I stayed up a little bit past my bedtime last night to watch the official launch of this ugly thing at the LA Auto Show, and the reactions on various YouTube channels devoted to EV's, and far and away the most frequent reaction was: "OMG it's so ugly." Even on the channel Now You Know, haven of far-gone Tesla zombies, the top comments this morning are all negative. YouTubers who literally build their own electric vehicles couldn't talk about anything except how ugly it is. I've never knowingly seen an adult man who has just pooped his pants, but after the reveal, Elon Musk, and Zac and Jesse, hosts of Now You Know, all looked as if they had pooped their pants: very embarrassed, physically ill, and trying very hard to smile, but not quite being able to do it.
Two of the officially shatter-proof windows on the truck at the LA Auto Show shattered when they were hit with a sledgehammer to show how shatterproof they are, and yet, no-one talked about that, except as a metaphor for someone's career having been shattered: "Who will be fired?" they asked. And if someone is fired, it won't be because the windows shattered. It will be because this thing is so goddamned ugly.
Maybe we once thought that pickup truck buyers didn't care about looks, and just wanted a truck that would haul. We now know that that isn't true. Looks matter, for pickup trucks too. And this is very, very bad news for Tesla.
There were the usual Tesla fans -- for some reason, they're often referred to as fanboys. They're also often referred to as zombies, but the reason for that is perfectly clear to me -- yelling "Alright! Yeah, Woooooooo!" and "Okay, Elon!" and so forth, at last night's reveal. But last night, there was also a lot more laughter. And it didn't sound like friendly laughter. I think that the model reveals up until now were overwhelmingly attended by the zombies. But the Model 3 is selling several times as fast as any previous Tesla, and it has changed things. Tesla is getting much more mainstream attention now. I think this was the first really public Tesla model unveiling, and oh my God did it go badly.
I haven't talked about how this thing actually functions as a truck. That's because I don't know any of its specs, and I don't know anything about trucks, so its specs wouldn't tell me anything anyway. There are plenty of other people who can tell you all about that. The usual car and truck guys. But, as I mentioned above, last night those guys weren't talking about anything else except how ugly this truck is. It might be the best pickup truck ever made, from the perspectives of performance, reliability, maintenance costs and so forth. But that wouldn't matter as much as how ugly it is. One of those guys who literally builds his own electric vehicles said last night, "That's it, I'm buying a Rivian." Rivian is another manufacturer who will be offering an electric pickup truck for sale soon. And they've been showing pictures of the truck all along, and letting journalists look up-close at the prototypes. (It looks pretty much like a pickup truck. Completely different than this monstrosity from Tesla.)
Tesla didn't do that. They allow a normal amount of glimpses into their upcoming models, usually, but with this pickup, they were completely secretive. It was very unusual. Musk kept saying that it was not going to look like any pickup anyone had ever seen. Turns out he was actually telling the truth for once. I figured that it would be a sort of mild let-down when we finally saw it. I figured people would say, Hm, yeah, it looks like a pickup.
But it doesn't look like a pickup. And not in a good way.
If some Tesla zombies read this post, they will call it a hit piece. But it's not. Musk hit himself right in the face last night. All I'm doing is reporting about it.
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