The Cybertruck is an all-electric battery-powered next-generation sports utility vehicle manufactured by Tesla, Inc. The design has brought equal amounts of ridicule and praise. Since it's unveiling, the truck which was supposedly inspired by Blade Runner, the Lotus Esprit sportscar that doubled as a submarine in the 1970's 007 film The Spy Who Loved Me and various video games, has spawned countless memes. ^[1][17]

On November 21st, 2019 Elon Musk unveiled the Cybertruck in a demonstration at Tesla's design studio in Hawthorne, California. The majority of the demonstration was spent bragging about the vehicle's durability. The frame and the windows are made with a special alloy invented for SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft. ^[2]

To prove the durability of the materials, Musk's chief designer, Franz von Holzhausen, performed several tests on stage. He dropped a large steel ball down a chute onto the glass and swung a sledgehammer into the side of the door. However, when he threw a steel ball at the windows of the truck, they immediately shattered and Musk was forced to spend the rest of his presentation in front of shattered shatter-proof windows. His immediate response was: "Oh my fucking god! Maybe that was a little too hard.” He added "It didn’t go through, so that’s a plus side, room for improvement." ^[2]

The restrained anger apparent in Elon's face was captured and posted in meme form everywhere.

Even armored glassmakers Safelite used the opportunity to circulate memes to drum up business. ^[3][4]

The original design concept for a Tesla Semi was released in 2017 and looked more a super-sized pick-up truck. It was originally touted as a truck that could fit another truck in its truckbed. The driver's seat was uniquely structured like a futuristic shuttle's cockpit. Critics created the "What it actually looks like" meme to emphasize how outlandish the 2019 Cybertruck is. Another meme described it as a mix between a Delorean and a Ridgeline. ^[8][9]

Five days after the Cybertruck's release Pewdiepie tweeted a picture of a Cybertruck photoshopped into the video game Halo with the caption: "Does it come with attachments? Either way I want one". Elon Musk replied with: "Gonna have some sick attachments". Elon later replied to a tweet from Halo saying: "Cybertruck is inspired by games like Halo. Warthog IRL!!". ^[5][6][7]

The angular frame looks pixellated to some and has inspired many video game memes. The most popular one points out how the Cybertrucks trapezoidal nose looks extremely similar to Lara Croft's rack in the early Tomb Raider series. Someone even did the math and found that the Cybertruck has 103 polygons, 225 edges and 124 vertices. ^[10][11][12]

Fake news outlet Genesius Times wrote a piece that went viral about an upcoming Tesla Schoolbus that looks like something out of Mad Max. The article even lays out some hypthetical specs about the bus saying "kids will want to get on it!": ^[13]

Tesla was always up front about how the vehicle design was inspired by Blade Runner. That didn't keep people from juxtaposing the two and marveling at how science-fiction can easily become reality. Other people have pointed out that it looks like a car that was briefly shown in the 1990 film, Total Recall. ^[14][18]

Lego poked fun at Cybertruck with an ultra-minimalist mock model consisting of a single lego with headlights against the backdrop of a foggy stage. They also went the other way with it and released a cool design for a lego-based Cybertruck complete with a Tesla E-ATV in the truckbed. ^[15][16]

In an episode of The Simpsons titled "The Car Built for Homer", Homer meets his long lost half-brother and together they design a conceptual car that's an absolute flop. The episode was a parody of a poposed concept car by Ford in the 1960s called the Edsel. People compared the Cybertruck to something half-baked and superflous like what Homer and his half-brother cooked up. ^[20][19][22]

The Cybertruck has been compared to children's drawing of what they'd imagine a futuristic car to look like.

An article on brutalism compared the design to the 1980 Citroën Karin, which was famously described as: