you either go practical or go special purpose. CT doesn't do either.
Third option: just use it as a car!
This is where outcome-driven preference comes into play & where people get tunnel-vision about the usage & desires for a particular vehicle because they refuse to see beyond what their emotions dictate (which makes for great advertising the Cybertruck because of all the free publicity, haha!). For my purposes:
1. I was SHOCKED at how ugly it was upon the initial reveal, right back in the very first page of this thread lol. But, it grew on me haha. I wish it still had the same aesthetic as the pre-production model, however.
2. I like weird cars. Had a Beetle, a green first-gen Kia Soul, 4-cylinder Mustang, etc. The Cybertruck is about as strange as they come! Then again, there's a dude in my town who drives around a Unimog (and it's awesome, lol).
3. I appreciate the fact that the Cybertruck is weird & different. I like stand-out designs. I do not, however, like public attention (yay anxiety!). I don't know if I could handle the attention tbh.
4. For me, it would be my commuter car. I work in freelance IT & on-call, so I drive all over the state & can charge for free at several customer locations, so that would reduce or remove my fuel costs. Coupled with the battery, stainless body, etc., I also like the long-term story of the vehicle over time, especially cost-wise. However, the pricing economics don't work out at $100k minimum right now. I liked the appeal of both the mythical $39k model (hah) & the larger 500-mile battery (which would eliminate ALL of my range anxiety!). Neither exist, however.
5. Personally, I really like the bed design, as it's bigger than my Ford has currently, so I could fit more tools & supplies in the back. I don't work in construction anymore & don't need an 8-foot bed, which is a common argument on the Internet (FWIW, I don't know anyone personally who owns an 8-foot-bed truck for home use). With the type of work I do (computers, servers, etc.), I don't even need a standard-size truck bed like the F-150 has, so that's a non-issue for my purposes. Plus turnkey storage slider systems are in the works already:
The $100.00 is the reservation price for the Tesla Cybertruck INVINCIBLE® Bed Storage Slider System. Full pricing to be revealed later in 2024. The balance is due before delivery. Our sales team will contact you with the further details after the reservation is made. The UP INVINCIBLE® Bed...
unpluggedperformance.com
People tend to to act:
1. As if giant, flashy cars don't already exist. Remember how much flack the "gas-guzzling" consumer version of the Hummer got?
Or the giant-at-the-time Ford Excursion?
2. As if big trucks don't already exist. Ford, GM, etc. ship over a MILLION trucks per year that weigh more & are physically larger than the Cybertruck. Ford sold 700,000 pickups last year, whereas the Cybertruck has shipped around 4,000.
3. As if large vehicles don't already exist on the road. Current data shows that we have nearly 2 million semi-trucks on the road today & more than 8 million trucks on the road every day between trailers, box trucks, dump trucks, fuel & oil trucks, etc.
Yet people online get so wound up & offended over a different design. Nobody is all up in arms about the F-150 Lightning, Silverado EV, Rivian truck, Hummer EV, etc. Elon Musk is a divisive public figure who released a controversial vehicle design. So it's a metal triangle with a battery in it....and yet people get personally offended by it to the point where they feel the need to tell other people how to spend their money lol.
It's just a car. I think it's pretty neat! I love the marketing aspect of it too...they made it so non-standard that people can't HELP but talk about it. It's the most-talked-about vehicle I've seen probably
ever. I just wish they had hit their aesthetic design, cost, and battery targets better. I will be sticking with gas for the foreseeable future LOL.