At first, I thought the Cybertruck rolling onto the stage was a joke:

It became (very) painfully real that the vehicle behind Elon Musk was not a joke, as he and his henchmen decided to punish the truck with sledgehammers and gigantic metal ball bearings - awkwardly resulting in an “OMFG” from Musk when his assistant actually shattered two windows in an apparent stress test gone horribly wrong:

Awkwardness aside, when the reveal event mercifully ended I was left with one major question: who does Elon Musk think is going to buy this thing?

I bought my 2011 Ford F-150 for a few reasons, several of which I think transfer over to a large segment of the pickup truck market. I won’t address commercial fleet sales in this post.

Why I bought my F-150:

• Functionality. Although I don’t work in construction, I do tend to take advantage of my truck’s bed to haul household goods, groceries, pets, etc. relatively often. No other vehicle class offers the flexibility I have with my truck bed. The Cybertruck offers the same functionality, with a bed length of 6.5 feet - a foot longer than my F-150.
  
• Price. I bought my truck below MSRP - around $40,000. That was very affordable for me when considering the amount of functionality I was buying. Surprisingly, the Cybertruck beats this price at it’s lowest price point of $39,900. Although I would expect that most people would probably opt for the mid-level version which has all-wheel drive, enhanced performance, and extended range for an extra $10,000, the Cybertruck can compare favorably with an F-150 on price.
  
• Aesthetics/intangibles. The F-150 looks tough (or did, at least, in 2011) and uniquely American. Here, the Cybertruck diverges sharply. Rather than taking design cues from the objectively gorgeous Tesla Models S, 3, and X, the Cybertruck looks like it came straight out of the 1982 sci-fi movie Blade Runner:

While it technically may look “tough”, I would argue that it’s not the same tough that most consumers like me are looking for.

The discussion of the definition of “tough” should go further. The first thing Musk talked about when he got the Cybertruck onstage was the fact that the body was made of stainless steel. He then proceeded to have an assistant smash an F-150 door with a sledgehammer, and then try to do the same thing to the Cybertruck’s door (to no effect, the sledgehammer bounced off). Then he demonstrated through a video behind him that the Cybertruck’s steel body is impervious to 9mm pistol gunfire. Finally, he demonstrated the “transparent metal” toughness of the Cybertruck’s windows by dropping large steel ball bearings onto sheets of the Cybertruck glass (this demonstration backfired as mentioned above). All that is to say, the first 10 minutes of the reveal were dedicated to “toughness”.

So clearly, by at least Musk’s definition, the Cybertruck is tough - and he wants to convince us of it.

Is this enough to get skeptics past the aesthetics? I would argue no. Consumers generally aren’t interested in buying vehicles that look like a mix between a spaceship and a transformer. Especially in America and in the pickup truck market, consumers value tradition and classical looks.

That’s not to say that the Cybertruck won’t be successful - if Tesla can capture even 1% of the market in 2019, that will mean selling around 30,000 Cybertrucks next year. The market is huge, and sales will increase as Tesla proves itself in this category.

As for me, I’ll be waiting to see Ford’s all-electric F-150 when it rolls out in 2021.