#cybertruck

Tesla CEO Elon Musk was on top of his game during an interview with Automotive News last week. By that, we mean his ego and various personality quirks came through like a shaft of sunlight parting a fog bank.

Musk announced during the talk that his company performed no customer research before designing and revealing the polarizing and still-not-clearly-legal Cybertruck to would-be buyers, laughing at the idea. If folks don’t like it, he said, there’s a plan.

If you happen to find yourself running a section of this country and would like an automaker to build a factory there, we’ve got a couple of tips to help improve your odds. It might be unfair to call them tips, however, as they’re common knowledge and realistically the only way to get a business to settle on your land. Step One involves promising as much money and as little regulation as possible. Step Two involves waiting for their response.

Hoping to beat out Oklahoma as the home of Tesla’s Cybertruck, Texas is attempting to dazzle the electric automaker with the tax breaks it knew the company wanted. All the automaker has to do is spend over a billion dollars to build its facility in Travis County.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made it painfully clear that Texas is his first choice when it comes to locations for a second U.S. vehicle assembly plant. The executive, disillusioned and annoyed with Silicon Valley and the general California experience, had somewhere in the central or southern U.S. on his mind when he started hunting for a new plant location.

A report out of Austin Monday suggests Tesla could be close to sealing a deal.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk appeared on the Joe Rogan Podcast this week, mentioning that the resurrected Roadster stands to see less love as the company turns its focus to other projects. Rogan, who already owns a Model S P100D and is an avid car collector, said he was interested in picking up the new Roadster once it becomes available. To that, Musk had some bad news. Higher-volume cars would have to come first.

“Roadster is kind of like dessert,” he said. “We gotta get the meat and potatoes and greens and stuff.”

The rest of the interview saw the two men discuss Musk’s opposition to unconstitutional lockdown orders resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, as well as humanity’s growing need for symbiosis with technology in order to ensure we’re not left behind as artificial intelligence begins to surpass us — boring stuff that has nothing to do with cars.

A Missouri city is making a direct pitch to Tesla in the hopes of landing an assembly plant. The electric automaker is on the hunt for a new domestic manufacturing site in which to build its ridiculous-looking Cybertruck, and since Texas seems to be off the table, other states feel they’ve got a good shot.

Naturally, the city of Joplin isn’t coming to the table empty handed.

It sounds like Texas may no longer be in the running for a potential Gigafactory. Earlier this year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk implied, via tweet, a desire for the Lone Star State as the locale for his next domestic assembly plant.

He’s now searching states with smaller belt buckles.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is no stranger to sparking conversation — along with lawsuits, SEC probes, and stock fluctuations — with his social media missives. Tuesday night was no different.

In a two-word Twitter message backed up with a two-item poll, Musk suggested Tesla’s next domestic assembly plant will take up residence in the Lone Star State.

This time of year is rife with year-end lists and compilations ranging from music-inspired topics to the insidious Instagram Top Nine. It’s a great tradition, one I look forward to every year.

You know precisely what our topic is: cars. We’ll throw it out to you, dear reader — what was 2019’s biggest surprise in the automotive industry? As you’d expect, we have a few ideas to start off the proverbial tip jar.

There’s many unknown aspects of the Tesla Cybertruck, not least of which is its curb weight, but a recent letter to the California Air Resources Board (CARB) reveals that Elon Musk’s retro-futuristic brainchild might have no business engaging in a one-on-one with the Ford F-150.

According to the letter, Tesla is pursuing a medium-duty classification for the triangular pickup, placing in in competition not with the F-150, but the F-250.

Coming into work under false pretenses is what December’s all about. Everyone’s productivity is whittled down to a bare minimum in order to spend additional time browsing the internet for gift ideas, travel arrangements, and polishing off their list of must-watch holiday films. As a result, the news cycle gets slow and silly.

Over the weekend, the big automotive story was Elon Musk showboating the Tesla Cybertruck around Malibu while on his way to pick up some Japanese food — smacking into a traffic pylon and breezing through a red light after leaving the eatery. While a quick satellite view of the area absolves the CEO of any illegal maneuvers (Nobu’s parking lot is before the intersection), the fate of that poor barricade left us wondering about Musk’s driving ability and/or the visibility available from inside the Cybertruck.

As part of Tesla Motors’ debut of Cybertruck, CEO Elon Musk showed a clip in which the EV pickup yanks a Ford F-150 uphill against its will. The Blue Oval is also building an all-electric pickup, in addition to already manufacturing the best-selling truck model in history. Clearly, Tesla clearly wanted to place both on notice, though the video only provides evidence that Cybertruck can tug a rear-drive F-Series uphill in a video Tesla produced to show exactly that outcome.

Media outlets began musing if this was really a fair fight, apparently forgetting how advertising works, while science celeb Neil deGrasse Tyson offered a public physics lessons. “We all love Torque. But high Torque just spins a tire in place if there’s not enough weight to provide traction,” he said in response to the video. “Fully load the F150, giving highest traction to its rear wheels, then try to drag that up the hill. I otherwise agree: Load both to the max and the highest torque wins.”

Mr. Tyson’s new role as a Ford Truck Man remains unconfirmed, but the more likely scenario is that he’s simply trying to make sure the test is at least mildly scientific. Ford agreed, saying a fair test between brands was just what the doctor ordered.

Given what Tesla revealed last night, it seemed appropriate to reference a movie from the early ’80s — an era from which the automaker’s “futuristic” Cybertruck appears to have emerged. Looking like a stainless steel pup tent with a delicatessen counter serving as a dash, the Cybertruck’s Thursday night reveal generated a critical mass of hot takes, resulting in an megaton-level explosion of ridicule heard to the farthest reaches of space.

Perhaps even on Mars.

While the term “half baked” appeared to be one of the more popular descriptors for the vehicle (and may be a contributing factor to the vehicle’s design), market analysts are a sober-minded crowd. Friday morning, they let loose.

Taking a moment away from my cheese sandwich, I looked at the countdown. Only four more minutes. Four minutes were all that separated me from Tesla Motors’ live unveiling of Cybertruck. Another bite while I checked my phone messages; just two minutes left now. Dear Lord, was I ready? Needing to calm myself, I poured a glass of cold water, drinking most of it before splashing a bit on my face. Thirty seconds. Things were serious now. Pretty soon, Elon Musk was going to appear and change the face of motoring once again. This will be the automotive announcement by which all others will be measured for weeks.

An ominous horn sounded as my screen illuminated to show me a blood-red stage. This was it. It was like they were announcing the first Terminator. Dark music subsided to a rowdy crowd, as a hologram told us we were addicted to oil. The solution? Cybertruck. Fashionable. Functional. Electric. Elon Musk walked out on stage like God Himself. Everyone started screaming. Humble, he chatted briefly with the front row.

“We need something different,” said after accusing all other truck models to be largely indistinguishable.

Then Cybertruck blasted on stage and I couldn’t believe what I saw.

Since Tesla CEO Elon Musk first uttered the word, we’ve avoided mentioning what seemed to be a nerd-fantasy placeholder name for the automaker’s upcoming electric pickup. Unfortunately, trademark applications reveal Tesla might actually make use of the word that dare not speak its name: “Cybertruck,” or, even worse, “Cybrtrk,” because vowels aren’t cool in Silicon Valley.

Speaking personally, it’s an unfortunate turn of events.