Two new electric vehicles were just revealed. One had a brief flash of media coverage and then faded away from the limelight, while the other one is literally one of the hottest topics in pop culture, and will continue to be weeks after its reveal.
The Ford Mustang Mach-E is pretty unremarkable. The only thing people seem to talk about when the vehicle comes up in conversation is the name, which appears pretty blatant as an attempt to hitch a family crossover onto the name of some famous and aspirational. Save your talk of “it drives like a Mustang,” because no one can drive it yet — we can only listen to what the marketers say, and in this jaded era, it shouldn’t be a surprise that a lot of people are cynical.
On the other hand, the Tesla Cybertruck is very remarkable in the literal definition of the word: it’s worth remarking about. It’s in memes, it’s all over the news, no one (myself finally included) can shut up about the damn thing. It’s a masterstroke of attention, something that Ford desperately wants but simply can’t figure out how to get.
The difference in approach has never been more striking. Ford: here’s an electric Ford Edge that you can imagine your Boomer dad driving. Telsa: here’s a truck that 8 year old you desperately wanted, and you too can live out your childish fantasies while looking like nothing else on the road today.
You will never find a Mustang Mach-E in a rap video, but you definitely would see a Cybertruck. It has been one of my longest running conundrums: someone out there had to eventually come out with something that is the equivalent of an electric Land Rover, something tall and boxy, capable of going off-road, but most importantly of all, be a status statement piece that a ovoid egg simply can’t be. With the flexibility of electric car design, why are we still stuck in the same old design paradigms? Why not something, pardon the pun, electricifying?
And then Tesla drops the Cybertruck. It’s polarizing, it’s edgy (both literally and figuratively), and it has captured people’s imaginations like nothing else in the past few years. This is a truck that even the brodozers would want to drive. (I can’t wait for the future videos of redneck Brodozer Cybertrucks griefing Telsas. Maybe instead of rolling coal, you could roll lightning? I’m imagining a Red Alert-style tesla coil hanging off the truck bed that could zap something on command.)
Ultimately, this is the difference between the Mustang Mach-E and the Cybertruck: the Tesla is an assertion, while the Ford is not. An assertion is something that can be disagreed with, it is a statement that can be attacked, and it is point of view not every one will share. But in a world where everyone is trying to please the masses by being as vanilla and palatable as possible, bold assertions stand out. The Mustang Mach-E is trying to be all things to all people, and it shows. The Cybertruck is for some people but not all, much in the same way that the new Corvette is not “the regular kind.”
I, for one, love the truck. Not only that, it’s exciting. When was the last time you were genuinely excited for a future automobile? As someone who wishes he was present in the crazy concept car days of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, the Cybertruck reveal feels like a small sliver of what true automotive wonder might have been like back then.