Elon Musk’s Cybercab, and the curse of the concept car

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In 1939, General Motors unveiled the Buick Y-Job, the automotive industry’s first concept car. It was a swoopy thing, with a honking schnoz and revolutionary technologies such as electric windows and headlamps hidden behind retractable shutters. But it wasn’t intended for production and sale; it was just a conversation starter. Every concept car since has been a “why job” of sorts, asking: why does this company still exist? Why will its future look different? Why should you care?

Tesla die-hards were whispering similarly big questions to themselves since mid-October, when CEO Elon Musk rocked up to the company’s “We, Robot” event in his much-hyped Cybercab concept. The proposed self-driving taxi has two seats, Lambo-style doors and lacks pedals and a steering wheel. An autonomous Robovan that can lug up to 20 lads was also on display. 

Both are part of Tesla’s vision for a future in which computers do the driving and car owners make extra coin by lending out their vehicles when they’re not using them. “It’s going to be a glorious future,” Musk promised, shortly before anthropomorphic robots in cowboy hats and bow ties began serving refreshments. None of this was awkward at all. 

And yet, Tesla stock dropped nearly 10 per cent the next day. Which, for a company that has at times seemed more like a stock play masquerading as a manufacturer, rather than the other way around, is bad. It later bounced back. But what exactly was wrong with the Cybercab concept anyway?

Some of what was on offer recalled the car industry’s early days. Back then, concepts were usually one-offs, built to excite car-show attendees, to get the people going without necessarily going anywhere themselves. Only a small number of them, typically made of clay, wax or fibreglass, were very functional. Vanishingly few could safely move faster than 10 miles per hour. And, after their public relations were consummated, most were junked or mothballed.

They would run absolutely crazy ideas up the flagpole just to see if anyone would salute them

That short shelf life led to plenty of bizarre specimens. Take the 1957 Ford Nucleon, a pickup with jet-age styling, copious lead shielding and a nuclear reactor for a power source. “Designers weren’t afraid to make absolute fools of themselves,” J Mays, Ford’s former chief creative officer, told me before he retired. Mays wouldn’t know much about that. He designed some of the most important show cars of all time, including the 1994 Volkswagen Concept One, which went on to become the hot-selling New Beetle. But in the old days, “they would run absolutely crazy ideas up the flagpole just to see if anyone would salute them.”

There were beauties too, like the lasciviously aerodynamic trio of Alfa Romeo Bat cars, created in the mid-1950s by Italian industrial designers Bertone. They were sold at Sotheby’s in 2020 for about $15mn.

By then, concept cars had become a fundamental part of the automotive design process. They’re the closest an industry can get to routinely inviting itself to lie on the couch and remember mother. “Every one has a strategic mission,” Ed Welburn, GM’s legendary top designer, told me in 2008, in the midst of a series of stunning concepts that defibrillated Cadillac out of a long design torpor. “They can highlight a new technology or new vehicle type. They help us test the market. At Cadillac, one concept after another helped establish the vision for the brand.”

For some, self-knowledge is a curse. Cursed concept cars come in three varietals: not enough of a tease; too much of a tease; and too out-there to tease effectively. The first tends to crop up during periods of economic malaise. In the years following the 2001 and 2008 crashes, for example, wild ideas were in short supply.

Teasing too much is worse. I was at the North American International Auto Show in January 2007, when Chevrolet pulled the canvas off its Volt concept. Inspired by seeing the first Tesla a year earlier, GM executive Bob Lutz had sought to create an all-electric vehicle, for real this time. What was actually shown was an advanced hybrid, but that didn’t matter. The Volt concept was the world’s largest car maker finally asking itself, “What if we took this green nonsense seriously?” 

And the answer was a total stunner: a muscular, haunchy American-made car with legit green credentials and BDE to spare. The trouble was, cost and manufacturing complexities meant the version of the Volt consumers could actually buy looked like a bean. 

The BMW GINA Light Visionary Model, revealed in 2008, was something else altogether. The name stood for “Geometry and Functions In ‘N’ Adaptions”, whatever that meant. Its exterior was made of elastic, polyurethane-coated Spandex, meaning electric and hydraulic actuators inside could reconfigure the shape of the vehicle on the fly. Although the overall design holds up quite well a decade and a half later, it was widely mocked as too goofy in its time.

Car companies these days are questioning themselves more than ever. Much of that is due to Tesla’s success. For years, the big American makers were happy for it to function as their regulatory hall pass, making billions selling them carbon tax credits while it figured out how to manufacture electric cars others couldn’t be bothered to. Now that Tesla is the world’s largest car maker (by market cap, anyway), they have to compete by coming up with more compelling ideas.

Which doesn’t quite answer the question of whether the Cybercab is a Volt, a GINA or something more promising? Part of the difficulty is that among the many norms Musk has challenged is the concept car itself. Consider Tesla’s previous big idea, a polygonal pickup truck that starts at $75,000 and looks like a DeLorean rendered by a Playstation 1. That vehicle has generated incalculable amounts of chatter, both good and bad, even though Tesla has only sold around 30,000 of them. Is the Cybertruck a concept car or a real product? The answer is yes.