Elon Musk’s Cybertruck is a weird FU to Tesla haters
Los Angeles, November 2019.
That's the time and location of the 1980s movie Blade Runner. It also marks when and where Tesla CEO Elon Musk made clear he DGAF to automakers the world over.
On Thursday night, Musk revealed the first electric pickup from Tesla. Officially named the Cybertruck, the vehicle looks like an angular hunk of metal that would fit right in with Rick Deckard and Roy Batty. In short, it's a doozy.
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Starting at $39,900 with 250 miles of range (and going up to 500 miles), the truck is supposed to be a beast with 7,500 pounds of towing capacity and still able to pull off 0 to 60 mph in under 6.5 seconds. And it has Autopilot, Tesla's signature semi-autonomous driver assistance system.
Musk first teased the truck in 2013 and early this year promised it'd be coming soon. Over the years he's hinted at what a Tesla pickup truck would look like. Most hints referenced cyberpunk and the dystopian film Blade Runner with a description like "an armored personnel carrier from the future."
It's certainly something we've never seen in a truck before. With this look, Musk seems to be saying, "I'll do what I want."
"Trucks have been the same for a very long time like 100 years, we wanted to try something different," Musk teased at the start of the event at the Tesla Design Studio on the SpaceX campus in Southern California. That was an understatement. While Tesla fans have made renderings and guesses of what the car would look like, nothing could prepare us for this.
To show its durability during a live demo, Musk directed it be hit with a sledgehammer. It looked like the beating didn't leave a scratch. Musk boasted that the truck's exterior is made out of "ultra-hard, cold-rolled stainless steel alloy," the same stuff used on SpaceX rockets.
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After touting the strength of the glass, he commanded that the windows be hit, too. They didn't survive.
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"We'll fix it in post," Musk quipped.
One of the top-selling pickup trucks in the U.S. is a Ford F-150, which looks nothing like Musk's pickup. As Jessica Caldwell, executive director of insights at auto research firm Edmunds, said in an email, "If the Tesla truck wasn’t somewhat polarizing, it wouldn’t be a Tesla. Tesla’s built its brand around striking design and doing things differently." Yes, very differently. Here's the inside seating with room for six, including the driver. Note the touchscreen on the dash is 17 inches.
Throughout the event, Tesla fanatics in the crowd could be heard saying, "We’re living in the matrix" and "Take my money." After Musk closed the unveiling, a crowd eagerly lined up for test rides and to snap photos with a prototype version that was brought on stage while the Cybertruck was dragged off for a quick window repair.
Musk also announced a Tesla-made ATV that pairs with the truck, showing off how it could be driven onto the 6-and-a-half-foot bed, which Musk has nicknamed "the vault."
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Hours before the unveiling, Musk tantalized anxious Tesla fans with tweets about the truck, noting that it was also inspired by the 1977 film The Spy Who Loved Me.
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Pre-orders for a refundable $100 are now open on the Tesla website, but the truck won't start production until late 2021. The tri-motor all-wheel drive version with 500-mile range isn't expected to start production until late 2022.
Topics Electric Vehicles Tesla Elon Musk
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
