Sandy Munro: Ford enginners wanted 48V, as early as 1980s, but finance execs said NO.

[PilotPete]

Maybe that's why to have a successful innovative company, you have to know something about everything, and stay in loop with all the problems that reduce productivity, not just the ones you want to solve, or are good at solving. EM sleeping on the shop floor to avoid bankruptcy with M3 ramp comes to mind.

Don't be limited by your job title or education. Even "dumb" people can b successful.
The trick is to know the right things, that matter, to affect change.

I have said, one of the things that really hit me with Tesla was the stupid stuff. Things like romance mode, the light show, fart sounds, etc. What this told me was the company was run by a management structure that the engineers could come to and say “Look what I did on my lunch break! This is a riot!” And then the upper echelon says “That is funny, put it in the next update!” And then we get it. I’d say in large corporate America, you don’t see that kind of encouragement to think outside the box. The further outside the box you get, the greater the risk. And in business, the greatest risk is generally the predecessor to the greatest reward.

Which leads us to the CT. Not everyone is going to think positively about the styling. Not everyone is ready to drive a truck that doesn’t look like every other truck. Not everyone is ready for a BEV (truck or otherwise). But as the CT shows, there is a whole market that is past ready, and clamoring to get their hands on one. The CT was a huge risk, with an equally huge reward. Just as the 3 was, and the S and X, and the original roadster.

I want to support a company that thinks that when an engineer gets an idea, it’s worth considering, even if it’s just to make fart sounds. Tesla is a fast agile company that can move quickly and still drive the market. The big 3 here are more like cargo ships. The don’t do anything quickly, accelerate, slow, stop, turn, nothing.

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[FutureBoy]

Which leads us to the CT. Not everyone is going to think positively about the styling. Not everyone is ready to drive a truck that doesn’t look like every other truck. Not everyone is ready for a BEV (truck or otherwise). But as the CT shows, there is a whole market that is past ready, and clamoring to get their hands on one. The CT was a huge risk, with an equally huge reward. Just as the 3 was, and the S and X, and the original roadster.

I want to support a company that thinks that when an engineer gets an idea, it’s worth considering, even if it’s just to make fart sounds. Tesla is a fast agile company that can move quickly and still drive the market. The big 3 here are more like cargo ships. The don’t do anything quickly, accelerate, slow, stop, turn, nothing.

Perhaps this is how Tesla CTs started to be wrapped as other trucks. It could be thought of as a way for the "CT is ugly" crowd to buy a super EV truck that looks like a "normal" truck. Maybe by the time the wrap starts to wear out they will be OK with the original look.