The day is finally here. Elon Musk’s Cybertruck deliveries have begun, and it only took 4 years to sort of deliver on his promises to make an affordable futuristic electric pickup truck. Kudos for coming through on the ‘futuristic’ part, but WoW that price!
When Elon Musk originally revealed the design of his new Cybertruck he touted it in 2019 as being affordable with a target launch price of $30,000. Now 4 years later the Cybertruck hits the market at a 50% price increase costing consumers $60,990.
So what happened? Well, reality, which Elon Musk isn’t a big fan of. You see, when you design a completely new vehicle from the ground up, things take a lot longer and cost a lot more. This isn’t a new concept. Ask any startup founder! But Elon Musk isn’t just any startup founder. The man has a huge track record of successive startups that grow to be behemoths!
According to Jessica Caldwell, a research analyst at Edmunds, “This is going to appeal to definitely a wealthier clientele that can afford the price point and they want something that is unique and quirky. That just isn’t a large segment of the population that can afford that especially where interest rates are.”
The Cybertruck is entering the market late considering others such as the Rivian, Ford, and GMC have already come out with all-electric versions of their own trucks.
GMC Hummer EV (yes, that Hummer) is priced toward the higher end costing around $96,000, along with Rivian’s R1T which starts at $73,000, then we have Ford’s F-150 Lightning on the lower end of the price scale starting at $50,000.
The Cybertruck’s new body material and unconventional, futuristic styling has added complexity and costs to production. That’s an understatement. Originally Elon Musk promised that the windows would be practically bulletproof, and to prove his point Tesla’s chief designer Franz von Holzhausen took a metal ball to demonstrate the truck’s unbreakable “armor glass” window, but spoiler alert: it shattered and left a crater sized imprint on the broken but not shattered glass.
Fast forward to today and the glass in the new Cybertruck will NOT be bulletproof, but it also doen’t shatter. At the launch event on Thursday the same Franz von Holzhausen threw a ball at the Cybertruck window and it bounced off without smashing the glass. How’s that for progress?
Tesla Cybertruck delivery event: Everything Elon revealed about the EV pickup