What do Tesla and SpaceX have in common? To Elon Musk, of course. And although both companies are in quite different sectors, it seems that at some point you notice that they are daughters of the same father and, therefore, they share some good things… and others not so much. Among the positive ones, without a doubt, the importance given to innovation, there is no doubt that Musk has had (or has been able to see/hear) good ideas and has fed them with the necessary budget to make them a reality.
Among the bad ones, do you remember that just a few days ago we told you about the problems of Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite Internet service, in terms of customer service? Well, today we can read in Business Insider that Tesla also limps on the same foot when it comes to reservations for its expected Cybertruckthe long-awaited pick-up of the company, announced back in 2019 and that in principle would reach the market in 2021, but that already in the summer of last year we knew that it would be delayed, at least, until 2022. To this day still there is no announced date for the first deliveries.
A policy in which Tesla and SpaceX agree with Starlink is with the amount that you must pay simply to get a place on the waiting list: 100 dollars. It is not an excessive amount, really, the truth is that we are talking about a quite reasonable amount, and it is understandable that both companies use this system to avoid the creation of reserves that are not going to materialize in the future, something that it is possible that would happen if these were free.
The problem is that sometimes the deadlines are delayed, and in the case of Starlink and the Tesla Cybertruck, this has been happening for a long time. in the case of Starlink we already told you that there are people who have been waiting for a year, and today we discover that in the case of the Cybertruck it is even worse, well there are people who made the reservation more than two years ago, and who in all this time have not received a single piece of newsnot a single update, by Tesla.
It is evident that if you book a vehicle that has just been announced, you know that you are exposing yourself to possible delays, but the problem (one of them) with Elon Musk is that he is very given to… well, let’s say sharing an overly optimistic view of reality. This is something that we have already talked about on previous occasions, such as when we talked about your Full self drivingor when CJ Moore, director of autopilot software at Tesla, claimed that certain statements by Musk did not coincide with the engineering works of the company.
Here, therefore, the long wait is only part of the problem. If potential buyers had been informed in a realistic way from the beginning, surely the level of frustration would be lower. But even more questionable is Tesla’s policy of not informing such customers. If you have booked a vehicle for a certain date, weeks or months go by without you knowing anything, and then you suddenly learn that it is going to be delayed even further by the press, then it is clear that the company is not trying your customers with the respect they deserve.
And in the case of Tesla’s Cybertruck it is even worse, as Musk stated a few weeks ago, facing investors, that the vehicle will arrive in 2022… if all goes well. It is true that 100 dollars is not a lot of money, but in my opinion it is enough for the company to keep its customers regularly informed, instead of leaving them without news for more than two years.
