The Cybertruck weighs almost three tons, so its enormous weight means it consumes an absurdly high amount of energy. Senseless waste that we as a society cannot afford. Add to that the sharp-edged construction: a safety disaster. The truck perfectly illustrates where the anti-social policies of the last few decades have led us: a few rich people drive well-armored into the disaster – and take everyone with them.
-Hendrik Fauer, one of the activists
That’s so stupid. Yes it’s ugly, impractical, and dumb. But if it’s anything like the R1T or Hummer EV, it gets 50-70 mpg equivalent. That’s great.
At least it is electric. Throw the paint on a Dodge Ram 3500 that dwarfs the Cyber truck AND burns oil.
This is like protesting at a small free range chicken farm when there’s an industrial chicken farm right next door.
There’s validity in going after something that specifically symbolizes Elon rather than a random gas guzzler. Though electric cars are (debatably) less harmful than regular ones, Elon has done a lot of work in setting back even better solutions by promoting them over things like trains.
Also he sucks for a million other reasons but he’s definitely a sort of wolf in sheep’s clothing when it comes to environmentalism.
Y’all act like you can only throw paint at one car.
But they only threw paint at one car.
This is an odd argument to make for a vegan. Because both of those farms need dismantling. Just like electric AND gas cars need to be phased out. While I can agree all these things do inequal damage, it’s STILL damage. Electric cars are a step but absolutely NOT a solution to climate change. Removing gas from the situation is well enough, but we need mass transit and rebuilt infrastructures to support it.
It’s wise to protest the placebo so people start seeking the cure. Especially when the placebo comes in a oversized impractical truck for.
Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.
I came SOOO close to putting that idiom in my response because I could see it a mile away. But what I, and the protestors themselves are saying, is that a electric cyber truck isn’t even “good”.
The most popular vehicle in America is a gas powered truck. If people switched to electric trucks, it would be good. It’s not perfect.
Have you lived anywhere other than a dense city? Mass transit doesn’t work everywhere.
Mass transit works just fine in rural areas when it’s properly constructed. Busses are about the single worst option for mass transit, and options like high speed rail excel in connecting rural areas to urban and exurban areas with better job opportunities and connecting urbanites to rural areas, both of which bring money to the rural areas.
Switzerland has one of the best rail systems in Europe yet it has more cars per capita than the UK at 604. The US is at 850. So creating a mass transit system in the US equal to the best in Europe would only reduce car usage by 30%. That’s the best possible.
that orange paint might actually improve its weather resistance
Also they are easier to spot.
SUVs are a fucking climate disaster, electric or no. Good on these activists.
How do they plan to sell it in Europe when pedestrian survival change is a necessary part of crash tests?
That car is slicing everyone in half that it hits and even if it isn’t that hood being steel will smash everyone’s head it.
It is never going to be sold in the EU because of how horribly unsafe it is for everyone around it.
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The Cybertruck is a joke of a car and why it is compared here to even worse cars makes no god damn sense. No one who actually needs a truck for work or even privately will buy this piece of overpriced and dangerous garbage. Instead it will be bought by adult children with too much money. I am not even hating on these people, rather i hate on the people that greenlight this disaster. This is what you get when a brain dead ceo can simply bully the company into doing his pet projects. Pathetic.
I was excited for it when musk announced it at $40k, now I can do without.
I support the climate activists, bigly. I think they could have chosen a better target.
Every single time
Look honestly this is pretty stupid.
The cyber truck is a super expensive, conservative coded, pavement princess car. The people buying it are probably doing so instead of getting an F350 with one of those illegal mods that lets you pipe out black smoke. It’s overall a net positive for the environment.
I feel like this is less about the Cybertruck and more about Elon. I get he’s hateable, but people just end up feeling lied to when you use BS logic to pretend that the (supposedly) best selling EV pickup in the US somehow needs to be targeted by climate activists. Just deface his private jet or some shit.
No. Both vehicles are absolute trash for the environment. Just because it’s an EV does not mean it is suddenly environmentally friendly. The stupid stainless steel alone uses up idiotic amounts of energy to produce and in the end it is still a several ton heavy vehicle instead of some form of micro car.
And no, no one really uses this or an ICE truck in a way that would require them to have one. Even people who haul shit in the back would usually do with a more sensible roofed vehicle, but that would be less “cool”.
All of those big cars can and should be a target. If we go with individual motor traffic, then we should use vehicles that are as compact and basic as possible.
Elon is also supporting right wing authoritarians who want to dismantle climate protections and promote coal, oil, and gas.
And no, no one really uses this or an ICE truck in a way that would require them to have one. Even people who haul shit in the back would usually do with a more sensible roofed vehicle, but that would be less “cool”.
Wait, no one has a legitimate use case for a truck? Like transporting building materials and tools? Large furniture and appliances? People who live along an unpaved mountain road, or work somewhere similarly remote, like forestry? Towing fifth-wheel trailers? When it snows here, I’m stuck at home until someone with a truck comes by to plow… They have large dedicated snowplows for the highways and stuff, but for out-of-the-way residential streets, the city contracts private pickup truck owners with their own plows. I’m glad they’re around.
Like don’t get me wrong-- The majority of truck owners pretty much never do these things, and it’s an extremely wasteful vanity display for them. That’s bad. Most people who buy Cybertrucks will not be doing truck stuff with them. That’s bad too.
But I think some people have a good reason to own a truck.
We’re talking about less than 1% here. And yes, most of even your examples do not require a pickup truck, or even your own hauler. Just look at other countries. People transporting tools? They have little vans or nowadays even cargo bikes. This whole pickup truck thing is very much an US fetish.
Almost all use cases for yank tanks and monster utes would be better served by some other vehicle. Large furniture and appliances? A van. Unpaved mountain road (sure…let’s just pretend that that’s actually a significant enough market to be worth derailing the conversation to talk about)? A 4WD. Transporting building materials and tools? Either a real truck or a more traditional ute. Or even a bakfiets if they’re just doing minor home repairs.
Are there use cases where yank tanks are truly the best option? Yeah probably. But they are so vanishingly small that they’re never worth talking about.
I don’t really understand your point. Vans have advantages for moving large stuff, but trucks do too. Trucks are the most common type of 4WD vehicle. For materials/tools, your examples are “big truck,” and “small truck.” Why are those acceptable, but “truck sized truck” is galling?
Oh there was also “backwards truck but bike.” I unironically love that, and I wish those were more common, but that guy isn’t coming 20km out of town in the snow with a new hot water tank.
The fact that trucks can do all of those things pretty well plus serve as an everyday personal vehicle means that IMO they do fit pretty well into lots of peoples’ lives.
4WD usually refers to a vehicle more like a Subaru Forester than a Ram, at least in my dialect of English. And while I’m at it, we don’t use the word “truck” here to refer to anything other than actual trucks. What Americans often call a truck would usually be called a “ute”, though that’s a relatively imprecise use of the term compared to the more traditional ute I linked above.
And, to be clear, I’m pretty anti-Forester, too, because most people rarely if ever use them in a way that actually needs that vehicle. But they’re definitely less obnoxious than yank tanks.
The point here isn’t that there is literally zero possible use case for them. It’s that the use case is so vanishingly small that bringing it up as a defence to criticism of those vehicles is just annoying and comes across as (even if you did not intend it this way) an attempt to derail the conversation in bad faith.
Oh… I think in my part of the world, most people picture a pickup truck when they think of a 4WD vehicle, although other vehicles like a Forester or Jeep would also be included.
I guess for me, I know enough non-city people who have vehicle needs that very regularly involve hauling, towing, driving off-road (or on barely-a-road surfaces), etc. that it doesn’t seem weird or wasteful to me that they own a truck, even though yes they also use them to pick up groceries. There’s great benefit in the versatility, which other vehicles don’t easily match, and I don’t think the number of people who need that versatility is vanishingly small.
In the city though, yeah… Almost nobody needs a truck in the city.
I should probably also add that I’m from a country with an especially low rural population. I’m from the state with the highest proportion of rural population, and we have 50% in our capital city alone.
no one really used this or an ICE truck in a way that would require them to have one.
Thanks for adding this. It saved me a lot of time trying to argue with you. You’re clearly the type of person who is gonna believe what you want to believe.
I believe what is happening in reality. But every accusation is a confession I guess. https://www.axios.com/ford-pickup-trucks-history
That source provides evidence against. It says that around 70 percent of F-150 owners use their car for “personal hauling” on at least an occasional basis, and around 40 percent use their car for towing under the same criteria.
You specifically said “no one” uses ICE pickup trucks for their intended purpose.
Did you not read that article or did you just think that I wouldn’t actually click on the link?
lmao The vast majority of people literally confess to use their trucks for shit like leisure and grocery shopping. You don’t need a heavy pickup truck to “occasionally” do “personal hauling”. But thanks for proving my point, because what you’re doing is mental gymnastics in an effort to make excuses. It’s like Cybertruck owners arguing they are off-roading with it, while they just drive over some dirt roads with a few rocks and puddles - something virtually every car can do. Unless you have to haul actually heavy gear on a daily basis through some serious terrain on an open bed, you don’t need a truck. And if you fit into those criteria, you wouldn’t buy a fashion truck with their tiny bed and are part of the 7% of that statistic, which is likely still more bullshit than not and the true number is closer to less than 5%.
See this is why I said it was pointless to argue.
- Your comment was extremely hyperbolic, relied more on emotion, and made some claims that sounded completely unbelievable
- You posted an article claiming it to “prove” your claim. It didn’t prove anything, but provided decent evidence in direct contradiction to what you claimed
- You then tried to argue in a way that defies any sort of common sense. Of course people with pickup trucks also use them to get groceries. Do you expect them to have an entirely different car that they’ll be using unless they specifically need pickup truck specific features? That’s insane
- You also moved the goal posts of what defined needing a pickup truck. Your definition is extremely restrictive, and isn’t referenced in the article. Again this is the article you yourself chose.
You’ve 100 percent what you’re gonna believe. That belief is based off your own personal hatred of pickup trucks. I wouldn’t be surprised if this didn’t somehow tie into a larger aspect of your identity via some weird political connection. It’s like talking to a 7th grader. Pointless.
Holy mother of projection… No thanks.
Yep and the message it sends to 99% of the population that isn’t deep in Elon derangement syndrome is that green movements are just more leftwing circlejerking idiots that are completely unserious about the causes they profess to fight for.
Yes I would love america to have better trains and better public transport but short of a magic wand that’s not going to happen this decade, if we want to improve things then we need to live in the world we’re in. Cybertruck is great for converting rich idiots who’d otherwise be ICE obsessives, they’ll all be getting solar roofs too so they can brag and preaching to their budies about being secure in disasters and price spikes. Though let’s be honest these protesters will likely have the opposite effect to their aims and increase Elons popularity amoung the right.
It’s sad to me these people who profess to care so much about climate change or whatever always and only do aggressive, destructive and easy acts - they never put the work in to come up with creative, constructive and genuinely positive acts which help people or projects working to improve things.
Careful, they are learning that electric cars are more damaging to the environment then normal ones!
Three ton stainless steel monstrosities are a danger to society and not an efficient use of green knowledge.
It doesnt mean a nissan leaf is bad.
They didn’t say that.
That’s the problem when one’s rhetorical toolbox is thrown soup.
I dont know what you said.
It’s a long running brouhaha about the effectiveness of the Just Stop Oil tactics
That is not quite true. Electric cars over their lifetime are definitely a lot lot better than ICE cars. HOWEVER, they are definitely not the solution for transportation. Public transit is.
Getting new electric vehicles makes sense for vehicles that simply cannot be replaced by other alternatives (examples of such vehicles being pickups for businesses, those little vans for the post office, buses, etc.).
Of course, the most eco friendly thing is generally what u already have. Switching to an electric car from ur five year old ICE car is more environmentally damaging.
