Overpromise and underdeliver. But this strategy still has its merit because it often is important in a competetive market just to be "first" somehow and capture a certain notion in people's mind. Just like Tesla in general now personifies electric cars because it was first (which it wasn't, but it certainly kicked off the mainstream EV market in the West). With the Cybertruck reveal, the point was to present something radical. The design, the numbers! Whether Tesla can actually deliver that by the time the truck comes to the market is almost secondary. Sure, some people are going to be pissed off, but in other people's minds, forever there will be this memory engrained of this amazingly radical thing this amazingly different company, Tesla, did back in 2019.
Btw, can you believe it's been 5 years since the Cybertruck was first unvealed?
Getting first doesn't mean much if you don't keep up with innovation. Just look at Xerox, Kodak, Nokia, Blackberry... Plenty of companies have had good products but were then outpaced by people who took what they did and made it better, cheaper, whatever.
Most of the example you cite were not outpaced by the competition in the same market - they missed the boat when their tech space got disrupted by a completely new and different alternative to their product.
Cybertruck was supposed to be first by taking a radically different approach to building a truck that would let them deliver a lighter (structural exoskeleton) and cheaper (no paint) truck to offset the expensive batteries.
In the time it took them to do that, cheaper batteries in a standard truck became feasible.
True.
Btw, does anyone have hands-on experience with such a truck like, say, an F150 lightning?
A friend has one and two things: the frunk is awesome, and two BlueCruise is great. The frunk means there's a huge storage area for all the tools that used to be in the bed tool boxes or in the cab that no longer need to be there, freeing up a bunch of space of passengers and materials.
BlueCruise doesn't cover all freeways, but is such a game changer for commuting. It's not full self driving or Waymo but it's solid where it needs to be for a freeway heavy commute. Also it can now charge on the Tesla Supercharger network so charging is fine, esp on top of a home charger.
One problem I'll mention is it's got an electrically limited top speed, so while it accelerates great, it tops out low.