Photo: Kleber Silva on Behance
Remember how much of a hype there was when Tesla rolled out the Model X? Soon thereafter, talk about a pickup truck started gaining traction on enthusiast forums and between industry specialists.
Elon Musk, however, said right off the bat that Tesla’s electric workhorse would be a different affair from traditional models such as the F-Series, Silverado, and the half-ton Ram. The Cybertruck is such a different animal that it’s easy to claim that it has set new standards for production pickups.
This gets us to a rendering by Kleber Silva of the so-called Model P, essentially a Model X with suicide rear doors and a borderline usable cargo area. Had the Musk Man and his design team went down this route, the Cybertruck would’ve been a bit of a flop in the long run because it's not revolutionary.
Equipped with the high-strength steel tow bar and a hitch receiver, the bone-stock Model X is rated at 5,000 pounds with the 20-inch wheels or 3,500 with the 22s. Now imagine the payload capacity in that less-than-ideal bed of the rendered truck, and you’ll understand why the Model P is merely a design study in Photoshop rather than a life-sized electric workhorse.
The Cybertruck may be a unibody like the X but it’s gifted with an “exoskeleton” of sorts that makes it unbelievably strong. The tri-motor AWD option is capable of more than 14,000 pounds (6,350 kilograms) in terms of towing and 3,500 pounds (1,600 kilograms) of maximum payload, which means that the Ford F-150 in its most capable spec is playing second fiddle.
Another reason the Model X with the body of a truck wouldn’t make sense is pricing. The tri-motor AWD Cybertruck is $69,900 at the time of writing while the entry-level spec of the e-SUV is $79,990. It’s hard to imagine Tesla taking $10,000 off the price of the Model X so easily, which is why a clean-sheet design like the Cybertruck is the winning formula.
This gets us to a rendering by Kleber Silva of the so-called Model P, essentially a Model X with suicide rear doors and a borderline usable cargo area. Had the Musk Man and his design team went down this route, the Cybertruck would’ve been a bit of a flop in the long run because it's not revolutionary.
Equipped with the high-strength steel tow bar and a hitch receiver, the bone-stock Model X is rated at 5,000 pounds with the 20-inch wheels or 3,500 with the 22s. Now imagine the payload capacity in that less-than-ideal bed of the rendered truck, and you’ll understand why the Model P is merely a design study in Photoshop rather than a life-sized electric workhorse.
The Cybertruck may be a unibody like the X but it’s gifted with an “exoskeleton” of sorts that makes it unbelievably strong. The tri-motor AWD option is capable of more than 14,000 pounds (6,350 kilograms) in terms of towing and 3,500 pounds (1,600 kilograms) of maximum payload, which means that the Ford F-150 in its most capable spec is playing second fiddle.
Another reason the Model X with the body of a truck wouldn’t make sense is pricing. The tri-motor AWD Cybertruck is $69,900 at the time of writing while the entry-level spec of the e-SUV is $79,990. It’s hard to imagine Tesla taking $10,000 off the price of the Model X so easily, which is why a clean-sheet design like the Cybertruck is the winning formula.
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