Telsa Cybertruck at the reopened Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, California, July 1, … [+] 2020.(Photo by Robyn Beck / AFP) (Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)
GM began sales of the Hummer H2 in 2002 to howls from detractors.
The Sierra Club promptly erected a website “hummerdinger.com” that savaged the H2, replete with a place to send a nasty email to GM.
The giant SUV — a polarizing design that could only be conceived by an American car company executive — was born of cigar-chomping Bob Lutz’s credo of building ”love them or hate them” cars.
Fast forward to the summer of 2023, when commercial production of the larger-than-life Cybertruck appears to be imminent.
Bold, brash, and big like the H2*, it’s either love it or loath it.
Write-ups about the Cybertruck (the Wall Street Journal in this case) are invariably littered with reader comments about its size, impracticality for the average pickup owner and how unspeakably ugly it is.
Which, of course, is fine with Elon Musk, who is taking a page from Lutz’s playbook. Cybertruck has generated massive consumer interest (and continues to rack up reservations from people with reportedly “high intent to buy”).
The Hummer H2 is displayed in this publicity photo. The car was introduced to the media January 7, … [+] 2001 at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan. (Photo courtesy of GM/Newsmakers)
Break the mold
The Cybertruck was “designed to break the mold of a traditional pickup” (ibid) but will that be enough to attract practical buyers and not just attention seekers pulling up to the porte-cochère of the Beverly Hilton?
Well, actually it’s not clear if Tesla is breaking the mold quite that much. Reports (Autoevolution and the Wall Street Journal) claim it won’t have the much vaunted exoskeleton — announced to much fanfare in 2019. That said, Musk at the May Shareholder meeting continued to talk about “a whole new set of manufacturing techniques” used for building the exoskeleton on the Cybertruck.
Whatever the case, the outlandish design is a test of the Tesla brand. A large chunk of Americans — and increasingly the world at large — are flocking to Tesla EVs. But this is the first love-it-or-hate-it design to roll out of its factory.
“It’s encouraging that Cybertruck is finally in production after years of delays…but this news alone isn’t a guaranteed slam dunk,” said Jessica Caldwell, Edmunds’ executive director of insights, in a statement.
“The polarizing pickup will be a good test…this is the first time Tesla will debut a product in an already competitive market that includes vehicles from established automakers, particularly Ford,” Caldwell said.
I live in Los Angeles in the heart of Tesla country. And I mean Tesla country. My Northwest Los Angeles community is now overrun with new Teslas (outstripping the Prius craze decades ago).
I expect more than a few residents here to be some of the first Cybertruck owners. But will the interest last past the initial burst of enthusiasm? Naysayers insist it will fade. But if it doesn’t and it converts practical pickup owners, Tesla has another hit in its quest for world domination.
Cybertruck production line.
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NOTES:
*The new EV version of the Hummer is available now though deliveries so far have been meager.
