Technology

40563 readers

209 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

alyaza@beehaw.org

TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org

gyrfalcon@beehaw.org

rs5th@beehaw.org

coldredlight@beehaw.org

SemioticStandard@beehaw.org

TheRtRevKaiser@kbin.social

remington@beehaw.org

Spit On, Sworn At, and Undeterred: What It’s Like to Own a Cybertruck (archive.ph)

submitted 1 week ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

25 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Aside from a MAGA hat, there is likely no object that feels more emblematic of US president Donald Trump’s return to the White House than the Tesla Cybertruck. The blunt angles and steel doors look futuristic, for sure, but only if the future looks a lot like RoboCop. To some, it’s a metallic status symbol. To others, it’s fascism on wheels. Either way, heads turn.

Cybertruck owners see things differently. “To me, it's just a vehicle that I love,” says Andrew Castillo, a stock trader from Los Angeles. “It has no political affiliations at all to me.”

We’re standing in the parking lot of McCormick's Palm Springs Classic Car Auctions. All around us, a dozen Cybertruck owners—and their cars—bake in the 100 degree heat. They’ve arrived for a meetup organized by Michael Goldman, who runs the 53,000-person Facebook group Cybertruck Owners Only. Though suspicious of the media, they’re eager to set the record straight about the car that they love. WIRED is here to learn how it feels to be out in public in such a politically charged vehicle. Has the past year or so changed anyone’s minds about owning the truck? Do owners like the attention—or are they adding bumper stickers decrying Elon Musk?

As we’re talking, a woman drives by in a small sedan. “Your cars are fucking ugly!” she screams before peeling off. Castillo smiles. “Some people just aren’t playing with a full deck of cards,” he says serenely.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] tal@lemmy.today 16 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

Aside from a MAGA hat, there is likely no object that feels more emblematic of US president Donald Trump’s return to the White House than the Tesla Cybertruck.

If Musk had been able to attract the typical F-150 owner to the Cybertruck, then the Cybertruck wouldn't have flopped, and I bet that the F-150 is a whole lot more correlated with voting Trump than the Cybertruck is.

IIRC from past reading, in terms of voting correlation by party, the Toyota Prius is the "most Democratic" vehicle and the Ford F-150 is the "most Republican" vehicle.

kagis

Nope (or at least, not by the metrics chosen here), but I'm close.

https://www.businessinsider.com/car-models-owned-by-republicans-democrats-american-politics-jeep-2024-10

To get a sense of how our rides reflect our political leanings, we compared 1.7 million vehicles listed on CarGurus with the results from the 2020 presidential election. We included only counties that were strongly red or blue — those where either Donald Trump or Joe Biden won by at least 19 percentage points. Then we placed every car on a political spectrum from reddest to bluest.

According to this, which excludes more-politically-mixed counties from the dataset, the vehicle most-correlated with voting Trump in 2020 at a county level is the Jeep Wrangler, followed by the Jeep Gladiator, followed by the Chevrolet Silverado 1500 (which I assume is the Chevy analog of the F-150), followed by the Ford F-150.

The vehicle most-correlated with voting Biden (at a county level) was indeed the Toyota Prius.

EDIT: To be fair, the article author is probably partly talking about Musk's association with Trump and the Cybertruck coming out about that time, and he's talking about the 2024 election specifically, but I think that the Cybertruck is maybe high-media-visibility, but doesn't have all that much to actually do with voting Trump.

[–] HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth 2 points 6 days ago

It's a Jeep thing.

load more comments (6 replies)