daily commuter vehicles for which no part of their "truckiness" actually matters for any reason other than image. I absolutely agree that these people should drive something that's not a truck, but that's a battle we're not going to win, so I'd rather have them driving an EV truck instead of a gas-guzzling V8. It's an improvement in some ways even if in reality that suburban parent would be best off with a minivan as their daily and renting a pickup from Home Depot for that mulch run.
My one friend who has a Lightning is exactly this. She used to have a gas F-150, replaced it with a RAV4 that she didn't like so she rapidly replaced that with the Lightning and loves it. Lots of power, quiet, smooth, and never needs to go to the gas station. I don't think she's ever fast charged it, just plugs in at home and goes about her life.
Where I live there are a lot of people who actually do need a truck or truck-based SUV for recreational purposes but don't really go long distances, like towing their boat up to the lake for the weekend, towing ATVs to the trail, or towing a RV trailer to a nearby state/national park where they'll then plug in to the nice 50A outlet and charge back up overnight without having to think about it.
There are also an absolute ton of commercial fleets that need pickup trucks for one reason or another but their trucks never leave their metro area and always end up back at the office every night. Lawn care, delivery, etc. where the only downside of the current lineup of electric trucks is that they're all only offered as the ultra short bed crew cab configuration instead of a long-bed standard cab.
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EVs are absolutely the wrong choice for time-constrained long distance travel, like long-haul trucking or the midwestern three-day-weekend road trip, but the Lightning and its GM competition that were actually designed to be good at things instead of a pure image machine are very good at certain roles.
That is so right on the money. I attended the LA Auto Show a couple of months back and the takeaway was that every manufacturer pretty much makes the same safe car. There might be a feature here and feature there, but it's the same car.
In the years past they at least had lots of concept cars. This year, I maybe saw two and they weren't all that "concept".
Elon going off the deep end is the tail wagging the dog. It's an objectively terrible car.
The collapse of the company overall, particularly the Model Y, which is a great car, is all about Elon. Not only his unveiling as a fascist, but he essentially looted the company.
I'm very much on the left, and I honestly like the design of the Cybertruck. (I know this puts me in a minority.) It is disappointing that the original "unibody" design was abandoned. The new design where the body panels just randomly fall off is silly.
If it was made by some other company I would genuinely consider buying one. But I would never buy another Tesla. I owned an older Model X, before Elon went full-fascism. And even ignoring Elon, the car was awful. It was shoddily built, kept breaking down, and the service experience was shockingly bad. Absolutely atrocious.
But after all that, I can't give money to Elon ever again. I can't fund America's descent into fascism. I could not live with myself.
> I'm very much on the left, and I honestly like the design of the Cybertruck. (I know this puts me in a minority.) It is disappointing that the original "unibody" design was abandoned. The new design where the body panels just randomly fall off is silly.
Function should drive form. The design would be cool if it was for a cool function.
Say you have a beautifully-made, expertly-weighted tack hammer. That looks cool on your work bench and works well. If you refashion the hammer into a kitchen spoon, it looks dumb in the kitchen and works poorly for stirring a pot.
While largely true, that trucks have adorned the comforts of luxury cars, most are running 6' beds. This largely ignores the evolution of the truck and the job site. My family operates contracting and excavating businesses that operating in all manner of weather and terrain, no one is carrying loads in their truck beds anymore... its not even legal most places unless you convert to a dump bed...
Whats in their trucks? Well, a crew cab occasionally is used for car pooling workers, where they all park their vintage beater trucks at the business... Sometimes weather sensitive tools, or job related items, documents, you can just throw these in a glove box... The bed usually has a gas pump for refilling remote equipment. Cones and other safety shit. Sand hoppers for plowing. Yes they also use these "luxury" trucks to plow.
The thing is... These people are making decent salaries... my direct relatives are multi-millionaires who still pick up a welder, a hammer, a shovel.
Im see alot of assumptions about why trucks evolved the way they did, who owns them, and what for... I would argue the "luxury faker" is a very small crowd, one that likely moved to the cybertruck... and despite the trucks looking modernized, are beaten to pulp over long service lives.
Now, go get in a modern tractor, dump truck, or excavator. They are also all AC, Radios, Computers, Leather Seats, etc... People want to be comfortable.
It's not just you, it's universally tasteless and that's the point: It is a contrarian vehicle.
In an age where the Internet has flattened subcultures into surface phenomenons, the only remaining way to publicly distance yourself from normality is by making patently, obviously bad decisions and using the backlash to further fuel your ego.
I think the dealership monopoly is partly to blame. Dealers get more reoccurring revenue from ICE vehicles, so they are incentivized to not stock EVs and to steer customers away from them. Ford seemed to understand this and attempted a direct sale program for EVs, but they canceled it due to dealer pushback.
Yes I think there's a real innovators' dilemma here for traditional automakers with dealer networks. Dealers make most of their money on servicing vehicles, not selling them. And EVs require almost no servicing.
Ford did try to make it up to them by offering a bevy of aftermarket add-ons for the Lightning that were sold through the dealerships. As a consumer, I wanted them to keep the EV and ICE versions as similar as possible, with the hope that parts would be cheaper and easier to find.
I bought a used Audi etron a couple months ago. Agent was going to try to sell me a service plan and realized none of them apply to electric :) The downstream fanout of the auto industry is huge…
They seem to be flooded on dealership lots and are not selling whatsoever. OEMs force dealers to take the crap vehicles if they are to get the good ones. You have a vehicle that started off as a hard sell to the crowd that normally buys the vehicle and then you make it so the price is astronomical...forget the dealer reluctance, what did you think was going to happen?
They will buy both ICE and EVs at the right price. I don't think Ford sells anything at the right price currently. But the Lightning was a mistake at that price.
> Ford seemed to understand this and attempted a direct sale program for EVs, but they canceled it due to dealer pushback.
Why didn't they just do it anyways? Dealerships seem like a pointless middleman, but I know absolutely nothing about what leverage they have. Self-driving cars can not come fast enough
Because dealerships are the automakers' real customers, at least right now.
You don't buy a vehicle from Ford; your local Ford dealership buys a large number of vehicles from Ford, and then you buy one of those.
Yes, an argument could be made that eliminating the dealership keeps the same customer base while eliminating the middleman (see also: Carvana), but now you have a lot more cost and logistics (shipping individual cars to individuals' homes, for example, rather than shipping truckloads to a single well-known spot) and unless you're willing to do the Carvana/CarMax thing of offering a 7-day return window (which adds even more cost and logistics and risk), the average American customer won't feel as comfortable buying a vehicle sight-unseen from across the country as they would if they could sit in the thing while a salesperson pitches it to them.
That means you're taking on whole new category of cost and risk, while assuming that you won't lose any of your incoming revenue.
That's kinda a big assumption, and the major established/legacy/whatever-you-call-them automakers aren't known for having a high risk appetite.
I have a conspiracy theory take on traditional manufacturers being so anti-EV.
Basically the primary differentiator between car companies and the primary barrier to entry in the combustion vehicle business is the engine, especially in the US. Look at the marketing, horsepower and torque are always the topline numbers. Zero to sixty and quarter mile drag races are the favored metrics. Each company spent decades perfecting the engines and the majority of the engineering effort goes into them. Even the transmissions get second fiddle status.
But now EVs come along and the electric motors are commodity parts that are already well optimized. There's little one company can do to make the motor significantly better. Battery tech is cutthroat and also largely outside of the car company's scope, although Tesla does more than other car companies with their megafactories and experiments with oversized cells. If EVs become popular there's little to stop competition from sprouting up everywhere and killing profitability for the legacy auto manufacturers.
As an EV owner, it sucks that the main thing holding the technology back is misconceptions and misunderstanding, rather than actual practical matters.
People think EVs are cars with tanks of electrons, and run aground the same way you would if you thought horses were cars full of hay. It's a different transport tool that gives the same results, you just have to know how to use it properly.
> It's a shame the Lightning got discontinued.
> As an EV owner, it sucks that the main thing holding the technology back is misconceptions and misunderstanding, rather than actual practical matters.
The F150 Lighting (and the Cybertruck) are failing precisely because it was impractical. It was expensive, has limited range when doing actual "pickup truck" work, like hauling tons of construction materials. It was built for the very niche market of buyers at the intersection of luxury pickups and EVs.
People who buy huge luxury pickups tend not to want EVs, and people who buy EVs tend not to want huge luxury pickup trucks.
A practical work truck needs to be smaller, less luxurious, and less expensive, electric or not. If Ford follows through and releases a plugin-hybrid Maverick with 150ish miles of EV range plus the onboard generator, that would be ideal.
A pure EV drivetrain on the other hand is incredibly practical for daily commuter and even long distance travel - assuming you have home charging - but not for hauling tons of stuff long distances.
The lighting is fine for towing, especially the type that people usually do. You can tow up to 10,000lbs and the truck has ridiculous power to pull it.
What you can't do it tow it long distances (>90mi, worst case) without 40 minute stops every 1.5 hours. That sucks.
But the truth is very few truck owners are towing huge loads long distances.
However, if you are pulling your lawn care trailer around town, you will not have a problem, because every day you start with a full charge.
As an aside, the main killer of range for a trailer is a function of speed and drag. Low drag trailers driven at highway speeds (60-65) have marginal impacts on range, regardless of weight.
Again, the whole thing is ridden with misconceptions and misunderstandings. The majority of people who tow stuff, can still tow stuff while reaping cheaper operating costs.
> But the truth is very few truck owners are towing huge loads long distances.
This pattern also applies more broadly. Most people don't actually need to drive 400 miles without stopping, don't actually need an SUV, and in some cases don't actually need a truck. For a huge swath of the population some variation on a hybrid/electric hatchback/wagon or minivan is actually the best match for their needs, but practicality is rarely the prevailing factor in vehicle purchase decisions.
I don't think that market is a niche at all. From what I can tell, most pickup owners don't use them as a pickup. They use them as a more masculine pavement SUV. So, you'd think, the F150 L and Cyber truck would be perfect.
I can do a ten hour road trip with a family of four plus a dog in a used (2022) EV that I got for ~30k last year. I think the idea that price and range are problems is exactly the misconception that op was taking about. They are somewhat more expensive, although when I originally did the calculus, fuel savings made up the difference in monthly payments for a new vehicle, but that's going to vary a lot. The is a very small proportion of people for whom range is a legitimate concern.
Now do the range/time/stops calculation with a travel trailer.
Yes, if we're talking about normal family travel, an EV works fine for many trips (though there are still charging "dead spots" in parts of the country - looking at you WV).
But, "truck stuff" like towing, they aren't there yet. Maybe in a few years when we get the next generation of battery and charger tech.
Yep. It takes a massive battery (and massive "normal" range) to pull off towing any distance. Unless I'm wrong, only the Chevy Silverado EV has the range (480ish) to make a reasonable tow vehicle, but only with the big battery, which pushes the price north of $90k.
I actually enjoy doing road trips in my tesla more so than in ICEs, because of the forced breaks. With ICEs, stops would be either for food or for bathroom breaks. A lot of times just eating in the car while driving. But for a 10 hour drive I am forced to take 4 20 minute stops - so once every 2 hours. This ends up making me feel a lot better at the end of the trip and also gives you "guilt free" time to enjoy a random park you've never been to, or sit down and have a meal. So, lets say 80 minutes of added time for a 10 hour trip, vs maybe 40 minutes that I would have added in my gas guzzler. 40 minutes extra on a 10 hour trip just isn't that big of a deal to me and especially so considering all the benefits from walking around for a bit or seeing some new places.
Obviously you could do that same thing in an ICE car, but I feel the pressure to keep moving so it hits different.
For me, it's some intermediate trips where the EV really "fails" (though admittedly the gap closes every year and the use case below is basically a worst case scenario short of trying to tow trailer on the same route).
A common trip for me is DC -> Dolly Sods WV for camping. Less than 3 hours drive time each way, about 150 miles. I only need to stop for gas once during the trip and for only as long as the tank takes to fill (no meal needed).
In an EV, that ~6 hour round-trip takes about 9 hours due to 2 hours of charging and a 60 mile detour. That's using ABRP, with an Ioniq 5 from Reston VA to Dolly Sods Wilderness and back, no overnight charging because it's a wilderness location (gravel parking lot in the middle of nowhere).
I make sure to have 100% charge before I leave, and then I drive it down to 5-10% and hit up a super charger. The batteries charge the fastest from 0-50%(~15 mins), so I end up having about 60-70% charge by the time I'm heading out. Then I just repeat the process. I also arrive at my destination with 5-10%. I have a 2023 model Y for the record.
I also try to drive in a manner that is friendliest to the battery (ie I'm not accelerating a bunch to pass people or driving 90 mph), and almost all the driving is on a highway. But, that's how I naturally drive in my gas car as well.
I do ~Denver to ~Salt Lake City and back 2x/year through the Wyoming route and I've done it 6 times so far in a Tesla and 4 times in a gas SUV. I do it in the early/late summer so temperatures are warm, which I'm sure helps the mileage.
The tesla mapper site claims you can do it with only 35 mins charging, but I prefer the northern route, and my actual departure/destinations are about ~1hr more driving, but I'm sure that wouldn't add more than 45 minutes to the charging time: https://www.tesla.com/trips#/?v=LR_RWD_NV36&o=Denver,%20CO,%...
I recently did a road trip to Maine, and the whole week it didn't get above 15F. The difference in range was about 20% less. But I drive at 65mph with cruise control all the time.
Nah. EVs can often charge ~80% in 20-30 mins. Pumping gas takes me at least 5 mins. You win pretty quickly on this metric unless you do a lot of 200+ mile trips.
Range is the misconception, because people view range through the "sit and fill up then drive till empty" paradigm.
That is not how EVs work or how they should be used. They should be charged overnight/when you are doing something else, and on road trips should be charged to align with other stops even if those stops are 10 minutes. It's rare that I have ever done the "sit in the car for 40 minutes waiting for charge", and extremely common to do the "Put car on charger for 13 minutes while going into [insert any of the gazillion places with chargers in the parking lot] to use the bathroom, stretch legs, and get a snack, or see a landmark"
Also you usually structure it so you arrive at your destination with very low charge, because you fill up while there. I've yet to be at a hotel with a gas pump in the lot.
Again, EVs function differently than gas, and that change of paradigm really gets people ruffled up and confused.
I actually leased a Kia EV6 recently without too much research into the charging situation, assuming that in 2025 it was probably pretty well figured out, and I could just do as you propose and just charge in small bursts at the grocery store etc. But:
- It didn't come with a home charger at all. They're not cheap.
- It came with a J1772 adapter, but no CCS adapter. The car itself has NACS. So I'm limited to Tesla superchargers, which are expensive, unless I buy a new adapter (not cheap, or cheap, but suspicious Temu brands).
- The experience of using all of these different branded charging points is _awful_. You need to create 10 different accounts with a bunch of terrible apps. The maps to find charging infrastructure seem universally awful.
- Pretty common to arrive at a charging location to find that some nutjob has hacked off all the charging cables. The only reliably maintained charge points are the larger, more expensive high speed charging locations.
I think a lot of the issues would be solved if I was more committed to the car and the house that I'm living in, and installed a home charger to charge at night. But the charging experience out in the world is absolutely _dismal_ when compared to gas vehicles, even if you change your behavior.
That’s exactly the problem. I’d be happy to use an EV daily, as I drive short distances. But when I drive longer, then I don’t want to waste hours on charging.
The other day I drove 700km in just about 5.5 hours (German Autobahn). Few stops to pee. With EV that would be few hours more (!). If this doesn’t bother you, then it’s fine. It matters to me though.
Sometimes I also drive early in the morning 600km, and in the afternoon back, so I’m home until 22:00. With EV, that’s just impossible.
As long as there's a fast charging station somewhere along the route you'd need more like 30 minutes to charge midway through, not multiple hours.
You also surely recognize that your driving patterns are very atypical and a car not working for them says very little about how suitable the car is for the market as a whole.
A fast charging station that is working, that has the correct connector for your car (including adapters you carry), that your car will work with (Tesla hasn't opened their superchargers to call cars with the NACS connector), that you have an account with... There are too many things that just are not there.
One top of that you need to find a charger. They are all over, but many of them are slow speed chargers. There are also a lot of gaps, if you pass a charger with 50% battery remaining you can't be sure you will make the next one. (most cars can pass several gas station with 5% gas in the tank and still make it to one). You need to ensure you will get back to your car when it is charged so they don't charge extra (this is a problem if you are at a concert or something and are trying to charge while doing something else that can't be interupted)
Someday all the above will be fixed. Everyone agrees NACS is the future connector, but it isn't rolled out. Someday every "gas station" will have a charger with the gas pumps (or perhaps something else?) - at least along routes where people often make long trips. Someday you won't need a phone/account, just swipe a card - or so I hope. But someday isn't today.
In your typical 475km EV sedan, you would only need about 20 minutes of charging to do that 700km.
This is why I am like a broken record repeating that EV misconceptions kill EVs. You are applying gas car logic to electric cars, which is what people do, and stops them from getting an EV.
If you often mowed a town park, you wouldn't buy a hand-push lawnmower and then be upset about lawn mower technology.
The Renault 5 is a town car. Its specs are closer to a golf cart than a motorcar. It fills a niche, but if you are traveling often, a different EV would suite you better.
The big problem here is we need a hybrid stage in between.
I have a hybrid now, it's still a conventional powertrain, and it's not chargeable. That's not exactly what I want, but it's what I could get.
I want a fully electric drive train hybrid with around 100 miles capacity on the battery, then a generator that's big enough to keep it running if the battery is drained.
100 miles gets you through the average day without having to use gas.
An electric drive train turns your engine to a generator that runs at a fixed speed and is more efficient. It also massively reduces the complexity turning into a system more like an EV.
And, if I go on a long trip, the car still gets me to where I'm going without charges (unless I choose to so I can save gas).
You can buy 1-2 year old used Teslas and BYD's in Australia for ~30% below retail.
Meanwhile Toyota hybrids not just retain their value but there have been moments where used RAV4's are listed above retail because the waitlist for new was so long.
A 600 mile trip can (theoretically) be done with 1 charge, because you leave home with full range, and arrive with 0 charge (and fill up overnight). That one charge is done while eating dinner, or spaced out in increments over the course of the trip, stops which you would take anyway. I know few people who want to bang out 10 hours without stopping for at least 1-2 hours over the course of the trip. And those who do, can be the edge case with gas cars.
So you need to go 600 miles, and you need 1 full charge worth of energy during that.
If that one charge takes 1 hour, you can also break it up into four 15 minute sessions at any time of your chosing.
I'm sorry, but almost no regular person does 10 hours without at least four 15 minute stops.
Range is not at all the problem people make it out to be.
Where can I find chargers on demand like that? There are a lot of slow chargers that won't give you much range in an hour. There are a few fast chargers that will, but they are much less common - enough to make the long trips possible but you need to stop where the fast charger is not where you are going to eat a meal or use a bathroom anyway. (gas stations are everywhere and so if you need a bathroom you can get gas at the same time)
You can get Model 3 LR that will do it for $20k used.
Like everyone else, you are thinking in "gas car" trying to resolve an electric car problem.
You start every trip in an EV with full range (unplug from home base charger). You drive 300 miles. You full recharge. You drive another 300 miles. You plug-in and go to sleep.
They have worse prices (higher) and worse range (lower, particularly for towing). These aren't misconceptions. (My only car is an EV that I'm happy with. But lying about EVs doesn't benefit advocates.)
> According to Edwards’ data, 75 percent of truck owners use their truck for towing one time a year or less (meaning, never). Nearly 70 percent of truck owners go off-road one time a year or less. And a full 35 percent of truck owners use their truck for hauling—putting something in the bed, its ostensible raison d’être—once a year or less.
They have artificially worse prices in the US where EVs are mostly only getting sold as "luxury" vehicles and competition is hobbled by dealer networks and dealer laws and import tariffs.
Most other parts of the world EVs are starting to be cheaper than the equivalent ICE in the same category.
Range often doesn't need to get better, the impression of range needs to change. That's where a lot of misconceptions play into effect, over-focusing on things like gas-station-like charging stations over at-home charging. Over-focusing on "zero to full tank/battery statistics" when no one keeps a gas vehicle with a full tank overnight every night. Over-focusing on high speed charging and ignoring boring but useful "Level 1" charging, which is "just about everywhere" because our society has been building electrical outlets for a long time. Sure, the experience changes in things like long distance trips, but experience changes aren't "worse" by default of being a change.
The main thing holding EV back is the oil industry, not the tech. The US is the only country lagging on EV and its all because the industry puts so much effort in to squashing all progress.
EVs are simpler and cheaper. Look at how fast adoption is growing outside the US. If US citizens could buy a BYD for the same price as in China, the the US auto makers and oil companies would be in trouble.
I drive quite a lot throught southern Europe with my EV, and it's super frustrating that gas stations have the infrastructure on the highway while for my EV I have to go just outside the highway to a fast charger (wasting time), then I need to pay again (and waste a lot of time to go through the gate) to get back on the highway for example in Italy.
I disagree. I really want a Lightning but live in a very rural place, weekend in an even more rural place, and need to pull a trailer pretty often.
I already have a plug-in hybrid that gets 40+ miles/charge and have opined all over the internet that the perfect car is one that gets 100+ miles/charge before firing any gas engine.
It sounds like the next Lightning will give me that though I don’t put much stock in their promises. Personally the Scout is too bougie but it does similarly.
I disagree along with you. EVs would work for 80% of the population, there is a long tail of people who an EV will never (well foreseeable future) work for.
Thankfully, the mass of humanity that should be transitioning lives in populated areas and never tows anything for more than 75 miles. There is no need to get bogged down in back and forths with the small subset of people who an EV will not work for.
I don’t get plug in hybrids. All other engine types save you more money compared to the next less efficient alternative the more you use them, but plugins get closer to the less efficient alternative (regular hybrid) the more you use them. Add in the approximately 25% price hike over the hybrid version when there is one and it makes no sense to me.
Depends on the car and driving patterns. I've got a friend with the PHEV Escape that he charges in his garage. It's the cheapest hybrid Escape that Ford sells, and he does all his driving on EV mode unless he has to do a longer trip outside of the city.
> but plugins get closer to the less efficient alternative (regular hybrid) the more you use them.
As long as most of your drive cycle fits within the EV range of the plugin hybrid, they are cheaper to operate than a regular hybrid. The crossover point depends on the drive cycle and the cost of electricity vs gasoline.
I had a plug-in hybrid SUV that got 2.2miles/kWh in EV mode, which covered 75% of the miles I drove. The net savings were significant vs an equivalent plain hybrid SUV in my area, which would get basically the same gasoline miles/gal.
Using a plug-in hybrid as an EV can and will wear out the drive battery over the lifetime of the car. It doesn't even matter if you don't intend to keep the car for very long as a rational market will price this in. The cost ($10k or more) goes a long way at the pump.
But the problem is that means you drove a minuscule amount so if you’d bought a hybrid you would have still used very little gas and your car would have been much cheaper.
Generously, the full range of a plugin hybrid is equivalent to about a gallon of gas.
An F-150 Lightning and Cybertruck weigh somewhere between 6000 and 7000 pounds, so I personally think of them the same way as if you replaced your horse with a hippo.
It's not hard to convince people to move to electric, just make it such a better economic proposition that it would be silly not to.
...misconceptions and misunderstanding, rather than actual practical matters.
What's the range of an F-150 Lightning when towing a small travel trailer? The Rivian R1T is ~150 miles give or take. I assume the F-150 is similar.
At least for towing, the math isn't great. Especially when you add in the cost - my Honda Ridgeline was $42k in 2021. EV trucks are roughly double that amount.
It's the most boring and practical vehicle I've ever owned. But, it does everything, so I'm having a hard time convincing my wife I need a Ranger Raptor or (used) AMG GLE.
At the size of Ford, sales numbers can be at a different mark for what is considered successful than others. Not to mention dealer gamesmanship fudges real sales numbers.
As to the Cybertruck it's both interesting and kind of ugly... repairability is another concern/issue as is pure cost...
I'm far more interested in the Slate[1] myself. It's probably closer to what a lot of consumers would want in an electric truck. It really feels like a spiritual successor to the OG Jeep (GP).
> At the size of Ford, sales numbers can be at a different mark for what is considered successful than others.
Does this really hold when Tesla has a considerably higher valuation?
Tesla is sitting at an egregious 30x market cap of Ford. If anything... I'd expect them to have sales targets that are ~30x the size of Ford.
When you consider that Ford also makes many more models than Tesla (Tesla has like 8 core models incl the cybertruck [and the not-yet-for-sale semi...] , Ford has like 20+)
By all measures - Tesla should be considerably more aggressive with sales targets for a core model, and it seems pretty clear the cybertruck is just a slow rolling market failure.
For 2025, Ford sold about 2.2 million vehicles, Tesla was like 1.6m. Given, more variety for Ford... But there's also margins and supply chains to consider.
The Cybertruck is kind of ugly and very expensive... not to mention that no EV truck really does towing well. The fact that the Lightning sold more than the Cybertruck doesn't make it a success.
The Cybertruck, imo, is not too different than a limited run sports car from a major car company... it's just a step above a concept car. The Lightning from Ford was an attempt to see if a market was really ready to shift to EV, it largely isn't. Even though I think it's probably a great option for a lot of work truck use, that doesn't include long distances or heavy towing, but then it likely prices itself out of that market segment too.
I'm not sure what the takeaway from your comment is?
I'm not arguing that the F-150 lightning was a commercial success for Ford, I'm suggesting that the argument that Tesla should be held to a different standard on sales numbers feels pretty shaky.
Both of these are basically "concept cars", and neither company has really delivered.
Both are expensive to make, and have very high sticker prices with low/negative margins (Tesla claims cybertruck is profitable, but they're sitting on an absolutely insane inventory count, which they can't seem to sell... so again... my guess is they're deep in the red for this model if you look at total costs instead)
I think the difference is what each company respectively thought of the model itself. For Tesla, Cybertruck is imo like a lower-volume sports car... for Ford, it was an upscale work truck option. The expectations are imo very different. Maybe not so much a Ford/Tesla comparison, but the respective market expectations.
Ford didn't exactly expect the Ford GT to be a mass seller, which is probably closer to what Tesla expected of the Cybertruck, or not, who knows.
I see the slate as the successor of the now extinct (in Can + US) mini-truck. 90s trucks like the small Toyota Truck, old Ford Ranger, Nissan hardbody, etc.
The kind of trucks that landscapers are still using, that are beat to shit, and have three features, cheap, load carrying, reliable by way of simplicity.
I can see that, but I mean in terms of body specs and room to reshape/cover/modify the vehicle to different needs beyond pickup truck. Including a second row of seats.
I'll be interested in the Slate when I can actually buy one. I've seen far too many startup car companies fail to launch to ever get my hopes up. Also, the hopes that the very first vehicle from a brand new company will be affordable are not realistic. Making affordable vehicles requires production at large scale, and that requires enormous capital investment, which generally means your company needs to already have income. Even if it just to prove to potential investors that you have basic competence.
Don't think that just because a billionaire is interested in the project that the funding will be easy. Billionaires don't like to spend their own money and can be easily distracted by newer and shinier projects.
When the cyber truck was announced we decided to buy a Super Duty instead. That was 5 years ago. It's now paid off and driven us and our RV all over the country, and still worth more than half it's purchase price with many more miles to go, and no issues at all (knock on wood).
A lightning, cyber truck, or even rivian can't do those things.
Instead of waiting for a slate just buy a little gas pickup and GO USE IT, live you life!!!
To be clear, I'm not waiting for it at all... I'm not that interested in EVs for my own use so much... I work from home and not going to buy a new vehicle any time soon. I'm just more interested in it conceptually. Much like I was interested in the Local Motors Rally Fighter, I wasn't ever going to buy one, just thought it was cool. Well, maybe not the same, as the Slate could be something I would actually buy if/when it hits market in any numbers.
If it's got a good level of repairability beyond the body/form, then the company collapsing may be a lot less of an issue. The way it's being done does remind me a lot of the original GP (General Purpose) vehicle. Though not necessarily fit for military/combat environments; As fuel is easier to transport than electricity to the middle of nowhere.
Look at the same specs for the cyber truck. There is about twice the carbon in the manufacturing of these, so it counts on people driving them for hundreds of thousands of miles, I don't see that happening with them because you can't even take a normal road trip while towing. These things just aren't going to see the miles, because they can't. They're just not usable as trucks.
If you want to kill coal and oil just tax them the fair market price of carbon sequestration for the amount of carbon they ultimately emit. Use that money to sequester the carbon. This is how carbon markets should have been set up, but unfortunately that would have killed the modern economy.
If that was the goal, then killing nuclear power and holding it back for the past 4 decades was probably the wrong move. Solar and other "renewable" sources aren't enough to meet energy needs now, let alone the near future.
It’s also the fact that Ford investors care about profits and its stock is not just a meme stock with no relationship to current or future profits like Tesla.
Same. The Slate is so close to what I actually want out of an EV: basic, utilitarian, cheap, not made out of 5 iPads. It's not perfect, but neither is any of its competition.
I find it funny that car discussions here are so much busier than computer discussions. I wonder if over there at the mechanics forum they spend as much time discussing their laptops and ignoring the drills and screwdrivers
Armchair internet analysts think they know better than the biggest car producer in the world that reinvented the modern supply chain.
"But look at Tesla market cap!!!"
Toyota had the right intuition: focus on EVs when the global sales will make sense for it, meanwhile avoid throwing good money after bad like most legacy automakers did with EVs.
Toyota is not immune to throwing good money after bad. They have dumped billions into hydrogen fuel cell research and production over three decades. Last year they sold more Venzas than hydrogen cars.
Notably, the Venza was discontinued after the 2024 model year and those sales figures represent inventory leftover from prior years.
It says a lot that spacex had to buy so many trucks just to help the sales numbers. I always thought the ford lightning was a better option for most people anyway. It is too bad they are stopping production when it seems to be the winner.
5,600 units of Cybertrunk and Semi combined is basically 5,600 units of Cybertruck. The Semi is still a boondoggle. I can believe that number. Your maximum sales figures are capped by your price point, and the Cybertruck, as well as the S and X, are in that "Fully successful this vehicle will have sales in the mid-thousands" price bracket.
I sometimes wonder about a world where those trucks managed to hit their $40,000 price points. For the Cybertruck it was clear that Elon demanded way too much (four wheel seering? Come on) to ever get close to it, but for the F150 it seems more like the price was due to Ford halfassing the production.
There is also the optic that the premiere US EV company failed to deliver an EV pickup truck behind Rivian, Ford, Stellantis, and arguably did a far worse job at it.
The F150 lightning was always going to be a tough sell for die hard truck customers but it at least has all the fit and finish that those customers expect, with access to the F-series aftermarket.
imho, CT is horribly looking car with absolute disregard to any aesthetics. everything else is secondary. it has vibes of Aztec. one of the worst selling car ever.
I've owned a few F-150s over the last 20is years. It has the best fold up seats of any truck - entire back cabin floor is flat which is great for my dogs.
I rented a lightning on Turo and it was amazing - planned on getting one as my next truck. I would drive a CT depending on price but they just draw too much attention.
I wanted an F-150 Lightning when it launched. Demand was high enough that I was told I'd have to pay over retail. I did not buy an F-150 Lightning and bought an ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle. The depreciation of electric vehicles has made me appreciate those circumstances more and more.
> Demand was high enough that I was told I'd have to pay over retail
Meanwhile the article says "the Ford F-150 Lightning delivered approximately 27,300 units in the US."
I wonder how much dealers lie about these things. They tell you that there's not enough of them to go around, then Ford cancels them, because of what exactly?
There were not enough to go around when it first came out. A couple years latter and everyone who wants one has one and there are plenty. This is normal for new cars - people who want the latest model line up to buy them as they come off the assembly line, then they all have one and sales drop.
> The depreciation of electric vehicles has made me appreciate those circumstances more and more.
The depreciation for most EVs isn't all that different from that of new ICE vehicles. For a while, MSRPs were artificially inflated by the EV tax credit, which could give artificially worse depreciation appearance.
Same here. I was told it would take a at least year on the waitlist. A month later I had 2 friends offer me their spot. They weren't impressed with the truck after a few reviews came out showing bad towing performance. I opted to buy a used ICE truck instead and have zero regrets.
The depreciation though has meant that used EVs are a bargain now.
But yes, as usual, dealers killed an EV. Same story for so many EVs. They don't want to sell them. They saw their opportunity to milk and screw up a product they didn't want, because of scarcity, and effectively poisoned it.
It wasn't canceled for poor sales. It was canceled because it was too expensive to produce, and would not fund all their other EV/battery projects. They found a better road to profitability in that front.
I love my EV, but for anything that needs the range they should have a super-efficient gas or diesel engine that can charge the batteries? It could be a much less complex engine.
That said, they big car makers only chased the government incentives, which was a great reason to have them.
Electric everything is the future. It is obvious (e.g. heat pumps, EVs).
Just before its release there was some press about a few high ups at Tesla who urged Elon to make a “traditional” looking pickup alongside the cyber truck in case it was a flip, but Elon shut them down hard.
I’d be really interested to know if they’re going to do that.
The tech is incredible and will filter into all vehicles in a decade or so (48v, Ethernet instead of CAN, etc)
Looks are subjective, but what I don't understand is why they put an enormous vision obscuring frunk on it. The vehicle could have been considerably easier to maneuver in tight spots and safer to pedestrians at the loss of just some dubious storage space with no loss in bed capacity. Or it could have been the same length or even a little shorter and have a full 4x8 bed in the back.
If anything the vehicle was designed more for aesthetics than for practicality. There is no engine up front. There's no need for all of that space in front of the driver. It's entirely possible to engineer crash resistance without needing 4 goddamn feet of crumple zone. They could have had both a crew cab and a full size bed. Or the short bed but a more practical size.
I'm as much of a Tesla Fan Boy that you can be but I have to say, the F-150 seems like a darn good vehicle and it's sad they're killing it. I especially like the V2X features.
I have one and it is an amazing vehicle. However, what they are planning with their new EREV system coming out in 2027 seems pretty interesting too. You get your usual battery only mileage and then a generator kicks in to recharge the battery for longer trips. I would imagine it wouldn’t be required in 95% of most people’s trips but it gives folks the option n long road trips or heavy tows.
I like it because it skips the usual hybrid approach of switching over to an ICE engine that drives your wheels in a different way and simplifies things immensely.
I remember when Elon promised that they would have an extended range battery option for the Cybertruck, but then realized the logistics of such a thing are extremely challenging and quietly dropped it.
F-150 Lightning is better vehicle than Cybertruck - however Ford is a political company (not like Musk) as in the fortunes of Ford lie to an extent with politicians, unions etc
so hopefully ford can turn the F-150 into an Extended Range Electrical Vehicle
They are the worst of both worlds: not enough battery range to satisfy on long trips plus the weight and maintenance headaches of a gas tank and engine, especially silly to lug that around if 90% of your trips are in battery range.
As a 2012 Volt owner I think EREV was a great idea in the 2010s given battery tech and networks at the time. In the 2020s, they seem a weak compromise that I wouldn't recommend to people.
No shit. The CT is ugly to most consumers' sensibilities, and not a "real" truck to most consumers in the truck segment. It only survives as long as it serves Musk's ego. But that's ok -- Tesla is Musk's company and shareholders are happy with that status quo. Who else cares?
The Cybertruck isn't a "real" truck, but the vast majority of trucks never do real truck stuff anyway so that's not as big of a gotcha as people think. Hell, even F-150s and Dodge Rams and GMCs have stunted vestigial cargo beds now, they're more like minivan utes. How many trucks can you buy today that can fit a standard everyday 4x8 sheet and a load of 8' studs in the back and close the tailgate?
> but the vast majority of trucks never do real truck stuff anyway so that's not as big of a gotcha as people think.
The whole point for those non-utilty buyers is the badass, tough-guy branding. Would a whiskey-drinking, steer-wranglin', meat-smokin', spur-boot-wearin', woodshop-havin', permanent-5-oclock-shadow BAMF drive a electric CT? No. Therefore the CT fails at the one thing they expect of trucks due to its lack truck aura.
Oh no. What if Elon's highly visible foray into right wing politics is an attempt to market his truck to people who would not normally give it time of day? Basically turn it into a rolling red baseball cap.
I'm sure the usual detractors will be here to whine "Electrek is biased against Tesla!"
To which I would ask: Is it "bias" because they simply report on Tesla frequently? Would it be "less biased" if they ignored Tesla? Obviously Electrek can't simply invent positive press for Tesla to report on.
Putting that aside though. The Cybertruck by all measures has been an abject failure. Its production run was so limited that insurance companies refused to cover it [1] and the NHTSA took something like two years just to crash test the thing due to how few of them there were on the road.
Combine that with 10 fucking recalls for absolutely horrific safety issues [2] and the company making the batteries taking a 99% slash in its $2.8 billion dollar contract [3] the thing is a complete travesty
Fred Lambert (Electrek founder) was pro-tesla and was using his site to get a huge number of referral credits. Then Tesla changed the rules on that referral program.
That's what triggered the beef. Fred sold all shares, took down all the pro-tesla articles, and posts nearly exclusively only negative tesla articles since.
Seems both parties were/are within legal rights, but it is clearly bias.
Literally the only people who can think that this dude is anywhere remotely objective is if you are already a Tesla hater; he posts qualifications in every title and always adjusts the wording and tone to be negative. Every Electrek's take on an article is him describing how he warned everyone about the Elon/Tesla heel turn as you laid it out. It screams confirmation bias but since he isn't a journalist there's no code of ethics he's bound to follow.
I'm bullish on EV's at large. They're far nicer to ride in. So I find his coverage informative. I've never owned a Tesla but I've ridden in hundreds and must admit (other than the original Roadster) I've been thoroughly "whelmed" by their mediocrity.
However, short of going to places like Reddit's "Tesla Lounge" or "Cyber Truck Owners Forum" I have yet to see many (any?) places that cover Tesla/Elon positively. Not because "every website is biased against him" but simply because they're reporting on events that've happened
Unless they come right back with a comparable implementation with a maverick/ranger type form factor, Ford is absolutely shot itself in the foot canceling the lightning. I’ve been Evie only for five years and have driven both the electric Silverado and the lightning. I bought the lightning. It’s fantastic. They are absolute idiots for discontinuing it.
Cybertruck is a gimmick. And the fad has passed. No wonder they're not selling well.
And they don't age well. Most of the ones around here are starting to look... grimy. Or dingy. After just a couple of years. It's a poor advertisement for itself.
And, yeah, then there's cultural eye-rolling. It's really the only vehicle I hear people openly mock when they see one... And that's not a Tesla/Elon thing entirely, since people don't have the same reaction to other Tesla vehicles.
I think the timing of the Cybertruck starting deliveries roughly aligning with when Elon got heavily involved in politics hurt it quite a bit. It is such a distinctive vehicle with a strong association with Elon, that there was an immediate brand association. It may have had poor sales anyway, but it certainly didn't help that many folks on the left, who are typically the most 'pro EV', had a large 'anti-Elon' shift around its launch.
That said, even though it's not to my taste, I do admire that they dared to do something different and took a big gamble on it. So many vehicles, especially in the truck space, are almost indistinguishable and lack any kind of imagination. Kudos to Tesla for trying to break the mold and push the category somewhere new.
>I think the timing of the Cybertruck starting deliveries roughly aligning with when Elon got heavily involved in politics
That and also it's just a bad product.
>That said, even though it's not to my taste, I do admire that they dared to do something different and took a big gamble on it.
A pickup truck should just be max utility, especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one
edit: agree there's a market for the raptor off-road tremor package thing, but it wasn't ford's first and they've been selling commerical trucks for 75 years. A true tesla f150 competitor would have sold like crazy, I think
> A pickup truck should just be max utility, especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one
The modern US pickup truck isn't built for utility. It's a $60,000 four-door lifted luxobarge with leather interior and a short bed. It signals (perceived) wealth while preserving working-class alignment. It can also be justified by way of having to pick up used furniture for TikTok refinish and flip projects or bimonthly runs to Home Depot to buy caulk and lightbulbs. Independent tradesman can write them off as work vehicles or, allegedly, use COVID-era PPP loans to buy them.
It's the suburban equivalent of a yuppie's Rolex Submariner. Investment bankers generally don't go scuba diving and if they did a dive computer would be vastly preferable.
I say all of that to say that making a pickup truck for that market segment isn't a bad idea from a numbers perspective. You just can't market it as a luxury vehicle because the whole point is that it is but it isn't.
As someone who's just been trying to buy a crappy used truck to haul some crap to the dump a couple times a year, you're absolutely spot on. I even live in the southwest US where trucks make up a considerable portion of vehicles on the road.
Crappy used trucks simply aren't up for sale. And even the rare listing I do come across, the asking price is ridiculously inflated.
If you only need a truck a couple of times per year, maybe it makes more sense to rent one?
Not even. When I lived in the boonies trash service was ~$75 a quarter, the local hardware store would deliver pallets of mulch for free, and furniture stores offered free delivery above certain purchase amounts. My buddy's dad would haul your boat between the marina and your house for a flat fee. Hell, I was able to cram a full PA with floor monitors and a few guitars into my Corolla for weekend band gigs.
I started looking into getting a trailer or hitch hauler but it didn't seem to make much sense. I could usually pay somebody on-demand to move stuff around and it always worked out to be cheaper than owning and maintaining a truck. I presently work from home and don't even own a car anymore; the math is quite similar with rideshare and motorcycle maintenance coming in significantly cheaper.
I have had good luck with farm type auctions just check the rust. IronPlanet is also really good but a little more expensive.
Consider a Honda Acty - they even have models with a dumping bed.
These are quite expensive for what you get and are slooooooow. It's fine if you want an expensive, quirky neighborhood runabout, but you'll be made very aware that this is a product not at all designed for the US market (there's a good reason most examples do ~1000 miles a year). The ACTYs I found online were in the $7-20k range, for a ~30 year old model - more for a nice van.
The best used work truck is actually a van. They lack the coolness factor of trucks, but are far more versatile. You can pick up a <10 year old Transit with under 100k miles for like 10-15k. That price point will get you a >10 year old F150 in the 100-150k mile range.
Plus, there are good options if you want something smaller can car-based, like NV2000s and Transit connects. Which don't really exist for trucks outside of newer (maverick) or niche (Ridgeline) options.
Bonus points, a nice Transit is a great daily driver too.
Harsh did a tipper conversion for the Daihatsu Hijet, which had an 850cc triple with a lot more poke than the Acty's 660cc twin, and had a "true 4WD" variant.
In the UK, Truck and Driver Magazine featured one so equipped in a head-to-head AWD tipper test (AWD in the sense of all wheels driven regardless of number of axles, not Subaru AWD/Audi Quattro type AWD), alongside a variety of extremely large trucks. Proper trucks, not F150s, we're talking 18-tonne Scanias and stuff here.
Everyone wanted one of the little Hijets to take home.
Consider a trailer if you have even a mildly acceptable tow vehicle that can take a 2 inch receiver. Use what UHaul will rent you as a rough limit for what your vehicle can handle, and then if you want to save some weight get your own because it will be lighter than UHaul's brick shithouses.
Having said that, I'm still in the market for a larger vehicle with a better tow weight rating as I use the trailer more than a handful of times per year, and my current tow vehicle is getting a bit long in the tooth.
Yes, and they're awesome. Also much closer to 100k.
Class tourism is a succinct term here. Blending in with hardworking blue collar Americans is a whole marketing industry in itself.
Blending in with imaginary people, you mean. Every single actual blue collar worker who needs a truck for that purpose drives a 1997 Toyota Tacoma.
I had a 2008 Tundra I sold when I moved to the EU not too long ago. Still miss it. It was big, but could easily tow my boat or haul anything I needed. Was a 4 door and had a full sized bed. Had 125k miles when I sold it, and still ran great.
I would have gotten a Tacoma, but I need the extra towing capacity.
The modern US pickup truck still has the utility image and they make sure they sell a bunch to people who want utility to ensure that the image is not lost. That is why the lightening came in a cheap pro trim clearly targeted at the things pros are likely to want. (I don't know how well it worked, but they seriously tried to sell to that market)
Of course the real money is in the high trim levels that sell for twice as much but don't really cost much more.
> A pickup truck should just be max utility
A working truck should be max utility. Around the core market of "working trucks," there are various wannabe truck products that do not have to be max utility. For example, a Subaru Brat or a Hyundai Santa Fe. Niche products compared to an F-150, but they had/have their fans.
I personally can't stand the design, but the idea of an impractical "halo vehicle" that appeals to a niche audience but burnishes the brand as "forward-looking" is not a bad one. It's just the execution of this particular halo vehicle that I would have a problem with were I in the market for a lifestyle look-at-me vehicle.
Oh sure, but look at the vast popularity of these monstrosities that never even see gravel. I get how you (and I) find that abhorrent, but there's clearly LOTS of folks that find a blinged out useless luxury pretend truck to be very attractive.
I was in the market for a pickup recently. I had wanted to like the Cybertruck, but ... too damn ugly, too version 0.3, too many dweebs driving them, too many teething issues even for a first cut. Plus it's as heavy as an F-250. There's almost no actual reason to grab one besides it being electric. Since I drive so little, I'd never pay back the embedded energy it takes to make the thing - so even that isn't a selling point.
So instead I got a used Tacoma, and disappeared into the ocean of Tacomas that exist here in the PNW. It could be worse :)
Trucks don't have to see gravel to be working trucks.
If you use a truck for work purposes once a year it is likely cheaper to just drive a truck for everything than have a second car. Don't say rent a truck is an option - you probably can't rent a truck for most work purposes - most rentals have fine print against that, even if you can find a place to rent a truck the cost quickly gets to more than just owning your own truck.
Are you in the US? Most Home Depot locations will rent you one of several sizes of work truck for as low as $20 for a quick there-and-back of 75 minutes, or ~$100-200 for a day. I understand Lowe’s to do something similar. U-Haul does trucks.
And if your needs are more ambitious, there’s Sunbelt Rentals through much of the country and Enterprise’s Trucks arm as opposed to their more consumer-familiar operation.
If I’m using it once a year, I’ll splurge for a bigass 1 ton 4x4 which Enterprise Trucks is currently listing for $139 a day including 150 miles… and in 100 years, have spent the $13,900 difference between a dweeby little smarte car and owning my own pickup
Not that there’s the least thing wrong with just preferring to own one, just options that I wish I’d known about earlier in life.
Have you read the contract with Home Depot? You can't use their trucks for anything other than hauling your purchased from Home Depot home.
I haven't see the contract with enterprise trucks, but I suspect it is similarity restricted against the type of damage this is normal from using a truck for work. You can at least tow a trailer with them. Their locations are not convenient for me either.
It's a lot cheaper to rent a trailer.
> Oh sure, but look at the vast popularity of these monstrosities that never even see gravel.
Normal-sized pickups aren't meant for offroading.
I hope someone fully capitalizes on what Edison is trying to do up in Canada.
That is a fully electric drive train hybrid. That way you can charge it at home and charge it with a generator under use. Problem is our current laws are making certifications a mess.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/opinion/marie-gluesenkamp...:
> It’s all but impossible to go into any rural bar in America today, ask for thoughts on pickup trucks and not hear complaints about the size of trucks these days, about touch-screens and silly gimmicks manufacturers use to justify their ballooning prices. Our economy, awash in cheap capital, has turned quality used trucks into something like a luxury asset class.
> It’s often more affordable in the near-term to buy a new truck than a reliable used one. Manufacturers are incentivized by federal regulations, and by the basic imperatives of the thing economy, to produce ever-bigger trucks for ever-higher prices to lock people into a cycle of consumption and debt that often lasts a lifetime.
> This looks like progress, in G.D.P. figures, but we are rapidly grinding away the freedom and agency once afforded by the ability to buy a good, reasonable-size truck that you could work on yourself and own fully. You can learn a lot about why people feel so alienated in our economy if you ask around about the pickup truck market.
> Instead, the authors of “White Rural Rage” consulted data and an expert to argue that driving a pickup reflects a desire to “stay atop society’s hierarchy,” but they do not actually try to reckon much with the problem that passage raises — that consumer choices, such as buying trucks, have become a way for many Americans to express the deep attachment they have to a life rooted in the physical world. A reader might conclude that people who want a vehicle to pull a boat or haul mulch are misguided, or even dangerous. And a party led by people who believe that is doomed among rural voters, the Midwestern working class and probably American men in general.
> This approach to politics governed by data and experts is what we mean when we talk about technocracy. It’s a system that no longer really functions today because the broad societal trust that once allowed data and experts to guide political choices has broken down. Democrats, increasingly, live in a world where data and researchers convincingly show that low-wage immigration raises the economy and our gun laws are reckless and misguided.
> A reader might conclude that people who want a vehicle to pull a boat or haul mulch are misguided, or even dangerous.
How about I just conclude that while pulling a boat or hauling mulch are completely OK things to want a vehicle for (*), one does not need a F150 with a front end that reaches my chest and has gas mileage to prove it.
As many have noted, pickups like the 90s Toyotas did these things just fine for almost everyone, but most US based manufacturers have stopped making them.
Me noting that doesn't make me part of the doom of the political party I always vote for.
(*) to the extent that we live in a society where private ownership of vehicles is completely unremarkable, that is. And we do, for the foreseeable future.
The Tacoma is the modern equivalent of the 90s Toyota, and while it is certainly bigger, it is not that much bigger.
Also, there are a lot of boats, RVs and trailers which my 2019 Tacoma absolutely would not have towed successfully.
The Santa Cruz is about the same size as a Santa Fe and weighs less.
The Ford Maverick is a smaller vehicle but also a truck. It is a working truck for some, and a rec/handyman vehicle for others.
A Maverick is hardly a working truck. It's got the same towing capacity of an older Kia Sportage. It's got front wheel drive (or awd). It's a car with a bed, not a truck.
Ford calls it a truck. Ask a random person on the street, and they'll say it is a small truck.
I've seen plenty of people in working clothes driving them, carrying working tools and such.
A BMW i3 is a body-on-frame rear-wheel-drive vehicle, but I don't think anyone would call it a "truck without a bed, not a car".
> It's got the same towing capacity of an older Kia Sportage.
How often do you need to pull 2000kg?
There are different sized trucks for different purposes. A Maverick or Kei truck is lighter and safer than a lot of cars on the road while being way more useful.
Maverick has a tiny bed (4.5 foot) whereas kei trucks can have up to 7 foot beds. I really wish we did small trucks with bigger beds here in North America. Really all I want is a hilux champ.
Tragedy of the commons.
Tragedy of not having better regulations. The commons don't have anything to do with it.
Some of the motivations to get vehicles like that, like being up higher than everyone and having more mass in a collision, are solidly tragedy of the commons.
This is a tragedy of an awful taste.
The reason is personal preference. Same reason people buy sports cars. I also wish their preferences were different
Reply to the sibling comment about little to no negative externalities:
Sports cars sure do have negative externalities. I live next to a custom car mod shop in the boonies. People hoon around here like there's no one else alive. They put my life and the lives of my family at risk on the regular. That is most definitely a negative externality.
Sports cars largely don't have any of the negative externalities of trucks.
Their fuel consumption is about the same, what externalities are you referring to?
Sure, if you're talking about high-power cars (M2, Corvette, etc). A Miata or Civic Type R will get far better fuel consumption.
And there's also wear on the road, noise, and damage to property and people when accidents happen (physics is a bitch).
Sure, if you’re talking about high-power trucks (F350, Ram 3500). A Ford Maverick hybrid will get far better fuel consumption.
I think more sports cars are burning out, revving loudly (or getting modified to take out their mufflers), and the damage from going a lot faster creates more damage.
No, you just don’t dislike them enough to find them.
HN has hated Trucks and American cars, except when Tesla came out, for as long as I’ve been here. Same with Reddit.
It's pretty funny how much truck rage there is here.
It’s crazy to me. If you hate automobiles, trucks still make the most sense- if you’re just carrying people and a grocery or two you should probably be on a bike or ebike.
I can't speak for the Santa Fe, but most Brat owners admit they have no intention of using it as a utility vehicle. The same cannot be said for most F-150 owners I know.
>A pickup truck should just be max utility,
The problem is as soon as you go EV, you use a lot of utility from the get go. With a truck specifically, because its a brick aerodynamically. There is no reason to buy a Cybertruck or Lightning when you can get a gas or hybrid F150 (or a Raptor) for a little bit more, and be able to sit at 80 mph on highways without worrying about range.
The biggest suprise about the lightning is that Ford didn't put in a gas engine in it as a range extender. They have 3 cylinder ecoboost engines that would have been perfect for that.
Here's a different aspect of utility: The F150 Lightning includes 120V and optionally 240V outlets, so it replaces the need to carry a separate gas-powered generator.
That's probably more relevant to fleet vehicles for construction and maintenance firms than to individuals towing boats. But just to offer an example of how the F150 Lightning is a great fit for certain uses.
You can also get a standard hybrid F150 with the "Pro Power(?)" package, and the hybrid drive-train turns into a 7.2kW generator.
I'm surprised it didn't sell based on that. 20 years ago when I was in construction the truck drove at most 130 miles per day (we made sure to work 14 hour days when we were going to spend an hour on the road - the crew hated those jobs), but typically more like 30. The the first thing we did was pull the generator out of the truck and started it. If would could just plug into the truck that would have saved a lot of space/weight in the truck, it seems like a no-brainer.
Then again, all the construction sites I see these days have mains power on a post, which we never had back then (I don't live in the same state so I don't know if this is universal or just this area has always been different).
It's great for rural folks or others with power issues. For a few thousand bucks, you have a backup generator in your garage.
The only question is range when those rural folks go to the big city (if less than an hour they do this once a week because groceries in the suburbs of a big city are so much cheaper. If farther than that they still go once a month because of things they can't get. Though I don't know anyone who lives so far out that they can't get to a city and back in a long day.
Otherwise rural folks often have something to fix on the other side of their property that needs tools. Cordless tools do a lot but sometimes are not enough.
> Here's a different aspect of utility: The F150 Lightning includes 120V and optionally 240V outlets, so it replaces the need to carry a separate gas-powered generator.
A small generator costs few hundred bucks and fits comfortably in any truck actually used for work. It's a small perk that some pro users would probably pay for, but it's not a selling point for a radically different car design.
it's a few hundred bucks, an extra thing to remember, takes up bed space, requires bringing gas, and is loud and annoying to use. It's not the biggest thing, but it's a pretty nice value add.
Easily stolen.
My brother has one, it is an amazing vehicle with better range performance than Tesla. It's dramatically better in the snow. Towing of large loads is a valid downside, but reality is that most people don't tow, and people who do are probably fine with 80% of the use cases (construction trailers, lawn trailers, etc).
The business problem Tesla solved at Ford cannot is the dealer network. He pre-ordered his, and the dealer he was stuck with tried to rip him off like 4 different ways.
The other issue is that car guys are afraid of electric, as the entire supporting industry is essentially obsolete. It's hard to get excited about something that will take away your ability to pay your mortgage. Every car dealer employee and mechanic knows that.
Electric cars still need maintenance. They don't get regular oil changes, but they wear out tires sooner. They have more recalls in general than ICE (this will likely change, but manufactures are still learning how to make EVs reliable). The parts of a car that are not common with EVs don't break for the first 100k miles, and almost nobody is using the dealer for cars that old. There is plenty of other work that is common that dealers will still need to do.
Your argument hinges on any level of maintenance being enough to maintain our current level of investment. The truth is always more complicated.
Take for example DVD rental. The market completely evaporated, while there is still a small lingering community that could be serviced by rentals. My local library is proof that there is a market. But there are, bar some weird exceptions, no remaining DVD rental stores.
If an EV needs 50% of the maintenance, then it stands to reason that you need 50% of the staff. That's the easy part. But what about all the other staff? Can you afford as many staff in front of house when your main profit centre shrank massively? Can you keep the same amount of cars in the lot if you don't have the cash to pay the manufacturer fees?
Next generation of lightning is doing exactly that with a smaller battery, they're claiming 700+ miles of range: https://www.fromtheroad.ford.com/us/en/articles/2025/next-ge...
> The biggest suprise about the lightning is that Ford didn't put in a gas engine in it as a range extender.
They announced that along with the EV Lightning cancellation: https://www.fromtheroad.ford.com/us/en/articles/2025/next-ge...
You have one reason listed, which is going 80mph (which is illegal in most states). They also can't tow long distances easily, but are superior in nearly every other way.
You also gain some utility. Infinite torque at idle, cheaper 4wd, better traction control, fewer mechanical problems, etc.
> pickup truck should just be max utility
Except the main demographic buying F150s is suburban dads driving to their office job.
And using the truck on weekends to tow the boat, or do other work with it. Not every weekend, but once a month in summer.
There are 5x more households with trucks than households with boats, so this hardly explains it.
There are a lot more uses of a truck than towing a boat.
Gas doesn't cost enough.
I don't know much about car economics but I'd think Tesla probably should have built a truck to sell as a fleet vehicle first. There are very few car brands that aren't part of a larger entity doing b2b vehicle sales.
> That and also it's just a bad product.
I want whatever the v3 equivalent of the Cybertruk would be. Assuming they improve on it.
That's basically the F150 or a rivian
That's... a very uneducated take, even according to those car's CEOs RJ and Jim.
Normal cars vs the fever dreams of a ketamine addict.
And a lot of the best automotive+ engineers in the world.
> it's just a bad product. So you've never driven one?
> A pickup truck should just be max utility You don't know much about trucks? What does this even mean, max utility? Trucks are designed for different purposes. Should we eliminate all programming languages besides bash or python?
> especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one Seems like you don't know much about business either. Most new products should NOT try to do everything at once the first time.
>A pickup truck should just be max utility, especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one
I don't think this is actually true, most pickup trucks aren't designed for maximum utility. They're designed to sell a lifestyle.
Heartbreaking but true. The most popular pickups today are not the most useful pickups. There are no more basic utilitarian pickups any longer, at least in the US.
Pickups are a little bit interesting in this regard. For any given model (eg: Tacoma, Frontier, etc.) the more premium the truck, the worse it is at being a truck. Each feature you add reduces its payload, and in the case of the Frontier, you could drop from a 6' bed with ~1,600 lbs of payload on the base model all the way down to a 5' bed with ~900 lbs of payload for the most premium offroad model.
I would be willing to say that a small Japanese kei truck is more than the average American would ever need for hauling furnishings, appliances and lumber. If you really need something bigger renting a trailer or truck is dirt cheap
>If you really need something bigger renting a trailer or truck is dirt cheap
It’s neither convenient nor cheap to rent a trailer in much of the US. Major cities have options, rural areas less so. Full disclosure I have a mid-sized pickup, but I recently looked into renting a trailer for a landscaping project that was above the weight limit for my truck. First issue I ran into was that there were not any trailers available for rent anywhere near my location. Second issue was that after factoring in driving distance + rental cost + dump fees, it was ~ the same price just to pay a junk company to haul the materials…and it was not cheap. Anecdotally, my pickup was cheaper than most other vehicle options at the time I bought it, my commute is short (so fuel economy is less an issue), and as a homeowner I use the bed to haul something at least once/month (Unfortunately kei trucks weren’t available at the time). So the cost/benefit/convenience factor of owning a truck over renting a trailer works for me. YMMV.
I found out a couple of years ago that you cannot rent a vehicle and use it to tow. This is a major barrier to the argument "when you need to tow <X> just rent a vehicle that can do that" (an argument I would like to support).
I found this out recently as well, and it's really interesting since it must mean that a lot of these "just rent a truck when you need to tow" claims must have been unfounded.
Except most people also use trucks as daily driver vehicles. You can't exactly fit the wife and kids in a kei. Sure you could also own a car for that but now I need to own/store 2 vehicles instead of one.
Yeah let's not pretend every family with a truck only owns one vehicle. Most families already have a second car anyways. Especially people spending $60k+ on a truck.
That is my argument for EVs as well. One truck with an ICE for take the whole family on long trips, or towing. Then an EV for everyone else - whoever is making the long trip that day gets the truck.
Truck works well for those role because it can do so much. It isn't the best for most of those, but it can do them.
The Ford Maverick is pretty utilitarian, inasmuch as any new US vehicle is.
The Slate is utilitarian, but remains to be seen if it actually ships. https://www.slate.auto/en
I decide if a truck is utilitarian by whether I have to flag a 2x4x8 in the bed or not.
I decide if you need to have a step on your bumper because the truck is too high to get anything in and out of it. Lowering my truck made it way easier to load and unload.
I can fit one of those into my Ford Fiesta with the hatch closed. :smh:
Closed and latched? I find that hard to believe (used to own an 80s Honda Civic which would allow "closed but not latched" for 4x8 sheet goods) ...
Yes, with room to spare. I assume the grandparent was referring to a stud, i.e. the nominal "2x4" that is 1.5x3.5inches in cross section and 8 feet long :-) Sadly I cannot fit 4x8 sheet goods though I haven't tried very hard. I can definitely fit them if I ask nicely for a lengthwise cut, so I end up with 2' wide 8' strips. Those I can fit and close the hatch.
these trucks are still a thing; Toyota sells a 10k stripped down work truck for places like Thailand
https://www.roadandtrack.com/reviews/a45752401/toyotas-10000...
wouldn't fly due to chicken tax + other safety and emissions. they plan on selling em in Mexico tho, so maybe we'll see some float up...
> There are no more basic utilitarian pickups any longer, at least in the US.
What makes you say this? The F-150 series has a pretty serviceable option in their XL trim. 8ft bed, 4x4, "dumb" interior (maybe not, looking at their site looks like the most recent is iPad screen, sigh) - but what else would you look for to call it utilitarian?
You're right that each feature is further limiting, but I would argue premium and utilitarian are reaching for opposite goals.
A F-150 from the previous century is much utilitarian than today's F-150's. The bed height and rail height are much more reasonable heights -- you can reach into the bed from the side.
Manual gearbox, triangle vent windows, engine bay room, repairability, bench seats.
I wish it had even fewer features, but I take your point.
The most utilitarian truck is probably the Hilux champ and it’s not even sold in the US.
Lifestyle sells.
I drive a wagon. Of course wagon owners talk about the utility. And yet, you can buy a wagon with a twin-turbo V8 engine. What's the "sportwagon" segment all about? Certainly not going to Home Depot to buy four toilets for the new house, it's about putting your $15,000 Cannondale Black Ink MTB on the roof and swanking up to the trailhead.
It's about drag racing on the way to your Jiu-Jitsu club with the baby seats in the back. And still being able to fit that new vanity from Home Depot in on your way back home!
The brain is a confabulation/justification engine.
In reality ideal utility is likely found in the shape of a 2008 Toyota Camry and a U-Haul truck rental when necessary.
You may underestimate how much consumption some people in the US have and why a Camry wouldn't work. Hell, for the amount of hobby project stuff I bring home on a bi-weekly basis a car just doesn't cut it. Then again, I'm not sure where I fit in the average population.
More like a 2001 Renault Clio. Camrys are already bloatware.
safety standards, gas milage, and a bunch of other factors have improved dramatically since 2008.
buy yourself a gently used 2019 Camry
> ... most pickup trucks aren't designed for maximum utility. They're designed to sell a lifestyle.
Yes, but that lifestyle can and sometimes does include actual needs for some of the utility. There is a great observation from Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat from Washington’s 3rd District in an NYT piece a couple of days ago. I included a perhaps too long quote in lieu of apologizing for the paywall.
> “Spreadsheets can contain a part of truth,” Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez told me. “But never all of truth.”
> Looking to illustrate this, I bought the recent book “White Rural Rage” and opened it more or less at random to a passage about rural pickup trucks. It cites a rich portfolio of data and even a scholarly expert on the psychology of truck purchasers, to make what might seem like an obvious point — that it’s inefficient and deluded for rural and suburban men to choose trucks as their daily driving vehicles. The passage never does explain, though, how you’re supposed to haul an elk carcass or pull a cargo trailer without one.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/opinion/marie-gluesenkamp...
If I mostly trim my hedges, but sometimes, very rarely, need to cut down small trees, am I best served by simply owning a hedge-trimmer and renting a chainsaw or other appropriate tool when necessary, or by buying a katana for both jobs?
Everybody knows why you bought the katana. We know you have a story to tell yourself, it's just not convincing.
> and renting a chainsaw or other appropriate tool when necessary,
I don't think most people realize how expensive and time consuming tool rental is.
This is where things also get kind of messy in the US. In manicured suburbs you probably don't need a chainsaw. But in older growth and places with larger lots you really do need one. If you wait till you need one after a big storm, you may travel 100 miles out of the storm damage to find one to rent or have to wait for weeks as your driveway is blocked and contractors are booked up.
For me the utility function is somewhere in between a car and a truck, hence why I have an SUV. I can carry the large boxes/items I seem to have at a regular basis. When I need something bigger I can rent a trailer to hook to it. Trucks themselves are way too expensive now, and I don't need that much capacity. A car would have me constantly renting or borrowing one from someone else (which I did when I owned a car and it was a pain in the ass).
We recently moved to a more rural location that has needed more tools. It is shocking just how expensive and inconvenient it is to rent tools (and even vehicles to some extent) and just how much worse it is being even just a little bit rural.
The big box store in our town doesn't rent tools or vehicles. You have to drive 45-60 minutes to get to a store that does. This means the 4 hour rental prices (which for something like a wood chipper or chain saw might be sufficient for a lot of jobs) become nearly non-viable or highly stressful rushing through unfamiliar power equipment that really shouldn't be rushed.
A full day tool rental is often 1/3 to 1/2 of the price of a new mass market version of the tool. A week rental is almost always more. The tools are rarely in great shape. You are almost always way better off going to an estate sale or local marketplace and buying a used tool. If there is a job you end up doing 2-3 times or need for more than a week its even cost effective to just buy new ones. You save so much on labor doing things yourself that even with new tools you basically always come out ahead.
The best case is that you have a community run tool library that lets you check stuff out cheaply for a week and can have a relationship with the folks that run it. Similarly, getting to know the neighbors and being able to swap/borrow stuff. For vehicles this is a little more dicey because of liability & insurance issues.
We've definitely struggled with the vehicle for long and sheet goods. We really don't need a pickup truck and it would honestly be a hazard on skinny mountain roads... but we do need to move lumber, sheet goods, appliance sized things just enough that it's a pain without one. We settled on a midsized SUV with passable towing power (as an aside, EV power and control makes towing a breeze as long as your round trip fits in one charge). Renting a trailer is still annoying, but at least can be done close by. For larger orders delivery can sometimes be cost effective (vs renting a vehicle or buying and maintaining a truck) especially because places often subsidize delivery to win business.
>A full day tool rental is often 1/3 to 1/2 of the price of a new mass market version of the tool
For sure. I had to dig some post holes in limestone that was very hard. Rental was going to be $200 for a tool that would do it in a day.
Instead I went to harbor freight and bought a tool closer to $100 even though it took me a bit longer, and I get to keep the tool which is still working to this day.
Heh, and labor costs in the Austin area are off the hook. I did a project for around $5000 that a neighbor had a similar but smaller in scope project quoted for $21,000.
> I don't think most people realize how expensive and time consuming tool rental is.
Same with truck rentals.
People seriously underestimate how much trouble a pickup truck rental from U-Haul can be.
I’ve wasted so much time trying to track down which location near me has one available on the exact day I want to do major yard work. Often I have to reschedule my work or plan out super far in advance. Or take a day off during the week because everyone else also wants to rent trucks on the weekend. Then I’m running against the clock the whole time.
An extra $100-$200 a month car payment to have a truck instead of a crossover is totally worth it.
Politics or no, the price point ultimately dictated its maximum sales. By that measure it's a reasonable success, and if Elon was forecasting that they would sell multiple tens of thousands of vehicles per year at a $80,000 price point he needs to lay off the drugs. Elon sometimes seems like the living embodiment of "How much could a banana cost, Michael, $10?" parody of out of touch rich people.
I think if people who like trucks didn't see videos of things like the bumper ripping off when towing or minor failures leading to whole vehicle shorts it might have done better. The people who want trucks want resilience and ability to self-service more than the average car buyer.
Cybertruck offroading attempts were also a hoot to watch. The whole vibe is that it is merely a truck-shaped Tesla EV that's terrible at most truck tasks. Sure, there's a market for mall-run trucks with pristine beds and never get any mud on them, but it's not a big one.
It's an amazing vehicle well suited to many normal tasks and more, and is an absolute pleasure to drive off road. I think you were subjected to either misinformation or very biased clips that were intended to warp your opinion.
It actually wasn't the bumper that ripped off in that video, it was the entire rear subframe tearing in two.
I remember the "under $40k" announcement price
2019 just before covid was a bad time to make price estimates five years into the future.
> I do admire that they dared to do something different and took a big gamble on it. So many vehicles, especially in the truck space, are almost indistinguishable and lack any kind of imagination.
I 1000% agree with this, in fact I love the way it looks, like something out of a SEGA Saturn game. But I would never buy one for the same reasons I would never buy any Tesla, or in fact any EV, or any post-2014 car at all. But the looks of it are not one of those reasons :)
I do have to laugh every time I see a Tesla with one of those “Bought this before we knew Elon was crazy!!” stickers, because to me they just read as “Wahhh I bought my car to make a statement and now it makes the wrong statement and I am self-conscious about it!!”. It's weird to me to think that other people are thinking that way about their automobiles, because I bought mine (Prius C) based on its features and how they fit into my needs and my life. I guess the Prius line was a popular “statement car” of the pre-Tesla era, though, like how Brian drives one on Family Guy, or the “Smug Alert” episode of South Park, but it was never that for me.
> Wahhh I bought my car to make a statement and now it makes the wrong statement and I am self-conscious about it!!”. I
I read it exactly the opposite. Somebody bought a car not because they were making a statement but just because they thought it was cool, only to find out later Elon was a nazi nutjob, and they don't want people to think they bought it because they share the same views.
Let me get this straight. You bought a "statement car" but not for its statement, and then you assume that other people driving a different "statement car" bought it because of the statement?
Yes, anybody who puts a sticker on their car apologizing for owning it is somebody who bought it to make a statement. I bought mine because I researched best gas mileage, lowest ongoing maintenance cost, and dimensions that fit the the city, and that's what I came up with.
>Yes, anybody who puts a sticker on their car apologizing for owning it is somebody who bought it to make a statement.
Or the opposite, buying the car wasn't a statement at the time and they don't like that driving it feels like a statement now so they got a bumper sticker to acknowledge that their continued ownership is not a statement of support for Musk and his ideology.
Real ones wouldn't be thinking about it at all.
Lots of reports of Tesla's getting keyed. I know Tesla owners who bought the sticker just to avoid getting keyed.
My favorite is the cybertruck with the T O Y O T A decal on the back
How are you defining "real ones"? Because it seems like you're implying that someone can't have political opinions while also occasionally making apolitical decisions.
Until someone who hates Elon (not saying that's wrong per se) throws a brick through the window (which IS wrong per se) and you're on the hook for paying for it.
So it all boils down to "No True Scotsman"? How about I offer you an alternative:
We don't try to guess why you bought what you bought, or why you need to so actively rationalize it, and you stop assuming that those stickers are something other than "Please don't key this car" signs. Less dramatically some of them are also "I bought this before the guy started throwing celebratory HiterGruß on stage and carving up important parts of the government for nonexistent savings."
Which... for people outside of your bubble is something important.
They also avoid buying certain cars to make a statement.
> “Wahhh I bought my car to make a statement and now it makes the wrong statement and I am self-conscious about it!!”
The correct interpretation for most people is "I bought my car because it was a good car and now for reasons beyond my control it may appear to be a political statement. Also sorry for giving that guy money, I didn't know he would spend it on Trump."
I understand you don't think it's a good car, which is fine, but most people who bought one did not agree with you.
Your comment is a little confusing because you obviously understand this concept, you bought a Prius because you thought it was a good car, not because of a political statement others may have projected onto your purchase. The same is true of most Tesla owners.
They may not have put it there because they were "self-conscious" about their "statement car." They may have put it there in an honest attempt to avoid having their car vandalized for something they had nothing to do with.
> I guess the Prius line was a popular “statement car” of the pre-Tesla era, though, like how Brian drives one on Family Guy, or the “Smug Alert” episode of South Park, but it was never that for me.
... So you admit to falling for Toyota product placement in cartoons.
Learn to read. I actually didn't see that episode until years after I both owned a Prius and lived in San Francisco, and I found it very funny :)
Have we completely forgotten about how Tesla dealerships were shot up, firebombed? Video after video showing cybertrucks vandalized with scratches and spray paint?
It may be a terrible car from a terrible program, but these events at least bear mentioning. If you saw it happening in 2025, would it have a cooling effect on your decision to purchase? Who would want the trouble?
The targeted vandalism/terrorism definitely stopped a lot of purchases.
I'll applaud anything that tries to move us away from the current stale design trend where every car looks like the same boring bar of soap and every truck looks like the same aggressive, drivable, mechanized fist.
But anything in this case is a pedestrian-maiming, finger-slicing, dumpster on dubs. Not sure that's really a move in the right direction.
I like the fact the design is bold. I don't like the fact it's criminally unsafe.
There are lots of interesting concept cars on every car show. Too bad companies choose to never make them.
The bar of soap is aerodynamic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_coefficient
Right. All cars are converging on the shape of the Dodge Intrepid Hybrid. It is simply unavoidable. It is carcinisation, but for cars.
You can attribute the failure of this vehicle to politics if you like, but it's fairly obvious to anyone watching why it failed - it came out at double the proposed priced with half the proposed range. It's not even the hideous design, there were hundreds of thousands of "pre orders" who knew about the horrible design. It's the price and range.
> Elon got heavily involved in politics hurt it quite a bit
I think the Cybertruck was DOA and his involvement in politics got people who shared his views to buy one in order to signal the same.
Also the fact that many truck deliveries were literally DOA as in the truck bricked itself in the driveway.
This isn't even remotely true though?
Elon Shithead promised a lot for apparently a good price and wasn't able to deliver.
It wasn't just the hate i think.
I mean as with most "product" things related to Musk, it's more about the meme stock than any fundamental coupling to finances in the real world.
Ford is a car company. They sell cars. The Lightning was a poorly selling car, so they stopped selling it. Pretty simple!
Tesla is a lifestyle company. They make line go up by owning the libs, catering to edgelord identity, and triggering speculation. The Cybertruck probably gained the company more memetic shareholder value than it lost as a real product.
I'm one of the few people that love the cybertruck design, but even I can't look at one these days and not think "swasticar". It's terribly disappointing, really. Fully self-inflicted.
The Cybertruck also does the tightest turns because it has front and back wheel steering. I could imagine that to be useful on job sites.
The kinds of people buying cybertrucks aren't going to be caught dead on a job site.
That's not true. Boss likes being flashy. You won't see them being used for actual work, but that's a different proposition.
No it doesn't. A regular Suburban without 4 wheel steering still has a tighter turning radius. A fucking Suburban!
2002 GMC Sierras did this, it was called quadrasteer
As did some models of Honda Prelude starting in '87.
A full-size Ford Transit - which is much larger than a Cybertruck, and much more useful - turns in about an 11-metre kerb-to-kerb circle.
That's fully a metre and a half tighter than the Cybertruck.
Not really, sites are pretty much always spaced out. Ironically, it’s best for city and daily driving - it’s a pure luxury feature.
It would be amazing in the city if it weren't two lanes wide.
It's the same width as an F150
Its not amazing in the city. The turning radius on the cybertruck is atrocious. Go look it up and quit believing the marketing bullshit.
It's great, maybe stop looking it up and go drive one?
The thing with Cybertrucks losing panels certainly didn't help.
A big part of the Cybertruck marketing was the robustness of its unusual design: exoskeleton! space grade materials! They smashed the door with a hammer and it didn't dent (just avoid pétanque balls...), Elon Musk commented that it would destroy the other vehicle in an accident. Morally dubious arguments sometimes, but it appeals to many potential customers.
And then, the vehicle that is supposed to be a tank falls apart by looking at it funny. And the glued on steel plates, is it that the exoskeleton? Not only the design is controversial, but it failed at what it is supposed to represent.
> I think the timing of the Cybertruck starting deliveries roughly aligning with when Elon got heavily involved in politics hurt it quite a bit. It is such a distinctive vehicle with a strong association with Elon, that there was an immediate brand association. It may have had poor sales anyway, but it certainly didn't help that many folks on the left, who are typically the most 'pro EV', had a large 'anti-Elon' shift around its launch.
IMO the sort of person who wants a vehicle like Elon's dumpster has a strong overlap with Elon's politics. Basically everything about its design and marketing was aimed at the sort of person who is focused on presenting a masculine image, who thinks they're going to be in a war zone on their daily commute, who wishes they could drive through a crowd of protesters, etc.
Basically the only thing "left wing" about it is the fact that it's electric.
> Kudos to Tesla for trying to break the mold and push the category somewhere new.
The only thing it actually did new was the drive-by-wire steering, which is by all accounts impressive but could have been done on any normal vehicle as well. The "unique" styling is mostly just re-learning lessons that John DeLorean taught the rest of the industry decades ago.
> IMO the sort of person who wants a vehicle like Elon's dumpster has a strong overlap with Elon's politics. Basically everything about its design and marketing was aimed at the sort of person who is focused on presenting a masculine image, who thinks they're going to be in a war zone on their daily commute, who wishes they could drive through a crowd of protesters, etc.
Elon is an ass, but this is still the most crudely and childishly stereotyped thing I've read on the internet today. Congrats.
I'll always give Tesla, SpaceX etc props for the work they accomplish, even though Elon is at the helm, he's not a perfect dude but I will give him props when he gets something right too. At the end of the day his employees are doing incredible work and it should not be written off because of Elon. To any Tesla / SpaceX employee whether you agree with Elon or not, thank you for helping to build a more interesting tomorrow.
Yeah SpaceX's tech is amazing. Funny China's like "star link launches are bad" then they're trying to do even more, China knows what's up.
Honestly, both the Lightning and the Cybertruck are just bad trucks. Some review of the Lightning I read said it has less than a 100 mile range towing a full load.
It's a fashion statement, not a work vehicle.
> Some review of the Lightning I read said it has less than a 100 mile range towing a full load.
Because of course towing long distances is the only reason you'd ever want a truck.
Obviously we can start by acknowledging that the vast majority of F-150s (and other half-ton pickup trucks) sold in the US these days are purchased by people who maybe haul a load of mulch or dirt once a year and otherwise use them as daily commuter vehicles for which no part of their "truckiness" actually matters for any reason other than image. I absolutely agree that these people should drive something that's not a truck, but that's a battle we're not going to win, so I'd rather have them driving an EV truck instead of a gas-guzzling V8. It's an improvement in some ways even if in reality that suburban parent would be best off with a minivan as their daily and renting a pickup from Home Depot for that mulch run.
My one friend who has a Lightning is exactly this. She used to have a gas F-150, replaced it with a RAV4 that she didn't like so she rapidly replaced that with the Lightning and loves it. Lots of power, quiet, smooth, and never needs to go to the gas station. I don't think she's ever fast charged it, just plugs in at home and goes about her life.
Where I live there are a lot of people who actually do need a truck or truck-based SUV for recreational purposes but don't really go long distances, like towing their boat up to the lake for the weekend, towing ATVs to the trail, or towing a RV trailer to a nearby state/national park where they'll then plug in to the nice 50A outlet and charge back up overnight without having to think about it.
There are also an absolute ton of commercial fleets that need pickup trucks for one reason or another but their trucks never leave their metro area and always end up back at the office every night. Lawn care, delivery, etc. where the only downside of the current lineup of electric trucks is that they're all only offered as the ultra short bed crew cab configuration instead of a long-bed standard cab.
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EVs are absolutely the wrong choice for time-constrained long distance travel, like long-haul trucking or the midwestern three-day-weekend road trip, but the Lightning and its GM competition that were actually designed to be good at things instead of a pure image machine are very good at certain roles.
I counted 49 pickup trucks with empty beds in the parking garage downtown this morning.
Wouldn't there be a selection bias, as trucks in parking garages are much less likely to be doing hauling /towing tasks?
I counted 50 sedans with empty seats in the parking garage downtown this morning.
Half of them sticking out into the roadway blocking half the lane. What an entitlement.
So? You saw them for one subset of what they are doing. Perhaps the most common one, but still just a subset.
> many vehicles ... are almost indistinguishable
That is so right on the money. I attended the LA Auto Show a couple of months back and the takeaway was that every manufacturer pretty much makes the same safe car. There might be a feature here and feature there, but it's the same car.
In the years past they at least had lots of concept cars. This year, I maybe saw two and they weren't all that "concept".
Elon going off the deep end is the tail wagging the dog. It's an objectively terrible car.
The collapse of the company overall, particularly the Model Y, which is a great car, is all about Elon. Not only his unveiling as a fascist, but he essentially looted the company.
pumped the stock and then tried to use the twitter buy as a way to sell greatly without taking the price too hard.
they wouldn't let him out of the sale -- he sued 3 times to get out of the twitter buy agreement -- so now he owns that too.
I'm very much on the left, and I honestly like the design of the Cybertruck. (I know this puts me in a minority.) It is disappointing that the original "unibody" design was abandoned. The new design where the body panels just randomly fall off is silly.
If it was made by some other company I would genuinely consider buying one. But I would never buy another Tesla. I owned an older Model X, before Elon went full-fascism. And even ignoring Elon, the car was awful. It was shoddily built, kept breaking down, and the service experience was shockingly bad. Absolutely atrocious.
But after all that, I can't give money to Elon ever again. I can't fund America's descent into fascism. I could not live with myself.
> I'm very much on the left, and I honestly like the design of the Cybertruck. (I know this puts me in a minority.) It is disappointing that the original "unibody" design was abandoned. The new design where the body panels just randomly fall off is silly.
Function should drive form. The design would be cool if it was for a cool function.
Say you have a beautifully-made, expertly-weighted tack hammer. That looks cool on your work bench and works well. If you refashion the hammer into a kitchen spoon, it looks dumb in the kitchen and works poorly for stirring a pot.
gl getting out of one in case of a crash when the battery that opens the doors malfunction
While largely true, that trucks have adorned the comforts of luxury cars, most are running 6' beds. This largely ignores the evolution of the truck and the job site. My family operates contracting and excavating businesses that operating in all manner of weather and terrain, no one is carrying loads in their truck beds anymore... its not even legal most places unless you convert to a dump bed...
Whats in their trucks? Well, a crew cab occasionally is used for car pooling workers, where they all park their vintage beater trucks at the business... Sometimes weather sensitive tools, or job related items, documents, you can just throw these in a glove box... The bed usually has a gas pump for refilling remote equipment. Cones and other safety shit. Sand hoppers for plowing. Yes they also use these "luxury" trucks to plow.
The thing is... These people are making decent salaries... my direct relatives are multi-millionaires who still pick up a welder, a hammer, a shovel.
Im see alot of assumptions about why trucks evolved the way they did, who owns them, and what for... I would argue the "luxury faker" is a very small crowd, one that likely moved to the cybertruck... and despite the trucks looking modernized, are beaten to pulp over long service lives.
Now, go get in a modern tractor, dump truck, or excavator. They are also all AC, Radios, Computers, Leather Seats, etc... People want to be comfortable.
> it's not to my taste
It's not just you, it's universally tasteless and that's the point: It is a contrarian vehicle.
In an age where the Internet has flattened subcultures into surface phenomenons, the only remaining way to publicly distance yourself from normality is by making patently, obviously bad decisions and using the backlash to further fuel your ego.
I mean, in certain circles online, people were literally calling Cybertrucks "Swasticars." Not the greatest for marketing.
I feel like kudos for making a public eye-sore merely because people typically don't make public eye-sores is a bit missing the point.
I think the dealership monopoly is partly to blame. Dealers get more reoccurring revenue from ICE vehicles, so they are incentivized to not stock EVs and to steer customers away from them. Ford seemed to understand this and attempted a direct sale program for EVs, but they canceled it due to dealer pushback.
https://fordauthority.com/2025/02/ford-ev-inventory-hub-syst...
Yes I think there's a real innovators' dilemma here for traditional automakers with dealer networks. Dealers make most of their money on servicing vehicles, not selling them. And EVs require almost no servicing.
Ford did try to make it up to them by offering a bevy of aftermarket add-ons for the Lightning that were sold through the dealerships. As a consumer, I wanted them to keep the EV and ICE versions as similar as possible, with the hope that parts would be cheaper and easier to find.
I bought a used Audi etron a couple months ago. Agent was going to try to sell me a service plan and realized none of them apply to electric :) The downstream fanout of the auto industry is huge…
There's still brakes, suspensions, tires, etc. to sell to EV buyers. Especially when EVs are so heavy that they have more wear on many of these.
Also dealers are one of the most reliable GOP funding sources. The GOP does not like EVs.
They seem to be flooded on dealership lots and are not selling whatsoever. OEMs force dealers to take the crap vehicles if they are to get the good ones. You have a vehicle that started off as a hard sell to the crowd that normally buys the vehicle and then you make it so the price is astronomical...forget the dealer reluctance, what did you think was going to happen?
[1]:https://youtu.be/F0SIL-ujtfA?t=532
Yeah I mean the obvious problem is that consumers specifically want to buy new ICE cars.
They will buy both ICE and EVs at the right price. I don't think Ford sells anything at the right price currently. But the Lightning was a mistake at that price.
> Ford seemed to understand this and attempted a direct sale program for EVs, but they canceled it due to dealer pushback.
Why didn't they just do it anyways? Dealerships seem like a pointless middleman, but I know absolutely nothing about what leverage they have. Self-driving cars can not come fast enough
Because dealerships are the automakers' real customers, at least right now.
You don't buy a vehicle from Ford; your local Ford dealership buys a large number of vehicles from Ford, and then you buy one of those.
Yes, an argument could be made that eliminating the dealership keeps the same customer base while eliminating the middleman (see also: Carvana), but now you have a lot more cost and logistics (shipping individual cars to individuals' homes, for example, rather than shipping truckloads to a single well-known spot) and unless you're willing to do the Carvana/CarMax thing of offering a 7-day return window (which adds even more cost and logistics and risk), the average American customer won't feel as comfortable buying a vehicle sight-unseen from across the country as they would if they could sit in the thing while a salesperson pitches it to them.
That means you're taking on whole new category of cost and risk, while assuming that you won't lose any of your incoming revenue.
That's kinda a big assumption, and the major established/legacy/whatever-you-call-them automakers aren't known for having a high risk appetite.
Extensive regulatory capture -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_US_dealership_disputes
I have a conspiracy theory take on traditional manufacturers being so anti-EV.
Basically the primary differentiator between car companies and the primary barrier to entry in the combustion vehicle business is the engine, especially in the US. Look at the marketing, horsepower and torque are always the topline numbers. Zero to sixty and quarter mile drag races are the favored metrics. Each company spent decades perfecting the engines and the majority of the engineering effort goes into them. Even the transmissions get second fiddle status.
But now EVs come along and the electric motors are commodity parts that are already well optimized. There's little one company can do to make the motor significantly better. Battery tech is cutthroat and also largely outside of the car company's scope, although Tesla does more than other car companies with their megafactories and experiments with oversized cells. If EVs become popular there's little to stop competition from sprouting up everywhere and killing profitability for the legacy auto manufacturers.
It's a shame the Lightning got discontinued.
As an EV owner, it sucks that the main thing holding the technology back is misconceptions and misunderstanding, rather than actual practical matters.
People think EVs are cars with tanks of electrons, and run aground the same way you would if you thought horses were cars full of hay. It's a different transport tool that gives the same results, you just have to know how to use it properly.
> It's a shame the Lightning got discontinued. > As an EV owner, it sucks that the main thing holding the technology back is misconceptions and misunderstanding, rather than actual practical matters.
The F150 Lighting (and the Cybertruck) are failing precisely because it was impractical. It was expensive, has limited range when doing actual "pickup truck" work, like hauling tons of construction materials. It was built for the very niche market of buyers at the intersection of luxury pickups and EVs.
People who buy huge luxury pickups tend not to want EVs, and people who buy EVs tend not to want huge luxury pickup trucks.
A practical work truck needs to be smaller, less luxurious, and less expensive, electric or not. If Ford follows through and releases a plugin-hybrid Maverick with 150ish miles of EV range plus the onboard generator, that would be ideal.
A pure EV drivetrain on the other hand is incredibly practical for daily commuter and even long distance travel - assuming you have home charging - but not for hauling tons of stuff long distances.
The lighting is fine for towing, especially the type that people usually do. You can tow up to 10,000lbs and the truck has ridiculous power to pull it.
What you can't do it tow it long distances (>90mi, worst case) without 40 minute stops every 1.5 hours. That sucks.
But the truth is very few truck owners are towing huge loads long distances.
However, if you are pulling your lawn care trailer around town, you will not have a problem, because every day you start with a full charge.
As an aside, the main killer of range for a trailer is a function of speed and drag. Low drag trailers driven at highway speeds (60-65) have marginal impacts on range, regardless of weight.
Again, the whole thing is ridden with misconceptions and misunderstandings. The majority of people who tow stuff, can still tow stuff while reaping cheaper operating costs.
> But the truth is very few truck owners are towing huge loads long distances.
This pattern also applies more broadly. Most people don't actually need to drive 400 miles without stopping, don't actually need an SUV, and in some cases don't actually need a truck. For a huge swath of the population some variation on a hybrid/electric hatchback/wagon or minivan is actually the best match for their needs, but practicality is rarely the prevailing factor in vehicle purchase decisions.
I don't think that market is a niche at all. From what I can tell, most pickup owners don't use them as a pickup. They use them as a more masculine pavement SUV. So, you'd think, the F150 L and Cyber truck would be perfect.
Right, but the people who buy luxury trucks dont want EVs. EVs dont align with the signal they are trying to send
I disagree that EV-s are held back by misconceptions. More their price and range.
I can do a ten hour road trip with a family of four plus a dog in a used (2022) EV that I got for ~30k last year. I think the idea that price and range are problems is exactly the misconception that op was taking about. They are somewhat more expensive, although when I originally did the calculus, fuel savings made up the difference in monthly payments for a new vehicle, but that's going to vary a lot. The is a very small proportion of people for whom range is a legitimate concern.
Now do the range/time/stops calculation with a travel trailer.
Yes, if we're talking about normal family travel, an EV works fine for many trips (though there are still charging "dead spots" in parts of the country - looking at you WV).
But, "truck stuff" like towing, they aren't there yet. Maybe in a few years when we get the next generation of battery and charger tech.
In truth you cannot really do this because range is a function of drag, not really weight.
So if you are towing a 2000lb empty box mobile home it's gonna be worse than towing an 8000lb flat bed of decorative boulders.
Yep. It takes a massive battery (and massive "normal" range) to pull off towing any distance. Unless I'm wrong, only the Chevy Silverado EV has the range (480ish) to make a reasonable tow vehicle, but only with the big battery, which pushes the price north of $90k.
I actually enjoy doing road trips in my tesla more so than in ICEs, because of the forced breaks. With ICEs, stops would be either for food or for bathroom breaks. A lot of times just eating in the car while driving. But for a 10 hour drive I am forced to take 4 20 minute stops - so once every 2 hours. This ends up making me feel a lot better at the end of the trip and also gives you "guilt free" time to enjoy a random park you've never been to, or sit down and have a meal. So, lets say 80 minutes of added time for a 10 hour trip, vs maybe 40 minutes that I would have added in my gas guzzler. 40 minutes extra on a 10 hour trip just isn't that big of a deal to me and especially so considering all the benefits from walking around for a bit or seeing some new places.
Obviously you could do that same thing in an ICE car, but I feel the pressure to keep moving so it hits different.
For me, it's some intermediate trips where the EV really "fails" (though admittedly the gap closes every year and the use case below is basically a worst case scenario short of trying to tow trailer on the same route).
A common trip for me is DC -> Dolly Sods WV for camping. Less than 3 hours drive time each way, about 150 miles. I only need to stop for gas once during the trip and for only as long as the tank takes to fill (no meal needed).
In an EV, that ~6 hour round-trip takes about 9 hours due to 2 hours of charging and a 60 mile detour. That's using ABRP, with an Ioniq 5 from Reston VA to Dolly Sods Wilderness and back, no overnight charging because it's a wilderness location (gravel parking lot in the middle of nowhere).
How are you driving for 10 hours with only 80 min charging?
I make sure to have 100% charge before I leave, and then I drive it down to 5-10% and hit up a super charger. The batteries charge the fastest from 0-50%(~15 mins), so I end up having about 60-70% charge by the time I'm heading out. Then I just repeat the process. I also arrive at my destination with 5-10%. I have a 2023 model Y for the record.
I also try to drive in a manner that is friendliest to the battery (ie I'm not accelerating a bunch to pass people or driving 90 mph), and almost all the driving is on a highway. But, that's how I naturally drive in my gas car as well.
I do ~Denver to ~Salt Lake City and back 2x/year through the Wyoming route and I've done it 6 times so far in a Tesla and 4 times in a gas SUV. I do it in the early/late summer so temperatures are warm, which I'm sure helps the mileage.
The tesla mapper site claims you can do it with only 35 mins charging, but I prefer the northern route, and my actual departure/destinations are about ~1hr more driving, but I'm sure that wouldn't add more than 45 minutes to the charging time: https://www.tesla.com/trips#/?v=LR_RWD_NV36&o=Denver,%20CO,%...
That’s pretty cool!
How does cold weather affect this? What about when there is no supercharger (I live in Germany)?
Or driving faster, 160kmh/100mph in Germany is normal.
I recently did a road trip to Maine, and the whole week it didn't get above 15F. The difference in range was about 20% less. But I drive at 65mph with cruise control all the time.
This calculation gets even better when you count “never have to go to a gas station except during long distance travel”.
Those minutes add up!
The minutes add up, but it only takes one long distance trip to burn months or years of gas station time saved.
Nah. EVs can often charge ~80% in 20-30 mins. Pumping gas takes me at least 5 mins. You win pretty quickly on this metric unless you do a lot of 200+ mile trips.
Range is the misconception, because people view range through the "sit and fill up then drive till empty" paradigm.
That is not how EVs work or how they should be used. They should be charged overnight/when you are doing something else, and on road trips should be charged to align with other stops even if those stops are 10 minutes. It's rare that I have ever done the "sit in the car for 40 minutes waiting for charge", and extremely common to do the "Put car on charger for 13 minutes while going into [insert any of the gazillion places with chargers in the parking lot] to use the bathroom, stretch legs, and get a snack, or see a landmark"
Also you usually structure it so you arrive at your destination with very low charge, because you fill up while there. I've yet to be at a hotel with a gas pump in the lot.
Again, EVs function differently than gas, and that change of paradigm really gets people ruffled up and confused.
I actually leased a Kia EV6 recently without too much research into the charging situation, assuming that in 2025 it was probably pretty well figured out, and I could just do as you propose and just charge in small bursts at the grocery store etc. But:
- It didn't come with a home charger at all. They're not cheap.
- It came with a J1772 adapter, but no CCS adapter. The car itself has NACS. So I'm limited to Tesla superchargers, which are expensive, unless I buy a new adapter (not cheap, or cheap, but suspicious Temu brands).
- The experience of using all of these different branded charging points is _awful_. You need to create 10 different accounts with a bunch of terrible apps. The maps to find charging infrastructure seem universally awful.
- Pretty common to arrive at a charging location to find that some nutjob has hacked off all the charging cables. The only reliably maintained charge points are the larger, more expensive high speed charging locations.
I think a lot of the issues would be solved if I was more committed to the car and the house that I'm living in, and installed a home charger to charge at night. But the charging experience out in the world is absolutely _dismal_ when compared to gas vehicles, even if you change your behavior.
That’s exactly the problem. I’d be happy to use an EV daily, as I drive short distances. But when I drive longer, then I don’t want to waste hours on charging.
The other day I drove 700km in just about 5.5 hours (German Autobahn). Few stops to pee. With EV that would be few hours more (!). If this doesn’t bother you, then it’s fine. It matters to me though.
Sometimes I also drive early in the morning 600km, and in the afternoon back, so I’m home until 22:00. With EV, that’s just impossible.
As long as there's a fast charging station somewhere along the route you'd need more like 30 minutes to charge midway through, not multiple hours.
You also surely recognize that your driving patterns are very atypical and a car not working for them says very little about how suitable the car is for the market as a whole.
A fast charging station that is working, that has the correct connector for your car (including adapters you carry), that your car will work with (Tesla hasn't opened their superchargers to call cars with the NACS connector), that you have an account with... There are too many things that just are not there.
One top of that you need to find a charger. They are all over, but many of them are slow speed chargers. There are also a lot of gaps, if you pass a charger with 50% battery remaining you can't be sure you will make the next one. (most cars can pass several gas station with 5% gas in the tank and still make it to one). You need to ensure you will get back to your car when it is charged so they don't charge extra (this is a problem if you are at a concert or something and are trying to charge while doing something else that can't be interupted)
Someday all the above will be fixed. Everyone agrees NACS is the future connector, but it isn't rolled out. Someday every "gas station" will have a charger with the gas pumps (or perhaps something else?) - at least along routes where people often make long trips. Someday you won't need a phone/account, just swipe a card - or so I hope. But someday isn't today.
Assuming car can charge that fast. This is why I said “price and range”.
Renault 5 EV charges with 11kW.
In your typical 475km EV sedan, you would only need about 20 minutes of charging to do that 700km.
This is why I am like a broken record repeating that EV misconceptions kill EVs. You are applying gas car logic to electric cars, which is what people do, and stops them from getting an EV.
But it's wrong.
Are you assuming 250kW chargers? …and cars which can charge that fast?
Renault 5 EV charges with 11kW. This is the size of car I need.
If you often mowed a town park, you wouldn't buy a hand-push lawnmower and then be upset about lawn mower technology.
The Renault 5 is a town car. Its specs are closer to a golf cart than a motorcar. It fills a niche, but if you are traveling often, a different EV would suite you better.
The big problem here is we need a hybrid stage in between.
I have a hybrid now, it's still a conventional powertrain, and it's not chargeable. That's not exactly what I want, but it's what I could get.
I want a fully electric drive train hybrid with around 100 miles capacity on the battery, then a generator that's big enough to keep it running if the battery is drained.
100 miles gets you through the average day without having to use gas.
An electric drive train turns your engine to a generator that runs at a fixed speed and is more efficient. It also massively reduces the complexity turning into a system more like an EV.
And, if I go on a long trip, the car still gets me to where I'm going without charges (unless I choose to so I can save gas).
> They should be charged overnight/when you are doing something else
This is fine if you're a homeowner. For a huge chunk of people living in denser housing, this is not feasible, and at best impractical.
Resale value is starting to ward some people off.
You can buy 1-2 year old used Teslas and BYD's in Australia for ~30% below retail.
Meanwhile Toyota hybrids not just retain their value but there have been moments where used RAV4's are listed above retail because the waitlist for new was so long.
Exactly, price is a huge problem. IIRC, the average selling price of F-150 is ~50k.
The extended range Lightning tended to be $60k and up. Sure, it had AWD, but lots of people didn't need that. The Cybertruck is even more expensive.
Both had huge preorders when they were announced at ~50k.
A 600 mile trip can (theoretically) be done with 1 charge, because you leave home with full range, and arrive with 0 charge (and fill up overnight). That one charge is done while eating dinner, or spaced out in increments over the course of the trip, stops which you would take anyway. I know few people who want to bang out 10 hours without stopping for at least 1-2 hours over the course of the trip. And those who do, can be the edge case with gas cars.
So you need to go 600 miles, and you need 1 full charge worth of energy during that.
If that one charge takes 1 hour, you can also break it up into four 15 minute sessions at any time of your chosing.
I'm sorry, but almost no regular person does 10 hours without at least four 15 minute stops.
Range is not at all the problem people make it out to be.
Where can I find chargers on demand like that? There are a lot of slow chargers that won't give you much range in an hour. There are a few fast chargers that will, but they are much less common - enough to make the long trips possible but you need to stop where the fast charger is not where you are going to eat a meal or use a bathroom anyway. (gas stations are everywhere and so if you need a bathroom you can get gas at the same time)
Which EV can go 600 miles with one charge, or with so little charging?
How much does that car cost?
Are you assuming, that every charger on the way is 200kW?
You can get Model 3 LR that will do it for $20k used.
Like everyone else, you are thinking in "gas car" trying to resolve an electric car problem.
You start every trip in an EV with full range (unplug from home base charger). You drive 300 miles. You full recharge. You drive another 300 miles. You plug-in and go to sleep.
600 miles. One charge. $20k EV.
Lucid Grand Touring can do it in one charge (that lasts ~45 minutes). Expensive, but it could do it.
I did Shreveport, LA to Pesos, TX as an example.
If you're OK with 2 charging stops, an Ioniq 6 or a Tesla Model 3 will work just fine.
Also, charging speed is irrelevant to how many stops you need. Most chargers are >150kW these days, though.
If you truly want to minimize charging stops, you'd be better served charging 3+ times for shorter periods of time, though.
Thanks for illustrating the point.
They have worse prices (higher) and worse range (lower, particularly for towing). These aren't misconceptions. (My only car is an EV that I'm happy with. But lying about EVs doesn't benefit advocates.)
Obviously this is slanted by tax credits, but the EV that I have shares a name with the existing gas model and was less expensive.
EVs aren't for everything, but mine fits my use case perfectly.
> They have worse prices (higher)
Does this factor in cost of ownership? Gas, oil changes, less complexity?
> worse range (lower, particularly for towing)
Towing reduces a gas powered car’s range, too.
(Towing) You can fill it up in 5 min.
Not true for EV.
Pop in for a pee and a snack. In the 15-20 mins that takes, you'll have a good amount of charge.
Towing is also a bit of an edge case.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-siz...
> According to Edwards’ data, 75 percent of truck owners use their truck for towing one time a year or less (meaning, never). Nearly 70 percent of truck owners go off-road one time a year or less. And a full 35 percent of truck owners use their truck for hauling—putting something in the bed, its ostensible raison d’être—once a year or less.
They have artificially worse prices in the US where EVs are mostly only getting sold as "luxury" vehicles and competition is hobbled by dealer networks and dealer laws and import tariffs.
Most other parts of the world EVs are starting to be cheaper than the equivalent ICE in the same category.
Range often doesn't need to get better, the impression of range needs to change. That's where a lot of misconceptions play into effect, over-focusing on things like gas-station-like charging stations over at-home charging. Over-focusing on "zero to full tank/battery statistics" when no one keeps a gas vehicle with a full tank overnight every night. Over-focusing on high speed charging and ignoring boring but useful "Level 1" charging, which is "just about everywhere" because our society has been building electrical outlets for a long time. Sure, the experience changes in things like long distance trips, but experience changes aren't "worse" by default of being a change.
I still have to pay the price whether it's artificial or not
The main thing holding EV back is the oil industry, not the tech. The US is the only country lagging on EV and its all because the industry puts so much effort in to squashing all progress.
EVs are simpler and cheaper. Look at how fast adoption is growing outside the US. If US citizens could buy a BYD for the same price as in China, the the US auto makers and oil companies would be in trouble.
It's not only US, it's global.
I drive quite a lot throught southern Europe with my EV, and it's super frustrating that gas stations have the infrastructure on the highway while for my EV I have to go just outside the highway to a fast charger (wasting time), then I need to pay again (and waste a lot of time to go through the gate) to get back on the highway for example in Italy.
I disagree. I really want a Lightning but live in a very rural place, weekend in an even more rural place, and need to pull a trailer pretty often.
I already have a plug-in hybrid that gets 40+ miles/charge and have opined all over the internet that the perfect car is one that gets 100+ miles/charge before firing any gas engine.
It sounds like the next Lightning will give me that though I don’t put much stock in their promises. Personally the Scout is too bougie but it does similarly.
I disagree along with you. EVs would work for 80% of the population, there is a long tail of people who an EV will never (well foreseeable future) work for.
Thankfully, the mass of humanity that should be transitioning lives in populated areas and never tows anything for more than 75 miles. There is no need to get bogged down in back and forths with the small subset of people who an EV will not work for.
Seems to me like the Chevy Silverado with the 200 kWh battery pack is the EV pickup to beat.
I don’t get plug in hybrids. All other engine types save you more money compared to the next less efficient alternative the more you use them, but plugins get closer to the less efficient alternative (regular hybrid) the more you use them. Add in the approximately 25% price hike over the hybrid version when there is one and it makes no sense to me.
Depends on the car and driving patterns. I've got a friend with the PHEV Escape that he charges in his garage. It's the cheapest hybrid Escape that Ford sells, and he does all his driving on EV mode unless he has to do a longer trip outside of the city.
> but plugins get closer to the less efficient alternative (regular hybrid) the more you use them.
As long as most of your drive cycle fits within the EV range of the plugin hybrid, they are cheaper to operate than a regular hybrid. The crossover point depends on the drive cycle and the cost of electricity vs gasoline.
I had a plug-in hybrid SUV that got 2.2miles/kWh in EV mode, which covered 75% of the miles I drove. The net savings were significant vs an equivalent plain hybrid SUV in my area, which would get basically the same gasoline miles/gal.
Using a plug-in hybrid as an EV can and will wear out the drive battery over the lifetime of the car. It doesn't even matter if you don't intend to keep the car for very long as a rational market will price this in. The cost ($10k or more) goes a long way at the pump.
But the problem is that means you drove a minuscule amount so if you’d bought a hybrid you would have still used very little gas and your car would have been much cheaper. Generously, the full range of a plugin hybrid is equivalent to about a gallon of gas.
An F-150 Lightning and Cybertruck weigh somewhere between 6000 and 7000 pounds, so I personally think of them the same way as if you replaced your horse with a hippo.
It's not hard to convince people to move to electric, just make it such a better economic proposition that it would be silly not to.
...misconceptions and misunderstanding, rather than actual practical matters.
What's the range of an F-150 Lightning when towing a small travel trailer? The Rivian R1T is ~150 miles give or take. I assume the F-150 is similar.
At least for towing, the math isn't great. Especially when you add in the cost - my Honda Ridgeline was $42k in 2021. EV trucks are roughly double that amount.
of course your ridgeline has other ways to hurt you :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWyjfbS7MMA
Funny because it's true.
It's the most boring and practical vehicle I've ever owned. But, it does everything, so I'm having a hard time convincing my wife I need a Ranger Raptor or (used) AMG GLE.
At the size of Ford, sales numbers can be at a different mark for what is considered successful than others. Not to mention dealer gamesmanship fudges real sales numbers.
As to the Cybertruck it's both interesting and kind of ugly... repairability is another concern/issue as is pure cost...
I'm far more interested in the Slate[1] myself. It's probably closer to what a lot of consumers would want in an electric truck. It really feels like a spiritual successor to the OG Jeep (GP).
> At the size of Ford, sales numbers can be at a different mark for what is considered successful than others.
Does this really hold when Tesla has a considerably higher valuation?
Tesla is sitting at an egregious 30x market cap of Ford. If anything... I'd expect them to have sales targets that are ~30x the size of Ford.
When you consider that Ford also makes many more models than Tesla (Tesla has like 8 core models incl the cybertruck [and the not-yet-for-sale semi...] , Ford has like 20+)
By all measures - Tesla should be considerably more aggressive with sales targets for a core model, and it seems pretty clear the cybertruck is just a slow rolling market failure.
For 2025, Ford sold about 2.2 million vehicles, Tesla was like 1.6m. Given, more variety for Ford... But there's also margins and supply chains to consider.
The Cybertruck is kind of ugly and very expensive... not to mention that no EV truck really does towing well. The fact that the Lightning sold more than the Cybertruck doesn't make it a success.
The Cybertruck, imo, is not too different than a limited run sports car from a major car company... it's just a step above a concept car. The Lightning from Ford was an attempt to see if a market was really ready to shift to EV, it largely isn't. Even though I think it's probably a great option for a lot of work truck use, that doesn't include long distances or heavy towing, but then it likely prices itself out of that market segment too.
I'm not sure what the takeaway from your comment is?
I'm not arguing that the F-150 lightning was a commercial success for Ford, I'm suggesting that the argument that Tesla should be held to a different standard on sales numbers feels pretty shaky.
Both of these are basically "concept cars", and neither company has really delivered.
Both are expensive to make, and have very high sticker prices with low/negative margins (Tesla claims cybertruck is profitable, but they're sitting on an absolutely insane inventory count, which they can't seem to sell... so again... my guess is they're deep in the red for this model if you look at total costs instead)
I think the difference is what each company respectively thought of the model itself. For Tesla, Cybertruck is imo like a lower-volume sports car... for Ford, it was an upscale work truck option. The expectations are imo very different. Maybe not so much a Ford/Tesla comparison, but the respective market expectations.
Ford didn't exactly expect the Ford GT to be a mass seller, which is probably closer to what Tesla expected of the Cybertruck, or not, who knows.
I see the slate as the successor of the now extinct (in Can + US) mini-truck. 90s trucks like the small Toyota Truck, old Ford Ranger, Nissan hardbody, etc.
The kind of trucks that landscapers are still using, that are beat to shit, and have three features, cheap, load carrying, reliable by way of simplicity.
I can see that, but I mean in terms of body specs and room to reshape/cover/modify the vehicle to different needs beyond pickup truck. Including a second row of seats.
I'll be interested in the Slate when I can actually buy one. I've seen far too many startup car companies fail to launch to ever get my hopes up. Also, the hopes that the very first vehicle from a brand new company will be affordable are not realistic. Making affordable vehicles requires production at large scale, and that requires enormous capital investment, which generally means your company needs to already have income. Even if it just to prove to potential investors that you have basic competence.
Don't think that just because a billionaire is interested in the project that the funding will be easy. Billionaires don't like to spend their own money and can be easily distracted by newer and shinier projects.
This.
When the cyber truck was announced we decided to buy a Super Duty instead. That was 5 years ago. It's now paid off and driven us and our RV all over the country, and still worth more than half it's purchase price with many more miles to go, and no issues at all (knock on wood).
A lightning, cyber truck, or even rivian can't do those things.
Instead of waiting for a slate just buy a little gas pickup and GO USE IT, live you life!!!
To be clear, I'm not waiting for it at all... I'm not that interested in EVs for my own use so much... I work from home and not going to buy a new vehicle any time soon. I'm just more interested in it conceptually. Much like I was interested in the Local Motors Rally Fighter, I wasn't ever going to buy one, just thought it was cool. Well, maybe not the same, as the Slate could be something I would actually buy if/when it hits market in any numbers.
If it's got a good level of repairability beyond the body/form, then the company collapsing may be a lot less of an issue. The way it's being done does remind me a lot of the original GP (General Purpose) vehicle. Though not necessarily fit for military/combat environments; As fuel is easier to transport than electricity to the middle of nowhere.
>> no issues at all
Other than all the CO2, CO, and NOx you've emitted over that time period.
The government should have started taxing barrels of oil in the 70s.
Look at the same specs for the cyber truck. There is about twice the carbon in the manufacturing of these, so it counts on people driving them for hundreds of thousands of miles, I don't see that happening with them because you can't even take a normal road trip while towing. These things just aren't going to see the miles, because they can't. They're just not usable as trucks.
https://insideevs.com/news/719434/tesla-cybertruck-awd-vs-ra...
Also the power plants and diesel generators for the data centers... https://www.selc.org/press-release/new-images-reveal-elon-mu...
If you want to kill coal and oil just tax them the fair market price of carbon sequestration for the amount of carbon they ultimately emit. Use that money to sequester the carbon. This is how carbon markets should have been set up, but unfortunately that would have killed the modern economy.
If that was the goal, then killing nuclear power and holding it back for the past 4 decades was probably the wrong move. Solar and other "renewable" sources aren't enough to meet energy needs now, let alone the near future.
The government started taxing fuel (both gas and diesel) at the federal level in 1932.
Individual states go back to 1919.
It’s also the fact that Ford investors care about profits and its stock is not just a meme stock with no relationship to current or future profits like Tesla.
Same. The Slate is so close to what I actually want out of an EV: basic, utilitarian, cheap, not made out of 5 iPads. It's not perfect, but neither is any of its competition.
the god awful range of the Slate is not closer to what a lot of consumers would want in an electric truck
Plenty of people use pickup/work trucks and travel under 150-250 miles a day.
I find it funny that car discussions here are so much busier than computer discussions. I wonder if over there at the mechanics forum they spend as much time discussing their laptops and ignoring the drills and screwdrivers
I've seen headlines / stories giving Toyota grief about not going 'all-in' on BEVs while many other companies did.
It seems that the hybrid-first strategy has been working pretty well for them. (The 2026 RAV4s are hybrid-only with no ICE-only options, AIUI.)
Armchair internet analysts think they know better than the biggest car producer in the world that reinvented the modern supply chain.
"But look at Tesla market cap!!!"
Toyota had the right intuition: focus on EVs when the global sales will make sense for it, meanwhile avoid throwing good money after bad like most legacy automakers did with EVs.
Toyota is not immune to throwing good money after bad. They have dumped billions into hydrogen fuel cell research and production over three decades. Last year they sold more Venzas than hydrogen cars.
Notably, the Venza was discontinued after the 2024 model year and those sales figures represent inventory leftover from prior years.
It says a lot that spacex had to buy so many trucks just to help the sales numbers. I always thought the ford lightning was a better option for most people anyway. It is too bad they are stopping production when it seems to be the winner.
5,600 units of Cybertrunk and Semi combined is basically 5,600 units of Cybertruck. The Semi is still a boondoggle. I can believe that number. Your maximum sales figures are capped by your price point, and the Cybertruck, as well as the S and X, are in that "Fully successful this vehicle will have sales in the mid-thousands" price bracket.
I sometimes wonder about a world where those trucks managed to hit their $40,000 price points. For the Cybertruck it was clear that Elon demanded way too much (four wheel seering? Come on) to ever get close to it, but for the F150 it seems more like the price was due to Ford halfassing the production.
If you sell five thousand units but built production capacity for a quarter million units, that's not a success.
There is also the optic that the premiere US EV company failed to deliver an EV pickup truck behind Rivian, Ford, Stellantis, and arguably did a far worse job at it.
The F150 lightning was always going to be a tough sell for die hard truck customers but it at least has all the fit and finish that those customers expect, with access to the F-series aftermarket.
I take it that SpaceX looked at all the trucks on the market and chose the cyber truck to maximize investor value.
Maybe they can sell them at the announced prices instead of the inflated ones. Used is selling around $40k with 20-40,000 miles.
New started at 40k, went to 60k for sale, pre-order fulfillment fell off a cliff so it sunk to 56k, and settled around 50k.
2022: 15,617 sold
2023: 24,165
2024: 33,510
2025: “Around 27,300 units sold in the U.S”
$4k-$6k per battery module replacement. Full pack $25k-$50k.
imho, CT is horribly looking car with absolute disregard to any aesthetics. everything else is secondary. it has vibes of Aztec. one of the worst selling car ever.
I've owned a few F-150s over the last 20is years. It has the best fold up seats of any truck - entire back cabin floor is flat which is great for my dogs.
I rented a lightning on Turo and it was amazing - planned on getting one as my next truck. I would drive a CT depending on price but they just draw too much attention.
I do not understand why we haven’t seen someone take a cybertruck and drop a new body on top. I see “put a model 3 into x” on YouTube all the time.
I would love to buy a cybertruck chassis with a VW bus or minivan on top (current political issues of Tesla aside).
The Cybertruck is a unibody, not body on frame, so it would be a lot of work.
I wanted an F-150 Lightning when it launched. Demand was high enough that I was told I'd have to pay over retail. I did not buy an F-150 Lightning and bought an ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle. The depreciation of electric vehicles has made me appreciate those circumstances more and more.
> Demand was high enough that I was told I'd have to pay over retail
Meanwhile the article says "the Ford F-150 Lightning delivered approximately 27,300 units in the US."
I wonder how much dealers lie about these things. They tell you that there's not enough of them to go around, then Ford cancels them, because of what exactly?
There were not enough to go around when it first came out. A couple years latter and everyone who wants one has one and there are plenty. This is normal for new cars - people who want the latest model line up to buy them as they come off the assembly line, then they all have one and sales drop.
> The depreciation of electric vehicles has made me appreciate those circumstances more and more.
The depreciation for most EVs isn't all that different from that of new ICE vehicles. For a while, MSRPs were artificially inflated by the EV tax credit, which could give artificially worse depreciation appearance.
So now that the tax credits are gone we should expect to see the sticker prices on new EVs to drop right? Right? Any day now?
This happened a few years ago, at least accounting for the dealer markups.
Hyundai and Kia did exactly that...
Same here. I was told it would take a at least year on the waitlist. A month later I had 2 friends offer me their spot. They weren't impressed with the truck after a few reviews came out showing bad towing performance. I opted to buy a used ICE truck instead and have zero regrets.
The depreciation though has meant that used EVs are a bargain now.
But yes, as usual, dealers killed an EV. Same story for so many EVs. They don't want to sell them. They saw their opportunity to milk and screw up a product they didn't want, because of scarcity, and effectively poisoned it.
Truth. EV's need less service and will kill the dealership model if adopted at scale.
It wasn't canceled for poor sales. It was canceled because it was too expensive to produce, and would not fund all their other EV/battery projects. They found a better road to profitability in that front.
I love my EV, but for anything that needs the range they should have a super-efficient gas or diesel engine that can charge the batteries? It could be a much less complex engine.
That said, they big car makers only chased the government incentives, which was a great reason to have them.
Electric everything is the future. It is obvious (e.g. heat pumps, EVs).
I would gladly own a Cybertruck if prices come down.
Approximately 100k for a truck of any type is ridiculous.
Just before its release there was some press about a few high ups at Tesla who urged Elon to make a “traditional” looking pickup alongside the cyber truck in case it was a flip, but Elon shut them down hard.
I’d be really interested to know if they’re going to do that.
The tech is incredible and will filter into all vehicles in a decade or so (48v, Ethernet instead of CAN, etc)
I thought the F-150 was cancelled because their aluminum supply caught fire?
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a69147125/ford-f-150-light...
Why was it so ugly? The front lightbars execution looked cheap and toy-like. Expecting awesome designs for future Ford electric trucks lets go!
Looks are subjective, but what I don't understand is why they put an enormous vision obscuring frunk on it. The vehicle could have been considerably easier to maneuver in tight spots and safer to pedestrians at the loss of just some dubious storage space with no loss in bed capacity. Or it could have been the same length or even a little shorter and have a full 4x8 bed in the back.
If anything the vehicle was designed more for aesthetics than for practicality. There is no engine up front. There's no need for all of that space in front of the driver. It's entirely possible to engineer crash resistance without needing 4 goddamn feet of crumple zone. They could have had both a crew cab and a full size bed. Or the short bed but a more practical size.
The Lightning was done the way it was because they were able to re-use a lot of existing F150 tooling/etc and keep the R&D cost lower in the process.
Similar complaint for the chevy silverado, why can't they just make it look just like the regular silverado?
I'm as much of a Tesla Fan Boy that you can be but I have to say, the F-150 seems like a darn good vehicle and it's sad they're killing it. I especially like the V2X features.
I have one and it is an amazing vehicle. However, what they are planning with their new EREV system coming out in 2027 seems pretty interesting too. You get your usual battery only mileage and then a generator kicks in to recharge the battery for longer trips. I would imagine it wouldn’t be required in 95% of most people’s trips but it gives folks the option n long road trips or heavy tows.
I like it because it skips the usual hybrid approach of switching over to an ICE engine that drives your wheels in a different way and simplifies things immensely.
I remember when Elon promised that they would have an extended range battery option for the Cybertruck, but then realized the logistics of such a thing are extremely challenging and quietly dropped it.
What's there to brag to be a fanboy of a company?
F-150 Lightning is better vehicle than Cybertruck - however Ford is a political company (not like Musk) as in the fortunes of Ford lie to an extent with politicians, unions etc
so hopefully ford can turn the F-150 into an Extended Range Electrical Vehicle
The Musk suite of companies all exist at least partly to promote Musk's politics and policies.
Range extended EVs make far more sense. Smaller cheaper batteries but range benefit of a gas tank. 90% of trips are less than 30 miles.
They are the worst of both worlds: not enough battery range to satisfy on long trips plus the weight and maintenance headaches of a gas tank and engine, especially silly to lug that around if 90% of your trips are in battery range.
As a 2012 Volt owner I think EREV was a great idea in the 2010s given battery tech and networks at the time. In the 2020s, they seem a weak compromise that I wouldn't recommend to people.
The Cybertruck was always the Homer car.
No shit. The CT is ugly to most consumers' sensibilities, and not a "real" truck to most consumers in the truck segment. It only survives as long as it serves Musk's ego. But that's ok -- Tesla is Musk's company and shareholders are happy with that status quo. Who else cares?
The Cybertruck isn't a "real" truck, but the vast majority of trucks never do real truck stuff anyway so that's not as big of a gotcha as people think. Hell, even F-150s and Dodge Rams and GMCs have stunted vestigial cargo beds now, they're more like minivan utes. How many trucks can you buy today that can fit a standard everyday 4x8 sheet and a load of 8' studs in the back and close the tailgate?
> but the vast majority of trucks never do real truck stuff anyway so that's not as big of a gotcha as people think.
The whole point for those non-utilty buyers is the badass, tough-guy branding. Would a whiskey-drinking, steer-wranglin', meat-smokin', spur-boot-wearin', woodshop-havin', permanent-5-oclock-shadow BAMF drive a electric CT? No. Therefore the CT fails at the one thing they expect of trucks due to its lack truck aura.
Oh no. What if Elon's highly visible foray into right wing politics is an attempt to market his truck to people who would not normally give it time of day? Basically turn it into a rolling red baseball cap.
Another truck thread on HN, another 150 bad comments about how trucks are pointless.
I'm sure the usual detractors will be here to whine "Electrek is biased against Tesla!"
To which I would ask: Is it "bias" because they simply report on Tesla frequently? Would it be "less biased" if they ignored Tesla? Obviously Electrek can't simply invent positive press for Tesla to report on.
Putting that aside though. The Cybertruck by all measures has been an abject failure. Its production run was so limited that insurance companies refused to cover it [1] and the NHTSA took something like two years just to crash test the thing due to how few of them there were on the road.
Combine that with 10 fucking recalls for absolutely horrific safety issues [2] and the company making the batteries taking a 99% slash in its $2.8 billion dollar contract [3] the thing is a complete travesty
[1] https://www.cybertruckownersclub.com/forum/threads/insurance...
[2] https://www.cnet.com/home/electric-vehicles/every-tesla-cybe...
[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-29/tesla-cyb...
Fred Lambert (Electrek founder) was pro-tesla and was using his site to get a huge number of referral credits. Then Tesla changed the rules on that referral program.
That's what triggered the beef. Fred sold all shares, took down all the pro-tesla articles, and posts nearly exclusively only negative tesla articles since.
Seems both parties were/are within legal rights, but it is clearly bias.
Literally the only people who can think that this dude is anywhere remotely objective is if you are already a Tesla hater; he posts qualifications in every title and always adjusts the wording and tone to be negative. Every Electrek's take on an article is him describing how he warned everyone about the Elon/Tesla heel turn as you laid it out. It screams confirmation bias but since he isn't a journalist there's no code of ethics he's bound to follow.
I'm bullish on EV's at large. They're far nicer to ride in. So I find his coverage informative. I've never owned a Tesla but I've ridden in hundreds and must admit (other than the original Roadster) I've been thoroughly "whelmed" by their mediocrity.
However, short of going to places like Reddit's "Tesla Lounge" or "Cyber Truck Owners Forum" I have yet to see many (any?) places that cover Tesla/Elon positively. Not because "every website is biased against him" but simply because they're reporting on events that've happened
Elecdrek's bias against Tesla is only surpassed by its gushing over any/everything China.
Unless they come right back with a comparable implementation with a maverick/ranger type form factor, Ford is absolutely shot itself in the foot canceling the lightning. I’ve been Evie only for five years and have driven both the electric Silverado and the lightning. I bought the lightning. It’s fantastic. They are absolute idiots for discontinuing it.
Cybertruck is a gimmick. And the fad has passed. No wonder they're not selling well.
And they don't age well. Most of the ones around here are starting to look... grimy. Or dingy. After just a couple of years. It's a poor advertisement for itself.
And, yeah, then there's cultural eye-rolling. It's really the only vehicle I hear people openly mock when they see one... And that's not a Tesla/Elon thing entirely, since people don't have the same reaction to other Tesla vehicles.
Ford doesn't have a benefactor worth close to 1T usd...
Nether does Tesla
Right. Musk extracts value from Tesla shareholders, rather than the other way around.
Are you suggesting that markets are rational?
Have you met truck guys? Truck guys call you gay for driving an EV. Yes yes, not all truck guys.