Tesla goes Populist?

Keeping the electric vehicle theme going this Friday morning...here’s the news from last night’s Elon Musk 11pm est reveal of the new Tesla Cyber truck. What a classic challenger brand marketer - he started the presentation with a clutter reel montage of truck videos stating that “trucks have not changed for 100 years”.

Until now.

I love how he is engaging a community that is decidedly more “blue collar” / populist than the suburban “soccer spouse” SUV crew the Mustang is going after. Trucks make up the majority of US auto sales, and the majority of those sales are outside of the major metro markets. Almost 3 million pickups were sold in 2018.

I like how Musk is tapping more into the DIY “industrial maker” in himself and his brand- there’s no reason electric vehicles have to stay chained to the blue-state eco-warrior Prius vibe.

Do you think the window shattering was a fatal flaw in this story? I found this public demonstration of “work in progress” strangely humanizing and authentic - and have a belief that Musk will be highly motivated to fix it before rollout.

Excited to see some radical change in an old category. Excited to see Musk and Tesla move beyond the Blue State bubble.

Truck Wars are coming! Get ready.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-reveals-cybertruck-its-electric-pickup-100156199.html