Technology
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It's crazy how they blew their lead. In 2019 there was no Rivian, no F150 Lightning, just them and their goofy prototype. If they went for something they could have actually mass produced w/o the stupid gimmicks, they probably would have dominated the E-truck market before it even started.
Eh, to be fair, in 2019 Rivian was as much of a force as Tesla was. That year Tesla only had a Cybertruck prototype, but so did Rivian - in fact, they unveiled theirs two years prior in 2017. It then took them three years to stand up their factory and begin mass production, which they've done.
The Cybertruck isn't really too comparatively behind schedule relative to Rivian. It's not like Tesla had spare capacity at their existing factories, so they also needed to build a new one.
Elon probably thought he could save a lot of time by building a truck that didn't need a full paintshop, and easy to stamp and weld in body shop. Of course, despite the added cost of complex steel/aluminum body panels and paint shops, these are well understood processes, with literally hundreds of thousands of people familiar with them in North America. Comparatively few know how to make a stainless steel vehicle.