Elon Musk's goofy Cybertruck exists somewhere between Total Recall and a PS1 game
Aux Features Elon Musk
Last night, the world ooh’d, ah’d, and lol’d when Elon Musk debuted the Cybertruck, his PS1-looking-ass Tesla pickup. There’s plenty to be impressed by; Musk says the truck can go from 0 to 60 mph in 2.9 seconds, and that it boasts a payload capacity of 3,500 pounds. How is one supposed to process that, though, when all we can think about is Total Recall?
“You want a truck that’s really tough. Not fake tough,” Musk says, finally cutting through the “Howdy, Quaid” echoing throughout our brains.
But then the “bulletproof” glass caves in after some hunk chucks a metal ball at it, and, well, we’ll see you at the party, Richter.
“Oh my fucking god,” Musk declares, crestfallen, and the quarterback is toast. The subsequent awkwardness has some real “science fair project didn’t work in front of the judges” vibes. “It didn’t go through. That’s a plus side,” Musk says of the hand-thrown metal ball that was not a bullet fired from a gun.
It’s all made funnier by the Silicon slickness of the L.A. event: the dramatic lighting, tight black tees, and tattoo sleeves. There’s also the truck’s $39,900 price tag, which has scored more than a few online snickers.
But there’s almost a level of awe to just how much the Cybertruck’s hard geometric curves evoke the soulless polygonal graphics of fifth-generation gaming. One worries it’ll start glitching the moment you drive next to a wall.
Is the future we envisioned decades ago finally coming to pass? Are memory implants and colonies on Mars next? Watch the below supercut and decide for yourself.
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73 Comments
I feel like a narrator’s going to tell me about the far-flung future of 199X when I look at that thing.
That truck looks like Musk gave total creative control to his long lost brother…
The original name, the Persephone, was struck down early in the creative process.
Damn, I was just coming here to post this…
You can NEVER find a horn when you’re mad!
It looks like a delorean. That does not bode well for anyone involved.
I just hope they put as much cocaine into the design of this monstrosity.
But maybe it’ll be featured in some future classic about time travel?
The inspiration for the look was the Lotus Esprit (specifically, the white amphibious one James Bond drove), but.. maybe they should’ve just hired the guy who designed that to do his take. He’s still working, and the end result wouldn’t have ended up like .. that.
You’re laughing now but you won’t when it transforms into a series 1 Autobot. I hear if you pay extra someone will get the hands out of the trunk and attach them for you.
I’m weirdly intrigued by some of the weird-ass “security” features Tesla’s working in. Like, there’s the ol’ “Bioweapon Defense Mode” that got some good press as people were evacuating from wildfires. This “armored glass” thing that got worked in (which I assume someone’s been fed to the cyber-bears over as of 10 AM EDT). I’m waiting on that thing from the Robocop movies that incinerates car thieves and maybe a bunch of the stuff Nick Fury uses to fight Hydra in The Winter Soldier. I weirdly think all those weird sci-fi things are coming, and here’s why:All put together, as silly as it is, I think Elon’s afraid he’s gonna be attacked by peasants/normies/whatever, and he’s floating/prototyping features that’ll grab the attention of people who also fear being attacked by plebes. He wants them himself, and he wants to sell them. Just a theory, but I think the evidence might be there for it.
Not buying one until CostCo starts carrying Energon cubes.
You kidding me? This thing would be lucky to be able to transform into a GoBot.
I can’t get over how bad this thing looks from the front door back. Just like 7 year old drawing the back of a delorean ass thing
The geometry of the front window is just fucking painful
I swear the car in that photo hasn’t finished rendering.
That’s sort of what I’m hoping for too. Maybe when the render’s complete it will be less shit.
A special thank you to the Christo-fascist President Jeanine Anez of Bolivia for this ugly abomination.
I don’t know about you, but if my automobile doesn’t require a coup or two to be manufactured I have to question whether it’s really the vehicle for me, yaknow?
I like a vehicle body design I can easily replicate with plywood. It looks like a piece of A/C duct work.
Just gonna say that $40,000 isn’t that incredibly high for a truck these days. The base price on the F-150 is $28,000. Pickup trucks are a luxury-heavy market these days. None of that suggests that this car isn’t ridiculous, but it’s not THAT expensive for a truck.
I’ll eat my shoe if it actually ends up being $40k
Tesla will come back a year after you buy it and ask for an extra $18K, Michael Scott style
Based on Tesla’s history, they’ll only build like 5 at $40k, and ordering will only take place for 15 minutes at like 3am on a Sunday, but it will exist.
If you give me your address, I’ll send you one of mine so that you don’t go hungry when it turns out you’re right.
For a luxury truck, yes.For my Nissan Frontier, I paid 21k for an almost new 2016 and haven’t found a thing in the last ~2 years I can’t fit in it or haul.The problem, as usual, is the American consumer.Wuldnt drive an American truck for a50% off…
Assuming that’s the baseline price, and that you actually plan on using this for ‘work’ (hauling, loading, etc.), it’s probably looking more like $60k once all the extras are added up.Which honestly isn’t that far off from some of the nicer F-series trucks, though I’d assume those will perform much better in the long run.
You are completely correct. That being said, it’s an indictment of our society and culture that there’s such a thing as a “luxury truck”.
I love it.
This car looks like it belongs in an 1985 arcade game called “Pinewood Derby” or maybe created in Minecraft by your dumber nephew.This whole article had me laughing uncomfortably loud at work
But he’s “real life Tony Stark” though.EDIT: Looks like a early/mid 90s 3D game like Starfox or Virtua Racing.
and look at how his hair implants don’t fall out like LeBron’s
Nice
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This looks like a car that went head to head with K.I.T.T in Knight Rider.
[pushes glasses up on nose]That would be K.A.R.R. Not to be confused with Goliath.
I loved Knight Rider because of K.I.T.T, I watch the reruns on Starz because I still love K.I.T.T. I am upset every year when the Car Show makes it’s way to Jacob Javitz K.I.T.T is not there somebody needs to get that car there for me to fangirl all over.
It really looks like a slapped together out of fiberboard and painted silver (to represent “the future”) vehicle put together for a low-budget, direct to video sci-fi movie.
Its a truck supposedly for hauling goods. So why haven’t they shown the truck bed?
4 minutes into the video at the bottom of the article
Because its shit
There’s a regular type truck bed in the back and another, smaller one in the front that Tesla has nicknamed the Fred.
Cars are made to crumple to absorb impact and ideally not annihilate anyone inside in a crash. So how’s this bulletproof monstrosity going to pass any sort of safety tests?
It isn’t.
Stop being a hater!Elon is a visionary! You wouldn’t understand, with your “crash test ratings
We don’t generally smack a new car with a hammer, and then throw a steel ball through the window, and then start making safety determinations… lol.Short answer is we won’t know until we know. My guess is they’ll have few issues getting it past safety, and a whole lot of problems finding enough low-poly people to buy them.
And I suppose the front and rear could crumple still
Everyone keeps ripping on this car design but I don’t think it’s that ugly. I think it’s nice that he let Grimes design a car for once.
Truck, truck, truck…
Cybertruck?? Did they go back in time to 1996 to get a focus group for that name?
The 90s urban edgy spraypaint font is pretty tough, too.
I think they actually went back to a time when 1996 was the distant future to get a focus group for that name.
Hey, maaaaaaaaan . . . Musk has got five kids to feed!
Can’t wait to get hit by one of these
When the inevitable Back to the Future remake/reboot happens, this will be the time machine.
Saw this earlier today, sums it up perfectly:I’m also thinking Elon’s daddy never got him that Big Trak he always wanted.Either way: the design is ugly, the overall angle is “on a scale of one to this truck, how high are you” dumb, and I suspect this is the kind of thing that happens when an idiot with way too much money and time on their hands is convinced they’re clever.
Does the cab fill up with foam instead of using airbags like in Demolition Man? Are there sea shells in the glove compartment? Is this a poorly thought out stealth CyberPunk 2077 promotion?
It’s a truck designed by people who have never had to use a truck.
It looks like you’re going to cut yourself just getting into it.
This may be what finishes Tesla off. Does it come in green?
Or shitty, emasculated beige?
That reminds me, gonnna stop and grab a lottery ticket on my way home from work.That thing looks apocalycious!
Sorry, but this looks dope.
Looks like you’re -on- dope.
Bah, Simone Giertz did a better job and she did it first, alone, in a cave with a box of scrap metal!(True story.)
As usual, I can’t tell if Elon Musk entire career is a practical joke.As usual, I predict vaporware.
“If this were a beauty pageant, we just lost.”
This is not a truck for people who need trucks.There aren’t enough anchors in the bed – four corners are nice, but there should be a mid-bed set for smaller loads, increased security etc.The acceleration is stupid. Trucks haul things – if you’re a legit pickup truck owner you’re going to be hauling haybales, furniture, all variety of things that are going to have a wide range of weights, mass, drag profiles etc., things that will not benefit at all from “0 to 60 mph in 2.9 seconds”. If that’s your concern for a *pickup truck*, the only thing you’re likely hauling is a fragile, stunted male ego. Working trucks take major abuse. How long can this survive off freshly paved roads? How much dust and gravel until the tracks on that fancy bed cover get clogged and it never works again?Let’s not even get started on how hard it would be to write a country song about this thing. Can you even imagine yer ol’ coonhound doing anything other than pissing on the tires?
Remember the “That thing got a Hemi?” ads for the Dodge Ram like 15 years ago? Appealing to stunted male egos is a massive driver in the modern pickup market (see also coal rolling, which this thing would admittedly suck at).
It’d suck at most of what a pickup is required for.Watch the video. See how poorly balanced the load is when they drive the ATV up into it – those front wheels are *barely* in contact with the stage. You could probably tip it on to the gate with one hand. Gods help you if you actually took Musk up on the 3500 pound “capacity”.If Ford, GM or any of the other major labels had come out with it, there might have been a chance that they could have coasted on the “you got balls, not brains – buy this” marketing. Musk and Tesla though? That’s Blue State corporation and Liberal thinking – you take this around the average ‘I drive this to hide my penis size” truck owner, you are going to at the very least get laughed at.
You mean like here where the rear was already squat before the ATV was in the thing? Pretty sure that’s the air suspension deliberately lowered for loading. If a Model X can already handle 5 people in the back (figure up to 1000lbs there), an ATV shouldn’t be an absurd ask. No, I don’t expect the typical promo shot where a loader dumps a ton of rocks in the bed from 15 feet up, but the suburban commandos they’re targeting this at (and who are a major buying force in the 1500 market) don’t need much more than the ability to tow a boat a couple times a year or to handle the occasional Home Depot run.
I’ve seen a hell of a lot of $35k-$40k F-150s with low profile “performance” tires, modified suspensions (either lowered to within an inch of their lives or raised into skyscraper territory), $5k+ worth of after market tinting/paint jobs/spoilers. The damn things are never going to go with 5 miles of real work. The only thing they’re ever going to haul is an ice chest to some party. I don’t see this truck as any different from those.
I’m getting serious Subaru Baja vibes
Lumber Rack or GTFO.
I think I saw ‘Cybertruck’ on TV once. Gary Busey played the villain, Dolph Lundgren was the hero, and Kelly LeBrock has a nude scene fifteen minutes in for no discernible reason.