I just wrote what I intended to be a measured review on the Tesla Cybertruck. I simply drove the machine and wrote down my thoughts. My review pointed out the truck’s flaws and ultimately concluded that I think it’s “cool” despite its controversial founder. That may sound like the most lukewarm take in automotive media history, but even it was enough to cause people to go absolutely crazy. 442 comments (and counting)!
I initially wondered “How are you supposed to write about the Cybertruck these days without people getting upset?” I’ve concluded that the answer is: You can’t. The Tesla Cybertruck should be renamed the Tesla Powderkeg, and reviewing it is totally pointless.
I’m exhausted by the comments sections of my Tesla Cybertruck review. Readers are pissed. YouTube viewers are pissed. Twitter/x users are pissed. Your neighbor’s dog that just laid a mound on your lawn probably did so because it was pissed. Everyone is pissed! And I don’t like it; I want people (and dogs) to be happy. I want them to enjoy their Sunday, not spend it banging away at a keyboard arguing with people.
But like I said, folks were LIVID the other day. “spooky cartoon spider-man,” in particular, let me HAVE IT on Twitter:
Do I think ripping on such a handsome devil’s looks because said HD called a truck cool is a great way to spend a Sunday? Not at all! Go outside! Throw that dog a frisbee so it doesn’t shit on your lawn again!
To be sure, I get why everyone is pissed. The Cybertruck’s primary proponent, Elon Musk, is a ridiculous person who has offended numerous groups, including ones that have already been marginalized. That’s a big deal, and it’s good that people take that seriously. But if you’re going to promote social unity/fairness, you gotta practice what you preach! That’s the thing about the Cybertruck and my review; it turned people who are normally nice and rational, and who regularly speak up to preserve civil discourse and dignity, into that which they denounce.
There are plenty of parallels to the current political situation. You have one group that believes that you must actively and endlessly hate someone or you yourself are condoning all of the bad things they’ve ever done (one commenter even wrote “There are some people (myself included) that consider Musk a large enough problem that they will judge a persons character when that persons uses or praises his work.” For reference, Tesla sells half a million cars annually in the U.S.). And then you have the other group that worships that person and thinks that anyone who slightly criticizes him is an ignorant hater.
While I think both groups — those who love Tesla and those who loathe it — have good intentions, oftentimes neither can think clearly. One is blinded by hatred, one is blinded by admiration; it really is a tale as old as time.
As such, writing my review was pointless. Solely because I called the Cybertruck “cool,” people are throwing tomatoes and soiled underpants at me and my beautiful, carefully crafted words, saying the writing is somehow “flawed” and that I wrote it solely for “clicks.” Clicks?! THE AUDACITY.
To be a bit more serious: I’m sympathetic to these folks. They are commenters on this site, and I’m grateful they’re here — even the ones who make fun of my looks. At the very least, they are purporting to be standing up against bad things Musk has said. To them, they are championing for a better, more civil, more accepting world, and that’s what we should all want. Does being mean online help their cause? Probably not, but the anonymity provided by the web often ends this way.
But it’s not just the haters, it’s also the lovers.
They believe Musk is saving the world, and in some ways, he’s definitely helped! He’s pushed the world towards electrification, which will end up having huge positive climate change implications (a macho Cybertruck to lure folks away from fuel-sucking SuperDuties could help, too). He’s changed the way the world does space exploration with SpaceX. And he’s done a bunch of other great things, but as was the case before when talking about his flaws, no matter what I say here, I’ll get criticized for not mentioning all of what he’s done. Suffice it to say: He’s done some amazing things in addition to the dumb things he’s said and done.
So when Musk fans see all the compromises I mention in my review and say things like “It’s a dumb, poorly disguised ‘hit piece’ peppered with ads. Don’t waste your time. Zero real insight,” I’m sympathetic. They want Musk to succeed — to sell lots of trucks, so he can save the universe.
I don’t think either group has bad intentions (and we here at The Autopian are totally cool with both writing in the comments section (in a civilized way) their strong opinions about the truck or Musk). I think the problem is that there are only two vocal groups. This is the world we live in today; it’s black or white, and there is little nuance. As a result, people in both groups are allowing the topic to get the best of them, and neither group is going to actually read a Cybertruck review with an open mind, making my endeavor to write one — as previously stated — thoroughly pointless.
Maybe I Should Have Included In My Review Every Single Good And Bad Thing Elon Musk Has Ever Done
Lord knows I’m fallible. While I did point out that the truck cannot be disconnected from highly controversial CEO Elon Musk, some folks felt I should have criticized Musk more. They wanted me to make a special exception for this vehicle review and add a paragraph about the transgressions of the CEO of the company that built the truck.
I personally think that pointing out that people have big feelings about Musk is enough, especially given that The Autopian (and everyone) has written ad nauseam about Musk and his foolish words/actions. I’ve never seen a car review spend that much time focusing on the transgressions of a company exec; plus, I know Elon proponents would have demanded that I add another paragraph of all the good stuff Elon has done. Should I do this for all cars? When I write about Lucid, exactly how many paragraphs do I need to commit to the Saudi Royal Family and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi? If I write a VW review, do I need to talk about Dieselgate? Should reviewers of the Ford Model A and VW Beetle have included paragraph-long asides in their reviews about Henry Ford’s nasty prejudices and the Third Reich, respectively?
[Editor’ Note: I feel sort of compelled to step in at this point, because I’ve been separating the terrible people who ran the companies of the cars I’ve loved from the cars themselves for pretty much all my life. That’s what happens when you’re a Jew who loves VW Beetles, like me. At some point, you just have to let the car be the car. This I suppose can bleed into the idea of separating the art from the artist, which I think generally I tend to do as well, though there’s always some point of too far or too much. Or at least, there can be. It’s blurry, and I think at this moment we’re in an era where no one wants to see gradients or shades, everything is all or nothing, so you either hate the Cybertruck with the heat of a thousand suns or love it with the heat of an equal and opposite number of suns. But that’s not how reality works.
We’re going to be deeply fucked if we, collectively can’t get past this. Not everything is pure good or pure evil, but we can always try to keep our eyes on being as good as we can to as many people as we can, and if that means that sometimes we accept that people will find a truck cool even if the guy whose company sells it is a steaming pile, then maybe that’s not the worst thing. I’ve never seen car fandom/hatedom quite like this ever before, and I sincerely hope this is an inane phase we’ll get past, because at this moment, we all seem kind of nuts. – JT]
No one is objective, and not everyone writes from my perspective, but my perspective is that Elon Musk is a lot of things both good and bad, but he’s definitely a bit of an edgelord with some awful takes and even awful-er communication skills. And because of his megaphone, those are indeed a big deal. My perspective is also that people care about the Cybertruck, and I care about trucks, and I want to know how the truck drives. Doing so, and communicating it in a cogent, uncontaminated way, is my job.
And I have to believe that what some people want is a car review without politics. I’m not saying “stick to sports,” as we write often about politics, and the larger world has to be considered when talking about Tesla — but how much throat-clearing is enough throat-clearing? It is, in a way, absurd to assume that anyone reading a review in The Autopian doesn’t already know about Elon Musk and hasn’t already formed an opinion about him.
Think about how many Tesla Model Ys are sold each year (I’m using this example because loads of them are already out; you likely know somebody who owns one) — roughly a quarter million. The people buying that car just want a good, clean, fun-to-drive, cheap-to-operate car. LOADs of people who drive a Model Y are not Elon Musk supporters. And when they read a review, they want a review — they already know about Elon and his weirdness. They want to know what the reviewer thinks of the Model Y so that they can make an informed purchase. While I suspect Cybertruck shoppers are a bit more opinionated on Musk’s antics than Model Y owners given the polarizing nature of the truck, many — and I’d guess the majority — just think it looks cool, and want to know what it’s like to drive. “It’s only a ’cause’ to you. To me, it’s a truck that does what I need it to do,” writes Cybertruck owner Loudog in the comments of my article. “It’s my money. I had an F-150 I daily drove before this (A Powerboost. Excellent truck but too many recalls.) Now I drive a Cybertruck.”
So that’s how I approached the Cybertruck. I drove it, I thought it was cool, I noted that I thought it was cool even though it had some major flaws, and then I wrote just that, while noting, of course, that it’s a product of a controversial man named Elon Musk (whom you can read about on your own, separately). It was measured, thorough, neutral, and nuanced, and that was my mistake.
I should have acknowledged exactly how much of a jerk Elon Musk can be, while also acknowledging all the things he’s done, while also acknowledging that he didn’t do all those things himself, while also acknowledging the global importance of Tesla, while also acknowledging the local impacts of Tesla, while also, maybe, finding a few minutes to write about the actual vehicle. I’ll do better next time. For that dog, and for your lawn.
Finally, to avoid ending on the sad realization that a simple review of a controversial truck championed by an insanely controversial man caused the internet — a place that struggles with nuance and subtlety — to lose its mind, here’s a comment from “Lost on the Nürburgring” that is fair and manages to be critical of the review and the car, but in a way that’s not completely devoid of reason.
Fair enough. We all have differing appreciation of vehicles for a variety of reasons, in all directions. Even leaving Tesla’s majority shareholder out of the assessment, I just find the Cybertruck a deeply silly vehicle, it’s ugly, there are much better trucks out there, there are better EVs out there, it’s too big/heavy, it’s made out of a silly material for cars, the flat panels are an empirically poor choice for the construction of the vehicle, it’s poorly constructed, it’s charmless. I just fail to find what its value proposition is at any level, other than you’ll get plenty of attention driving it around.
Side note, my initial comment did seem tonally to be more negative towards you than was in any way my intent. I read your whole article on the Cybertruck and enjoyed it, even if I disagreed with most of it. But we can agree to disagree, all of us, I hope, in our passion for various cars.
Now go grab that frisbee. Maybe I should have done that myself instead of wasting time writing a review of a Cybertruck that people have already decided to love or hate! [Dog takes second shit on lawn].
Definitely well said and I think for any other Tesla it’s hard to argue with. However, it sure seems that the Cybertruck is very much an extension of Elon’s ego and I would make the argument you both can’t and shouldn’t separate him from it (nor, I bet, would he want you to). My opinion (everyone’s got em and mine stinks too) is that nothing done by the hyper rich as a vanity project is ever cool. Interesting sure, but never cool.
Regardless though: fuck the people going personal. Not cool
Like I said on the Insta post, I just skipped the article. I mean that’s the point right? If people don’t read about the cybertruck, then nobody is going to write about it and nature will take it’s course? I’ve specifically stated that I want the cybertruck to fail because it’s directly tied to wish.com Henry Ford’s ego, and he deserves every bad thing that happens to him because he’s a fucking doos but I digress.
Not sure why people are attacking you for doing your job, but that is social media these days. I guess least you got the ad metrics(?), so you got that goin’ for you, which is nice.
I’d post the Carl Spackler image from the Caddyshack scene with Bill Murry but can’t embed images just yet.
This isn’t jalopnik, hater of all things Tesla. And for that I’m happy to be here. As unbiased as realistically possible to be, that’s who Autopian is, and should remain.
If individuals have a problem with either extreme of that expectation, they are not being held against their will, and just like assholes*les, we don’t need to see everyone’s opinions!
Vitriol and cynicism are never positives for the greater good. Ask yourself, before posting your unfiltered position, if it is either of those. If so, just move on and grab the poop bags.
Ah, this is a perfect example of how the internet has ruined society as much as it’s helped it.
I dare say the vast majority of those who love to argue online/in person about the Cybertruck have no intention of ever owning one.
To paraphrase Frank Zappa…”shut up and drive yer car.”
The Cybertruck is the Julian Assange of automobilia:
Everyone has a strong opinion, when actually, that may be his biggest claim to fame.
That and raping people, but that’s another issue.
I’m writing this just to make the comment number go higher.
Okay, joking aside, there are certain polarized issues that once they become a part of public discourse, you should avoid completely. People have already formed their opinions and their outlooks on the impact and you won’t change them. The Cybertruck is one of those things. Deciding to be at the center of the polar issue makes you extremely vulnerable because you’ll have both sides attacking you and neither side defending you. The types of people who get shoved into the far poles are the kind of people who’ve already lost their shit and, while likely not dangerous, are still massive pains in the ass who will make your life miserable for disagreeing with them.
Regarding Torch’s comment about there being no gradients, that’s true in politics currently because things are very precariously balanced and the balance is slipping. If a certain side pushes too far everything’s likely to come crashing down, and people rightly feel that means they need to be just as zealous about pushing back. As with anything based around reforming or maintaining hierarchies it becomes an arms race until one side collapses. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction until the point of entropy.
As David points out, you can’t separate the CT from Elon. It’s his childhood doodle come to life. So the Elon stans and haters alike all get up into their feelings about it.
Personally, I think it’s atrocious looking. I don’t care who is selling it, I’d be embarrassed to be seen in it.
I read your review, I thought it was good and objective as reviews should be. I do take issue with the phrasing here though: “Elon Musk, is a ridiculous person who has offended numerous groups” – he’s not quite that. He hasn’t offended numerous already-marginalized groups… he’s actively, eagerly, gleefully stoked the flames of oppression to try and encourage more marginalization (or worse) against the LGBTQ community in particular.
Other CEOs and prominent corporate leaders obviously donate to political groups that marginalized people will find very problematic. I get it, we get it. But when that figurehead is so loud and proud about it, I and so many others will not and can not separate the art from the artist. Toyota, for example, donates to some right-wing organizations and politicians and so on that most likely would prefer I have fewer rights in the future. But their CEO doesn’t crow about it online, repeatedly. (They also donate a roughly equal amount to left-wing efforts from what I know)
Just some perspective. I think the Cybertruck is a stupid product with lots of interesting tech and advancements baked into it. The engineers who pulled it off should rightfully be proud of much of what they did. I still want to drive it and review it myself. But yeah, loud leadership is problematic and I do think it’s worth acknowledging somehow.
You saved me the effort of writing pretty much the same verbiage. FFS Musk is so toxic that he doxxed a college kid who now gets death threats, but Musk is too gross of a human being to admit culpability for his antisemitism and blatant disregard for anyone not a rich, white, right-wing male like himself.
I feel bad that David got a wet-willie over his review, however it’s understandable that anyone with a social conscience would want to chime in. David’s (I’m sure) a cromulent guy, but he’s too deep in the automotive trenches to be aware of the enormity of Musk’s appalling attacks on public discourse.
Hating on public figures like this will seriously limit your (pleasant) participation in life. Might want to pull that stick out. He ain’t exactly Hitler, or Ford.
He’s exactly Ford. If you don’t see the parallels, you’re not paying attention.
https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2023/11/16/elon-musk-endorses-antisemitic-conspiracy-theory-about-jews-welcoming-in–hordes-of-minorities-
Endorsing theories is very different than taking actual damaging actions against Jews as Ford did. Lip service doesn’t hold a candle to actions.
His own bigoted rhetoric and Twitter pivot to platforming hate speech has set records for increased antisemitic violence. It’s costing lives and livelihoods, not dissimilar to Ford’s legacy.
Being a Musk apologist isn’t a good look, but you do you boo.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/16/us/adl-antisemtism-2023-audit-reaj/index.html
With all due respect I don’t think you do. You want to couch this as having tapped into the controversy surrounding Musk itself, rather than address the fact that you wrote an extensive defense of the greatest example of placing form above function in modern times. The Cybertruck shouldn’t exist, it’s half-baked, impractical, unreliable, and unsafe. Your defenses might make sense if somehow — like the Jeep — we got a vehicle where the compromises led to a better product, but all the Cybertruck does is look fairly close to its concept. Even it’s appearance, the one thing it has going for it, is flawed. Panels rusting, mismatched, razor sharp with huge gaps. It’s a testament to the stubbornness and penchant for contrarianism of its creator, but that’s it. You can call that “cool”, but it’s hardly surprising that people disagree.
It may not be a popular opinion, but I actually share in the lukewarm take on the Cybertruck. I hate how everything looks the same, so I give it some points for being original. I’ll openly admit that there are times where my vehicular (and possibly other) tastes are called into question. If everything looks the same, if bores my brain. Do I love it? No. Would I drive one? Probably, if you just tossed me the card-fob thing, whatever it is. At least it’s interesting. I haven’t driven one, but I agree it looks better in person than in photos. However, I view it as more of an oddity than a useful vehicle. At its price point, it just wouldn’t be worth it to me, even if I were in that buyer’s range (I am not). I think to some degree it’s important to divorce the product from the people/person responsible for it. If you dig deeply enough, you find that MOST people who have achieved outrageous success and achievement are loathsome creeps. Or, at the very least you’ll find some political affiliation you’re not fond of. What are you going to do? Lock your self in a dark basement forever? Who made the locks? MasterLock? Well, they’re owned by a company that donated money to Donald Trump’s campaign (utter nonsense, just an example of something someone might find controversial about a company if they look hard enough). Most amazing artists are very strange people to say the least. This lack of society’s even keel “normality”, whatever you define that as has freed them to make the amazing art they do. You may never want to be in the same room with someone, but if you like their product, whether it’s music or visual art, a movie, a car an air conditioner, that should probably be your deciding factor on who you give your money to. The product – do you like it? It is good? Henry Ford, anyone? How’s that company doing? Anybody cancel them yet? Everyone’s a d-bag when you look long enough.
I guess if you’re pissing off people on both sides, you’re doing alright. And I do welcome more clicks at Autopian (DT may not be mercenary but I can be if I want to).
I gently disagree with your opinion comparing the CT to the JL – the Jeep is cool because what it can do, whereas the CT is cool (not my word) only for how it looks.
We saw one in traffic and my wife, who has zero preconceived opinion on the matter, was viscerally disgusted. My four-year-old thought it was cool. I think it is a deeply stupid endeavor which only exists because Musk’s ego wouldn’t let them make anything other than a pointless, unfinished show car.
My complaint with the review is mostly the realization that if David thinks that the Cybertruck is cool, maybe I’m missing something.
The 80’s.
I didn’t agree with the premise of “very little changed from the concept so it must be cool” but otherwise it’s a good article. I like that you expressed your premise clearly and completely even though I disagree.
A faulty vision, executed and produced perfectly to plan does not magically make that product cool. It does frequently make an interesting product, but again, not necessarily cool.
Keep doing articles like this. We don’t mind when you’re wrong, as long as you’re passionately wrong. 😉
Appreciate you moving to HD notation once it was clear to the reader that you were referring to handsome devil
Went back to read the original review. Had to work hard at it – I don’t know if it was the many ads or the rapidly overflowing comments section, but my phone’s browser kept crashing and my phone got painfully hot to hold.
Seems like a physically-manifested metaphor for the hellscape that comments section became… ????
Now that I’m back here my phone has cooled off. Huh.
The review was good. You’re awesome. Autopian rocks. Keep on truckin’ …
David, thank you (and the rest of the Autopian staff). Open communication and discourse is a reason to love this site, even without the cars. I personally enjoyed the article since I like hearing points and counterpoints and also the context behind things. Other brands use Halo products to generate conversation too. Good or bad, it works. I wholeheartedly agree that collectively, we all need to find our medium setting. Computers are 0’s and 1’s, but we have multitudes of integers aside from those two digits.
I for one thought it was a very balanced review which pointed out the Cybertruck’s (many) questionable design decisions while revelling in the sheer ridiculousness that makes it fun. The YouTube video was also one of the best I’ve seen to date – not needlessly shitcanning it (it’s been done to death, it’s low hanging fruit) and not blowing smoke up Musk’s arse either. Don’t change, DT!
It takes guts to be a journalist. It takes cowardice to spew hatred. There’s a lot of cowards.
A thoughtful post mortem of the CT article shitstorm, but I don’t agree with the conclusion.
> I should have acknowledged exactly how much of a jerk Elon Musk can be, while also acknowledging all the things he’s done, while also acknowledging that he didn’t do all those things himself, while also acknowledging the global importance of Tesla, while also acknowledging the local impacts of Tesla, while also, maybe, finding a few minutes to write about the actual vehicle.
That would have been a waste of your time to write, and of ours to read, while achieving nothing to mollify the fools screaming past each other about the good and evil they perceive in Musk and the CT.
Fuck that fake spiderman asshole who made fun of your picture. It’s an excellent picture. I hope he grazes his under arm on the CT’s sheet metal and 15 liters of green bile gush forth and leave water stains on the body panels.
That was written in jest! I thought the “finding a few minutes to write about the actual vehicle” gave that away, but in the context of a kinda-serious article, I can see how that might ahave been missed!
I suspected it might have been, but wasn’t sure 😉
The issue is all around the frunk pinching fingers. See here is why.
You have a vehicle that has a significant liability and design flaw. So much of one that GM has books and groups whose job is to make sure they don’t put out a similar product. Is there a specific law about it? I don’t know, but all the major automakers have been taken to court and held accountable for their decisions, even if it is just money. So they end up building a better safer product through being held accountable.
Here we have a product that has a huge issue, one that if it happened to anyone else would initiate a stop sale, recall and fix. But Tesla? Nope. They will wait for the lawsuit and use all of their $ to fight it out of spite. The stock price won’t care. Same thing with autopilot.
The point is that people are frustrated by a lack of accountability for musk and tesla. The CT is more than a flawed design to be reviewed. It is a symbol of the continuing lack of accountability from Tesla and musk.
I don’t like the Cybertruck, to be fair, but I don’t control what you or anyone else does. Want a Cybertruck? Buy one. Don’t want one? Don’t buy one. I don’t see how my own experience in life is impacted by your choice to drive a vehicle I don’t care for nor do I see how your experience in live is impacted by my choice to drive a vehicle you don’t care for. Not everything in the world is an “us versus them” situation.
“I don’t see how my own experience in life is impacted by your choice to drive a vehicle I don’t care for nor do I see how your experience in live is impacted by my choice to drive a vehicle you don’t care for.”
Because if it does literally impact you it is much more likely to injure or kill you that’s why.