Gary Zhou 
Elon Musk made new comments about the Tesla Cybertruck – saying “the goal is to kick the most amount of ass possible with this truck.”
As the Cybertruck rolled up on stage last year, many thought Elon Musk had lost his mind, but the CEO was still conscious that the concept of the electric pickup truck would be polarizing.
Musk burst out laughing when asked on the Automotive News podcast about whether or not Tesla was conducting some consumer testing before developing the Cybertruck:
“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 introducing the Cybertruck, Musk had already claimed that if it was not well received, Tesla could always build a more conventional pickup truck using the Cybertruck’s powertrain.
Now that Cybertruck has more than 500,000 reservations, 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 for versatility and efficiency to make the Cybertruck a pioneer in the pickup market.
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 plans to put the Cybertruck electric pickup into service by the end of 2021. The automaker will begin by selling the two higher-end models of the electric pickup truck starting at $50,000 with a range of up to 500 miles.
Reported by Electrek.
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