I mean, other than Elon's tastes, of course 
I believe the development of it started with efficiency. As Elon pointed out in his presentation, traditional truck body on frame wastes weight since you need a strong frame and then you need to be as skimpy as possible on body panels since they provide no structural benefit, they are just there for looks and crash protection. Add in heavy batteries, and you've got a very heavy and thus inefficient, and thus expensive, truck. If the range and pricing weren't going to pencil out to something that could compete with an F150, why even bother?
That's the bind Rivian is in. It has a short bed (it's a smaller vehicle), and costs a lot compared to its specs/utility.
So to get both the specs/utility and the price to be competitive with an F150, they pretty much had to go with a stressed skin design, which gets rid of the heavy frame. The body panels are now no longer useless weight, they are now structural elements. This directly results in two things however. One is the need for sail panels at the back (the triangle piece that goes along the truck bed). This is needed for structural reasons. Other monobody trucks (there have been a few) also needed this structural sail, but for design reasons, they softened their look (see the triangle piece on the original Honda Ridgeline: https://www.123securityproducts.com...3525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/r/v/rvs-718523-05.jpg)
The other thing a stressed skin design results in (if you want to be weight efficient) is that you can't stamp your parts into complex shapes. Flat sheets of metal are strong, curvy complex ones are less so (all else being equal).
Then we have the cost factor. It is cheaper to manufacture body panels with simple bends in them, as opposed to stamped panels that require huge stamping presses. And, of course, it is much cheaper to not have a paint shop.
Finally, there is aerodynamics. If you're going to have a triangular sail, then it is easy to to have a cover, which helps range enormously. The particular angles in the roofline were no doubt chosen for aero efficiency.
So what do you end up with? A very unconventional design (which, netting out young at heart buyers and naysayers, might be sales neutral), that has some utility tradeoffs (harder to bolt on ladder frames, yet the stainless steel results in a beast of a truck that is impervious to dings and scratches), but in the end is cost and utility competitive with an F150.
And that makes the cybertruck stand alone in the market. No other EV truck competitor can say that. They are all too expensive relative to their utility.
The bottom line is that if the cybertruck looked like a conventional truck, even Tesla couldn't have made it cost/utility competitive with an F150. It was a bold decision to forgo traditional styling, but I think the tradeoff of a better functional EV truck was worth it. We'll have to wait a few years to see if the market agrees.
I believe the development of it started with efficiency. As Elon pointed out in his presentation, traditional truck body on frame wastes weight since you need a strong frame and then you need to be as skimpy as possible on body panels since they provide no structural benefit, they are just there for looks and crash protection. Add in heavy batteries, and you've got a very heavy and thus inefficient, and thus expensive, truck. If the range and pricing weren't going to pencil out to something that could compete with an F150, why even bother?
That's the bind Rivian is in. It has a short bed (it's a smaller vehicle), and costs a lot compared to its specs/utility.
So to get both the specs/utility and the price to be competitive with an F150, they pretty much had to go with a stressed skin design, which gets rid of the heavy frame. The body panels are now no longer useless weight, they are now structural elements. This directly results in two things however. One is the need for sail panels at the back (the triangle piece that goes along the truck bed). This is needed for structural reasons. Other monobody trucks (there have been a few) also needed this structural sail, but for design reasons, they softened their look (see the triangle piece on the original Honda Ridgeline: https://www.123securityproducts.com...3525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/r/v/rvs-718523-05.jpg)
The other thing a stressed skin design results in (if you want to be weight efficient) is that you can't stamp your parts into complex shapes. Flat sheets of metal are strong, curvy complex ones are less so (all else being equal).
Then we have the cost factor. It is cheaper to manufacture body panels with simple bends in them, as opposed to stamped panels that require huge stamping presses. And, of course, it is much cheaper to not have a paint shop.
Finally, there is aerodynamics. If you're going to have a triangular sail, then it is easy to to have a cover, which helps range enormously. The particular angles in the roofline were no doubt chosen for aero efficiency.
So what do you end up with? A very unconventional design (which, netting out young at heart buyers and naysayers, might be sales neutral), that has some utility tradeoffs (harder to bolt on ladder frames, yet the stainless steel results in a beast of a truck that is impervious to dings and scratches), but in the end is cost and utility competitive with an F150.
And that makes the cybertruck stand alone in the market. No other EV truck competitor can say that. They are all too expensive relative to their utility.
The bottom line is that if the cybertruck looked like a conventional truck, even Tesla couldn't have made it cost/utility competitive with an F150. It was a bold decision to forgo traditional styling, but I think the tradeoff of a better functional EV truck was worth it. We'll have to wait a few years to see if the market agrees.
