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So it’s an ugly, impractical truck on purpose?

Shrug, I would say it has different priorities than basically any other vehicle on the market – but in different ways than say the PT Cruiser, Aztek, or Hummer ugly. The angular body is cheaper, lighter, and faster to make – at the obvious cost of polarizing looks, pick any color so long as it’s steel, perhaps aero, and near ground visibility, etc…

"On paper," the Cybertruck gives you more range, more towing, more payload than than an equivalently priced Ford F-150 Lightning (at the highest end the $70k Cybertruck has 500+ miles, while the extended range Ford F-150 Lariat is $75k for 300 miles of range. – similarly towing capacity and payload are also theorectically better) even the cheapest Cybertruck will have around 25% more range than the cheapest F-150 Lightning… combined with the existing Supercharger network… that has "some" points for practically – but it’s a pretty mixed bag as well all agree.

I’m not going to buy one (and my gut tell me anyone who owns a pickup now is going to find the F-150 Lightning a better match)… but Elon Musk’s reality distortion field is big enough that there might be enough people out there who will.

I don’t think the angular design is particular for aero so much as it’s the limit of the complexity of shapes what Tesla can do with stainless steel and a press (which is the way they are trying to go to keep manufacturing costs low)

I feel like the goal of the Cybertruck was like the engineers asking themselves… what if we really didn’t care about how the truck looks… or "mundane" practicalities like keeping the windshield clean… how could we make a vehicle body as cheaply as possible … and here we are… a body that is basically a sheet of stainless put through simple metal press to bend it in as few times as possible (saving millions of the hundred of parts typical truck body is built out of as each of those need a custom die press… and then also need additional time/labor need to be attached together). Don’t add on paint (because that also costs time/money). A voila… a unique piece of "engineering"

Otherwise known as a unibody?

There are both "unibody" but not the same. Maverick and Honda Ridgeline have a unibody "endoskeleton" (i.e. bones) while the Cybertruck has a [url=https://youtu.be/YQSQYQ44Qco?t=313]unibody exoskeleton.[/url] (link is from a former Ford engineer, who also worked on the Delorean).

but from an automotive engineering perspective, it’s the same basic concept underpinning

Not from a production prospective. The childishly simplistic, angular shape of the Cybertruck was designed so it could be made with essentially a press brake

Which would make the Cybertruck body an order of magnitude simpler, cheaper for automotive engineers to manufacturer than a typical unibody which is comprised of hundreds of pieces individualy die pressed, and then put together.

And then you still need to attach exterior panels onto of the unibody.

TLDR: Cybertruck is basically if you were like "what if we didn’t care able how it looked" how could we make a strong truck unibody relatively simple (low number of parts) and "cheap" (lower upfront costs as you don’t have to make hundreds of unique dies to stamp out the pieces) and "easy" (few pieces mean less time to put them together).

Video series I linked to also discusses off-roading specs

It isn’t that they are easier to cool. It is that they generate 80% less heat while charging. That is because heat produced by an electric current is proportional to the length of the conductor, other things being equal. Due to its tabless design, the electrical path in the 4680 cell is 50 mm compared to 250 mm in the 2170 cell

Thanks for the correction.

I was going by the early speculation that the 4680 would of have the battery be cooled by a top/bottom plate instead of a fluid filled snake design that exists on the Model 3/Y. This early speculation suggested that more of the battery surface area would be in direct contact with a cooling element and more of the surface area would closer to "tab" area and so you can pull more heat out quickly (tabless design is more like mult-tab).

The Rose-Like Battery Cuts Down on Heat
The new design not only generates a smaller amount of heat due to its lower ohmic resistance, but it also exhibits better heat transfer properties. With conventional designs, the generated current goes through the tab that occupies a small area, and hence, the temperature of the region around the tab increases significantly.

With the tabless design, the whole edge of the electrode is responsible for current (and heat) transfer. Heat transfer occurs through an area as large as the base of the battery cylinder. When the anode and cathode sheets of the new battery are rolled up, it forms a rose-like gathering at the ends.

One of the interesting features of EV charging is that the charging speed is somewhat tied to state of charge (Imagine people rushing into an elevator: It’s easy when the elevator is empty, but as more people get in, it takes longer to let them find space to wiggle through.)

So with existing Tesla Supercharging tech (before the 4680 cell) the 5-80% charging time of a 300 mile range car is roughly same as the 5-80% charging time for a 500 mile range car or roughly 28 minutes. On a 300-range car that’s 225 miles of range (3 hours of 70 mph driving). On a theorectical 500 mile range car that’s 375 miles of range (5+ hours of 70 mph driving). It should be noted that 60% charge is 18 mins (165 and 275 miles of driving until next stop). The main limiting factor here is the cost of a 500 miles battery.

Again… all of this is with in production Tesla charging and battery technology (i.e. chargers already being used, and batteries already in cars).

Charging speed are increasing… for instance the Porsche Taycan with Porsche’s 350 KW charging can charge 5-80% in 22.5 mins. So it is likely that Tesla will increase their charging speed further in the future…

Similarly… a big part of charging is heat dissipation… these large 4680 batteries are supposedly easier to cool… so say we get a 10% reduction in charging time rom that battery tech. That could mean in the future… we are talking getting around 375 miles of range in under 15 mins of charging. I think stopping for 15 mins every 5+ hours of driving … while not good enough for a cannonball run, is more than enough for anyone who isn’t an emergency cross-country trombone repair/delivery man.

It sounds interesting until you get to the part where it has no IBIS.

Apparently, most high-end cinema cameras don’t have IBIS either…

First because more formal film crews don’t handhold their cameras (where IBIS is best) instead using a lot of steady cams and gimbals as IBIS doesn’t reduce Z-axis bounce when you are walking. Second, IBIS tends to behave poorly when subjected to high-frequency vibration (mounted to a vehicle).

Basically… Canon felt that the cost to get a Canon r5C kitted out (lenses, external monitor, external storage, etc) was higher than what most run-and-gun handheld users are willing to pay.