The completed original line up was

S 3 X Y

The C didn’t fit that, nor would a 2. Unless he’s aiming for a lineup of products that has you seeing someone next Tuesday.

> the exact people who would buy such a car are now avoiding Teslas

The traditional fix for this is to license the technology and do manufacturing for another carmaker to brand.

It's super common for brand X of car to actually be a rebadged Y with slightly different shaped body panels.

However, it only works if your product is good and you have decent margins. That means you have to compete with china cars, since the obvious thing for a western brand to do is to rebadge a chinese designed car and split the margins with the chinese designer/manufacturer.

There are people like me who still buy teslas. Buddy picked up his new Model Y couple weeks ago. The price and the whole package is fine. Zero interest financing is absolutely nice. Elon showed his real face during children rescue drama in Asia. With this defamation story it was well known who he is for years. Political involvement was the visible tip of an iceberg for everyone.

Now if you ask me if the German car managers are better I doubt it. Gassing apes by Volkswagen in US is on the same level as Elon. Mercedes guy was complaining about lazy workers too much. Only BMW guy was able to keep acceptable silence. Overall German equivalent of model Y is at least 20000€ more expensive than Elon‘s car.

Personally I don’t buy anything from China if I can. I am not brave and as the Ayways story showed clearly, that great Chinese car can quickly be without any service. Maybe it’s ok to lease such car for couple years, but I don’t want to have car after small accident for what no replacement parts are available.

I spent a month in Spain driving a BYD daily and it was fine. I just don’t like the tackiness of the interior and not in love with the exterior either. The handling is also ok, nothing exciting. There’s something still very Chinese about these cars. Not saying that matters if you just want an affordable and reliable EV that takes you from point A to B. BYD can do that perfectly fine. I personally like the design of the Model Y (own one) very much, it also feels much more “alive” particularly the dual motor. There’s no comparison with the BYD I drove. Also never had any issues with build quality other than the charging port malfunctioning, and it was fixed outside my house, all I had to do was touch a button in the app to call service. FSD is pretty damn amazing. The tech is great and the updates do make the car better in many ways. I hope Tesla finds its way because apart from all the controversy they can make good cars.

> Teslas I've been in didn't seem to have great design or build quality

Design is subjective (I like it), and build quality. Not sure, I don't have issues with mine except one where after 2 years frunk latch started failing. It was replaced in an hour when I went to service center.

Teslas are the cheapest EV for the features offered in Europe. I would gladly buy another car, but they are either more pricey, or lack features. (I did market research 2 years ago when I was buying Model Y, the closest one was ICE - RAV4 for similar price, but I didn't want ICE).

Today probably not but there was a time where Tesla doing a rush to electric car market dominance was not totally far fetched. This would have required them to have cars filling the important segments.

because there is still 2012-era belief hanging around many people that Tesla's EV tech is superior to anything else

Even without Musk's public persona, the Tesla build quality is infamous. I would never.

What I've seen so far from Chinese car makers (BYD and MG, to be precise) is, to put it bluntly, the bare minimum. Build quality so-so, design is… unconventional and software is just bad. It drives, but only just.

Maybe the more recent models, like the Xiaomi thing, are better. But at the moment, Tesla is at least on par, if not better. The brand being tainted is very relevant though.

Don't forget Renault 5!

All the big European car manufacturers also have EV cars too.

Plus there are plenty of popular options for high-end EVs that are far more glamorous as well as practical than the Cybertruck.

Is there any indication that they're going to "defeat common sense" again? They're cancelling products, making marginal improvements to old models, alienating their customers, etc.

Tesla as a car company seems dead-set on a continuous downward spiral.

Maybe the switch to robots will pay off and you'll be right. Somehow, I'm skeptical.

Everyone knew that was the future and that the big auto manufacturers were deliberately dragging.

No-one (serious) thought there was a market for the cybertruck.

The stock price is pure madness, it's like it's priced in robotaxis, but that's clearly not going to happen for Tesla. And if it did, it would be a small-ish market, their brand has become toxic in so many big markets.

Elon Musk said he estimated 250k to 500k yearly sales

Idk, his twitter account was enough to sort out he had lost control over himself.

It failed based on the sales projections that Tesla set. Also, several reviews have not exactly been kind, along with lots of comments from owners about annoying issues and malfunctions.

If Tesla needed beta testers for things they hadn't figured out yet there would have been better ways to go about that.

I think the real issue was that Cybertruck required way more structural parts (body) than Tesla originally thought. It was originally supposed to have a load bearing exoskeleton.

> it was intended a low-volume product for next-gen Tesla tech

If this is true that's not what Musk was saying beforehand.

That is the opposite story that Musk told when hyping the Cybertruck, though.

Musk projected that the Cybertruck would sell 250k annually. It's selling around 20k. Even for Musk, that isn't normal exaggeration; that's a huge difference.

That's weird too, maybe they just have some preorders they need to fulfill. They did stop its production for a while last year and reduced the number of models available.

Tesla has a factor in Germany.

To be "for the masses", it would need to:

- be smaller

- have an actually usuable truck bed

- be painted (so rust isn't an issue)

- have a body that's not literally duck taped together in some places and can easily snap in others

- use steel (which bends) for body construction

- be suitable for towing hauls

- not be ridiculously overpowered (...to the extent where engine can overpower the breaks)

- have good visibility with a windshield that isn't at a sharp angle to the ground and body geometry which doesn't maximize blind spots

- not have sharp corners that the cut you or doors that can decapitate your dog

- have door handles that make doors openable in case of emergencies/no power situations/electric shorts

- not have bulletproof glass (WTF, "for the masses"?) which makes makes it harder to rescue people when accidents happen

- be easily repairable, or at least amenable to repairs in local non-Tesla shops, with customers being confident it their warranty won't go poof (as the law requires)

- be easily customizeable for different applications (particularly when it comes to the bed)

- not look so different from other trucks without any reason other than "Elon Musk wants to be edgy": ugly is subjective, being a billionaire's fashion statement isn't

...to start. That's off the top of my head.

And, of course, being priced for the masses, which doesn't just happen. It's a design requirement.

As it stands, the Cybertruck is, and has always been, a rich boy's luxury toy — and it was designed as one.

It really seems like something got to Musk's head that he thought the world has so many edgy rich boys.

You want to see a modern truck "for the masses"? That's Toyota IMV 0, aka Hilux Champ [1]. Ticks all the above boxes.

And hits the $10,000 price point [2]. A literal order of magnitude cheaper than the Cybertruck.

Speaking of which: a car "for the masses" isn't a truck. It's a minivan (gets the entire family from one place to another), it's a small sedan/hatchback (commuter vehicle), a crossover/small SUV to throw things, kids, and dogs into without having to play 3D Tetris in hard mode.

But not a pickup truck, which is a specialized work vehicle.

The masses aren't farmers and construction workers (most people live in the cities, and only a small number needs such a work vehicle).

The popularity of The Truck in the US is, in a large part, a byproduct of regulation which gives certain exemptions to specialized work vehicles.[3]

That's not even getting to the infrastructure part: trucks shine in remote, rural areas. And while one can always have a canister of gas in the truck bed, power stations can be hard to find in the middle of the field or a remote desert highway.

But again, it's not impossible to make a truck for the masses (at least for certain markets). That's the $10K Hilux Champ.

For all the luxury aspects of the Tesla sedan, it's been one of the most (if not the most) practical electric vehicles on account of range alone. It also looked like a normal car at a time when EVs screamed "look at me, I'm so greeeeeen!" from a mile away (remember 1st gen Nissan Leaf or BMW i3?). It was conformal and utilitarian, while also being futuristic and luxurious enough for the high price point was fair for what was offered.

The public image of having a Tesla was good: you are affluent, future-forward, and caring for the environment.

The Cybertruck went back on everything that made Tesla a success: it's conspicuous, impractical, overpriced, and currently having publicity rivaling that of the recent Melania documentary.

It was not a risky bet. It was an a-priori losing bet. The world simply never needed as many edgy toys as Musk wanted to sell.

And driving a car shaped as an "I'm a Musk fanboy" banner really lost its appeal after a few Roman salutes and the dear leader's DOGE stint.

Overly optimistic engineering assessments? Perhaps, but they are much further down on the list of reasons of Cybertruck's failure.

[1] https://www.roadandtrack.com/reviews/a45752401/toyotas-10000...

[2] https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/2025-toyota-imv-0-pickup-...

[3] https://reason.com/2024/02/02/why-are-pickup-trucks-ridiculo...

Yes. It's a flop:

https://insideevs.com/news/784715/tesla-cybertruck-ev-sales-...