[open592]

I’ve never seen a car get the same amount of attention at this price point. There is certainly a slice of the population who is excited by the idea of people stopping and taking a picture of their car. The slice is not big, but it’s enough to satisfy Tesla.

[tsimionescu]

I think it's more likely that it's enough to satisfy Musk. Tesla as a company is probably hurt much more by selling the Cybertruck than if they hadn't made it and had focused on a normal car.

[cduzz]

The CT's weirdness isn't just the silly exterior. I suspect they don't want to sell a lot of them because each one they sell is a potential liability.

These new cars are 100% drive by wire; they're all in on their dry cell battery tech, it's 100% 48v for the "normal" electronics like power steering and HVAC and instrument cluster, etc.

They want to sell the CT to the weirdos who're willing to put up with whatever the heck the truck dishes out. They want paying beta testers to put miles on these things, get them more tested than they can with an internal testing program.

Only once the tech is more proven will it be "safe" to mass produce a "normal" car with all the same tech. The goal is to catch all the "nissan leaf lizard chemistry" or "bolt self immolation" bugs on the people willing to buy a CT.

[red-iron-pine]

clearly not, if they're shutting down production of the car and cutting 10% of staff

this is a meme car for a person that effectively doesn't exist: a survivalist tech bro.

not saying that person can't be found -somewhere-, possibly in a Neil Stephenson book, but even at the insanely inflated prices of the Cybertruck that's not enough to stake a multi-year production effort.