Why Silicon Valley Is All Wrong About the Cybertruck
Elon Musk’s future Tesla is a truck like the iPhone is a phone
Silicon Valley is all wrong about the Cybertruck, but not like it was wrong about Apple’s AirPods or Amazon’s Echo Show.
The Cybertruck reimagines what a truck is, constitutionally. It’s such a savage departure from our expectations that define a “truck” that we need a new word. It’s in a class of its own.
The Cybertruck may be hired for similar jobs as the Ford F-150 (as Musk asserted), but it consequates much more.
Personally, I see parallels to Steve Jobs’ 2007 launch of the iPhone — a generation-defining moment that birthed a new category: “an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator.” It may have been unknown that day, but it didn’t take long to feel the enormity of the iPhone’s importance as a modifier of human experience. I have a similar sense about the Cybertruck, at least in terms of the symbolism it offers and what its design portends.
Tesla’s Cybertruck is a truck like the iPhone is a phone. Though the word “phone” is embedded in the name iPhone, it primarily serves as an homage to the category it redefined; as an anchor to the familiar, rather than as a predictor of its potential.
