A folded stainless exoskeleton without paint has the potential to make low volume car manufacturing much cheaper.

A press brake is generic and cheap. Molds for presses are cheap if the cost can be spread over many vehicles, but are expensive for low volume manufacturing.

Paint shops are similar. They're not expensive if you're running a lot of cars in the same color through it, but at low volumes with custom colors they are fabulously expensive.

Of course the final production Cybertruck didn't use the exoskeleton design so it was the worst of both worlds, but it does feel like the original design wasn't expected to sell well and was designed for low volume manufacturing.

Bending stainless steel requires special tooling and strategies to overcome its tendency to work harden and high springback.

The folded steel exoskeleton has no potential, it was a bad idea that was abandoned. It was always going to crack at the folds.