WSJ: Cybertruck Is a Symbol of Tesla's Struggles

Saturday’s Wall Street Journal features an excellent article by Becky Peterson detailing the very predictable failure of Tesla’s weirdly designed Cybertruck and how it has come to symbolize the struggles of the company overall amid a failing U.S. electric vehicle market, impacts of Trump’s tariffs, and a rapidly changing federal public policy environment.

Readers here will know I’ve predicted this goofy-looking contraption would be a miserable failure since well before it finally started rolling off the assembly lines simply because it would have appeal to only a tiny segment of the population, and because only wealthy individuals would be able to buy it in any event. So, the cost combined with the bizarre design automatically limited the available market to perhaps 1/10th of the country’s wealthiest 5%.

Ms. Peterson is less critical of the way the things look, referring to the Cybertruck as an “angular, stainless steel pickup [which] was supposed to generate buzz for Tesla by showcasing new technology and unlocking the lucrative truck market.” She’s much more polite than yours truly, obviously.