Elon Musk made new comments on the Tesla Cybertruck, saying that “the goal is to kick the most amount of ass possible with this truck.”
When the Cybertruck rolled up on stage last year, many thought that Elon Musk had lost his mind, but the CEO was always really aware that the electric pickup truck’s design would be polarizing.
When asked on the Automotive News podcast about whether or not Tesla did any customer research before design the Cybertruck, Musk burst out laughing:
Customer research? We just made a car we thought was awesome and looks super weird. I just wanted to make a futuristic battle tank — something that looks like it could come out of Blade Runner or Aliens or something like that but was also highly functional.
Before even unveiling the Cybertruck, Musk was already saying that Tesla could always design a more traditional pickup truck with the Cybertruck’s powertrain if it wasn’t well received.
Now, after Tesla has received over 500,000 reservations for the Cybertruck, the CEO is reiterating those comments:
It can be a better sports car than a Porsche 911, a better truck than an F-150, and it’s armored and looks sort of kick-ass from the future. That was the goal, recognizing this could be a complete failure. But I wasn’t super worried about that because if it turns out nobody wants to buy a weird-looking truck, we’ll build a normal truck, no problem. There’s lots of normal trucks out there that look pretty much the same; you can hardly tell the difference. And sure, we could just do some copycat truck; that’s easy. So that’s our fallback strategy.
Design aside, Tesla is looking to make the Cybertruck a leader in the pickup segment for functionality and performance.
Musk added:
We’re really, fundamentally making this truck as a North American ass-kicker, basically. The goal is to kick the most amount of ass possible with this truck. We want it to be something you could use to tow a boat, a horse trailer, pull tree stumps out of the ground, go off-roading and you don’t have to worry about scratching the paint because there is no paint. You could just be smashing boulders and be fine.
The CEO often joked about how Tesla “makes the best vehicles for the apocalypse.”
The Cybertruck might turn the joke into reality:
So it’s probably helpful in the apocalypse. Things are seeming more apocalyptic these days. Let me tell you, the truck you want in the apocalypse is the Cybertruck.
Tesla is planning to bring the Cybertruck electric pickup to production in late 2021.
The automaker will start by offering the two higher-end versions of the electric pickup truck starting at $50,000 and with up to 500 miles of range on a single charge.
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