It was with no small amount of excitement (and maybe a bit of jealousy, since I work for a car website that would have love access) that I saw Hagerty’s Jason Cammisa-helmed exclusive review of the Tesla Cybertruck posted to YouTube. Even before watching it, I knew it would be chock full of insight and humor, and that it’d be produced to a level that would shame many television productions. Even more importantly, I knew it would do deservedly huge numbers. So why are some people online so upset about this review?
I’ve directed, produced, written and even poorly attempted to host more than a hundred car films and TV episodes over the years. Doing so has given me the opportunity to work alongside the most talented people in the industry and, in my mind, the best to ever do it is/was Chris Harris. No one balances insight, the ability to communicate, and the ability to drive for camera like Chris does. He picked up the mantle from Jeremy Clarkson, who added a dose of entertainment and theater that many earlier reviews lacked.
But right now there is no one better than Jason Cammisa, and there are no shows better produced and more entertaining than the ones he does for Hagerty. It doesn’t even really matter what the car is. Cammisa will make you care about the Subaru XT. You may prefer Throttle House or SavageGeese or whatever, but the production quality is unique.
I produced videos for Hagerty as well, for about a year (some occasionally fun stuff produced at a fractional budget and none remotely as good as what Cammisa was making), and got a little insight into the level of care he and producer/director Anthony Esposito put into everything. It was as impressive as it was enviable. Cammisa once told me and another host, as we were prepping for a show, that he read three books before each episode he shot. The results should surprise no one.
Is this Cybertruck review the biggest, best, most dynamic thing Cammisa has ever done? Maybe not, but compare it to the one from the only other outlet that got it, and I think it’s better:
So what’s with all the hate online?
People On Reddit, Forums And Twitter Think Something Was Missing
Here’s just a sampling of what you’ll find on the r/cars Subreddit this morning:
And here’s some from Bob Is The Oil Guy:
You’re probably noticing a trend here. This is an “ad” and there’s very little substance to it, people allege. And to be sure, you’re going to get this kind of response from folks when you produce effusive content, even if the vehicle is great. But nonetheless, the criticism isn’t just coming from Jim-Bob the EV-hater down the street. The advertising-ish nature part I’ve heard privately from other journalists (who, it’s worth noting, did not get access) as well, but I think that’s extremely wrongheaded as a criticism. I can’t imagine Hagerty and Jason have anything financially to gain from Tesla, which is a company that barely advertises and doesn’t need to pay anyone for good coverage. Also, for all the glowing references to the truck, Cammisa rightly refers to Musk as a man-child and includes critiques no ad would dare. It’s only advertising-ish in the sense that it’s positive and, sure, Hagerty will make a large amount of money from YouTube advertising (though possibly not enough to cover the cost of doing it).
LO, and I cannot stress this enough, L. https://t.co/HDAfJAXXqK
— Matt "Stick to Cars" Farah (@TheSmokingTire) December 1, 2023
Also, there is a ton of substance in the piece. As many other positive comments point out, the density of information here is extremely high, and the way that it’s communicated is amusing, straightforward, and easy to understand. By the nature of the fast-moving, tightly scripted show Cammisa doesn’t always take time to put an asterisk on everything (though he often does in the subtitles, as he does when referencing steer-by-wire) and it’s unreasonable to expect him to, frankly.
The more accurate critique is that this isn’t particularly “exclusive” (two other people had the vehicle) and it isn’t really a “review.”
no one has actually reviewed the Cybertruck yet. several have driven it, none have *reviewed* it https://t.co/HlI9Qdsq6X
— Kyle Cheromcha (@cheromcha) December 1, 2023
Kyle, who is the EIC of The /DRIVE, isn’t wrong, depending upon how you look at it, though I don’t know any EIC with any modicum of sense who would turn down this opportunity, even with whatever conditions were attached. We drove out to do a story on just looking at the thing. I don’t know what the conditions were, if there were any, but we’d have been happy to have the early drive of the vehicle under most circumstances. So far, the crew has admitted to being time-restricted.
Sure, you have to get a full 21 minutes into the video before there’s actually a section literally called “dynamic review” and that is a fractionally small part of the whole video. In that “review” section he mentions that the drive-by-wire steering is “pretty disorienting at first in parking lots” and he points out that you don’t have a rear-view mirror because of the Tonneau cover, though I’m not sure I heard a real judgment on that other than pointing out it’s a disadvantage relative to a regular truck. Honestly, maybe the karting section is where you get the best of a traditional “review.”
A big reason for this, I suspect, is something not dropped into the video until about 21 minutes in. This is a “prototype” Cybertruck and, for various good reasons, there’s a danger in giving too much of an impression to a prototype from any manufacturer (the degree to which this is a pure prototype and a pre-production car like the ones normally reviewed on launches, isn’t clear), let alone one owned by Elon Musk. Plus, Cammisa seems to genuinely be impressed by the truck.
This is also the trap of online media and, especially, a world in which YouTube is the dominant and most ingested form of car reviewership. As an online creator, there’s a great pressure to call things “exclusive” and you have to call them a “review” every chance you get. Is anyone going to Google “Tesla Cybertruck Amusing And Highly Educational Video That Contains Partial Impressions But Mostly Does An Extremely Good Job Of Placing The Vehicle In Historical Context”?
Nah. We all know that Cammisa can do a real review as good as anyone else and this, definitely, is not a full review. There’s a reason why some folks aren’t entirey satisfied with the piece, and that’s because of Cammisa’s well respected car-critiquing skill. If there’s any error here on Cammisa’s part it’s in calling it a review, but the context of this truck is important, and context is what Cammisa is trying to provide.
Also, making videos is hard and it seems like Cammisa and crew had limited time to put this together.
The Challenges Of Making A Car Film
Here’s a little explanation of how hard filming with a vehicle as new as the Tesla Cybertruck is:
JUST SO YOU UNDERSTAND THERE’S NOTHING DEVIOUS GOING ON, YOU NEED TO KNOW HOW THIS FILMING BUSINESS WORKS. WHEN YOU FILM A CAR REVIEW, THE REVIEWER IS ONLY THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG. BEHIND THE LENS IS A FILM CREW, AND ONLY A DAY’S WORTH OF LIGHT TO SHOOT THE EIGHT MINUTE FILM. THIS MEANS WE HAVE TO PREPARE IN ADVANCE A TREATMENT – A ROUGH DRAFT OF A SCRIPT SO THAT THE DIRECTOR AND FILM CREW CAN GET TO WORK RIGHT AWAY, KNOWING WHAT SHOTS THEY WILL NEED TO CAPTURE. IT WILL CONTAIN THE FACTS ABOUT A CAR, AND WHAT WE THINK OF ITS LOOKS AND SO ON, BUT HOW WELL THE CAR ACTUALLY DRIVES IS ADDED ON THE DAY. IF WE’VE DRIVEN IT AHEAD OF FILMING, AS WE DO WITH MOST CARS, WE WILL ALSO HAVE AN IDEA HOW IT FEELS TO DRIVE. BUT, AND THIS IS CRUCIAL, AS WE UNCOVER FRESH INFORMATION ABOUT A CAR WHILST FILMING IT, IT IS ENTIRELY NORMAL FOR THE TREATMENT TO BE MODIFIED AS THE DAY UNFOLDS.
Oh, wait, that isn’t from the review of this Tesla, this is Top Gear super producer Andy Wilman responding to a lawsuit over the infamous Top Gear review of the Tesla Roadster from 2011 that led to an unsuccessful Tesla lawsuit where the carmaker complained the show committed libel and malicious falsehoods. This is a key moment in history and I think, in many ways, it accelerated Elon Musk’s creeping paranoia about the media and desire for control over every aspect of his company and its image.
Musk and Tesla were famously mad that the necessity of film production saw Top Gear, to some degree, cutting corners to tell a story. The whole fiasco was annoying and laid bare the reality that most of these videos are as much entertainment as they are journalism.
If you watch Jason’s podcast he covers a lot of this and talks about the difficulty in getting this episode together so quickly.
His co-host on the podcast, the delightful Derek Tam-Scott, points out that the timeline of this was very compressed compared to what the crew normally does. According to Cammisa, they had days to set it up, a day and 3/4 to film, and it rained, cutting into the shooting time. Also, they were shooting on some of the shortest shooting days of the year. It was tight.
“Typically, and I don’t know if I want to admit this publicly, but typically an “Icons” episode is 4-8 weeks of pre-production planning, and that includes writing scripts and research and whatever blah blah blah… logistics. And you know typically, we have 12, 13, 14 vehicles in the show. Plus support vehicles. And then it’s four days of filming, four and half days of filming, to get the shots exactly the way we want it. And then it’s 4-8 weeks in post.”
I appreciate the clarity here, though, when someone on a podcast with their name on it says “I don’t know if I want to admit this” they aren’t confessing, they’re bragging.
This is the challenge of access. Any time you agree to review a car on someone else’s terms you are, in some small or large way, making a sacrifice. The Autopian regularly reviews cars on press launches. In a past life, I worked with the pre-production crews responsible for route planning and setup for these press launches and these are controlled environments with hand-picked pre-production cars. If there’s a part of a route that’s bad for the specific vehicle you can assume it’s not going to be on the map.
David and I were recently chided by a PR person from an automaker (I’ll let you guess) because that person was mad that we went a little out of the norm of a typical car drive and berated the automaker for a bad technical decision. [Ed Note: I stand by it. If you make a dumb technical decision and I call it out, don’t come complaining to me. Go to your purchasing folks or engineers. -DT]. Implicit in the complaint, I felt, was the idea that it wasn’t worth inviting us on the drives anymore, which is a risk that does exist.
It doesn’t mean anyone is being dishonest. It doesn’t mean you can’t trust these reviews. It just means there are limits to what you can discover in these circumstances and why most car outlets do a second review after a limited first drive. To get the fullest review you need to do like Consumer Reports and buy a car, independently test it, and live with it for a while.
Ultimately, Elon Musk gave the truck to three people: Cammisa, Marques Brownlee, and Top Gear. What’s interesting to me is that Brownlee, who is great but has the least journalistic background of the three, arguably did more of a review than the other two. It’s also amusing that, after all this time, Musk also endowed a car to Top Gear.
Cammisa Vs. DeMuro And The Art Of Entertaining
I remember when Doug DeMuro came to write for Jalopnik. It was one of his first (his first?) media gigs and at one point he asked if he could put his YouTube videos from his channel in the stories. This was a fine arrangement for me as, at the time, Jalopnik barely had a YouTube or video presence. Obviously, Doug was smarter than all of us and managed to grow his channel rapidly and eventually flip that success until multiple other ventures. He’s extremely talented so he’d have been successful regardless, but it surely helped.
It was in this nascent period of online car films that we saw the rise of MotorTrend‘s team (including Cammisa), /Drive with Harris and Farah, and freelancers like Jason Fenske and Doug DeMuro. The former group, influenced by TV, produced something more like TV. The latter produced videos that were more like podcasts.
I think it’s pretty clear with Doug that who you see in his videos who is he is. There’s very little artifice and it’s why, as he told me, adding production value to his personal videos doesn’t seem to result in any more viewership. You aren’t watching a character, you’re watching Doug, and Doug is weird in a way that flashy camera tricks and jokes won’t help. The best way to experience Doug if you like Doug (and many, many people do, including us of course) is simply to watch him as he is.
The Jason Cammisa you see in these “ICONS” videos isn’t even the same Cammisa you see on his podcast and not, necessarily, even the Cammisa you experience in real life (at least in my limited experience). The Jason Cammisa in this context is a character, and it’s the job of this character to be a big, happy, ornery man-child who knows everything about cars and takes glee in surprising the audience and tweaking driver Randy Pobst. It’s a schtick and it’s a very good one.
To varying degrees, all the true professionals I’ve worked with in this business are playing a character, and Cammisa is nothing if not a professional. The reason why we love the Clarkson/Hammond/May Top Gear is not that they were faithfully themselves, but because they were acting, even if only amplifying their true characteristics. Clarkson may be a big buffoon, Hammond may be a rural sweetheart, and May is definitely a nerd, but those traits were heightened as necessary for those specific episodes and conditions. Again, there’s nothing wrong or dishonest about this. It’s entertainment. Why anyone would expect anything less from a film wherein a dude blasts a refrigerator with a sledgehammer and drives an LM002 confounds me.
Additionally, Hagerty itself has a schtick. Its schtick is to be pro-car and pro-driving, much as we are here at The Autopian, and the company has the resources and reach, on YouTube and elsewhere, to get the access it needs to get to do these films. This doesn’t mean that Cammisa is restricted from being critical, it just means that Hagerty has an overall editorial direction and even Cammisa is, so far as I know, influenced by it. Watch his podcast (on the Hagerty podcast network) and you’ll see him saying plenty of critical things about the truck.
The Cybertruck Is Like No Other Vehicle And Tesla Is No Other Car Company
It’s worth watching the whole podcast because Tam-Scott is a useful counterbalance to Cammisa, and he asks some probing questions. Cammisa early on acknowledges that most people have already decided that they love or hate the thing, which is undoubtedly true.
Cammisa’s main point in the podcast undergirds his main point in his review:
“The Cybertruck advances the art of the truck far more than the Model S advanced the art of the automobile,” he says when pressed by Tam-Scott on why this is such a big deal. [Ed Note: This seems like a hell of a take, given that the Rivian R1T exists, and that the Model S was the first high-range mainstream EV in the history of earth. -DT].
In that context, his video serves a real purpose. Cammisa is, as he makes clear in his podcast, trying to cut through all the preconceived notions of the truck that he has and that others have in order to explain why it’s so revolutionary and why it took so long to produce.
Explaining all of this in a way that didn’t feel like advertising for Tesla is a difficult chore, and the irony of all of this is it’s Tesla itself that made it so difficult. Elon Musk has made so many promises about so many things and sewn so much distrust in the world that to like or dislike one of his vehicles sometimes feels like choosing a side instead of buying a product.
It’s because of this, actually, that the media-averse Musk needs the media. He needs Cammisa. He needs Top Gear. Sure, a million people plunked down $100 to reserve a Cybertruck, but for all the wild success of Tesla it still requires new customers and it still needs many of those reservations to eventually be turned into real purchases.
Musk and team are just a little smarter about this now than they were in 2011. They picked their outlets (why the hell didn’t MotorTrend, a publication that fawns over Musk, get a truck) and they clearly inundated those outlets with access to the truck and engineers. I don’t think Tesla picked these three and gave this level of access because they knew they’d get soft-balled.
I suspect the company knew what it had was quite good, at least in prototype form, and understood that it would require someone from the outside to explain that fully. I don’t see Tesla ever doing a traditional press launch because, frankly, the company doesn’t do anything traditional. That’s Tesla’s schtick.
So, instead, we get Cammisa as the messenger. That’s a fundamentally difficult position to be in and, with all the inherent limitations, I think he did an admirable job. The truck is fascinating! You’re all talking about it. Hell, if you’ve gotten this far, you’re reading a review of a review.
Will the Cybertruck replace regular trucks? No idea, and this video isn’t going to answer that question. Nor will it fill in many of the blanks for regular consumers. It’s going to take time to find out how this truck performs in the real world, and it’s really on you for thinking a highly produced car film on an insurance company’s YouTube Channel is the real world.
I watched it. I suppose you could say it’s an ad, but they literally rolled out a DeLorean DMC-12 and compared it directly to the C-Truck. If that wasn’t throwing shade in plain sight, then I don’t know what shade is.
The DMC-12 is only known due to Back to the Future. Had that movie not used it, it’d be a barely-remembered curiosity. “Hey, remember when John DeLorean hoovered coke and decided to make a shitty car? Good times.”
FFS, the truck was announced with a $40k starting MSRP. Now it’s six figures. One fender bender and this thing is going to be totaled out.
I’ll give Tesla this much: the Cybertruck looks exactly like the kind of truck I would’ve drawn when I was 10, when I imagined something futuristic, cool, and “badass”.
To be fair in another post Toecutter did the math and the MSRP is pretty close when you account for true inflation.
Awesome username
One fender bender and this thing is going to be totaled out.
You mean 2 cars will be totaled out: no way a 2nd car in a car2car collision will survive a basic fender bender from colliding with a CT. I imagine a CT in a collision with a Model Y may show some interesting fireworks.
Looking at the vid and also the Curmudgeon podcast, it doesn’t seem at all like there was any intent to throw shade. The guy loves the CT — even specifically says so in the podcast.
I encounter Jason C. in real life around here in the Bay Area and he strikes me as being somewhat like myself: a “functional introvert”.
His IRL personality is fairly quiet and low key. There’s a new roster of motojournalists arriving, breaking new ground with content, presentation and writing. I think it’s tremendous and about 15 or so years overdue.
I enjoyed the video and that’s because it’s ultimately entertainment. If I was seriously considering buying one I would do a lot more research so I don’t get the controversy. I think trucks/SUVs etc are largely pointless, wasteful etc for the majority who buy them, but as far as the CT goes I went from rolling my eyes years ago to “ok, fair props, you actually did it and it’s not the worst truck”.
100% agree with you Matt, Hagerty > Cammisa does “Car-Tainment” videos equally as well as the 3 (lovable) idiots; Hamster, Cap. Slow & the Orangutan all without a couple of other people to bounce bits against.
Re: “To get the fullest review you need to do like Consumer Reports and buy a car, independently test it, and live with it for a while”
Also 100% correct, lightning fast “exclusive drives” like this really can’t be any better and give any better sense of a new product without spending a hell of a lot more time living with and using the product.
About the product itself…
Elon missed on the two Largest ev buyer considerations
1. Range (for the top of line model)
2. Promised price (even adjusted for inflation between 2019 and today)
And a 3rd… would be the downgrade from being able to seat 6 to 5 people which was also promised in 2019…
Above said ignoring the looks (which is kinda hard to do), at first look, the Cybertruck appears like a hell of a good product, I think the new tech. in the drive-by-wire and 48 volt systems will be adopted now by at least the MY and M3 and could lead to these technologies Finally being adopted more broadly.
Does it ‘need’ to be stainless steel, no, but that is the big hook, with most (eary) reservation people likely bc they want to Peacock the latest ev thing and really are after the significantly “it looks different/weird/stupid/I Hate it!/I love it! looks”
What am I doing with my life?
Well shit now I’m reading comments reviewing the review of a review
I just liked a comment that is replying to a comment that is reviewing the review of a review.
edit: Also, I just commented on that same comment that I liked, which was commenting on a comment that is reviewing the review of a review.
Is that, like, meta^meta??
I still think the Cybertruck is an irredeemable pile of garbage, and anybody buying one is a bad person. No amount of praise-laden “reviews” will change my opinion on the fact that large, heavy EV trucks are wasteful and stupid. It’s American excess in the worst way. In fact, this is the exact same opinion I hold about the Hummer EV, so I’m not even bashing Tesla specifically.
If you want to do actual work, go buy an actual truck with a usable bed. Otherwise, just get a car and stop contributing to road fatalities.
I love you
In my opinion, this was a defense of a subject and host that didn’t really need or deserve one.
I’ve read a lot of the comments and people parsing over whether any of the videos are actually reviews or not, and/or what is expected of a YouTube video or whatever, but all that seems to miss the point.
In my opinion, it’s pretty simple. If you watch the three big Cybertruck videos (Jason Cammisa/Marques Brownlee/Jack Rix) or even a portion of each of them back to back to back, I think it would be fair to say that Marques Brownlee’s is the best, Jack Rix’s is a close second, and Jason Cammisa’s is a very, very distant third (I would actually give it a “DNF” like in a car race). The only one out of the three that came across as a blatant puff piece/ad was Cammisa’s. Even Rix’s, which featured interviews with the Tesla design boss and a top Tesla engineer (meaning more potential for pro-Tesla hype), came across as very even-handed and insightful compared to Camissa’s. I mean, several minutes worth of drag racing between Cybertruck and Rivian and Cybertruck and Hummer? And that smug look Camissa had on his face when beating them with the Cybertruck? What in the world was that intended to prove? It wasn’t even entertaining, because we already know these vehicles are fast and it turns out the Cybertruck is even a little faster. So what? It also seemed like any point he made about pretty much everything was intended to justify it in Tesla’s favor rather than question it or at least provide some “cons” to go along with the “pros.”. Maybe he was just excited. Who knows. But I don’t think folks can be faulted for noticing that something seemed a little “off” compared to the other videos.
Maybe there will be another parallel to the Model X story. Maybe they’ll follow this up with something is more conventional and cheaper like they did with the Y. Make this look closer to a regular truck that you can actually see out of, ditch the exotic SS exterior, give it 3/4 of the capability, and sell it for $15k less. Then, everybody is in trouble….
I wonder how much they could save doing aluminum instead.
Well said Matt, I totally agree. I thought the video was excellent, and I learned a lot. I had no idea about all of the stuff underpinning this pointy “truck.” Cammisa shared tons of information about this product in an entertaining way, and that’s what I’m here for. I had no preconceptions that this was some noble piece of journalism meeting only the highest standards of the profession. It’s a YouTube video about a prototype, and a good one at that.
MKBHD is basically the king of Tech reviews so I’d expect to see his dominance in car/truck reviews start to take hold as the industry shifts.
I understand it’s not full production so it’s not fair to do a full review… but this guy’s established enough not to make this video.
He could have (and IMHO, should have) passed on this ‘opportunity’ and held on to some credibility.
I stopped watching at some point because it just felt too paid for. I actually looked for “ad” labels and double checked that it actually was from Hagerty.
It’s a cool truck and all but wow, that really did feel like more of an ad. or one of those fanboy “unboxing” videos. I just moved on with my day. interesting to see that others shared the sentiment.
I had it playing off to the side while working and multiple times had an “this is an ad” feeling. I let the whole video play but remember thinking to myself that a lot of negative comments were going to come from it which I don’t fully disagree with. It felt like they padded just enough softball negatives in there to try and “balance” things.
Articles based on people’s comments are always a bit boring.
I watched all the good new CT stuff on YouTube including Top Gear, Hagerty and that nice young black tech dude with the many letters. Even Matt Watson (though I think he was better in his a bit more relaxed form a few years ago): Now I don’t hate CT quite as much, because there are actually dumber vehicles out there like the Hummer EV, and it does have a bit of innovation in all that clumsy blocky design.
I’m allergic to “Hi guys” and manic people who think they are funny (who am I thinking of?… 😉 ) so I was entertained and enlightened. I don’t care at all if they were reviews or not.
If the cybertruck was built and sold as a low volume high style vehicle to test materials and technology, it would be a neat and worthy addition to the car market. Pretending that a car with such terrible ergonomics, built with materials that have so very many manufacturing issues, will be a high volume sales success is almost insulting.
I’m generally a huge fan of Jason Cammisa’s work but I found this video near unwatchable. It seemed far too long for the material presented and had many seemingly misleading presentations. After correctly pointing out the a conventionally shaped Rivian had a better drag figure, why act like it’s somehow impressive that the cybertruck has lower drag than high drag, high downforce super cars? And engineers have not been dreaming of steer by wire, it exists because it packages well and is cheaper to manufacture not because it is inherently a better way to steer. And the whole stainless steel presentation left me very cold… the car is not an exoskeleton and lack of give in an impact is not necessarily a virtue in the real world.
Speaking of the materials and styling, how is Tesla is going to react to the first lawsuit after a kid splits his skull open on one of those sharp corners? They already acknowledged they are dangerous by covering them with rubber in some sill and truck bed locations.
Apparently, Nissan has been using steer-by-wire since 2013 in the Infiniti line (although with a backup clutched steering column), and Toyota, Mercedes, and Geely have steer-by-wire cars with no steering column backup coming shortly.
If Cammisa said “engineers have been dreaming of steer-by-wire,” instead of “engineers see strong advantages to steer-by-wire, which Nissan has been using since 2013, but are working to ensure safety in long term use and resolve the issues with steering feel”, then that’s additional proof that I don’t need to waste time watching this video.
This might blow Cammisa’s mind but I have an electric pickup with over-the-air steer-by-wire. But he’s only driving my Traxxas Slash if I get to preclear the script.