The Tesla Cybertruck

Listen as the Carstuff crew give you a rundown of Tesla's Cybertruck unveiling event held on November 21, 2019.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to car Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode
of car Stuff. I am one of your hosts, Kurt Garren,
and I'm here with oh Ben Bullen. That's me, Hey Kurt,
Hey Ben. How are you doing today? I am always
doing well when we get to hop on the air together.

(00:23):
But I gotta I gotta say, man, I've been a
little distracted recently, probably noticed around the office and a
little loof loose, little absent minded because something happened recently
that just it haunts me. Man I I can't get
this image out of my mind? Would you be talking

(00:44):
about Tesla's announcement of the cyber truck by each n
How did you know? Is it because I've changed my
screen saver to a cyber truck? Have you? Really? Is
it because? Is it because I am considering getting a
cyber truck tattoo? That part is not true. It is true, however,
that you and I, like a lot of people, were

(01:06):
to see the least surprised by the recent revelation of
the Tesla cyber truck. The unveiling occurred on the twenty
one November nineteen, just a few days back at the
Tesla Design studio, which is next to SpaceX, and during
this presentation, I don't know, how would you describe it?

(01:29):
Eighties inspired, dark, post apocalyptic, let's get a blade Runner vibe? Right?
For sure. It made me revisit the highly underrated eighties
car movie The Raith. I don't know if you're familiar
with the cut. Yeah, yeah, that's the Wraith is from right,
And it's not so much for the design of the car.
The design of the car is very blade Runner. That's

(01:51):
the comparison that most people are putting out there. It's
just the feel of the whole thing. Is that eighties
futuristic vibe? Yeah? Yeah, exactly the future as it was
thought of in the eighties. Before we get into the
details of the cybertruck, let's make this very very clear.
It is a divisive announcement. When it occurs, Tesla's stock

(02:14):
sinks like six percent immediately after the announcement. Some people
called it ugliest sin, some people thought it was very
cool in a sci fi retro way. And probably the
most off script thing that happened during the presentation was
when Ellen Musk asked someone to demonstrate the amazing properties

(02:35):
of the Tesla armor glass that was in the vehicle.
Remember that. I think we actually have a clip of
it here we can play for you. Oh my god, Well,
maybe that was a little too hard. It didn't go
through yikes. Indeed, yes, So that was Franz von Holshausen,

(03:00):
who was the lead designer for Tesla. We're hearing there
is a test of the bulletproof glass, so called bulletproof glass.
And as you heard Elon Musk himself say, the glass
it didn't go through the glass. This object that we're
throwing at the windows, it did crack them. So people

(03:20):
react to this he the guy throws this steel ball,
and you can make a couple of different points about
the shape of the object thrown and how that can
affect the glass itself. But to me it didn't seem
like the hugest deal. But a lot of people, a
lot of people instantly started ridiculing the project for this,
which I thought was a little unfair. Yeah. Well, but

(03:42):
the glass wasn't supposed to break, and they did a
test before the show and the glass did not break.
The official reasoning behind the glass breaking was that when
they hit the door panel with a mallet, which is
a sledgehammer, which is something that they did before they
threw the ball ring at the window. The hit from
the mallet broke the glass underneath I guess at the

(04:05):
base of the glass, so it kind of weakened it
a little bit. Um, So that's the official excuse or
the official reason. However. Yeah, however, I mean you have
to remember, basically, this was production is down the road.
I believe production is going to start, so basically looking
at a very early mock up of the truck anyway,

(04:25):
So yeah, that's true. But the technology was supposed to
be there. So the glass broke for some reason, and
there are some conspiracy theories behind why it broke, but
really the only conspiracy theory is that it was a
publicity stunt. Right if you hear and see the reaction
from Musk, you kind of know that Mrs embarrassed. He
rolled with it, but he was, Yeah, it was I

(04:48):
think it was clearly not scripted. A lot of times
when people try to script corporate events like that, it's
very obvious it's better to be sincere in those events.
I think he was sincerely surprised, but to bite getting
criticized by people despite having a brief moment of internet
meme popularity. When the clip of the broken window goes viral,

(05:09):
or I would say the cracked window goes viral, it
appears that some people are big fans of this truck.
Just two days later, on the twenty three November, Musk
tweeted that Tesla had already received a hundred and forty
six thousand pre orders in the first day and a
half after the unveiling. Each of those pre orders requires

(05:31):
a one dollar refundable deposit, so it's a promising sign.
But what about the truck itself. We'll dive into the stats,
the options, the trim after a word from our sponsor,
and we've returned now, Kurt. One thing that stood out

(05:54):
to both of us, I think was the entry price point.
Right now, they say the side Rich Chuck is we
want to start at thirty nine thousand, nine hundred dollars,
So fairly low price point for a groundbreaking vehicle. At
least it's a landmark vehicle for Tesla andsa ground breaking
vehicle when you when you talk about the pickup truck
in general, it's just a drastic reimagining. No matter how

(06:16):
you feel about the looks of it. You have to
give it props for being different, which if you're one
of those people that think different is cool, this has
got to be extremely cool. At that thirty nine thousand,
nine hundred dollar price point, that you get a single
motor rear wheel drive version that has a range of
two hundred and fifty miles, a zero to sixty speed

(06:38):
of six point five seconds in a top seed of
a hundred and ten miles per hour. Not too shabby,
And the payload is the same for there's three different versions.
By the way, I don't know if I said that
the payload for them all is thirty five hundred pounds.
The toe rating for the base model is seventy hundred pounds. Well,
let's let's say I get a little bit of scratch,

(07:00):
I got a little extra cheddar in the bank. What
could I get if I step up a little? Well,
if you step up a little, you will be looking
at a dual motor all wheel drive version. I believe
this is the one that most people are going for.
When you were speaking about the pre orders, I think
this is the one that most people have their eye
on and has a three hundred plus mile range. I
don't know how much further that plus is going to

(07:22):
get you Zero to sixty is four point five seconds.
In the top speed is ten miles an hour more
than the base model at a hundred and twenty. Again,
the payload is the same and the tow rating is
ten thousand pounds. Okay, so you can haul two thousand
five more pounds. Right, It's faster and it has a

(07:42):
wider range. Okay, Well, you know what, Kurt, Let's say
that I have been saving my pennies. You know, I've
been working on the side selling artists in Scotch tape
or whatever, and I've got even more money to spend.
And I and I say, you know, the dual motor
all will drive is okay, but h wait, wait, what

(08:04):
can you do for me a loan? If I give
you even more money? Well, if you really did well
and you had seventy thousand dollars to spend, you will
get a tri motor all wheel drive trucks. So that's
three motors. They're looking at five hundred mile range, two
point nine seconds zero to sixty with that instant torque.
Top speed is a hundred and thirty miles per hour.
Payload is the same throughout the range and it can

(08:27):
tow fourteen thousand pounds. Oh yeah, it looks like I'm
going for the tri motor, And you're correct. Most people
did choose the dual motor. All will Drive forty two
chose that when chose tri motor, and only seventeen of
people and the pre orders chose the base model, the
single motor configuration. So numbers are still coming in for

(08:50):
pre orders. They've already broken two hundred thousand as of
the past few days. And now I have to ask.
I know that we have, like everybody has their own
set of aesthetics. What some people think is beautiful, some
people think is ugly. I personally really warmed to the
cyber truck partially because of the I'm interested in the

(09:16):
material design of it, you know, uh, the unibody construction,
the fact that it's such a mix of marketing and
engineering because they have a unibody construction like most cars,
but they call it an exoskeleton. And it's weird because
trucks typically have body on frame construction. This thing has

(09:37):
pretty thick, stainless steel body panels. The reasoning it doesn't
have a lot of curves is because these body panels
cannot be stamped like other automobile parts. They can only
bend along straight lines. And that's why people have said
this looks like a car from a PlayStation one game
or something, you know, which. I think it's funny. It's

(09:59):
im fair. Other people are completely all in on the
idea of this truck, but people have been people have
been pretty critical. One thing I did just for fun,
by the way, was I went to the Tesla website
and started looking into the pre order and design of
the truck. So if I go for the tri motor,

(10:21):
all will drive as you said, sixty nine dollars. Let's
say I want to add the self driving software. That's
an extra seven thousand dollars and do today. We just
need to give them a credit card so they could
get a hundred dollars and then for the rest of it,
I'll just tell Mr Musk that the check is in

(10:42):
the mail. Yeah. I feel like a lot of people
are just paying the one hundred dollars to get their
name on the list so they can say they got
their name on the list with no intention of buying
the car when it comes out. Possibly, I mean, I wonder, Okay,
so they say that they say that deposit is refundable,
but maybe it's not refundable if you'd change your mind,
you know what I mean. Well, apparently Must kind of

(11:04):
puts these ideas out there, and many of them come
to fruition, but some of them don't. So we'll I
have to see when it comes out if these three
versions stay the same, if it even looks the same.
Because I was intrigued about the tires. I'm just wondering
what kind of tires this thing has on it, because
the tires have little elements of them that go with

(11:26):
the wheel design, so it's not just some regular tire
you can buy. I mean, I'm sure you can put
the standard tire on there. However, kind of ruins the
look a little bit. So even the tires, to me,
are kind of interesting. What will the final product look like?
Another issue that I took with the design, which I
like overall. I liked it initially when I saw it,
and I still like it. But the bed of the

(11:47):
truck is not accessible from the side, So if you're
using this as a you would normally use a pickup truck,
you would normally throw things over the side. Sometimes you'll
go around to the back loaded through the tailgate. However,
a lot of times if you're lumber furniture, you might
want to lift it over on on the side of
the of the bed. And this one, the way the

(12:07):
angle comes down off the bat glass, it doesn't seem
like you would be able to get to the back
of the bed of the truck from the side is easily. Yeah.
This goes into a question that I wanted to bring
to you into you, fellow listeners. Whenever somebody designs or
makes a new car, new vehicle of any sort, when
the first questions they have to ask is who is
this vehicle for? And in the case of the cyber truck,

(12:33):
there have been critics who are saying, you know, this
is not a truck for truck people. How do you
feel about that? I don't I mean this to me,
that's a broad statement. I don't really know who truck
people are. Some people totally just have their beat work truck,
you know what I mean? Uh? And then other people
might have a really nice F one fifty that's their

(12:54):
daily driver. And Christine right, the type is slow down
its speed ums, which is so ridiculous. But you know,
what's your car? Do what you will? With it. The
reason I bring up that criticism is because I feel
like me, Okay, I see your point about practicality for
that pickup bed, but maybe it's just so new and

(13:16):
so different that we have to give it time for
We have to give the car buying audience time to
pick it up as well, because if it turns out
that it does the stuff he says it will do,
then people will buy it. Well, the demo they did
during the concept event, that's what I'm calling it, was

(13:38):
loading it. So they drove an a TV that they've designed.
I don't know if they're going to be producing this
a TV, but it's an electric ATV. They drove up
onto the back of the into the bed of the truck,
and it aesthetically matches. Yeah, it looks cool and you
can plug it in and the bed and charge it
and it has a nice ramp that extends from the
tailgate to the ground. Um, so I think that's what

(14:02):
they see the bed of the truck being used for
more like a roll on, roll off situation rather than
if by truck person you mean someone who wants to
use their truck to haul things every day in I'm
not sure that this particular truck is made for those
types of folks, but like it can go off road,
but does it look like an off road truck? Does

(14:23):
it feel like one when you drive it? You know
what I mean? That's what I've been thinking about as well.
Let's pause for a moment for a word from our sponsor,
and we'll be back with some more updates on the
Tesla cyber truck. In a late development, at least as
of recording of this show, Ford had challenged Tesla two

(14:48):
heads up match Tesla release a video of the cyber
truck pulling or out pulling a Ford F one and
pulling it uphill. So somebody from Ford sent out this
message of send us the cyber truck so we can
do a head to head test of our own and
see which one will win. I initially thought when I

(15:11):
saw that that it was crazy. I believe that the
Tesla would probably the electric truck would probably outperform the
F one internal combustion engine because I thought it would
just because of the instant uh, because the application torque. Yeah, apparently,
though they did not use a high end F one
in this test. For in this comparison, Neil de Grass

(15:33):
Tyson weighed in. Yeah, he weighed in and said that
they needed to make the test fair because I think
that's how the Ford thing happened, right, because people watched
that video that you mentioned and I saw it too,
and a lot of people criticize this for being They said,
you know, he stacked at the deck a little. Neil
de grass Tyson said, electric vehicles are famously heavy over

(15:55):
both axles. It's all about the weight born by spinning tires.
That's the source of traction, not the engine power. And
then Musk agreed and responded to Neil de grass Tyson.
He said electric motors also have insane torque. If we
load both trucks to the max, electric still wins. Physics
is the law. Everything else is a recommendation. Neil de

(16:17):
grass Tyson responds and says, we all love to work,
but high torque just spinds a tire in place. If
there's not enough weight to provide traction, fully load the
F one fifty giving highest traction to its rear wheels,
then try to drag that up the hill. I otherwise
agree load both to the max, and the highest torque wins,
which I thought was a fair point. That's a fair point,
but then you would be modifying the F one, you

(16:39):
know what I mean, you be kind of so as
is well, load load them both and then see which
one wins. And I believe the conclusion was the electric
motor would still win out. So there's a Ford executive
named Sonny Madra who also saw this video and wrote
to Allen Musk on Twitter and said, hey, uh, you know,

(17:01):
let's have a fair F one fifty versus cyber truck
tugg of war, and La Musk just said bring it on.
He accepted the challenge. I believe they're gonna end up
doing this even though Ford has backed out. That's right,
they backed down. Uh. There was a Ford spokesperson who
said Sunny's tweet was tongue in cheek to point out

(17:24):
the absurdity of Tesla's video. Nothing more. With America's best
selling truck for forty two years, We've always focused on
serving our truck customers regardless of what others say or do.
We look forward to our all new F one fifty
hybrid coming next year and all electric F one fifty
in a few years. So they're also working arduously toward

(17:45):
an all electric pickup truck, which still sounds kind of
weird just to me personally, because I always associate the
hauling power of trucks with internal combustion engines. Maybe I'm
just the old man. Maybe I'm getting old. Is going
to be several other electric trucks out when the Tesla
comes out as well, so they will have competition, although

(18:08):
Tesla has kind of made their marks being one of
the leaders in in that category. When you think of
electric vehicle, you don't think of a Ford or a Chevy,
you know, you don't think of the Volta. You think
of Tesla because that's what they do. They're of a
Nissan Leaf, right, Yeah, I mean the nic but um

(18:31):
Tesla started out as an electric car company and they're
all in. So that's to me that makes me want
to route for them, you know, like that's their innovative
in that capacity. I mean, they developed partnerships with other
companies along the way. I think Toyota has a partnership
with them. Yeah. It's just so difficult to start a

(18:51):
card company. So many people have tried, so many people
have failed, and in at least one case, in the
case of Tucker, they were shut down by the existing
automobile companies. I know that sounds conspiratorial, but I do
believe that. But I see your point because we're talking
about a company that doesn't They don't do this on

(19:14):
the side, They weren't doing something else and then just decided, Hey,
let's try to make an electric car. This is what
they wanted to do from day one, and it's something
that they have done successfully over a couple of different
iterations and they haven't gone under yet. And the fact
that other car companies are following suit lead me to
believe that the other car companies feel as if this

(19:35):
is where the market is heading. Eventually, it might be
later rather than sooner, but the technology is building in
that direction. I have question for you, my friend. Did
you see the camping mode? Check this out? So this
is another thing that makes me think. It makes me
wonder whether all of this is marketing or all of

(19:56):
this is an indication of how serious they are here.
So if you look up cybertruck camping mode, what you'll
see is polygonal tent. It's still very much in line
with the design of the truck itself, and uh, this
is part of their camping package. So if this thing

(20:17):
really comes out and I think this part is cool.
You'll get a tent with a raised sleeping floor and
a slide out electric stove that runs off the battery pack,
of course, but again that's if this stuff works out.
We should also mention even though it doesn't feel like
an off road car, it's got the clearance is clearly
designed to be off road. Yeah. Yeah. One of the

(20:39):
things that I found interesting when looking at the car
that they were showing off in the event was the
fact that the vehicle had no windshield wipers, no rear
view mirrors on the side. Is these things that make
vehicles street legal, basically headlights, turn signals, that sort of things.
It's like little little touches that get in the way
of maybe the overall aesthetic of the vehicle, but are

(21:01):
still necessary, at least right now. Because the headlight is
just one long stripe. Yeah, it's a light bar. Yeah
it has fog lights, but I'm not sure how they're
gonna incorporate turn signals into that. And the rear lights
are they probably suffice, but they're they're also very small.
The interior is a little sparse for my taste, and
I'm kind of a minimalist too, but I just feel

(21:23):
like it's if you if you look at the available
footage of the interior, what you see is pretty cool
looking steering wheel, a yoke, yeah yeah, and uh, and
then a touch pad and that's it. And the touch
pad is just sort of to the right of the yoke,
and then there's what looks to be a marble countertop

(21:44):
and that's just the vehicle and that looks a little
sparse to be I know, it's different when can get
all the info displayed on that touch screen, but man,
when that thing's off, it's like it just bones. Yeah,
it's weird to me. I'm a storage either. I like
my glove boxes to cram full of whatever. You know.

(22:05):
I think there's a lot of things that they haven't
taken into account yet with the design of the car.
Safety would be one of those aspects that they I
don't think they fully incorporated yet. Tesla is known for
having high safety standards, so I'm sure that in the
final vehicle they will change the design a little bit
to accommodate for safety. That sort of thing, the ultra
hard materials that it's made of, would make me want

(22:28):
to believe that they're going to add something something in
the form of a bumper. Maybe because the concept car
doesn't have bumpers, and I think rear view mirror or
syve view mirrors are required on cars. Maybe they're thinking
that in the future. Yeah, in the future, they'll just
have cameras around the car and that will suffice. But um,

(22:49):
I don't know, man, maybe not Abe. I still am
a little distrustful of cameras, just because I drive an
older vehicle, and like, I know, backup cameras are cool
and I see how useful they are, but I would
still want to have a rear view mirror just in
case something breaks. I found something interesting. People have been
comparing the cyber truck and the four D F one fifty,

(23:13):
and some people are saying that the cyber truck comes
out on top when you look at the stats. Uh,
you know, even the the rear well drive single engine configuration,
the thirty nine thousand dollar one, it is apparently better
than Ford's twenty eight thousand, five hundred or four hundred
nine six F one fifty, And you can see how

(23:35):
things stack up. So F one fifty has a lower
price point, but the cyber truck has a higher maximum
payload because one fifty can carry three thousand, two hundred
seventy pounds, but the cybertruck can carry three thousand, five hundred.
They can they can both seat six people, not comfortably,
because we all remember, I'm sure everybody listening at some

(23:56):
point has had to squeeze into an extended cap truck.
It's this same way that tents will say, like, hey,
you can sleep three people in this tent or two
people with equipment or one person in their equipment comfortably.
But the cyber truck. This is what you inspired me
to to look into this group, because the cyber truck
apparently has more exterior storage space than the F one fifty,

(24:19):
not a crazy amount, more as a hundred cubic feet
of storage space outside cyber truck, yeah, outside of the cab,
and the F one fifty has seventy seven point four
cubic feet the length of the bed. There's six point
five feet on the cyber truck, so there's space They
must be making up for some of that space on
the side creatively, I guess right, because six point five

(24:44):
ft is not a very long bed. There's also a
front storage area. Uh I think they called it a
front front trunk or I just called it that. Sorry,
I'm not sure that sounds right to me. Thanks, man,
I believe it. Thanks. And so here's where here's where
we hit the here's where we hit the road on this.

(25:04):
Knowing what we know now and assuming that price is
no object, would you drive this truck? Of course? Yeah? Yeah.
To me, this particular truck has the potential to steer
the market in a different direction. It's it's different, and
that's I believe that's good right now for the car industry.
That's one thing that I like about the car industry

(25:26):
of fifties sixties, where there was innovation, but there were
also these design and aesthetic aspects that were taken into
account when designing cars. Now, the industry seems like it's
in a little bit of a rut, maybe balancing costs
things like that, where the designs of the vehicles are
kind of they're a little cookie cutter, a little boring.

(25:46):
One thing you can say about the cyber truck is
that it isn't boring as far as it's designed. It's
a pretty bold design. Love it or hate it, it's
um it's definitely different. And so that's kind of where
I stand on it. Yeah, as far as driving a truck,
I'm not sure that I'm one of those truck people
right now, but maybe one I will be. Maybe. I'm

(26:09):
just gonna go ahead and say that if I were
in that position wishes were horsepower and so on, I
would definitely get it because I want to do Blade Runner,
you know, I want to do like a Blade Runner
thing and change my whole vibe. I'll just always dress
like a sci fi film from that era, you know
what I mean, like fighting mutants and U replicants and

(26:31):
stuff like real tight leather clothes. I don't know. I
don't know about that. Man. I'm probably I'm gonna see
if Tesla can also make me an exo skeleton of
my own, they can create one for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
So maybe I'll start Blade Runner and Iron Man with
my cyber truck. Just the way, just the the language
that they used during this event bothered me a little bit. Really, yeah,

(26:55):
I get that these people are creators, they are innovators.
Just to talk about the way they were talking about
we created an exo scale. Well no, remember this is
the same guy who sold flame throwers. I haven't heard
about this. So he has something called the Boring Company

(27:16):
Elon Musk and they sell a product called the Boring Company,
not a flamethrower, but they sold twenty oh you can't
buy one now. They sold twenty thousand flame throwers. Fire
extinguishers are sold separately. Do you have to review the
terms and conditions and so on? But yeah, the Boring
Company has a lot of has a lot of cool
stuff going on. It's also where he talks a little

(27:39):
bit about the hyperlop concept. I believe that's a train. Yeah, well, yeah,
it's like a sealed transportation high speed rail. Yeah. Oh,
which we should talk about in a future episode. Definitely.
All right, Ben, let's throw the question out there to
the audience. Could you see your self in a cybertruck

(28:01):
in let us know. You can find us online at
car Stuff HSW on Twitter and Facebook. We also have
a website where you can access all of the previous
episodes that we have done over the years. You can
find that at www dot car Stuff Show dot com.

(28:21):
And we'll see you next time. Car Stuff is a
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