Tesla has revealed that pricing for the cheapest model of its much-hyped and long-delayed Cybertruck will start at $60,990, (€56,000) as the electric-car maker officially began the first deliveries of the futuristic-looking vehicle.
The price tag for the Cybertruck, with its unconventional angular shape and steel body, is higher than the starting price of just under $40,000 Tesla gave when it first announced the vehicle in 2019.
In addition to the cheapest rear-wheel drive model, which will not be available until 2025, an all-wheel drive version will be available for delivery in 2024, with a $79,990 price tag, according to a Tesla product page. The priciest version, known as the Cyberbeast, will sell for an estimated $99,990 and be available in 2024.
The Cybertruck is the first new Tesla vehicle since the Model Y more than three years ago. Tesla has said it has received more than a million pre-orders.
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Although Tesla had planned to start deliveries in 2021, engineering and production challenges linked to its unconventional design delayed the process. Elon Musk, Tesla chief executive, warned last month that the first deliveries of the Cybertruck would be followed by an “extremely difficult” increase in production likely to take at least 18 months.
At a live-streamed event on Thursday at the company’s headquarters in Austin, Texas, Mr Musk drove a Cybertruck onstage and touted its bulletproof qualities, towing power, off-roading capabilities, four-wheel steering and speed.
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“I think it’s our best product, I think it’s the most unique thing on the road, and, finally, the future will look like the future,” Mr Musk said.
“As you can see, we’ve got quite a few to deliver here,” he said, as he began to guide several members of the audience into the electric pickups, which were driven out of the venue one by one.
“This is going to change the look of the roads,” Musk said. “I mean, one of them in a parking lot does not look like the other.”
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The Cybertruck is Tesla’s bid to move beyond sedans and SUVs to challenge the likes of Ford, Stellantis and General Motors in the pickup market, which is rapidly shifting to electric.
Musk initially unveiled the truck at a launch event in 2019 at which the truck’s window was smashed by a steel ball while testing its supposedly unbreakable qualities.
“You may remember an incident four years ago [that] didn’t quite go as planned,” Mr Musk joked, before inviting Tesla designer Franz von Holzhausen onstage to throw a baseball at the window, which did not break.
The truck’s debut comes after a downbeat earnings report in October revealed Tesla fell short of revenue expectations with factory shutdowns, price cuts and fewer deliveries of new vehicles. Musk said in a call with investors at the time that he was also concerned about high interest rates, which could affect demand.
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The Texas plant has a production goal of 250,000 Cybertrucks a year, although the company does not expect to meet that objective until at least 2025.
“In 2019, Tesla created a frenzy at the Cybertruck reveal by claiming the electric pickup’s starting price would come in below $40K,” said Jessica Caldwell, an analyst at automotive industry insights platform Edmunds. But “the reality is that no full-size truck, electric or gas, transacts anywhere near the $40,000 mark on average.”
“Long term, this feels like a true test for Tesla since it represents the brand’s first entry that feels legitimately risky from a product perspective and has the added challenge of an established competitor set,” she said. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023
