Designer Says The Only Way To Fix The Cybertruck Is To Scrap It And Start Over

José Rodríguez Jr.
Wed, August 30, 2023 

Photo: Nic Coury (Getty Images)

The road to a production Cybertruck has been bumpy. Almost as bumpy and uneven as the first Cybertrucks coming out of the Austin Gigafactory, which have reportedly been so bad that they prompted Elon Musk to send an urgent email to Tesla employees. In the message, Musk demanded greater precision in the production process of the EV pickup, with Musk going on to reference the famously tight tolerances of Lego blocks and soda cans to inspire his workers to build better Cybertrucks. It goes without saying that the time to ask for “sub 10 micron accuracy” from your own company, let alone the suppliers building parts for the thing would be several years ago, before the car was “headed for production.” But we’re all learning as we go in this life.

But a better Cybertruck would only be possible through a complete redesign, according to Fast Company, which cites car designer and the Autopian contributor Adrian Clarke. The issues come down to the impossibly flat body panels of the Cybertruck. Given the design of the EV, small imperfections inherent in the production process are all the more clear, as Clarke tells Fast Company:

Still, Musk is soldiering on with the Cybertruck despite its unprecedented design, which remains unprecedented for good reason: it makes production difficult and repairs nearly impossible.

Photo: Nic Coury (Getty Images)

I get the impulse to design something simple and clean. Really, I do. But there’s a difference between something minimalist and something reductive. The Cybertruck strikes me as an attempt at the former that went off the rails and arrived at the latter. A bad joke that started with Elon Musk or someone else at Tesla saying “what if we did this instead...” followed by uproarious laughter at crudely drawn lines and four circles. Behold, the Cybertruck, said some genius and no one dared to question the so-called Technoking.

The problem is that the bit went too far. That is, if the damned thing ever makes it to production.

Photo: Frederic J. Brown (Getty Images)

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