Australia is a long way from the world. Fourteen hours from Melbourne to LA. Five hours to New York City. I was in town for a conference, and some other business, but had to see the steel triangle on wheels.
Firstly, props to the Tesla sales staff. They were patient with some unexpected members of the public who became flustered when the reps shared the blunt news that;
You cannot approach, or touch the Cybertruck (emphasized by the steel wire that surrounded the vehicle
Dependent on 1, you cannot sit in the Cybertruck, which is what the half-dozen or so people who had turned up around the time I was there were expecting to do
The sales staff knew nothing about the product. What model was on display, the range dimensions of each type. Pricing. When. How. What if. I was a patient and practised observer. I just watched, nodded, smiled and listened. There was nothing that could be done for us mortals who had ascended, seeking explanation. Seeking solitude in the idea this was Tesla’s long awaited urban truck.
The Cybertruck is unexpected, but conventional. Yes, it’s obvious. Abrupt angular shapes punched from steel. Floating comfortably on four earth-moving custom tyres that hug the floor to carry the three ton weight. It’s flat panels frame a large glass windscreen that hints at a clean, sustainable future inside.
Cybertruck is urban myth meets some type of fast approaching dystopia, where personal protection extends to how you move around in the early twenty-first century. An exterior designed for deflection, including bullets. Not forgetting the unbreakable glass, which didn’t break this time. Comfortably attend any civil unrest event in style, or intimidate the other parents at school. Is this a vehicle for everyone? Of course not. But it doesn’t have to be. Could it become the choice for trades people? I don’t think so. People who buy Range Rovers? I can’t see them adjusting from the wood grain to the plastic, and from the smell of diesel to the EV silence. I can’t see it for many.
Cybertruck has had the best product onramp. Pre-orders started 4 years ago. A few hundred dollars to reserve one. Fully refundable. Ahead of the Cybertruck launch event on 30th November, Tesla dropped the news they had 2 million pre-orders. The sales rep at the Tesla store (I visited on 5th December) said it was closing in on 3 million. Elon said they hoped to make two hundred thousand in the first year (2024). Assuming fifty percent of the Cybertruck orders are from China (52.1% of all Tesla sales in 2022 came from China), it’ll take years before you can get one. Years.
That angular verbose design is reaching for that iconoclastic stature, like Herman Miller chairs or the iPhone. Considering most people are not technophiles or pay attention to business news, it’s likely (as of December 2023) perhaps 99% of all people don’t know the Cybertruck even exists. And why should they care? Their first introduction will be when they see it, out on the road, for the first time. What will they be asking themselves? Is that some type of new government issued police vehicle? I wonder what the army are doing in my neighborhood? Unconventional urban design crawling your street. They will be Cybertrucked.
I won’t buy one. Well, I can’t. Not ever, maybe. I live in a tertiary market for Tesla; Australia. A rollout of Cybertruck will be something like North America, China and then Europe. So I’m guessing five to six years - if Tesla decide to ship Cybertruck here at all. They stopped shipping the Model X here years ago. I doubt we’ll see them on the freeways and local streets of Melbourne, Sydney and other places this decade. It would have lasting historical appeal, rolling the same outback roads used to film The Road Warrior. A fitting environment if there was ever one.