AUSTIN, Texas — Love it or hate it, there’s no doubt that Tesla’s electric Cybertruck is impressive with its audacious angular design, powerful engine and stunning towing capacity.
For automotive journalist Alanis King, a UT Austin graduate who now writes for leading car magazines like "Road and Track" and who hosts a popular car review YouTube channel, it’s a risk that only Tesla could have taken.
King said the company boldly went where other truck makers aren’t too likely to go.
“If you’re going for a volume seller, you don’t want to do something totally wild unless your CEO [Elon Musk] is also pretty wild and people appreciate that about them. So that’s why Tesla can get away with this,” King said.
Still, King said that once owners begin taking delivery of their Cybertrucks, there could be some bumps in the road.
“There is some potential for some not-so-great headlines about this truck as the first customer units roll out, and we see some issues with it. There’s also potential to change the way automotive design goes," King said.
Indeed, the Cybertruck is a radical departure from traditional pickup truck design, which has remained pretty much unchanged style-wise since the first pickup arrived nearly 100 years ago in 1925, when Ford sprung its Model-T- based Runabout on the public.
By the 1950s, pickup truck design became more car-like and, over the decades, it became more popular with the public. Americans bought nearly three million new pickups in 2022.
At the manufacturing hub for Cybertrucks near Austin, the question is: how many cyber trucks will be sold? Likely, quite a bit.
Some media outlets report that the wait list for Tesla’s new creation could take more than three years to clear. And with a price tag of just under $80,000 for what’s available now, it could be a big money maker – certainly a long way since that first Ford pickup 98 years ago, which cost $281 brand new.