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.

  • ddplf@szmer.info
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    2 months ago

    This is absolutely a design decision. They won’t tow, they won’t go off the asphalt, they will mostly climb sidewalks and the only heavy loads they will ever carry will be the ones in their owners’ bellies after family dinner at Olive Garden.

    They are oversized crossovers with open trunk and that’s plenty more than their owners need.

    • d00phy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      2 months ago

      Reminds me of an old Miller Hugh Life commercial I loved. Showed an old guy watering his lawn by hand with nothing but a hose while looking at his neighbor’s new SUV (when they were getting popular). The voiceover says: “The only ‘off-road action’ this $60,000 monstrosity will ever see is if its owner accidentally backs over a flowerbed. A real man knows a station wagon when he sees one!”