Tesla Cybertruck was announced as vapourware in 2019 and got limited production only in 2023. It was also delayed. Wonder whether it would have been also considered "bait and switch setup" according to your stance.
In the case of the Cybertruck, it was never a question whether it is even possible to do such a thing, because they had all the technology, the only question was if they were stupid enough to build it.
Just as in the case of the "Hyperloop": in theory, it is perfectly possible, but anyone who got as far to build a few meters of it (or something resembling it) quickly realized the practicality problems, and what would happen if you scaled those problems to a few hundred kilometers...
On the other hand, autonomous driving is not a solved problem, not even in theory. One could argue that it would require some sort of a generic AI, which we don't have, and nobody knows if we will in the future. So selling anything based on that is simply fraud, in my opinion.
What do you mean by "stupid enough to build it?" It's the best-selling electric truck in terms of shipped units, by a large margin (approximately equal to every other EV truck manufacturer combined, including Ford's electric F-150).
Could you please cite sources on this? Just looking at Rivian [1] they delivered 37,396 units this year alone. Tesla doesn't officially publish numbers, but the Cybertruck recall from few weeks ago tells us around 27,185 total [2]. I know that the July sales were high, over 5172 units [3], but that's a single month. And just to put everything in perspective here: over 13 million trucks were sold in the States in July alone [4].
Rivian's delivery numbers include the R1T pickup, the R1S SUV, and their EDV delivery van for Amazon and other fleet customers. The R1T pickup is likely half or less of their total production number.
We don't know how profitable it is. They're already running out of folks willing to pay $100k and have begun offering the $80k version. Will that version be profitable to build? It takes more than unit sales to make a good business decision.
Even if it is profitable, it still needs to be weighed against the opportunity costs of using those resources to pursue a different strategy. Would the same resources in terms of designer, engineers, hours, and capital outlay on factory production lines have been more profitable if they were applied to a different vehicle?
It's very possible. The Cybertruck is always going to be a limited demand vehicle. It may do well versus other EV pickups in the US market, but Tesla is a global company and the Cybertruck is not a global vehicle.
Look at the announced price and all the claimed features then. We were promised a bulletproof amphibious truck for (IIRC) $40k, and we got a truck whose warranty is void if you drive in the rain, costing $80k for the base model. Also it won't even stop .22LR bullets.
We were also promised micron panel gaps. the panel gaps on the cybertruck are both visible and visibly uneven.
It's really weird to see anyone even imply that the Cybertruck has vindicated Tesla.
The body panels are pretty thick, and they're made of an austenitic nitrogen steel -- a modified form of 316LN -- which should perform nearly as well as any "armor grade" steel alloy. (Against steel fragments, it likely performs poorly, but against lead handgun rounds it is likely even superior to the average high-hardness armor steel.) Just on the face of it, I'd expect the Cybertruck's body to stop any threat up to .44 Magnum.
Besides, 9mm and .22lr are very different things. .22lr is one of the very weakest ballistic threats. 9mm has much more mass, usually more velocity, and a much higher (~3x higher) average KE load.
Yeah of course I can't find it now, there was some lame Youtuber memelord that let his buddy shoot at it with a handgun and at least one bullet went through. But I also see that it can resist it, so IDK and retract my statement.
I do know the difference between the calibers though, having shot a few different weapons in different calibers (as a hobby & in the military)
Wasn't it also released at a significantly higher price than announced?
"""In 2019, Musk claimed that the Cybertruck would be available in late 2021, starting at $39,900. The date was later pushed to 2022, and eventually it was pushed to late 2023, with a starting price of $60,990.""" - according to the Wikipedia page.
I'd definitely count that as bait and switch from the price change alone.
Thats a 19.32% price increase in one of Tesla's other cars over 15 years, compared to a 52.857% price increase of the Cybetruck in the 5 years between it being announced and today.
The cheapest Model Y right now is $44,990. You have to remove the "gas savings" and other subsidies that individuals may or may not qualify for to see this cash price.
So the announced price for the ~300mi, dual-motor version in 2019 was $49k.
Today that price is $79k. ($99k if you want the first-edition Foundation series which has been the only one delivered to customers so far).
CPI inflation calculation puts $49k in 2019 as $60k today. So inflation means the price should have gone up ~$10k, but it has actually gone up ~$30k.
Also in 2019, $69k was supposed to get you 500 miles of range. The highest range configuration of the truck they shipped is 340 miles, with potentially up to 470 miles if you fill half the bed with an additional $16k battery pack that is only installable/removable by a Tesla Service Center. Nobody has seen this pack demonstrated yet or how it will handle things like Supercharging. Having half the bed taken up to achieve the max range was definitely not part of the 2019 sales pitch.
50% increase in price point, 3 years delay. Inflation is only a small part of this. The delay is more telling than the price increase.
The cybertruck was promissed as a cheaper way to make cars, its more expensive tha n the others that suffered the same inflationary forces. Save that its a new product, if they trusted that scale was going to cheap it down more than they current methods they would take a loss at the start to make a larger profit later.
Could you give some numbers to back it up? Considering the loss due to inflation from 2019 [1] I would have expected the truck to get to around $49,200.
Whats your point here? We said they broke their promise (bait and switch, because they knew it was not assured expectation for price and delivery).
You say they have the right to brake promises, which is true.
So we agree they made a promise, broke it and raised the price beyond inflation, likely due to screwing up the production cost targets. All of that after they took reservations.
So we agree but you don't like that we're judging them badly for it?
Tesla previously announced that all of their cars had the hardware for Level 5 Self-Driving in 2016 and would be capable of driving fully autonomously within 2-3 years.
This isn't just a bait and switch, it's a new bait and switch to redirect from the existing one.
If Tesla wants to make a new announcement about autonomous vehicles now, 8 years after originally announcing that they were already shipping them, it should be that they are actually operating autonomous vehicles in the wild somewhere.
Not showing off a new car design that isn't needed for such a demonstration and that is coming 2-3 years from now.
