Admit It, the Cybertruck Is Awesome

Desaim Saahil. "Admit It, the Cybertruck Is Awesome: The world needs weirder EVs." Technology, The Atlantic on line, 30 November 2023. As of December 2024 (sic) available here.[1]

In SF, TRUCKS have often been important, or central, as in WARLORDS OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY / BATTLETRUCK; indeed, sometimes, as in the Supercar television series, "The Cars Are the Stars" — or featured, as in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD. The Tesla cybertruck is a brutalist-modern or postmodern design in the real world that is significant in terms of the esthetic possibilities of the engineering involved with EVs: electric vehicles.

Traditional cars have hulking grilles in the front, because the internal combustion engine gets very hot very quickly from all of the tiny explosions that power your car. You have to cram into the backseat in part because the transmission, drive shaft, fuel tank, exhaust systems, catalytic converter, and fuel injector take up so much space. EVs don’t have to deal with any of that: They have a huge battery (the Cybertruck’s primo “Cyberbeast” model has an estimated range of up to 320 miles) and a tiny motor splayed out on a flat “skateboard” beneath the car—and that’s basically it.

Free of the constraints imposed by the internal combustion engine, EVs can be designed quite freely. And Tesla gave us in the real world something like a brutalist postmodern battletruck. Erlich suspects (or fears?) that means something.

RDE, finishing, 16Dec24