Are you in the car industry? i feel no one talks about refresh cycles so confidently unless you’re very tight.
I think 99.9% of people in the industry have no interest in shaking the equation that feeds. but,conversely, there really is nothing but upside for the consumer. cars have been “refreshing” for decades in a fashion that is not driven by function. I think ‘visually or recognizably new’ is a marketing cheat that wastes resources.
I think some believe the truck is ugly to draw attention but, and while i can’t rule that out, i think the weighting would be in the 10% realm. the remaining , at least originally,based on pushing the envelope as practically as possible. for instance, to be able to fold the metal of the car to simplify it’s construction.
Stainless steel holds a special place in many engineers’ minds. this truck is fundamentally cool because so many ideas got to come together under one hood. a truck is foremost a tool, like a hammer, and nobody tries to keep a top coat nanocermajama on their hamma!hehe
I follow the auto industry closely. I’m not in it.
Of course car platforms don’t change especially fast. They’re complicated to design and build.
But yes, all car companies tend to have some kind of refreshed exterior styling within a platform generation, and they also update interior amenities, sometimes major and minor ways (new infotainment systems of course are common). Yes, they have customers they love to sell to repeatedly every 3-5 years and it is wasteful. Lessing is the most profitable form of automobile sale.
Just compare the 2025 Kia Carnival to the 2020 model, as an example. Basically the same car but new electronics inside and new exterior styling to match Kia’s latest brand language.
Tesla themselves refreshed the Model 3 just recently after about 5 years of high volume sales.
What I’m saying here is that the Cybertruck will have major difficulty doing a mid-cycle refresh like that. Where do you even start from a styling perspective? Do you just keep it the same forever? What happens when the novelty wears off?
The stainless steel panels are also a huge problem since they can’t be pressed in a mold like normal automotive steel, they have to be bent. You say engineers hold stainless steel with in a special place in their heart, but with that in mind you’ll have to explain why more vehicles don’t use stainless steel if it’s such a great material to build cars with.
If stainless steel is so great why don't other automakers experiment with it?
Well, we already know why: difficult machining, can't be made into complex molded shapes, can't be painted, can't be color matched, sucks up fingerprints like no tomorrow, difficult for body shops/repairs, reduced pedestrian safety...
And what are the benefits? What does the customer get out of it?
I don't know any group of automotive engineers who would choose Stainless Steel given an "unlimited budget/creativity" type of project. You don't see it in million dollar exotic cars or anything like that. The fact of the matter is that Elon Musk is stuck in the 1980s and wanted his own DeLorean truck.
