There are many reasons to hate the Cybertruck. Looks, shoddy workmanship, flat out performance lies, Man-child business owner, etc…

But my biggest gripe, and this is the unpopular bit, is that in my opinion, it’s not actually a truck at all.

The Cybertruck is a uni-body construction, often called a “car chassis”. It shares that with the Honda Ridgeline, Hyundai Santa Cruz, and a few others. Trucks that are meant to do actual work use a body-on-frame construction because it has more ability to flex and twist when you put a heavy load in the bed or towing something heavy.

To put it simply, if you put a heavy enough load in the back of a uni-body truck, you’re going to lose some traction on the front wheels as the weight will tilt the entire body backwards, whereas real trucks made for work are developed with the bed mounted separately to avoid that issue.

I know that yes, Santa Cruz, Cybertruck, Ridgeline, etc… are still technically classified as a truck. But in my (unpopular) opinion, anything uni-body shouldn’t be classified as one.

  • @Technoguyfication@sh.itjust.works
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    716 months ago

    Not to mention it’s an entirely aluminum frame that has been shown to shatter instead of bend when overstressed, which is the opposite of what you want when you’re towing a trailer down the road at 65mph

  • @WoahWoah@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    You’ll also break the frame if you hop on the hitch. It has a vertical load rating of 160 pounds and the frame is aluminum. No bending, just breaking. It’s poorly conceived, executed, and implemented from top to bottom.

  • @Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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    136 months ago

    I…I’m not sure this is unpopular, so much as it is nit-picky. It would be like saying your favorite nut can’t be honey roasted peanuts simply because the peanut isn’t a nut at all. It’s a legume. Doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be arrested for attempted murder if you force fed someone peanuts who had a known nut allergy.

  • @fubarx@lemmy.ml
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    96 months ago

    In a previous post, somebody called it a name that will forever live in my head:

    WankPanzer.

  • @Mac@mander.xyz
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    86 months ago

    We should start to distinguish the two different styles of trucks by bringing back the term “pickup”.

    These smalls trucks can be “pickups” and the truck trucks can be trucks.

      • snooggums
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        86 months ago

        While I am onboard with this, it is funny that the article keeps changing terminology and uses ‘pickups’ and ‘puckup trucks’ interchangeably.

    • edric
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      56 months ago

      Back in my home country, we exclusively called them pickups. “Truck” was used for anything from box trucks to 18-wheelers. But the passenger vehicles with beds were called pickups, regardless if it was a Maverick or an F150. Took a while for me to adapt to calling them trucks in the US.

  • @esc27@lemmy.world
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    66 months ago

    I think of them like planets.

    The Ford Maverick looks like the larger trucks in style but is unibody, so it is Pluto. Looks like a planet, considered by many to be one, but technically a “dwarf planet”

    The Santa Cruz is Ceres. Round, definitely planet like, but harder to call a planet.

    The Cybertruck is Arrokoth. Few would mistake it for a planet. Weird looking, misproportioned, and way out there…

  • Lexam
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    56 months ago

    I never understood how the “X” was an SUV.

  • Hemingways_ShotgunOP
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    56 months ago

    Just to add… if the Cybertruck, Ridgeline, etc… are trucks, then so is the El Camino…technically. And that is certainly not true.

    • snooggums
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      46 months ago

      The El Camino is a coupe utility vehicle, which is like a truck in the same way a three door hatchback is like a atation wagon. Kind of an midpoint between two other more distinct classes of vehicles.

      Unibody trucks are still trucks if they can do general truck stuff like haul cargo in a bed and are generally shaped like a truck. They are definilty lighter duty though, which is fine and I wish coupe utility would make a comeback.

      The cybertruck is just terrible at being a truck.

      • Hemingways_ShotgunOP
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        36 months ago

        I would absolutely argue (and that’s kind of my point) that the Cybertruck…and ESPECIALLY the Santa Cruz is closer to a coupe utility vehicle rather than a truck.

    • @Voyajer@lemmy.world
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      16 months ago

      If you can do truck things with it, it’s a truck. You can certainly do more truck things with a Ridgeline than a cybertruck and have it survive.

  • @TootSweet@lemmy.world
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    26 months ago

    Cybertruck not actually a truck. Musk directs Tesla to rename flagship vehicle “Cyber-not-a-truck.” News at 9:00.

  • @AA5B@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Yeah that’s unpopular - I shared that view in the early days of unibody construction but manufacturers can do a lot more with that now. Why not judge whether it’s a truck by whether it can do truck things?

    We’re way past the point where trucks are used for stereotypical truck things and they’re used for a much wider range of uses. Most don’t need to be so heavy duty to fulfill their use case.

    Unless you’re also going to claim we don’t need 80% of the trucks we have, you’re just being pretentious about the need for heavy duty vehicles and what manufacturers are able to design

    • Hemingways_ShotgunOP
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      36 months ago

      Unless you’re also going to claim we don’t need 80% of the trucks we have

      I would never presume to claim any such thing. I drive a 2021 Canyon quarter-tonne precisely because I think there is a use case for lighter duty trucks for people like me who aren’t doing much more than hauling home-reno trash to the dump and moving some furniture for friends.

      • @Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
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        16 months ago

        That’s a pickup truck.

        (Or in some places we call them a “pick 'em up truck.”)

        The Cyberwhatsis will never be a pickup vehicle because not only can’t it carry anything heavy, it also actively repels girls.