Cyberflop

In 2017, when Trump began his first (but, alas, not only) term as President, I was still in the afterglow of having driven a Tesla Model S at a special event sponsored by the brand.  It was at that time that the shark that Tesla would eventually jump started swimming around the company, as Elon Musk began undermining what had been the biggest success story in American auto manufacturing for a new company since Walter Chrysler founded the company that bore his name.  

In 2017, Musk unveiled the second generation of the Tesla Roadster,  and he started taking orders for the car immediately, with a thousand people paying $250,000 for a new car.  That totals to $250 million, a quarter of a billion bucks, that Musk pocketed.  To this day, no one who paid for a Mark 2 Roadster has received a car; it's never been produced.  Instead, Musk focused on entering the truck market with a newfangled pickup that was styled to look like a television remote - the Cybertruck.  What?  A truck designed to resemble a futuristic vehicle in a Hollywood movie?  Why not freshen up or redesign the cars in the rest of the lineup? Nah, too boring.

Musk promised miracles with this vehicle.  The stainless-steel panels would be easier to maintain.  They would be bulletproof.  It would be priced at the same level as and have a bigger payload than conventional pickup trucks.  And the braking system would channel energy used to bring the truck to a stop back into the electric motor in order to make the brakes last as long as the vehicle itself!

Uh, yeah.  The Cybertruck has panels that get dirty easily and are hard to clean, bullets can still have hideous pockmarks on the panels, it costs about a hundred grand, the payload is smaller than an F-150, and Musk's ballyhooed regenerative braking system is an implausible idea that must of come out of one of those sci-fi books he loves.  

I'm tempted to say that Tesla has become the automotive equivalent of one of those real-estate companies that sell worthless properties to land speculators for enormous sums - "You didn't buy any property there, did you?  I swear there was a lake!" - but that's not entirely true, because unlike the second-generation Roadster, the Cybertruck actually got produced.  But not very well.  Not only are its stainless-steel panels worthless, they don't fit properly onto the truck, and their edges are so sharp, you could peel a potato with them.  The single windshield wiper is so pliable, it's limper than an overcooked ramen noodle,, and the slope of the windshield is so low-slung that rain water cascades up it.

Also, the Cybertruck is so big and bulky that one can easily hit a pedestrian if you don't look carefully enough, and if the cameras aren't working (a typical problem with the Cybertruck), you could run over someone and not even realize it until after its too late.  For that reason, the European Union has banned the sale of the Cybertruck in its member states for its failure to conform to EU pedestrian impact standards - standards the American automobile regulatory system does not have, thanks to a lax regulatory culture in Washington and the demand for monster wagons on light-truck chasses.  And when it comes to providing safety for those outside the vehicle as well as those inside, the Chevrolet Suburban and the Ford Expedition aren't exactly all that much better.  And all of those SUVs and pickup trucks posing threats to smaller vehicles are the reason we don't have cars like the Volkswagen Polo and Renault Twingo offered for sale in These States. 

Did I happen to mention the Cybertruck's loose-fitting plastic gas-pedal cover?

Road testers at auto magazine and on auto-news YouTube sites have known about the Cybertruck's defects for months, but the Cybertruck's flaws are only coming to the fore now among the general public thanks to Tesla's current woes and Musk's megalomaniacal  desire to dismantle American government. Tesla has become the auto industry's most discredited brand; the Cybertruck has become the auto industry's most discredited Tesla.

Tesla at this point is probably beyond saving, but Musk will remain unscathed because he'll still have his billons as well as his profits from Starlink and SpaceX (which has numerous government contacts.  Butt the Cybertruck should prove that, far from being another Walter Chrysler, Elon Musk is turning out to be another Malcolm Bricklin. 

Having failed to start his own car company, Malcolm Bricklin decided to sell us the Yugo instead.