When the first deliveries of Tesla’s long-awaited Cybertruck began last November (and frankly even well before that point), it was widely panned across social media. People called it ugly, expensive or overpriced, even useless. Some of the funniest observations were that it looked like something a grade schooler would draw when assigned to design a vehicle; angular and boxy, as befits the aesthetic limitations of that age cohort.
Looks aside, there are some useful lessons to be drawn here for design. It seems to me, at least, that the Cybertruck is a prime example of the failure of design. Let me explain.
As many have pointed out, the biggest issue with the Cybertruck is safety. In fact, car safety experts have noted that the Cybertruck’s stainless-steel panels are excessively stiff, which could cause more damage in collisions with other vehicles on the road, but also would pose a greater danger to cyclists and pedestrians. The many sharp edges of the stainless-steel body, which is touted as being bulletproof, also pose an increased risk in collisions.
Particularly at a time when the U.S. is seeing more pedestrian deaths on its roadways (where in other parts of the world pedestrian deaths are in decline), putting a vehicle with such clear safety issues on the road is a bad idea at best, irresponsible at worst. Apart from factors such as road design and behavior (both distracted drivers as well as pedestrians), a major factor in the rise in deaths is vehicle design. As a recent IIHS study found, vehicles that are tall and blunt, such as the ever-larger pickup trucks we see on roads, are 43.6% more likely to cause death in a collision with a pedestrian.
All of this leads to considerations of what goes into a good design. We can argue about the details, but a few basic principles seem fairly straightforward. These would be designing for functionality, reliability, safety, and manufacturability.
Functionality may be the most obvious element – that is, does it function in a way that addresses the problem to be solved? The end product should have useful functions that the user needs or will make life easier or better in some way, and perhaps avoid unnecessary complexity; the much-vaunted “ease of use” that product marketers are apt to deploy to describe a benefit of their product.
The designed product should also be reliable, with a solid useful life that’s realistic. So, no products that prematurely fail, for instance. And the design should take into account manufacturability; that is, designing a product or system that can be successfully manufactured, that doesn’t pose undue challenges to manufacturing.
Combined with safety, a successful design would encompass all of these elements. In other words, it should be a good, useful, purposeful design that enhances the public good and makes life better for people.
And in many ways, especially in safety and manufacturability, the Cybertruck falls short of these design principles.
At the same time, this is not an argument against electric vehicles, nor electric trucks. Is there still room for such things as the Cybertruck? Perhaps so, but maybe as private fantasies of rich men. So let them tinker and design their speedy, bulletproof trucks and then go race them around in the desert or salt flats far away from public roads and cities with pedestrians and bicyclists and children and pets, where they won’t pose any risk to them at all.
Filed Under: NEWS • PROFILES • EDITORIALS, Commentaries • insights • Technical thinking
