Tesla's electric Cybertruck is billed as a radical redefinition of the car, but in fact draws on old-fashioned ideas of escape, argues Elizabeth Bisley, co-curator of the V&A museum's new exhibition about car design.

The prototype for Elon Musk's Cybertruck was launched in LA just over a week ago at a testosterone-fuelled event in Tesla's design centre. Visitors drove in past the home of the SpaceX project, skirting round Musk's latest rocket to arrive at the main event ? a dry-ice- and laser-beam-filled bonanza that seemed to have borrowed its special effects from early 1980s sci-fi. But far from being a radical reimagining of the car, the design is a dystopian throwback to a time when car makers prioritised the individual and the open road ahead of them. There was nothing (intentionally) camp or fun in this particular brand of nostalgic futurism though. As the Cybertruck drove on stage past shooting flames, audiences were treated to a pick-up seemingly fitted out for the apocalyptic age. Encased in thick, matt, rolled steel, the truck sits high on all-terrain wheels.
Its faceted body can be fully enclosed, with the truck bed (dubbed by Musk as the "vault") lockable under a retractable steel cover. The truck's design is like a mutant vision of 1930s streamlining, one that's taken the principles of aerodynamics and uninterrupted airflow to its most extreme point of enclosed capsule.
Audiences were treated to a pick-up seemingly fitted out for the apocalyptic...