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this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2025
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...and unlike the Pinto, because we are so deep into fucked-reality-ville, it won't get recalled.
Ford's reasoning was that it was cheaper to pay out for the injuries and deaths than to change the car. Cybertruck has a much better plot armor, a fanbase that refuses to believe it's crap.
I think that fanbase is staying to wane. But who knows, maybe the gas loving Maga rednecks will start buying...who am I kidding, most of them can't afford the ridiculous price tag.
Not only that, it's not even a proper truck. They could have come up with a standard truck design and used tech and EV to create a new niche that was usable. But no one can tell Elon no, so his 5-year-old self's vision had to be made because it's different. Sometimes different doesn't mean better.
The kind of car Blade Runner would have driven.
Blade Runner vehicles were more aligned with 1960s coupes
You mean he drew the design with a crayon?
What often happens in cases like that is people on the edge leave, but those who remain are now distilled insanity.
the maga crowd has diesel truck attached to their very masculinity, thats never happening.
The MAGA crowd mostly needs to give their truck gender-affirming care by giving them truck nuts.
They can just buy a used one since the value of these fucking hunks of junk drops dramatically once its driven at all.
I read a reddit post recently by a guy who had bought one for $135K after shelling out $50K to a broker to find him one. He was wanting to sell but couldn't get more than $70K for it lol.
According to the article there are already five less of them than there used to be.
The very real origin of the Fight Club joke about not doing a recall
"joke"
I don't know. I'm not sure I've seen or encountered strong pro cyber truck sentiment. Maybe a bit of online excitement for like a day when they were first rolling out but now it's been a laughing stock.
IRL owners are something else to deal with. they get mad when you point and laugh at their rolling dumpster
I sped up and passed one on the freeway just to give him the finger. He even looked like pre-gender affirming surgery Elon. Who looks a lot like Andrew Tate.
There's 3-4 Wankpazers around here and I see them around once a week. I flip them off every chance I get.
I'm a school bus driver - kids love the things and go apeshit whenever they see one. Fortunately, not many elementary school kids can afford one.
Nah, he will just get more government grants to "fix" it. (Aren't they up to like 30% grants at this point?)
Nah. The Ford Pinto laid the groundwork for the NHTSA's regulatory control of forced recalls. The only way this thing doesn't get recalled for being dangerous is if Musk's D. o. g. e manages to undercut or defund the NHTSA.
Additionally, other countries with better regulatory bodies won't even allow it to be sold or will require mandatory recall of these vehicles which means the end of the cyber truck. They can't even sell them because people don't want them.
The other thing is that insurance companies can absolutely refuse to insure them and if I'm honest, they may be the main reason that the NHTSA doesn't back down from regulating them (insurance companies are a powerful lobby, and they absolutely can countermand the automotive lobby in some cases).
My point is, it's more complicated than just "Musk is a government official now, and historically dangerous cars weren't recalled".
It will take Leon 20 minutes to shut down the whole agency claiming that they actually eat babies and people will just go with it.
I don't know why you keep saying intentionally inflammatory things that don't take into account the full list of factors and facts we have about how the real world works, but you do you, I guess.
Because the way the world worked changed a few months ago. Trump is immune and has pardon powers.
You'd be surprised at how little it's changed. Oligarchs are still oligarchs. You think the Ford and GMC CEOs are just gonna let Musk come in and eat their lunch when they have a whole swathe of legal teams just waiting for the government to breach a contract?
I hope you are right, but all oligarchs fell in line real quick so far. Donating millions to Trump, getting rid of DEI, unbanning nazis, etc. Tax breaks are coming and they don't want to be excluded.
Project 2025 has explicit targets for reforming NHTSA. It is unambiguously in their sights, just lower on the priority list.
Agreed. And that's where consumer choice comes in. People don't want them. Tesla is having to rework their entire plant to use the assembly lines that produce cybertrucks because they can't sell the ones they've already made. They projected and prepared to manufacturer and sell 500,000 and they've sold something like 40,000 and the rest are just sitting in retail lots or holding lots collecting dust. The best estimate seems to be that they might be able to sell another 30,000 in 2025. But with tax credits for EV's going away and other regulations going into effect world wide, that is probably a pipe dream.
On a scale from 0 to 3 (out of 10), how surprised would you be to read that the DHS decided to purchase 250.000 cybertrucks, because they are bulletproof? Before you go to Google it - I made it up, but there is a 50% chance of it coming in the next weeks.
I would be surprised for a lot of reasons. The main one being, they'd have to be dirt cheap and have an exceptional warranty agreement attached in order to compete with other automakers who make bulletproof vehicles. And, further there's too many other problems with the amount of information they collect that the DHS would not have full and direct control over. Tesla's are well known for recording anything and everything. We learned when they blew one up outside that Trump Hotel that they can be remotely locked by Tesla the company. A private company should not have that kind of direct access to government vehicles of any kind.
I think that really underestimates how corruption would work. Tesla might make a show of a "government edition" software loadout, whether because they had to or even as theater to pretend they catered to government requirements when in actuality it's largely the same but maybe with some branding.
In terms of pricing, I'm sure that any actually "bulletproof" vehicles cost plenty. Which is why even departments like the DHS have largely unarmored fleets. Tesla wouldn't meet those standards, but the marketing might be sufficient to serve as a bullet point over the current non-armored vehicles they use.
I think we can count on the corruption and legal rights of other companies more than you think apparently. Tesla's not the only car company. They certainly don't have the same pull in the government as Ford and GMC and Dodge. Tesla is a brand new player who cannot be trusted to follow the rules and deactivate or unequip any sensors and components for tracking that the government would require (on trucks they have already manufactured for the civilian market - which would be the case because Tesla already has significant stock it can't sell). The government don't have the qualified personnel to upkeep these vehicles, and that's assuming they even have a place to store a fleet of them that's covered parking.
A government software load out is not going to be enough. When the government buys vehicles they specifically have them manufactured to a spec and that spec would have to involve the removal and or lack of installation of most of the sensors and capabilities the vehicle comes with stock. So they either have to buy them as is and modify them (which requires personnel with a specific set of training and qualifications), or they have to be manufactured to that spec at the Tesla factory (or retrofitted to remove the unwanted components).
DHS's armored and unarmored fleets can be washed, can be parked in an uncovered lot, can be maintenanced by the personnel they already have. There's way more to buying a fleet of vehicles than just the price tag for individual units.
I work on planes for a living including government planes when we get the contract for those and let me tell you, they differ quite a lot from conventional civilian planes even when the base plane is the same. Tesla doesn't already have a contract, and even if they get one that money isn't allocated to them in the budget. There's plenty of other reasons why I think this is a BS take, but man even corruption has a shelf life. Trump may be out of office in a couple of years but the entire government won't just up and retire with him. Their corruption will definitely conflict with his because these are career politicians and Trump is liable to die in office.
The skin is literally handgun resistant not anything more than that. And the windows aren't bullet proof. They'd have to modify each door to take bulletproof glass. It's prohibitively expensive on a vehicle that wasn't engineered for that.
It's the kind of thing I'll believe when I see it and not a moment before.
You mean that dog killer lady and Nazi weirdo care about competition and data security?
They aren't the only people who have a say in what happens. It's funny to me that y'all clearly don't know how the government works or how much red tape there is. Tesla is an overvalued and under performing company that barely deserves to be called an automotive manufacturer.
The government has already signed contracts with other car manufacturers for the purposes of armored vehicles. Those manufacturers will absolutely sue for breach of contract in the event that the government doesn't pay them and utilize their vehicles. Further, there are still regulations and specifications that are required to be met. They can't fire everyone no matter how much they think they can. And Congress will not jeopardize their cash cows.
It's a lot of different echelons of the government that this type of thing has to go through and it's definitely not going to happen overnight. I'm not saying it can't happen. I'm saying that it'll take time and the other automotive companies will fight back against anything they see as a conflict of interest.
I can understand that people think things look bleak. But like half of what's going on right now is scare tactics to make the general populace capitulate without a fight. The people who know how things work are very rarely ever at the top of anything. The people who get shit done are rarely at the top.
The budget is already signed sealed and delivered. Where's DHS gonna get this money? Because I would bet other car manufacturers have already bid for the contract for new vehicles. So unless you've got something that says Tesla won the bid, quit playing with me.
Have you seen how fast other companies roll over to this admin? Why care about a 100M contract when you can get a 1B tax break?
And you are thinking about red tape in a sane government. Here you comply or get fired and replaced with a yes man.
Look, all I'm asking is that Tesla investors lose all their goddamn money.
I would love it if the board voted Elon out. I know it won’t happen because they’re a bunch of sycophants, but “Elons antics and poor decisions are causing us to lose money” is a great reason to do so.
Lol. You're getting your wish. They basically would be in the red if it weren't for some credits and Bitcoin they sold.
https://electrek.co/2025/01/30/a-quarter-of-teslas-earnings-were-due-to-recongnizing-a-600-million-gain-on-bitcoin/
I'd like to thank you for this measured take in response to my unbridled cynicism.
To be fair, you made a good point. In the article it states pretty definitively that the NHTSA hasn't been allowed to have the Cybertruck independently crash tested which is bogus as hell.
The fact that it can't force that from any car manufacturer doesn't really make sense. They haven't even received relevant data related to Tesla's in house crash testing and I can't even begin to understand how that's legal.
They will be neutered even further soon, they're on the project 2025 list.
I believe they're absolutely not street legal in the UK, nor in the EU. Those were never "ridiculous sized trucks" Walhalla to begin with (although I see more Rams than I care to, these days), so there's roughly zero chance those things will become mainstream here.
Heck, we have rain here, that's enough of a wankpanzer repellant.
They haven't been banned from sale in the UK or EU so far as I can tell, according to the article.
But the relevant safety organizations and municipalities have been impounding them when they show up, so that's something.
They don't have to explicitly ban the Cybertruck if it doesn't pass the existing regulations. It's not legal to drive in UK/EU. You could buy one for display-only or something I'm sure.
Let me simplify it for you... Musk has been targeting agencies that stood in the way of SpaceX. Did you hear he started targeting OSHA this week because of the spotlight on Musk's intentional dismissal of safety regulations? Or that he is also targeting the consumer protection agency? Everything that protects regular citizens is being shut down as "wasteful", and his only criteria is anything that costs him money or prevents him from exploiting workers.
Don't forget the revelation that USAID was looking into Starlink in a critical way...
Yeah I've seen some bits about that, they were looking into how Musk was interfering with the Ukraine war I think?
I mean, the thing is already outright illegal in most countries where pedestrian safety is taken into account. An EU version would have to look completely different.
Probably why he’s closed the CFPB.
These are cybertruck owners....