Giga Texas may have built Tesla’s first Cybertruck, but fans of the iconoclastic pickup shouldn’t bother reaching for the checkbook quite yet.
As of Monday, Elon Musk’s pioneering electric car brand failed to reveal what the hotly anticipated vehicle will precisely be capable of and, more importantly, what it will all cost.
Tesla boasts the vehicle can accelerate to 60 miles per hour from a standstill in as little as 2.9 seconds, comes with up to 500 miles of range and can “pull near infinite mass”.
Yet Tesla pulled the specifications, trim levels, as well as prices back in October 2021 and has failed to update them despite a period of red-hot inflation.
Musk, who has repeatedly preached the mantra “prototypes are easy, production is hard”, tweeted on Saturday “Congratulations, Tesla team!” just after the official Tesla account posted the news from its Austin factory.
The announcement came shortly before Tesla is set to hold its second-quarter earnings call on Wednesday. Currently, the third most pressing issue for Tesla shareholders, measured by upvotes, is the status of the unorthodox pickup, including the two biggest unknowns: final pricing and specs.
Given Musk has remarked before on driving prototypes of the model around Giga Texas, Saturday’s announcement could imply the vehicle has entered actual series production.
The first Cybertruck built by the workforce in Austin could however just as easily be little more than a preproduction model for further validation by employees and destined for the crusher.
Either way, it’s not entirely clear.
Semi production still minuscule
With Tesla scheduling the first deliveries of its pickup before September ends, time is starting to run out to clarify key details.
Customers still cannot yet place a firm order for a particular vehicle via the Tesla website.
As things stand, they may only place a $100 deposit for a space in the queue—estimated by some to be as long as 1.8 million customers.
“When they commit to specs, trim levels and PRICES, and start building units for customers, then we have something worth discussing,” posted one reader to the popular EV news site Electrek. “What’s depicted is nothing more than a publicity stunt.”
It could be reminiscent of the Tesla Semi.
More than half a year has elapsed since Musk took the stage to celebrate the first customer delivery of the heavy commercial truck.
Since then there has been precious little information about supply and demand of the electric lorry and it still lacks an official price.
A regulatory recall revealed that just three dozen had been built through March 15th, while the company’s Q2 production and delivery statement earlier this month made no reference of any kind.
This lends credence to the idea that the "Semi Delivery Event" was overhyped by Tesla for publicity purposes.
Musk, who last month conceded production of the Semi would not in fact ramp up until late 2024, has also warned that the Cybertruck would first reach volume production sometime next year.
“I always like to downplay the start of production,” he said in late January during the Q4 earnings call. “It increases exponentially, but it’s always very slow at first. So I wouldn’t put too much thought in the start of production.”
