Cybertruck: A Statement in Automotive Design
As electric surges into mainstream, Tesla’s Cybertruck raises an interesting conversation about automotive design and style
Cars and trucks are status symbols. No matter what year, make, or model, automobiles are seen as road jewelry; an explanation of social hierarchy. A beat-up and rusty ‘82 Chevy truck with a utility box and a logo on the side? It’s probably owned by a hard-working blue-collar mobile mechanic who is skilled enough to keep the old rattletrap running. A chrome-clad 2010 Lexus that still looks shiny ten years later? An office worker who lives a tidy personal life with a penchant for comfort and an eye for details. Whenever a manufacturer releases a new vehicle most of the reaction from the buyers is about how it looks. When Chevrolet released the 7th-Gen Corvette back in 2014, nobody paid attention to the bleeding-edge tech. Regardless of the technology it had to rev-match by itself and tune the traction control based on tire temperature, people could only seem to focus on how different the C7’s curves were from the C6. It makes sense, as the current bulk of the car-buying public becomes more and more disconnected from the garage. People don’t refer to cars by their make and model, they say, “The silver one,” or “The blue one.” So when a new vehicle arrives as a brand new product line, it needs to make a bold visual statement. As electrification launches into the mainstream, let’s look back on the design of one of the industry’s most polarizing battery banshees; the Tesla Cybertruck.
Tesla’s Cybertruck is nothing if not iconic, and it hasn’t even seen production yet. That counts for something.
Fresh Ideas…?
The Cybertruck’s angular lines, flat planes, and sharp edges have been the topic of meme and article alike ever since the reveal. Elon Musk has stated the truck is designed so radically because the Cybertruck needed to stand out from the crowd and be different. The light duty truck market is so saturated with brand loyalty that mimicking existing pickup design cues wouldn’t win any customers. Silverado owners are going to scoff and keep buying Sivlerados, and the same is true across F-Series, Ram, Tundra, and even Titan. Elon is a brilliant mind, and the theory is great on paper. But we’ve seen how this ‘be different’ formula has worked before. Witness the Subaru Baja, Chevrolet Avalanche, and original Honda Ridgeline. These vehicles had great ideas, but couldn’t breach the market share to stay relevant, suffered abysmal sales, and eventually got the axe. The average Subaru buyer didn’t need a pickup bed, and the average minitruck offered a larger bed for less money. A new Baja was outcompeted by a used Tacoma, S10, or Ranger. The Avalanche’s bed was tiny in comparison to its Silverado cousin but cost more, and the novelty of the Avalanche’s design couldn’t justify its lack of value. It seemed like it combined the Silverado’s and Tahoe’s worst attributes into one vehicle. Honda’s Ridgeline was too early to the midsize truck party (a vehicle size that the current Tacoma and Ranger now dominate). But not only did Honda compete in an empty gymnasium, it also lacked the hardware to steal sales from established truck marques at Toyota and ‘the Big Three.’ Tesla tried to learn from these mistakes when they created the Cybertruck, and went in a different direction. The question that people asked was, “Why that direction?”
Prior to the Cybertruck’s release, Turkish car designer Emre Husmen performed his own rendering of what a Tesla truck could be. Husmen’s rendering was a truck that was smooth, curvy, and stylish. It took clear cues from existing Tesla vehicles like the front and rear fascia, grille, door handles, and roofline. The design looked cool, and looked exactly like what a Tesla truck should be. It would look at home on the showroom next to its brand siblings Model X and Model S. Not only that, but it achieved Elon’s goal of breaking away from design norms. Husmen’s curvaceous design defied the broad shoulders and flat lines of the established truck market. So when Tesla revealed the actual Cybertruck, it was met with mixed reactions. To some, the polygon pickup was a refreshing change of pace. For others, it was wholly impractical and silly. What is odd about the Cybertruck’s geometrical styling is that it disobeys a key market strategy in the automotive industry; design language.
Husmen’s rendering embraces the iconic Tesla design language that the Cybertruck so deftly ignores.
Automotive Design Language
In the sea of silver, white, and black paint that dominates today’s salesfloors, automotive designers have to create a design language that separates their vehicles from their rivals. Lexus’ angular and gaping maw of a grille instantly identifies them as a Lexus. The aggressive and risky styling not only separates it from competitors at Acura and Infiniti, but it also separates it from the Toyota platforms that they’re based on. The Lexus ES looks nothing like the Camry it shares its underpinnings with; given the hefty $15,000 premium over the Camry, that’s a good thing. But design language isn’t just for identification and visual marketing, it can also be used to leap the entire industry’s design focus forward. One of the best examples of this is the second-generation Dodge Ram; the 1994-2002 model years.
The post-war pickups of the late ‘40s and early ‘50s were round-nosed, curvy, and smooth. But from the early 1960s onward, pickups had a very blocky bodystyle. The bedsides were flat, the nose was squared off, and everything was built to be utilitarian and inexpensive for the blue collar buyer. By the late 1980s, Dodge’s truck sales were paling in comparison to their Blue Oval and Bowtie rivals. They needed something different, and something different is what they got. Taking clear cues from the round-nosed pickups of the ‘40s and ‘50s, Dodge created a truck that immediately stood out from its rivals. An imposing hood bulging up from the fenders, a pronounced grille, and a rounded-off cab gave it away in a parking lot as the new Ram. Sales more than doubled from 95,000 units in ‘93 to over 230,000 in ‘94. In ‘97, the F-150 grabbed a piece of the pie with its own round design, and GM followed shortly after in ‘99. The retro movement continued to bleed from trucks into passenger cars, and the Chrysler PT Cruiser, Chevrolet HHR, and Plymouth Prowler are the most exaggerated examples of throwback design language. One could argue that the Cybertruck is doing the same thing as the 2nd-gen Ram, but your author highly doubts a new wave of origami automobiles in the near future. As revolutionary as the Ram’s lines were, there was a limit to how far from the norm they could break away. With these nameplates of proven sales domination, it was baffling how defiant the Cybertruck was to these norms with its hard shift to flat steel. Not only does the Cybertruck spit in the face of the conventional truck market, but it seems to spit in the face of its Tesla siblings, too. It doesn’t look like a normal truck, but it also doesn’t look like a Tesla. However, this might just be something about Elon Musk and his company; they understand the power of the internet in ways that the other big automakers never could.
Over a year after the initial press release, and car enthusiasts still find themselves scratching their head at the Cybertruck’s extreme angles and flat lines.
When was the last time you saw people outside of the enthusiast world comment on the release of an automobile? Even the new C8 Corvette which made waves amongst car people didn’t get so much as a blip in the rest of the world. The Cybertruck didn’t play by the rules, and that gave it attention. Musk understands the power that memes can have to push a product, and as hilarious as it sounds, it’s a genuine marketing strategy. And it works. As revolutionary as the Model X and Model Y are from a hardware standpoint, their designs don’t break any barriers. They meet the status quo of the curvy, smooth, overweight-looking crossovers that everyone else is making. The Cybertruck’s outrageous appearance is its own marketing department because it breaks away from its siblings so much and gets people talking. The big question is how to stop people from talking, and get them to start buying.
Breaking the Market
The least expensive Tesla is the Model 3, a compact sedan which starts just under $44,000. For that same price, you can get a full-size Toyota Avalon XSE Hybrid Nightshade loaded to the gills with the optional Wind Chill Pearl white paint, 14-speaker JBL Premium Audio, Dynamic Nav, and still have enough room for those optional $400 illuminated door sill plates. Tesla’s heftiest window sticker is worn by the Model X, bursting the scales at a whopping $104,000. For that same money, you could buy two TRD Pro 4Runners. If you prefer a used car lot then you could get a 2016 Highlander for the family, a 2004 Mustang GT for a weekend toy, a 2007 Tacoma for the trail, and still have enough left over for a ‘99 Civic and an iPad for the teen. Tl;dr, Teslas are expensive, and in a way that seems disproportionate to their features. Does that electric motor really justify a price tag double that of their competition? My primary complaint with the current swath of Teslas is that they don’t feel like transportation; they’re toys for the rich. Tesla’s next marketing strategy needs to be shedding that stigma. Could the Cybertruck pull it off? Maybe. How many keyboard warriors would actually shell out the proposed $40,000 of their hard-earned cheddar for the memetruck? It’s hard to say, but time will tell.