ANNALS OF TRUMPI$TAN: The Sudden Demise of the Cybertruck, a Culture War on Wheels. (Dave Phillipps, NY Times, November 8, 2026)

FORD'S EDSEL sold more cars.  ELON MUSK's TESLA is a failed $2 billion FLOP.  From The New York Times:

The Sudden Demise of the Cybertruck, a Culture War on Wheels

Feelings about the angular, stainless steel pickup run deep.

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Tesla announced on Friday the death of its angular, norm-shattering pickup, the Cybertruck.Credit...Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

By Dave Philipps

Dave Philipps is the only person he knows who thinks the Cybertruck is cool.

Nov. 8, 2026Updated 1:31 p.m. ET
Cybertruck, we hardly knew you. Or maybe we knew you too well.Tesla announced on Friday the death of its angular, norm-shattering pickup, a sci-fi stainless-steel origami shark on wheels laden with tons of cultural baggage. It was three years old.Its end came on the concrete floors of Tesla’s Gigafactory Texas, after its creator, Elon Musk, said in a post on X that production will cease this coming summer. The factory was built to churn out 250,000 Cybertrucks a year, but amid a torrent of negative attention from Wall Street analysts, internet meme architects and everyday truck buyers, it produced only about a tenth of that.Response to news of Cybertruck’s passing has been … polite.“Cybertruck, I can say this, we will always remember you,” Mike Ramsey, an auto industry analyst at Gartner Inc., said in an interview from Detroit on Friday. “You were the most distinctive vehicle that nobody asked for.”The sudden demise, after Tesla sunk about $2 billion into development and production, led many people to compare Cybertruck to the ultimate business-school example of a flop, the Ford Edsel. But that’s really not fair. The Edsel sold far more vehicles.From the beginning Cybertruck took an unusual road, born not in a standard automotive design studio, but in the mind of Mr. Musk, who drew inspiration largely from decades-old dystopian movies about the future.When it debuted on a stage full of smoke and lasers in California in November 2019, the angular metal exoskeleton landed like a monolith dropped by aliens.It was shocking, transformative, and maybe, a bit ugly?

Skeptics mocked it as an aerodynamic absurdity, saying it resembled a dumpster, a space-age doorstop, an El Camino mated with cheese grater, even a “fascist Toblerone.”
But legions of techno-optimist believers lauded the audacity of a company trying to get the visionary — if a bit dumpstery — design onto public asphalt through sheer force of will. They put down refundable deposits by the hundreds of thousands.
Mr. Musk promised a future where a bulletproof, amphibious electric truck with a range nearly as broad as Texas and acceleration that could beat a Porsche in a drag race could be bought for about $40,000.
“The goal is to kick the most amount of ass possible with this truck,” he told Automotive News in 2020 when the truck was still in development.

If people found it funny-looking and a bit creepy, perhaps that was the point. Innovation is disruptive.

“Customer research?” Mr. Musk told Automotive News. “We just made a car we thought was awesome and looks super weird. I just wanted to make a futuristic battle tank.”

To show the world that Cybertruck was not just another organic-grocery-getting electric vehicle, Mr. Musk, at its 2019 debut had his chief designer hurl steel balls at the armored glass windows. That the windows immediately shattered in front of a stunned audience was unfortunate. Or was it? Maybe it was on purpose. Mr. Musk just chuckled when the glass broke.