Musk and the Cybertruck: Towing, not Running, Into The Lambda: Or, Is It Still Wrong?

The Cybertruck is actually here after two years, with the base model costing $61,000. Four years ago, when the Cybertruck was first introduced, Musk promised to raise it’s price by $21,000. The cheapest model will not be available for another decade.

Another crucial stat: 250 miles per charge for the base model Cybertruck, and 320 for the premium Cyberbeast. Compare that to plug-powered competitors including the Rivian R1T (which gets 270 to 350 miles a charge) and the Ford F-150 Lightning (which gets between 230 and 320 miles), and that’s not as impressive as some were hoping.

During the Austin event, Musk emphasized that the Cybertruck was powerful, noting that it was the only truck in the world that could tow a different sports car than the previous one.

The base model, which has a single- motor and is rear wheel, will travel from 0 to 60 in 6.5 seconds. The middle model of the all wheel drive can hit 60 mph in 4.1 seconds. The premium pick, also due in 2024, will be able to hit top speeds of 130 miles per hour, go 0 to 60 in 2.6 seconds, and tow a fairly beastly 11,000 pounds—more than the Ford F-150 Lightning, and about on par with the Rivian R1T.

The Price of a Newly Inflated Chevy Silverado and Chevrolet R1T? The Fate of the Black-Hole Cybertruck

In the middle of the year, Musk and his company launched a thousand memes after the car company’s head of design attempted to prove the strength of the Cybertruck’s windows with a metal ball. The glass shattered. Today was a bit easier on the truck. Von Holzhausen went after the windows with a baseball. The Cybertruck did not die.

The price bump will also be a drag on demand. The vehicles picked up by the 10 or so customers yesterday—likely to be “manufacturing unit” one-offs rather than true retail models, and which will be tethered to Tesla for some time—was $10,000 more expensive than the $39,900 base model promised in November 2019. Crucially, the world has moved on since, with a slew of competitors selling here-now, traditionally-shaped product.

Ford snuck in ahead with its $49,000 F-150 Lightning, the battery-powered version of the truck that has dominated the pickup segment for decades. The Chevy Silverado will cost $52,000 while the RAM 1500 Rev will cost $58,000. Rivian has a $73,000 R1T truck that can be used for look-at-me e-candy.

A professor from Boston University says that just 15 percent of the new cars would be equivalent to Toyota’s annual unit sales. “But Tesla faces the challenges of scaling up production and achieving a sufficient flow of paying customers.”

With an estimated 2 million preorders from self-styled “reservationists,” this Blade Runner–inspired electric pickup could make the world’s most wealthy man even more unfeasibly rich. If half of those $100 refundable deposits stack up, that’s revenue of more than $65 billion, based on a newly inflated $61,000 price tag—up $21,000 from what was promised four years ago.

It’s stupid. It’s very sad. Fugly. The Hummer should not have sold so many. Might Elon Musk pull off a similar trick with the stainless steel Cybertruck?

The numbers did not turn out how we were expecting, but as you can see,Tesla stuck close to a few of them. It can’t carry as much as it was originally intended. The cost will be much more than we were told. It retains its polarizing design. And arguably, thanks to Musk’s antics in the last few years, it has become polarizing for entirely new reasons.

There are better range estimates on the AWD Cybertruck, and also a heftier price tag. The production version is a little more compact than what was first announced in 2019.

While the truck looks like it did four years ago, almost nothing else about the production version is the same. The price, range, and performance have all shifted dramatically — and probably not in the direction most customers would prefer.

Let’s start with the performance-oriented Cyberbeast trim, since that’s the one we have the most details on. Tesla hasn’t said whether this version will have three electric motors, as promised in 2019, but it’s a fair guess that it does.

The number has changed a lot in the last year. The company says the Cyberbeast can put out over 10,000+ lb-ft, which is more than they originally said. That can possibly be due to the Musk announcement at Thursday’s event.