By Mark Favermann

Let me be clear where I stand on the Cybertruck controversy. I have never ridden in, driven, or even touched one. But I love the way it looks.

2025 Tesla Cybertruck. Photo: Tesla

As a boy, I played counting games on medium and long car trips. Sometimes it would be adding up different state license plates; other times counting the colors of various vehicles; and still others totaling the makes and brands of vehicles. At night, spotting cars with only one working headlight was called finding a “padoodle.” Today, no longer a boy, my usual car trip game is to count Tesla Cybertrucks. Since 2024, a few months after they started production, I have seen 11.

Is the Tesla Cybertruck an elegant sculpture on wheels or a monster-like road machine? Individuals either love it or hate it (the majority are negative). Few are neutral. Why do so many individuals hate the Tesla Cybertruck? Along with its controversially radical, futuristic “look” and advanced technology comes the heavy taint — the personal and ideological baggage — of eccentric CEO Elon Musk, the empathy-lacking richest man in the world. Take your pick of his foibles: reactionary-supporting statements, awkward economic theories, and bullying political rhetoric. Note: MAGA followers overwhelmingly drive nonelectric, gas-guzzling Fords, Chevys, or GMC pickups. Public surveys suggest that current public opinion is about 72 percent negative. Several design factors have also influenced the dismissive public perception, including a right-angled, rather than curvilinear, design, as well as a myriad of manufacturing flaws that have led to several recalls.

Males buy most of the vehicles. Corporate Tesla claims about 3 to 1. Maybe that is true in the American heartland; on the East Coast, women Cybertruck drivers are scarce. Why does the truck appeal to males?  Cybertruck owners definitely want to be noticed — not necessarily liked. The car’s distinctive appearance attracts individuals who wish to stand out from other exotic or luxury vehicle owners.

Tesla Cybertruck in a driveway in Newton, MA. Photo: Evan Eisert

Male relationships with highly distinctive, expensive cars and trucks depend on a complex mix of factors: self-identity, personal passion, love of style and craftsmanship, and strategic social signaling — as well as other biological and psychological factors. For some, special vehicles are a hobby; for others, the appeal lies in an aura of heightened power, status, and attraction. Nostalgia for a patriarchal sense of control also energizes the masculine sense of self. Add to these factors the vehicle’s image of economic success, and you can see the aesthetic appeal of the Cybertruck to a segment of the population.

The design is like no other current production vehicle. Musk’s vision for the electric, high-tech Cybertruck was about anticipating what is to come. He reportedly told Tesla chief designer Franz von Holzhausen, “Design something that looks like the future.” Von Holzhausen translated Musk’s conceptual vision into the final Cybertruck design, which incorporates a distinctive hard-line, angular shape and a stainless-steel body. The prototype was unveiled in 2019, and the vehicles were first produced and shipped in late 2023 and early 2024.

After graduating with a BS in transportation design from The Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA, Franz von Holzhausen worked for a series of more-or-less conventional car companies, including Volkswagen, General Motors, and Mazda, where he created concept and production models. In 2008, von Holzhausen was appointed Tesla’s chief designer. He has headed the design of Tesla’s Model S, Model X, Model 3, Model Y, and Semi. The Cybertruck was his baby.

Musk has said that the final Cybertruck design was heavily inspired by the police vehicle Spinner in the 1982 film Blade Runner, the product of the dystopian imagination of the movie’s visual futurist, Syd Mead. Even though the Spinner floated, hovered, and flew, there are similarities between the two vehicles — polygon-like shapes along with an unpainted, flat, stainless steel body whose panels nod to angular cyberpunk styling. The vehicle is sprinkled with additional influences: the flying imperial patrol Landspeeder in Star Wars and the Swiss Army Knife-like functionality of James Bond’s Aston Martin and Lotus Esprit.

Without a doubt, there are other inspirations — conscious or unconscious — for the angular, steel-plated design of the Cybertruck, including the wedge-like gull-wing door of the DeLorean DMC-12 and the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter. Memorably, Doc Brown used the DeLorean DMC-12 in Back to the Future. Either Musk or von Holzhausen remembered it.

The Cybertruck logo. Photo: Tesla

The Cybertruck is available in its “natural” polished stainless steel color. Tesla also offers a variety of vinyl wrap options — a selection of 11 colors that includes Forest Green, Rose Gold, Satin Abyss Blue, Slip Grey, Satin Stealth Black, and Satin Ceramic White. In addition, many third-party installers offer aftermarket wraps and coatings. The result: some of these pickup trucks have been adorned with corporate advertising.

Not since the Edsel has a car or truck been as scoffed at, insulted, and maligned as the Tesla Cybertruck. The insults reached a high in early 2025 during Musk’s six-month sojourn with DOGE and the White House. Around the country, the vehicle has been spat upon, graffitied, vandalized — even burned. Some design critics have called its aesthetic form a blatant example of unmitigated Brutalism.

Cybertruck owners have talked about encountering various forms of hostility while driving: other drivers giving them the middle finger or a thumbs-down gesture. The increase in harassment has been tied to growing waves of anti-Musk protests. Some protestors view the vehicle as a symbol of Musk’s fascistic mentality. Some Tesla owners have been selling their cars, fearful of being associated with Musk’s poisoned brand.

Yet, to many, the Cybertruck represents an act of innovation. Tesla fans admire the Cybertruck for its distinctive engineering and technology. Despite (or because of) its critics, the Tesla Cybertruck continues to generate considerable curiosity and interest. Some owners report positive conversations with strangers intrigued by the vehicle’s visual mystique. Cybertrucks have been making inroads (pun intended) in mass entertainment as well. It is beginning to steal scenes in TV and movies, popping up in a cameo role in Tulsa King, The Righteous Gemstones, Law and Order: SVU, and The Simpsons. Jason Statham’s film The Working Man also put the truck to use.

Let me be clear where I stand on the Cybertruck controversy. I have never ridden in, driven, or even touched one. But I love the way it looks.

Mark Favermann is an urban designer and planner with a practice focusing on human scale issues. In 2024, he received APA/MA’s Journalism and Communications Award for his decades of writing on the built environment. From the Mass Cultural Council, he is a recipient of the Creative Individual Artist Award 2025 for his sculpture.