In 2019 we all watched the sleazy car salesman tactics get 250,000 people to pay $100 for nothing.
Worse than nothing, they paid for the promise of a “tough” truck that immediately was revealed as fragile.
You may remember LEGO cleverly mocked this slime spectacle with what seemed to be a far superior toy truck design.
To put it another way, context matters here. LEGO puts a huge amount of engineering and careful craftsmanship into their vehicle replicas. Their recreations of famous cars are truly impressive at any scale.
So when LEGO threw together a minimal effort block they described as an improved version of the silly Tesla Truck design craze, it was literal mockery of inflated egos at Tesla peddling sadly simplistic ideas and low skills. LEGO slam dunked on the spectacle, wisely foreshadowing the truck’s predictable failures.
FastCompany is now laughing out loud at the little dictator running Tesla, after he just threw up his hands and issued an edict that the Truck must be built like a LEGO.
The problem, according to Musk, is the bright metal construction and predominantly straight edges mean that even minor inconsistencies become glaringly obvious. To avoid this, he commanded unparalleled precision in the manufacturing process, stating in his email that “all parts for this vehicle, whether internal or from suppliers, need to be designed and built to sub 10 micron accuracy. That means all part dimensions need to be to the third decimal place in millimeters and tolerances need [to] be specified in single digit microns.” …Musk added, “If LEGO and soda cans, which are very low cost, can do this, so can we.”
Commanded? Demanded? Unhinged.
If LEGO and soda cans can do this, why can’t a flamethrower at 100 meters perfectly turn an apple on my head into a delicious pie? I command you peons to make my fantasy a reality and if you fail I’ll just find more peons who keep believing.
Herr Musk seems raised on the privilege of an unrelenting pursuit of selfish fantasy and unable to grasp basic reality. His toddler-like curations of design based on mysticism, as if they could replace actual engineering knowledge, soon may have his legions of unskilled enablers/believers headed for a rough and abrupt awakening.
What do you call it when a giant flat shiny steel panel after three years still produces the exact opposite effect of what was promised to a quarter-million people who put money down?
Advance fee fraud truck.
The dumb design promised to be on the road by 2021 is a failure by almost every measure, a monument to a sheltered elitist South African apartheid boy pushing symbolism over substance. America should take down the 1920’s statues of General Lee and mount the 2020’s Cyber Truck on columns instead. Start renaming the overtly racist failure of Lee Street to Cyber Truck Lane. Same stuff, lessons not learned, 100 years later.
At this point you have to ask how a car company can exist let alone be valued when it so very obnoxiously shows it can’t handle even the basics of car design.
Studebaker folded for less.