New Skoda Octavia: your briefing
From anybody else it would look like a sci-fi geek’s daft fantasy. But the Tesla badge says this may be the future of pick-up trucks Tesla needed to boot the ball a long way down the field again, and this time it needed to cut loose with the looks
Tell us about your first car…
‘A Metro, but it lasted 10 days. I destroyed it on a slippery road. Then I bought a Lancia Beta Coupe.’
What’s your proudest achievement? ‘Giving the Defender back to the world.’
Tell us about a time you screwed up
‘Maybe I should have slowed down in that Metro. I just remember how big the steering wheel was, also the ratio between the steering and the front wheels – ridiculous.’
What’s the best thing you’ve ever done in a car? ‘When I lived in America I drove east from California for a week in my Audi TT, away from the freeways.’
Supercar or classic?
‘I don’t own lots of cars like a lot of designers do, but if I did it would be a classic. A B20 Lancia Aurelia GT.’
Company curveball – which car won the World Car Design of the Year in 2018?
‘Velar? [Correct]. I don’t think we design cars to win awards. We do it to enrich people’s lives.’
THERE ARE SOME ACTUAL FACTS…
…but not many. Cybertruck is a long, wide and heavy battery-electric pick-up in three variants: Single Motor Rear-Wheel Drive; Dual Motor All-Wheel Drive; and Tri Motor All-Wheel Drive. The claim for the range-topper is 0-60mph in less than 2.9sec, a 500-mile range, adaptive air suspension, six seats, a 17-inch touchscreen, a stainless-steel body and armoured glass. A refundable £100 deposit secures your place on the waiting list, with the prospect of being invited to complete your spec ‘as production nears’ in late 2021, or late 2022 in the case of the Tri Motor.
TESLA HAD TO DO IT
CAR’s leading Musk watcher, Ben Oliver, has a theory: ‘A decade ago I asked design chief Franz von Holzhausen why the Model S looked a bit like everything else. He replied, quite reasonably, that if you want buyers to accept a new form of propulsion from a new car maker, you don’t ask them to accept radical new design too.
‘But times change. We’ve bought into EVs. Tesla is now a (precariously) established car maker, something Elon didn’t foresee. It now has direct rivals from brands which are good at making and selling cars. Tesla needed to boot the ball a long way down the field again, and this time it could afford – in fact it needed – to cut loose with the looks.
‘Cybertruck also looks this way for a reason. It radically re-imagines how a vehicle could be built. It will go a long way to solving Tesla’s current “production hell”, and negating the manufacturing advantages of its fast-follower rivals. No, it probably won’t arrive on time, or actually cost $40,000 in base trim. But who cares. It shakes everything up, again.’
SOME OF THE DETAILS ARE, ERM, QUESTIONABLE
CAR’s leading pick-up watcher, CJ Hubbard, doesn’t see the Cybertruck going into production in its current form: ‘Visibility looks terrible. Its width [about six inches wider than a Merc X-Class] would make it impractical in many other places. Its weight [undisclosed, but the combination of thick glass, thick steel and big batteries will be hefty] means you couldn’t drive it with a car licence [although that could allow it to sidestep the pedestrian protection standards a car would need to meet].
‘Elon can make all the claims he likes about the stainless-steel panels but a pick-up driver is bound to damage them anyway – if they’re that strong they’re surely also going to be dicult/costly to repair. Lights on the tailgate are also a bad idea. They will get damaged. And how do you recharge a pick-up in the middle of a field?’