As soon as I saw it, I knew this is what he was thinking. This is obviously a car designed for driving on Mars. Yes, seriously. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1197627433970589696

Imagine considering everything that we need to do here, now, today, and then deciding you need to build a truck to use on Mars.

IMO one of the least interesting critiques of the Cybertruck is that it's "ugly" - and I think that reaction comes from the naturalization of the homogenized car design, where everything looks nearly identical. Anything breaking that mold is an object of ridicule. Car cultures.

This is a really interesting point contrasting this with previous releases: "What Musk didn’t do was explain the Cybertruck." https://www.wired.com/story/is-teslas-cybertruck-pickup-real/

There's been a lot of focus on the exterior of this design, but the interior is equally strange. Six seats? The steering wheel looks like racing style controls that aren't usually street legal.

Tesla image depicting the Cybertruck with an "in-bed tent" set up, apparently an image designed by someone who doesn't understand you wouldn't want a cooking surface directly next to a tent. How do you even get in, climb over the kitchen?

Tesla imagines producing a trailer to match? This looks even more like a toy I would have had in the 1980s.

Tesla Cybertruck aesthetic reminds me of a few things. That 1980s moment in future-imagining that created the "Lazer Tag" concept and world, which was supposed to be set 1000 years in the future.

The Tesla Cybertruck aesthetic also reminds me of the military vehicle in Aliens (1986), the APC, a form that is certainly set deep in the militarized futures consciousness of kids from that era. So again, the 80s.

Tesla has always summoned the ghost of K.I.T.T., the sentient AI car from Knight Rider (1982), who was like the lovechild of a Cylon and a Tesla. And the Cybertruck does that even more if not as much in form as in mood and advertised self-driving function.

Some real car comparisons are obvious, like the DeLorean. And there's some Trek original shuttlecraft shape in there, along with later version Batmobile (left). More recently though is the NASA Mars concept car/rover design (right).

Science fiction has a history of land vehicles that echo the Cybertruck form directly and in mood. Here's some concept art and images from the Ark II TV series (1976), the smaller vehicle was called the "roamer."

Here's the 1980 Citroën Karin, a concept car that was clearly inspired by many of the 1980s science-fiction film and TV designs.

More concept cars of the 1970s-80s echoing the Cybertruck's angularity, all influenced by science fiction moods and designs from the era.

Some have pointed to the cars from Total Recall (1990), with headlines saying the Cybertruck looks "exactly" like them. But it's really just a whole genre of future-concept car from the 80s in both film and auto design industry speculation/future-designing.

What I think this adds up to: Many of the people this Tesla truck is marketed at will love it because they look at it and they think "I've seen this before" and yet it feels like the future to them because it's what the future looked like when they were kids imagining the future.

There's an interesting thing going on with scale in this design too. I think it's meant to look much bigger than it is, it's clearly referencing the feeling of a class of very large science-fiction rovers in film and TV from the 1970s to today. Rover from Prometheus (2012).

I agree. I also thin k the Cybertruck is an interplanetary frontier vehicle. It's meant to make you feel like you're the first one to drive on a planet you are colonizing, whether that's Earth or Mars. The world outside is dangerous. https://twitter.com/sevensixfive/status/1198003406167781376

Another one of the large rovers that it's referencing: https://twitter.com/nwchap/status/1198002959725973504

Tesla cars have always implied that even on Earth you might be in a space-like hazard environment. From industrial pollution to the wildfires of climate catastrophe, the car is advertised as built to respond to science-fiction-like threats. https://twitter.com/Tesla/status/727288282665508864

Does it matter if the planet is burning, or even uninhabitable, as long as you're safe in your space car?

The saviour narrative doesn't need a trip to mars, it's already established here on Earth. https://www.biotecnika.org/2018/11/tesla-bioweapon-defense-mode/