Last December, there was a deluge of the “CyberTruck is a failure” talk. I didn’t feel like any commentator was nailing it, so I made my own video (which took me a while to finish, because I wanted to actually rent one and try it out).
Notes on the video:
My wife actually had no idea about the CyberTruck, I literally just showed up one night with one. The reaction is genuine. The video was also recorded the day after Valentine’s Day, which I also really didn’t realize until my wife pointed it out.
Okay, so the video is mostly an economics video teaching the ideas of S-curves and Veblen goods, it’s not an actual CyberTruck review video. So here are my honest thoughts after renting it for a week– if you can get past tribal biases, the truck is genuinely awesome. I love the looks. It drives great. Self-driving is the second biggest technological breakthrough of my lifetime (after AI). It has 2 distinct downsides though
1) the range is terrible, sub-300 miles, I had to charge it every day (granted I was driving a lot) and
2) I live firmly in the blue bubble of Los Angeles, people give you tons of dirty looks and won’t let you merge and just generally treat you awfully while driving it. If you have one, you will not be anonymous. Although this does have some upside: pro-Tesla people come talk to you.
I would totally get one, but my wife has made it clear she would legitimately divorce me, so I’m stuck with my sweet 2014 Prius for the foreseeable future.
Recommendations:
Our world in data has a cool graphic on the adoption of various household appliances: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/technology-adoption-by-households-in-the-united-states
