Elon Musk’s Cybertruck is nothing if not divisive. But nobody should feign surprise: the warning signs were there.
His Tesla passion project is every bit “the futuristic-like cyberpunk, Blade Runner pickup truck” Musk said it would be. He even telegraphed its alienating aesthetic when interviewed by Recode’s Kara Swisher last year, conceding that he might have to build a more conventional truck in the future if nobody likes it:
”I’m personally super-excited by this pickup truck. It’s something I’ve been wanting to make for a long time. And I’ve been iterating sort of designs with Franz … It’s like I really wanted something that’s like super-futuristic cyberpunk. Which, if it doesn’t … if I’m weirdly like … if there’s only a small number of people that like that truck, I guess we’ll make a more conventional truck in the future. But it’s the thing that I am personally most fired up about. It’s gonna have a lot of titanium.”
Well, Elon, the early results are in…
In all fairness, it does have its defenders… kind of.
The thing that I’ll say in defense of the bad Elon Musk cybertruck is that it absolutely looks like it belongs in a 1989 movie called CYBERTRUCK. Like it should be seen driving down a dusty road and a suicide door should open and Jeff Fahey should lean out and say “get in.”
— David Roth (@david_j_roth) November 22, 2019
Sorry but the cybertruck design is actually genius level brutalism. It’s demolition man IRL. It’s a Hummer in low poly mode with none of the carbon footprint. It will sell poorly and be discontinued in two years.
— Joshua Topolsky (@joshuatopolsky) November 22, 2019
https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/22/20975725/love-hate-telsa-cybertruck-design