The shape of things to come
Tesla’s Cybertruck has generated red-hot coverage from its demo onwards. More lasting interest may come for the design that has a rich genealogy with significance beyond vehicles.
Elon Musk tweeted the Cybertruck’s design inspiration was a 1977 Lotus Esprit that appeared in the James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me. Musk bought it for $860,000 at auction
“Nobody remembers, or is inspired by, anything that fits in.” Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle, 2018.
Electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer Tesla, caused a furore with the launch of its latest product, the Cybertruck: an electric-motor-powered pickup truck with an unexpected and polarising design – “unexpected” being the operative word. Tesla pulled-off a “Wow…what the f**k is that!” moment in an age when product launches so often lack surprise. Where prototype images and artistic renders are leaked and distributed online well in advance of launch dates to ease public and investor uncertainty.
With the Cybertruck, Tesla contrived hype about a new product – both positive and negative – reminiscent of an Apple product launch of yesteryear when digital-age innovations felt so much more exotic and countercultural.
Reviews from publications are split. Wired UK ran a story with the headline “Tesla’s Cybertruck is either a bad joke or a big mistake”. Journalist Jeremy White quoted Chief Creative Officer at WPP brand agency Superunion, Greg Quinton, observing that the Cybertruck is, “the love child of a cheese grater and a door wedge. Who’d have thought that was possible? The truck reverses automotive design back to a child’s first Duplo car. Sergio Pininfarina [Italian car designer] is likely turning in his grave.”
Wired US highlighted the initial horror of Raphael Zammit, who heads the MFA Transportation Design program at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit and has been in the field of automotive design for nearly a quarter century.
While Zammit registered its “extreme” design he also highlighted to Wired a feature that perhaps points to a surprisingly ecological approach that the design codings disguise: “By being philosophically so pure and so functional, Tesla has completely eliminated a very large part of what is the traditional automotive assembly.”
Tesla Design BC (Before Cybertruck)
As a 21st century automotive newcomer – founded in 2003 – Tesla is still young with a short design history and a tiny back catalogue of reference models. The 2012 Tesla Model S luxury sedan is the vehicle which put the marque on the map and laid the design language foundations for subsequent models – namely the Model X and Model 3. Even though the Model S was an innovative and forward-thinking car for its time – remember, back then, eight long years ago, electric battery power was for golf carts and milk floats, not serious vehicles – the Model S’s exterior design was fairly conservative and mature, not looking out of place or strange alongside its gasoline-powered contemporaries. From the outside, the Model S looked like a normal car, similar in proportions, profile, lines, surfaces and features. It was only when the driver got inside the Model S did the design break from convention, most prominently by the iPad sized digital touchscreen display in the centre console suggesting the car was more PlayStation than Meccano.
Similarly, the 2015 Tesla Model X looked inconspicuous from the outside. Yet it did have a couple of unique design features. Such as a panoramic windscreen, allowing more light into the interior as well as giving the passengers a wider view of the outside world from within the car. And Falcon Wing passenger doors – hinged from the roof, opening upwards like bird wings – which allowed easier access to the vehicle’s rear seats. Both these design features communicated a sense of openness and affability. The most innovative and bombastic technological feature of the Model X was its ‘Bioweapon Defence Mode’ which is a medical grade air filtration system, filtering out pollen, bacteria, viruses and pollution from entering the interior cabin space.
In terms of design, Tesla has focused and differentiated itself through the EV interior user experience rather than the exterior design per se. Tesla design BC can be characterised as being familiar, inoffensive, well executed, aesthetically pleasing but not exactly head-turning – in stark contrast to BMW’s i Series (i3 and i8) entry into the EV/plug-in hybrid market with their overtly stylised and eccentric exteriors.
Tesla hatred
“Wax me /Mould me /Heat the pins and stab them in /You have turned me into this /Just wish that it was bullet proof” Radiohead ‘Bullet Proof…I Wish I Was’ from The Bends, 1995.
In 2020 I find it harder to differentiate between what is real or fake. Applications with sophisticated digital content generating and manipulating software distort the information we consume on our smartphones and laptops on a daily basis. While content management algorithms adhering to confirmation bias help to cement and polarise our opinions – if you think the world is flat, search engines and social media platforms will prioritise and feed you information which confirms you are right.
Therefore, I take with a pinch of salt, hatred crime reports against Tesla car owners I read online. For example, articles about Tesla drivers being “Coal-Rolled”, where truck drivers dump sooty diesel engine exhaust into the path of an overtaken vehicle. Or posts about Tesla Supercharger battery recharging stations being intentionally blocked by non-electric vehicles – also known as “ICEing”. Or broadcasts of Tesla cars being physically attacked by other motorists, “keyed” – gouging-out body panel paint with a key or blade. Yet Tesla recently created and introduced ‘Sentry Mode’ software – essentially, a video-surveillance system utilising cameras within the vehicle – to give customers a greater sense of security against those who see Tesla as a target for abuse.
Enter the Cybertruck
[the motorcar]… “an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad, and incomplete in the urban compound…It is a hot, explosive medium of social communication” Marshall McLuhan, ‘The Mechanical Bride’ in Understanding Media, 1964
The Cybertruck is an unwieldy, armour-plated, teenage rebellion, badass vehicle. At 17 years old, Tesla has ditched its prep school modesty and given the Cybertruck a modern urban attire which says “hey! look at me, b*t*ch!” – spoken as if from the mouth of Rick Sanchez from Rick & Morty. The raw, unadulterated steel clad vehicle shouts “I’m not a pickup truck” much like how the 1998 iMac G3 with its translucent, Bondi Blue polycarbonate casing declared “I’m not a computer” – instantly making every other beige box PC look super dull, unimaginative and outdated.
The Cybertruck grabs attention through its dramatic lines, large faceted metal surfaces and angular forms – it is a piece of Ken Adam set-design realised as a vehicle. Sparse, vast, with a touch of futurism. The Cybertruck is not naturally beautiful but it has the allure of an abstract painting – making the viewer look once, twice, thrice, in the search of meaning and understanding.
The vehicle’s bulletproof-clad exterior is controversial and seems a spec too far but perhaps should not be taken literally. I doubt many Tesla customers buy the Model X because they imagine the ‘Bioweapon Defence Mode’ would be a useful feature in the unexpected event of driving through a war zone. The ‘Bioweapon Defence Mode’ sounded overdramatic but actually made sense in our smog-ridden cities by creating an EV space ‘hermetically sealed’ to the polluted outside world. Similarly, tougher car body panels – albeit bullet proof – in today’s tightly packed urban parking-lots could reduce an owner’s anxiety of dings, dents and scratches and possibly their insurance premium.
The Cybertruck feels raw, anti-complexity, anti-tech – void of elaborate transitional, intertwining lines, forms or surfaces – unruly, cold and de-humanised as if battle-hardened. I feel it fits within today’s milieu.
The Cybertruck is poised between reality and fantasy. The bulletproof features would fit right into Fortnite Battle Royale.
Contextual Sense-making
‘More than any other manufactured product, the car enshrines and projects the values of the culture which created it.’ Stephen Bayley, Sex, Drink and Fast Cars, 1986.
The Cybertruck’s idiosyncratic style wouldn’t look strange in episodes of quirky, scifi, fantasy series Black Mirror or Rick and Morty. The vehicle’s hard-edged grimness resides in the world’s depicted by Martin Scorsese’s epic The Irishman and Todd Phillips’ Joker. The Cybertruck’s audacity would make it the perfect contender as star vehicle in the next, all-action, indestructible, Fast and Furious franchise. The vehicle’s bullet proof exterior would be a useful advantage in popular Battle Royale-style video games such as Fortnite and Call of Duty – as well as within some riotous metropolitans in the real-world. One can imagine the Cybertruck’s exclusivity will make it an Instagram sensation – an electric beast to be hunted down, captured and trophied online.
I know these contextual references are a mixture of fictional, virtual, internet realities but we live in an age where different realities coexist and intertwine – a single tweet by President Trump is more powerful and impactful than months of face-to-face dialogue. Even the vehicle’s name, “Cybertruck” is suggesting that this is an automobile for a virtual, computerised world. I’ve already seen the vehicle reproduced and simulated in video games and modified in artist renders online. Maybe the Cybertruck doesn’t even exist in the reality we call the “real-world”? Maybe Elon Musk has created a fantastic cyber illusion?
Assuming the Cybertruck is a “real” object, there are clear contemporary design examples from non-automotive sectors which demonstrate that the vehicle’s design language and characteristics are current and coherent. For example, I’m writing this article on a 2019 Space Grey MacBook Air, that feels and looks like a block of metal that has been cut and polished into an electronic device, much like how the Cybertruck comes across. The MacBook Air is minimalist, flat, geometric, sharp and precise. Void of charm and soft “human” touches, the reassuring “breathing” LED and glowing logo on my old MacBook is consigned to a more caring bygone era. Moreover, the latest Mac Pro and Apple Card share a raw, pure – almost elemental – hard and cold industrial feel similar to the Cybertruck. Tactile but impersonal.
The Cybertruck wouldn’t look out of place alongside the exquisitely folding geometry of a 2019 Bang & Olufsen Beovision Harmony television nor a pair of sharp-edged Bang & Olufsen Beolab bronze speakers. The Cybertruck has a common geometric solidness and material craft akin to furniture collections by David Chipperfield and Tom Dixon. While the vehicle holds a forbidding dynamism found in Snohetta’s 2019 submerged underwater restaurant project and an intriguing emptiness presented in the minimalist concrete 2019 House in Ashiya by Kazunori Fujimoto Architect & Associates.
In terms of fashion, there are design synergies between the Cybertruck and the understated yet distinctively cut proportions and details of technical urban wear brand Arc’teryx Veilance. More provocatively and progressively, one can see the Cybertruck on the catwalk beside the cyber-punk, retro-futurism expressed in the 2020 Dior menswear collections by Daniel Arsham and Kim Jones and the streetwear label Ambush. Furthermore, there is something about the 2019 Nike Adapt BB self-lacing shoe with its relatively uncluttered yet standout design and neon electric light-up soles which feels far-out – Back to the Future – like the Cybertruck.
There are also correlations between the Cybertruck and contemporary graphic visual languages such as the reinvented Volkswagen brand. After the Dieselgate emissions scandal, Volkswagen has shifted its focus to EVs and in doing so it has recently revelled in a new identity. The new logo for example, is flat, simpler, cleaner and sharper – appearing to have been created by no more than a Sharpie pen and a set of rulers, much like the lines and block shapes of the Cybertruck. Moreover, the Cybertruck feels like the vehicle of Extinction Rebellion – bold, electro-punk environmentalism with bags of attitude.
The underwater restaurant designed by architects Snohetta in Baly, Norway, has a similar ‘forbidding dynamism’ as the Cybertruck. Photo: Ivar Kvaal
Design and Creative Futures
At the dawn of this decade, Tesla and Elon Musk has given us the Cybertruck. A tangible, physical, designed object and a virtual manifestation. Ahead of the vehicle’s commercial realisation and mass-production, the Cybertruck’s severe, elementary yet contemporary design language has lent itself to a barrage of online commentary and – more fascinating – online digital manipulation, distortion and “cyber mythologisation”. Is the Cybertruck another strategic marketing master-stroke by Elon Musk? Maybe. The question remains, will the virtual illusion be better than the real thing? And as we head further into this new decade, will the “real” even matter?
Nicholas Stafford is an innovation consultant and product designer. He graduated from Central Saint Martins in London with a master’s degree in Innovation Management. He lives and works in Bangkok.
