A Tesla Cybertruck tours the Elkhorn Battery Energy Storage System in Moss Landing, California on June 6, 2022.
Nick Cooley | Bloomberg | Getty Images
electric car manufacturers tesla is set to reveal details CEO Elon Musk talked about his new unconventional pickup truck, the Cybertruck, on Thursday, a day after appearing at the DealBook Summit in a bizarre interview in New York. At the event, Musk boasted, “This year will be the biggest product launch ever on the planet.”
The event will be held in Austin on Thursday at 2pm local time (3pm ET) and will be livestreamed, and will mark the company’s first delivery of a Cybertruck to a customer.
At an October earnings conference, Musk made more cautious statements, saying, “There will be major challenges in reaching mass production of the Cybertruck and then making the Cybertruck cash flow positive.” “We dug our own grave with the Cybertruck,” he said at the time, pointing to the “unique challenges” of manufacturing and bringing the truck to market.
Tesla first unveiled the Cybertruck in November 2019 with an angular, unpainted hard steel body. Tesla previously announced that production of the vehicle would begin in 2021 and that the truck would be sold at an entry-level price of $39,900. The rear-wheel-drive version, the top-spec tri-motor version, costs about $69,000.
After the Cybertruck’s announcement, the company began accepting refundable $100 “reservations,” and announced that it had received more than 1 million reservations since its debut.
However, the coronavirus pandemic and other factors caused a two-year delay, and Tesla only began initial production of the Cybertruck in July of this year.
On the other hand, our competitors include: ford, general motors and Rivian has started selling a more practical electric pickup. Earlier this week, Rivian, which only makes battery electric vehicles (like Tesla), began offering lease options on select models of its R1T all-electric pickup truck.
The U.S. electric pickup truck market isn’t expanding as quickly as some thought when the Cybertruck was first announced. Several startup companies, like Lordstown Motors, are currently bringing vehicles to market, or with little success. GM and Ford have both announced plans to scale back, postpone, or cancel EV products and investments, including those related to EV trucks.
—Mike Wayland contributed to this report.
