The Tesla Cybertruck Is Going To Be So Hard To Build

It’s hard not to write about the Cybertruck because the Tesla Cybertruck is a wild, audacious vehicle. The 2024 Toyota Tacoma that we just reviewed may be a huge improvement over previous Tacomas, but it looks and acts like a truck, and building it shouldn’t be a challenge for Toyota. The same cannot be said for the Cybertruck.

As with many Tesla projects, the Cybertruck has been omnipresent in our minds without actually being omnipresent in our streets. In fact, it’s rare to see one in person. That may continue as the building of it is gonna be a challenge, as CEO Elon Musk himself has admitted. But just how bad will it be?

And speaking of Musk, Tesla may have dodged most of an NRLB complaint over some firings.

Finally, Lotus Tech now has the financing in place to go public and raise more money for its EV dreams whereas Toyota is going to let go of some of DENSO so it can continue to fund electric cars.

A Roundup Of All The Ways The Cybertruck Can Go Wrong

It would be really great if Musk was just an even remotely normal person or, at least, if he was just a weird person who doesn’t amplify stuff so antisemitic he seemingly has to go to a warzone in Israel to try to deflect from just how odious he’s gotten on the platform he himself owns.

I say that because you can’t entirely divorce the creation from the creator (I will never be able to dance to “Ignition (Remix)” again, for instance), and the same spirit that defines his desire to buck the status quo in the automotive world seems increasingly inseparable from his embracing of the absolute worst trolls online and their weirdo beliefs.

Cognitive dissonance is not, unfortunately, uncommon in successful people, which is why the Bloomberg piece this morning that runs through all the ways the Cybertruck could go wrong is so interesting.

Central to the issue is the fact that it’s very much like the original concept and is therefore made of huge stainless steel panels. Fitting these together neatly and cleanly to the spec that Musk wants is a huge potential challenge as we’ve seen. Musk commented on this in his 3rd Quarter Earnings call, saying:

[T]his difficulty going from a prototype to volume production is like 10,000% harder to get to volume production than to make the prototype in the first place. And then it is even harder than that to reach positive cash flow. That is why there have not been new car start-ups that have been successful for 100 years apart from Tesla. So, I just want to temper expectations for Cybertruck.

It’s a great product, but financially, it will take, I don’t know, a year to 18 months before it is a significant positive cash flow contributor. I wish there was some way for that to be different, but that’s my best guess.

I mean, there have been plenty of successful car startups in the last 100 years, including most of the Japanese car industry, but I get his point. VinFast tried to make fairly straightforward electric cars and had a rough go of it.

But it’s not the details concerning the construction issues, the weird choices, or even the huge battery pack that caught my eye (though, read the piece, they’re important). It’s that the Bloomberg piece is full of Musk basically saying this is going to be super hard and maybe a mistake and includes this great quote from the archives:

In these respects and others, the Cybertruck will be a big step backward from how Tesla has progressed in its approach to carmaking. The last vehicle Musk spoke about the way he’s described the Cybertruck was the Model X, the sport utility vehicle that’s never reached high volumes because of what its chief executive described on several occasions as hubris.

“Model X became kind of like a technology bandwagon of every cool thing we could imagine all at once,” Musk said of the SUV in May 2017. “That is a terrible strategy. You really want to start off simple and add things over time.”

Emphasis on simplicity and designing for ease of manufacturing served Tesla well with its next product, the Model 3 sedan, and the smash-hit Model Y SUV that followed. The two were the first electric vehicles to break into the mainstream, making Tesla far and away the most valuable automaker and its CEO the world’s wealthiest man.

David saw the production Cybertruck up close and it looked better than the pre-production one we saw, but it does beg the question: Is making something this difficult and polarizing a key to the company’s success or is this just the sign of a person who cannot stop himself and cannot be stopped by anyone else?

NRLB Decides Tesla Didn’t Fire Workers For Trying To Unionize

I’ve already detailed the ongoing Tesla v Organized labor saga and the latest twist is that Tesla, while it did violate some other regulations, isn’t likely to get in trouble for firing workers who recently organized.

From Bloomberg again:

A regional director for the National Labor Relations Board has dismissed a case against Tesla filed by the Workers United union in February, Kayla Blado, a spokesperson for the agency, said by email Monday.

Workers United had said Tesla fired a group of employees in Buffalo, New York, who were working on the carmaker’s Autopilot feature the day after some workers announced a union campaign. The union framed the dismissals as retaliation against organizing efforts.

Tesla did get cited for violating other labor laws, including a ban on making audio recordings at work. An NLRB judge is going to have to sort that one out.

Would You Like To Own A Small Part Of Lotus?

You may not be able to afford a new Lotus, but Lotus Technology is now ready to go public and it’s quite the mix of companies involved.

Lemme see if I’m getting this right: Lotus Technology is the sub-brand of Lotus Group, itself backed by Chinese automaker Geely, and it will do a SPAC via blank check company L Catterton Asia Acquisition, which was formed by L Catterton, which itself is an investment firm that is backed by LVMH Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey.

That’s a lot of brands. What’s the point of all of this?

Per Reuters:

The funds will be used to further advance development of “next-generation automobility technologies, promote product innovation, support the company’s expansion of its global distribution network, and for general corporate purposes”, the statement showed.

Sweet.

Would You Like To Own A Small Part Of DENSO?

You may only know DENSO as the brand that often appears on Toyota sports cars around the world, but it’s actually one of the major suppliers of the auto industry and is owned partially by Toyota.

Toyota’s reportedly planning to sell abut $4.7 billion worth of the company. Why? Again from Reuters, who got the scoop:

At $4.7 billion, it would be the second-biggest such share offering in Japan this year, after the more than $9 billion sale of shares in Japan Post Bank (7182.T) in March, according to LSEG data.

It would also be the biggest share offering in the auto industry in more than a decade, highlighting the stakes involved in the pivot to battery electrics.

This is, as the article points out, part of a larger trend of Japanese companies trying to untangle their multiple joint ventures just a bit and raise some cash.

The Big Question

Let’s take a break from all the Tesla and talk about what’s really important: What is the most important Toyota livery of all time and why is it the Ivan “Ironman” Stewart red-yellow-orange?