If there truly were a “climate crisis,” you’d think they’d stop producing EeeeeeeeeeVeeeeees almost no one can afford.
Of course, there isn’t a “crisis” – that’s just the excuse being used to get people to accept being priced out of cars, which the Left has always despised, just like free speech. At least – with regard to the former – when it is ordinary people who own them.
Enter the Cybertruck, Tesla’s latest EeeeeeeeVeeeeee. Tesla says it will eventually cost $60,990 to start – when that version of the thing arrives (if it ever does) come 2025. In the meanwhile, the one people will be able to buy in 2024 will cost an estimated $75,000-$80,000.
Only a few people will be able to buy it at either price so only a handful will ever be sold and that will do nothing to salve the putative “climate crisis” that’s ostensibly almost upon us (as it has been for at least the past 50 years – very much like the low-cost/long-range EeeeeeeVeeeeee battery “breakthrough” that’s been just around the corner for just about as long) that we’re told must be salved by swapping cars for battery-powered devices such as the Cybertruck that almost no one can afford to swap into.
What is the logical conclusion to be drawn from this?
Obviously, it is to swap us – the people who can’t afford a $60k-plus device – out of cars while providing psychological camouflage for the affluent Leftists who can afford devices such as the Cybertruck.
These Leftists can afford them, by the way, because most of them have access to as much of our money as they need, which they’re able to take because most of them work for the government or for adjuncts of the government (i.e., the corporations that are becoming indistinguishable from the government). Government work is very well-paid work. Even a cop – who is a government worker – typically takes home (the italics because it’s exactly that and not earned) tens of thousands of dollars more than the average working person. At the policy level, you have government apparatchiks such as the current secretary of transportation, who takes six-figures-plus home, plus benefits. A person such as he is able to afford a battery powered device and does not give a damn that you can’t.
In fact, it’s the point of his efforts – as this column tries to make clear as often as occasion warrants, because it is necessary to comprehending what is going on. He does not want you to drive.
But he isn’t going to give up driving. Nor flying. Nor eating food rather than bugs.
Elon had promised the Cybertruck device would cost about $40,000 – or about 50 percent less than what it actually will cost. We have heard similar promises about EeeeeeeeVeeeees generally. These promises are made to sound plausible by making a fallacious analogy with devices such as microwave ovens, VCRs and the first personal computers – all of which cost big money when they were first introduced but eventually became very affordable mass-market devices almost everyone now owns.
The fallacy is these devices are small and do not have to move themselves, let alone you. It is one thing to power a PC. It is another thing to power a vehicle.
With a battery, that is.
Chips are cheap – and get cheaper. The batteries used in small devices – such as a laptop, for instance – don’t have to be as heavy as the computer in order to power it. But an EeeeeeeVeeeee’s battery pack weighs as much as a car and sometimes, more. For example, the Ford Lightning, which is the battery powered iteration of the F-150 truck, has a battery that weighs about 2,000 lbs. – which is several hundred pounds more than this writer’s 1974 Super Beetle weighed.
The Cybertruck’s battery probably weighs more – because (like the Lightning) it is not designed to be efficient. It is designed to be capable of pulling more than its own weight – some 11,000 lbs. – though not for very far. And to be able to out-accelerate a high-performance sports car like the Porsche 911 that weighs half as much. This is all very impressive, if you have the money to burn.
But it’s also exceptionally obnoxious in that people who are being priced out of cars they can afford are having to subsidize devices they can’t afford. Few people who cannot afford to own a Porsche resent the man who bought one – using his own money. But it is noisome and insufferable to be lectured about the necessity for our diminishment by Leftists who can afford to spend $60k-plus on devices we’re forced to help them pay for.
There is no “climate crisis.” But there is a crisis of common sense.
. . .
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This thing is proof that Tesla is a cult…Like Apple.
Coffee – $2.00, iCoffee – $8…Don’t be an iDiot.
“you have government apparatchiks such as the current secretary of transportation, who takes six-figures-plus home, plus benefits. A person such as he is able to afford a battery powered device and does not give a damn that you can’t”
That government apparatchik has no children and is married to a man. He and his man husband probably have two incomes so they can afford many luxuries. I spoke too soon for it seems him and his man husband have twins. How they were able to re-produce would be a modern miracle. But it just came out that in early September, the two announced the birth of their first children, Penelope Rose and Joseph August Buttigieg. Now they have confirmed that the children were adopted.
For a moment I almost believed in miracles. I’ll stop there.
“That government apparatchik has no children and is married to a man.”
He has two kids, and is married to a man.
Which should be an entirely intolerable state of affairs in a civilized place. Bringing innocent children into a condition of wretchedness and mental illness that is. If Petey Bootie Judge wants to be a homosexual he should have the decency and respect for society to keep it private- like civilized people do.
If Musk wants to be a true Conservative he should get rid of his Tesla shares.
I can now honestly say “I rode the lightning” and lived, lol! Although, I just can’t fathom paying $97K to be completely bored and nonplussed about a new, virtually useless, pickup truck. Thanks Eric!
During the hey day of Tesla popularity, the Cyber Truck was announced and it instantly became an internet meme, a joke, like these, scroll down they get better:
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=Cyber+Truck+meme&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fow4g7xjg66041.jpg
good ones:
ISIS in back of cyber truck
elon, age 4
pointy tit girl
Cars over the last twenty to thirty years have been getting uglier and uglier but it appears they have now reached the pinnacle of ugliness with an added feature of uselessness.
Anyone purchasing this should be psychoanalyzed and automatically entered as a contestant in the Darwin awards.
And just like all other Teslas, this Cybertruck will charge extremely slowly, with no fast charging possibilities in sight, since fast chargers haven’t even been invented yet (!).
Top of the line model will be $99,990
More price hikes coming on EeeVees:
‘The Biden administration proposed new rules on Friday to limit the role that Chinese firms can play in supplying materials for electric vehicles that qualify for federal tax credits.
‘Automakers are facing intense cost pressures as they try to modify their factories to make electric cars. China offers some of the most advanced and lowest-priced battery technology in the world.
‘The rules kick in for battery components in 2024, and in 2025 for critical minerals like lithium, cobalt and nickel. Auto industry lobbyists have warned that extremely strict rules could throttle electric vehicle sales.’ — NYT
https://archive.ph/WjJQK#selection-773.0-779.102
Well, there they go again, as the Gipper used to say — forcing automakers to build costly new US supply sources instead of buying from the cheapest source (China). They could end up blowing away the whole $7,500 tax credit with price hikes — if indeed, they haven’t already.
Automakers are fools if they invest in capacity based on diktats from political commissars.
The dirty little secret is that you can get the whole $7500 credit if you lease, no matter where the components are from. Helps with the “you’ll own nothing” part. I posted about this the other day in regards to Rivian.
https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2023/11/24/cleaner-car-choices/#comment-990696
Tell me you get to test-drive this one, Eric.
Its beauty may be overwhelming, and the stainless-steel construction probably aids in the flux dispersal, but I think it needs a fair evaluation.
All through the early 2000’s, when I first started driving, There was a plethora of S10s, Rangers, B2300’s, Dakotas, and the like that all had 4 cylinders, manual transmissions, 110k miles and cost 1500 dollars.
you could buy one of those every 6 months for 10 years, have 20 working vehicles and still not touch half the price of this thing.
Along with everything else it is one ugly p.o.s.
>it is one ugly p.o.s.
Agree with that.
Stainless steel body?
BFD. DeLoreans had SS body panels, and DMC figured out how to stamp them.
eLoon didn’t.
This is not a truck. As my former brother in law put it, trucks have 18 wheels. This thing is not even a well designed pickup, just an auto with a sliding rear deck lid. Certainly not a working man’s pickup. Roof rack? Tool boxes? Forget it.
“Cyber?” ROFLMAO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics
>One of the most well known definitions is that of Norbert Wiener who characterised cybernetics as concerned with “control and communication in the animal and the machine.”
>Wiener explains, the term was chosen to recognize James Clerk Maxwell’s 1868 publication on feedback mechanisms involving governors, noting that the term governor is also derived from κυβερνήτης (kubernḗtēs) via a Latin corruption gubernator. Finally, Wiener motivates the choice by steering engines of a ship being “one of the earliest and best-developed forms of feedback mechanisms”
Zerohedge has an article on the Cybertuck:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/watch-tesla-hosts-event-deliver-first-batch-cybertrucks-customers
It’s interesting in part that while an estimated range and towing capacity is shown it does not indicate what the difference is between the distance when towing and when you’re just picking up some groceries from Winco. Curious skeptics and wrong thinkers want to know.
I suspect the range when towing will suck just like the Lightning does. Tesla fan boy’s will buy them just like Apple fan boy’s buy i-phones.
Ugly, very expensive, and of little practical use. Sort of like a typical politician.
Tesla fan boys are more analogous to the geeks who run around in Amiga Forever t-shirts.
Usually, concept cars get mellowed out and de-radicalized quite a bit, before entering production. Like the outrageous, precarious couturial creations paraded on fashion show runways, concept cars aren’t intended for real life. They are daring aesthetic statements.
Cybertruck may be the only vehicle ever to go straight from the first crude sketch to production without any toning down. As swamprat wrote, it is a third-grade boy’s fantasy, devoid of any adult input.
This scaled-up, $80,000 stainless steel Tonka toy is headed for an epic meltdown. With Elon screaming ‘Eff you!’ to advertisers boycotting his X platform, it’s almost as if he’s intentionally skating along the edge of self-destruction, just for the sick thrill of it. His dark wish may come true.
That thing looks like it was drawn by a third grader. I doubt they will sell 100 of them.
I will say it again. Why anyone would buy an EV is beyond my comprehension. I don’t think they should be illegal, but I question the sanity of people who buy them.
I dunno: If I think of an EV as “just avoiding gasoline consumption”, then I think good applications for EV’s are commuter cars, delivery vans, and busses. Basically, anything that is garaged every night, and travels a short route. However, if I consider the other aspects of EV’s *besides* just the avoidance of gasoline usage, and there are quite many, then there is NO case for them.
>busses.
Not even buses. Transit districts which have tried electric buses found the battery charge only lasted half a day, meaning they needed two buses per route per day. Not viable.
Swamp,
It does! That’s the first think I thought about it. I’m pretty sure I did draw this exact vehicle when my age was still in the single digits and I first got ahold of a silver crayon. I’ll give Musk credit for not wavering from his elementary school dreams. 😉
Meanwhile sperm whales are choking to death on plastics but theres no money/grift available for saving them. We are a pathetic species, smart enough to ruin the planet but not smart enough to manage it responsibly. Slava Russia/Palestine.
Ruin the planet? C’mon man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ELBctq_2z0
Car.ln’s wrong here. It is important to do what we can to protect animals and species. You want a world with no wild elephants? Lions? Its the focus on reducing a beneficial gas for the green energy scam that is the abomination.
With all due respect, you’re offering a false binary choice. “Do X my way or Y will cease to exist.” The socialist, anti-private property schemes of the Enviros never consider that free markets and private ownership of animals might lead to greater outcomes. You don’t see a lack of Holstein cows because people can make money off them. I dare say the same can be true of any species. If I own an elephant you better not mess with it or I’ll come after you. Poachers would become extinct. Collective ownership always ends in disaster.
The $60,000 Cybertruck won’t be available until 2025.
I doubt Tesla intends to move many of the $79,000 trucks. That’s a teaser price to get people interested who think they can afford the vehicle with the tax credit.
Even at $72,000, affording the Cybertruck requires a realistic take home of $150k/year. Take home.
EV Waterloo is here.