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Why Tesla can’t ditch the Cybertruck for a traditional pickup design
The Tesla Cybertruck is so “Tesla,” it’s not even debatable. To me, at least. The truck is the true embodiment of everything the electric automaker had stood for during the last seventeen years when it was established in 2003. It breaks all the rules; it goes against the look and feel of “traditional” automotive manufacturing. It is a rebellious statement against the normal boundaries of what a truck is “supposed” to be. Making a traditional, typical, and standard pickup truck would break all of Tesla’s rules, and if the company ends up designing it, it would mean that the legacy automakers have won.
Earlier this week, CEO Elon Musk said that if the Cybertruck happens to tank in sales, Tesla will end up designing a more traditional pickup for the market to consider. Even though I openly said I don’t think that Tesla will have to worry about designing and manufacturing a Cybertruck alternative, the possibility still worries me.
I know what many of you are probably thinking. “Joey, that’s really extreme.” Or, maybe, “Joey, that’s ridiculous, Tesla is just doing what it can to stay competitive in a popular market in case the Cybertruck tanks.”
Sure, I can agree with the second one from an economic standpoint for the company, but I certainly don’t see my point of view as extreme.
Tesla’s Cybertruck, when it was unveiled, shocked the world. It made everyone question what the company was doing. I’ll admit, when I saw that beast roll out onto the stage in Hawthorne, California, I was skeptical. I think I said something along the lines of, “What the hell is that thing?”
But as the presentation went on, I found myself increasingly interested in what Tesla was doing. I realized it was meant to be ridiculous, different, and “polarizing,” as so many people like to call it. It made the entire automotive industry look at the company, and it has worked thus far because it is arguably the most talked-about vehicle in recent memory.
Let’s be honest: Tesla has always broken the rules. Skeptics said the Model S would fail. It didn’t. They said Tesla couldn’t attain a considerable or acceptable range for its EVs. The company did and has scrapped vehicle models that aren’t capable of “acceptable range” of over 250 miles. They said the company couldn’t make an affordable vehicle. The Model 3 and Model Y are both mass-market cars geared toward affordability. They said Tesla couldn’t turn a profit. It just did, for the fourth consecutive quarter.
Tesla has always done what people said wasn’t possible. The Cybertruck is just one of the latest examples.
When the Cybertruck was unveiled, people said, “Nobody will buy that.” “It’s ugly.” “Even if people buy it, it won’t perform well against petrol-powered pickups.”
It has a substantial amount of pre-orders. According to CybertruckOwnersClub’s reservation number decoder, it has over 750,000 pre-orders.
It may be ugly to some, but that’s an opinion and subjective. I find the truck unique and beautiful in its own way.
The Cybertruck won a Tug-of-War against an F-150.
There are those three theories debunked.
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But more significant than that, the Cybertruck is really an embodiment of Tesla’s mission as a whole. It has always been to prove the doubters wrong, to change the way people look at cars. Before Tesla, people saw their everyday drivers as a way to get from Point A to Point B. Some were faster than others, some were louder than others, and some had better stereos than others. The point is, when Tesla’s came out, their vehicles became more than a daily transportation outlet. They became entertainment machines, and they changed the way the world looked at a car.
The Cybertruck did the same thing. It changed the way people looked at trucks, even though nobody has one yet. It is a summarization of what Tesla has always meant and tried to convey to people. Change the way people look at something, and the possibilities become limitless. Before the Cybertruck, people thought that the “truck” had to have a cab, a bed, and look nearly the same as every other pickup on the market. But that’s the thing. Tesla has never used the rules or the “typical” idea for anything. That’s what makes Tesla, Tesla.
People knew battery-powered cars were possible, but nobody was good at it. The other car companies in the world were too focused on making their petrol engines more advanced at the time. After all, nobody was anxious about climate change at the time. At least, it wasn’t widely accepted by people until the mid-2000s from what I remember.
Tesla changed all of that. They proved electric cars didn’t have to be slow, or boring “like a golf cart,” as Elon Musk once said.
In my opinion, we won’t see a traditional Tesla truck. I don’t think the Cybertruck will tank in terms of sales, and I don’t believe that Tesla will be interested in being just another car company that makes a truck that looks like everyone else’s.
The Cybertruck goes against all the rules, and that’s more “Tesla” than anything.
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Tesla has officially launched public Robotaxi rides in Austin, Texas, without a Safety Monitor in the vehicle, marking the first time the company has removed anyone from the vehicle other than the rider.
The Safety Monitor has been present in Tesla Robotaxis in Austin since its launch last June, maintaining safety for passengers and other vehicles, and was placed in the passenger’s seat.
Tesla planned to remove the Safety Monitor at the end of 2025, but it was not quite ready to do so. Now, in January, riders are officially reporting that they are able to hail a ride from a Model Y Robotaxi without anyone in the vehicle:
I am in a robotaxi without safety monitor pic.twitter.com/fzHu385oIb
— TSLA99T (@Tsla99T) January 22, 2026
Tesla started testing this internally late last year and had several employees show that they were riding in the vehicle without anyone else there to intervene in case of an emergency.
Tesla has now expanded that program to the public. It is not active in the entire fleet, but there are a “few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader robotaxi fleet with safety monitors,” Ashok Elluswamy said:
Robotaxi rides without any safety monitors are now publicly available in Austin.
Starting with a few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader robotaxi fleet with safety monitors, and the ratio will increase over time. https://t.co/ShMpZjefwB
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) January 22, 2026
Tesla Robotaxi goes driverless as Musk confirms Safety Monitor removal testing
The Robotaxi program also operates in the California Bay Area, where the fleet is much larger, but Safety Monitors are placed in the driver’s seat and utilize Full Self-Driving, so it is essentially the same as an Uber driver using a Tesla with FSD.
In Austin, the removal of Safety Monitors marks a substantial achievement for Tesla moving forward. Now that it has enough confidence to remove Safety Monitors from Robotaxis altogether, there are nearly unlimited options for the company in terms of expansion.
While it is hoping to launch the ride-hailing service in more cities across the U.S. this year, this is a much larger development than expansion, at least for now, as it is the first time it is performing driverless rides in Robotaxi anywhere in the world for the public to enjoy.
Tesla has scheduled its Earnings Call for Q4 and Full Year 2025 for next Wednesday, January 28, at 5:30 p.m. EST, and investors are already preparing to get some answers from executives regarding a wide variety of topics.
The company accepts several questions from retail investors through the platform Say, which then allows shareholders to vote on the best questions.
Tesla does not answer anything regarding future product releases, but they are willing to shed light on current timelines, progress of certain projects, and other plans.
There are five questions that range over a variety of topics, including SpaceX, Full Self-Driving, Robotaxi, and Optimus, which are currently in the lead to be asked and potentially answered by Elon Musk and other Tesla executives:
- You once said: Loyalty deserves loyalty. Will long-term Tesla shareholders still be prioritized if SpaceX does an IPO?
- Our Take – With a lot of speculation regarding an incoming SpaceX IPO, Tesla investors, especially long-term ones, should be able to benefit from an early opportunity to purchase shares. This has been discussed endlessly over the past year, and we must be getting close to it.
- When is FSD going to be 100% unsupervised?
- Our Take – Musk said today that this is essentially a solved problem, and it could be available in the U.S. by the end of this year.
- What is the current bottleneck to increase Robotaxi deployment & personal use unsupervised FSD? The safety/performance of the most recent models or people to monitor robots, robotaxis, in-car, or remotely? Or something else?
- Our Take – The bottleneck seems to be based on data, which Musk said Tesla needs 10 billion miles of data to achieve unsupervised FSD. Once that happens, regulatory issues will be what hold things up from moving forward.
- Regarding Optimus, could you share the current number of units deployed in Tesla factories and actively performing production tasks? What specific roles or operations are they handling, and how has their integration impacted factory efficiency or output?
- Our Take – Optimus is going to have a larger role in factories moving forward, and later this year, they will have larger responsibilities.
- Can you please tie purchased FSD to our owner accounts vs. locked to the car? This will help us enjoy it in any Tesla we drive/buy and reward us for hanging in so long, some of us since 2017.
- Our Take – This is a good one and should get us some additional information on the FSD transfer plans and Subscription-only model that Tesla will adopt soon.
Tesla will have its Earnings Call on Wednesday, January 28.
Elon Musk shared an incredible detail about Tesla Cybercab’s potential efficiency, as the company has hinted in the past that it could be one of the most affordable vehicles to operate from a per-mile basis.
ARK Invest released a report recently that shed some light on the potential incremental cost per mile of various Robotaxis that will be available on the market in the coming years.
The Cybercab, which is detailed for the year 2030, has an exceptionally low cost of operation, which is something Tesla revealed when it unveiled the vehicle a year and a half ago at the “We, Robot” event in Los Angeles.
Musk said on numerous occasions that Tesla plans to hit the $0.20 cents per mile mark with the Cybercab, describing a “clear path” to achieving that figure and emphasizing it is the “full considered” cost, which would include energy, maintenance, cleaning, depreciation, and insurance.
Probably true
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 22, 2026
ARK’s report showed that the Cybercab would be roughly half the cost of the Waymo 6th Gen Robotaxi in 2030, as that would come in at around $0.40 per mile all in. Cybercab, at scale, would be at $0.20.
Credit: ARK Invest
This would be a dramatic decrease in the cost of operation for Tesla, and the savings would then be passed on to customers who choose to utilize the ride-sharing service for their own transportation needs.
The U.S. average cost of new vehicle ownership is about $0.77 per mile, according to AAA. Meanwhile, Uber and Lyft rideshares often cost between $1 and $4 per mile, while Waymo can cost between $0.60 and $1 or more per mile, according to some estimates.
Tesla’s engineering has been the true driver of these cost efficiencies, and its focus on creating a vehicle that is as cost-effective to operate as possible is truly going to pay off as the vehicle begins to scale. Tesla wants to get the Cybercab to about 5.5-6 miles per kWh, which has been discussed with prototypes.
Additionally, fewer parts due to the umboxed manufacturing process, a lower initial cost, and eliminating the need to pay humans for their labor would also contribute to a cheaper operational cost overall. While aspirational, all of the ingredients for this to be a real goal are there.
It may take some time as Tesla needs to hammer the manufacturing processes, and Musk has said there will be growing pains early. This week, he said regarding the early production efforts:
“…initial production is always very slow and follows an S-curve. The speed of production ramp is inversely proportionate to how many new parts and steps there are. For Cybercab and Optimus, almost everything is new, so the early production rate will be agonizingly slow, but eventually end up being insanely fast.”
BREAKING: Tesla launches public Robotaxi rides in Austin with no Safety Monitor
Tesla Earnings Call: Top 5 questions investors are asking
