Please Advise! What Went Wrong with Musk’s Monstrous Cybertruck?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

Tesla has announced that production of the Cybertruck will cease. Are you disappointed?

Signed,

Torque

Dear Torque,

Alas, poor sheet-metal monstrosity, we hardly knew ye. More than a decade spent in gestation, followed by a fleeting moment in the sun — the Cybertruck is a four-wheeled cicada.

Elon Musk first spoke of plans for his electric truck in 2012. After delays, misfires, premature rollouts and missed deadlines, it arrived in showrooms in 2023. Now, like five-day Trump press secretary Katie Zacharia, its brief time is done. Tesla’s “Gigafactory,” located outside of Austin, Texas, has announced it will no longer produce those big, shiny, five-seat toasters. Musk's two overpriced Texas products, the Cybertruck and failed Senate candidate Ken Paxton, are off the market in the same week. No refunds on either.

That's the problem with capitalism — it's too woke. You're better off with government projects, like SpaceX. But the free market is cruel. It stifles personal expression. How will young MAGAs speak their truth now?

Cybertruck packed a lot of tsuris into a short period. Musk initially said his vehicle was partly inspired by a Lotus Esprit from the 1977 James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me, a car that doubled as a submarine. Musk said it would be capable of surviving total immersion. In April 2024, a Cybertruck owner reported the vehicle malfunctioned after going through a car wash. Musk had described the truck to investors as “apocalypse technology.” And to be fair, come the Apocalypse there probably won't be any more car washes.

Tesla then warned owners that corrosion and staining would result from washing the vehicle while in direct sunlight. This made Cybertruck the second MAGA object unable to stand sunlight, along with new White House chief of staff Stephen Miller.

Early on, Musk promised the Cybertruck would be bulletproof. An early onstage demo featured an engineer throwing a ball at the truck’s window. The window was smashed. Probably should have thrown a bullet.

Musk promised the Cybertruck would cost about US$39,900 and have a 500-mile range. This turned out to be accurate insofar as the actual figures contained some nines and zeros and other numbers found on a calculator, albeit in strikingly different arrangements. One version ended up costing US$99,990 with a range of 325 miles.

Once on the market, the Cybertruck was subject to seven recalls in the first year. Both the United Kingdom and the European Union ruled they were not road safe due to terrible sightlines. There were fatal accidents, although not many by Musk standards — he probably killed a lot more by cutting U.S. government aid.

The Cybertruck proved neither bulletproof nor scorn-proof. Driving one was like standing beside the world's most expensive “I'm with Stupid” T-shirt.

Last May, one Texas driver did something particularly stupid — he read the user's manual. And believed it. The Cybertruck manual described a feature called “wade mode” that would allow it to travel through shallow water. He drove it into a lake. Those who recall the car wash incident will not be surprised at the outcome. Eventually the wallowing Cybertruck was hooked and fished out, less submarine than giant sardine.

Even those Cybertruck owners bright enough to keep their vehicles on dry land have reported problems with breakdowns and pieces of the stainless steel body falling off. The truck seemed to have design flaws, including the fact that it was much too large to use as a paperweight.

The last production vehicle to use stainless steel was another famous automotive flop, the DeLorean, immortalized in the 1985 movie Back to the Future. Perhaps Musk will make a new Cybertruck that can also travel back in time — back to before he pissed away close to half a billion dollars trying to elect a stainless steel dumpster full of GOP nitwits; back before people made documentaries depicting him as a self-deluded con artist and enemy of Ukrainian freedom fighters; back to when he hosted Saturday Night Live and wasn't yet among the world's most hated humans. Or maybe he'll just drive it uptown for some more ketamine.

Cybertruck did have notable successes. It became the most nicknamed truck of all time. Wankpanzer, Schadenwagen, Cuck Truck, Swastikar — more nicknames than Trump gives to Democrats. And the smooth sides turned out to be perfect for ad placement, making Cybertrucks a vital advertising medium for cannabis dispensaries, gyms and testosterone clinics. As if simply driving one wasn't sufficiently on brand.

Like a zeppelin, or a Blockbuster store, the Cybertruck will soon become a marker of a very specific period of history. A few of them could become useful movie props for films set specifically in, say, 2025. As soon as Hollywood greenlights a Kristi Noem biopic, you'll wish you had a Cybertruck to rent out.

As for Tesla, it will carry on, for now. Musk wants to focus on self-driving cars — only about 60 fatalities have been linked to self-driving Teslas so far, which for Musk is chump change — and he recently showed off a Tesla with rocket boosters. Very James Bond. What could go wrong?