A guy I follow on another site (automotive) wrote about his thoughts on this "truck". Rather than post a link, I'll just post the text:
"I have several issues with the truck and after thinking about it for a large part of the day, here goes:
1. For something that has been teased for the last two years this thing looks remarkably unfinished. All of the concepts mentioned such as the Marzal, Boomerang, Esprit (that actually reached production) and even stuff like the MB C-111 and the Dome Zero, they all looked MUCH more production ready than this truck does.
In fact, this seems like it would work better as NOT a truck. Look at things like the Aston Martin Rapide, it works very well although in the abstract it seems wrong. Same with the Panamera, first gen looked weird, but current gen absolutely works. Lower this concept and it works better that way instead of a “pickup”.
2. I don’t get the price. While you can “reserve” one I’m guessing that the $39.9k is including $20k in gas savings (15,000 miles/yr x 4years @ 12mpg @ $4/gallon = $20k) once the full configurator comes online. So a real base of $59.9k. But in any case, why the fixation on the low price, nobody buys a Tesla because it’s the lowest priced product. Half the M3 buyers are coming from Civics and Priuses. They are happily paying multiples of their prior cars prices. It’s a premium product and if it wants to be perceived that way should be priced that way.
2a. – The corollary to price is cost – you have a body material that is 3-4 times the thickness of standard truck steel/Al. That costs more money. Who cares that it doesn’t ding, dings are easy to fix with PDR. If it won’t ding, will it crumple in an accident? If not , that’s another problem. And if it does then it’ll likely be harder to fix than Aluminum. Bulletproof windows? Who cares, its too late for Biggie and Tupac already. I’ve never been shot at in my ride, Joe Q. Public would rather save the money and Tesla doesn’t need more costs. If the special glass was cheaper it’d be used in every car so clearly it just adds cost. And doesn’t seem to work well anyway.
3. Form vs Function – I hear a lot about the shape being that way due to aero, ok that’s form following function. But it’s a truck, why do the other functions not follow the form aspect? Headroom in the back seat looks marginal and if it’s not then the front seat has enough room for the Coneheads which is totally unnecessary. The high bed sides look like the world’s biggest blind spot and were 100% panned on the original Ridgeline for example and force everyone, even Wilt Chamberlain, to get out the step stool or deploy the ramp to get a box out of the bed.
4. There’s not enough of a market for a polarizing design. The Model 3 sells worldwide because it works sizewise. This truck is as large as domestic fullsizers. Those are NOT popular anywhere else in the world due to their size (not the gas mileage, there are plenty of poor mpg vehicles around the world that sell), hence there is no world market for this truck. Tesla needs sustained profitability, and this is a low volume vehicle. Rivian is physically smaller, hence a larger worldwide market. Bollinger looks cool too, likely to more people than this does, and has some very practical features (that whole body passthrough for example).
5. Tesla currently produces a very expensive luxury liftback sedan, an even more expensive weird looking liftback SUV that’s overly complex, a right-sized sedan when supposedly nobody is buying sedans but people flock to the M3 although it could be a liftback and thus more practical without changing the shape…, and soon a liftbackish small CUV. Now here is this truck that will be limited in appeal for no good reason and eventually maybe the Semi and the Roadster. But where the hell is the midsize two-box SUV that EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD IS BUYING THESE DAYS and that might actually set Tesla on a path to real profitability by removing ANY excuse to buy their product due to practical concerns? The “aero” excuse is overblown, it just doesn’t figure into most people’s calculations and Tesla is arguably the most able to absorb a little efficiency hit of anyone out there based on their battery tech and charging infrastructure. They seem to be able to build a factory in a year, less time than to design a car so why not make the vehicle that actually sells for real money and will make them money while doing so? It’s not that hard of a concept. Instead we get these flights of fancy.
Oh, one more thing… as far as design inspirations, the Brubaker Pickup design from 1978 is a dead ringer for this thing at least as far as the back half is concerned. Definitely more than the concepts from above in that regard."
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