Tesla Cybertruck reservation holders got a minor update on the upcoming electric truck at Tesla’s annual shareholder’s meeting. CEO Elon Musk confirmed that it is going to have a higher price than previously announced, and that production equipment is about to be installed.
When Tesla unveiled the Cybertruck back in 2019, Tesla said that the electric pickup truck would make it to market by the end of 2021. As the deadline was approaching, the automaker confirmed that production slipped to 2022.
CEO Elon Musk later said that Tesla was targeting a start of production for the electric pickup truck in “late 2022” at Gigafactory Texas. With the focus clearly on bringing the Model Y to production at the factory, and that being delayed as well, it appeared likely that the Cybertruck production timeline could also slip.
In March 2022, it was confirmed that Tesla aims to complete Cybertruck development this year for production in 2023, and in June, Musk said that Tesla is aiming for production to start in mid-2023.
If the automaker sticks to the new timeline, it is less than a year away, but there are still a lot of unknowns. When Tesla first unveiled the vehicle, the automaker revealed three versions of the electric pickup truck starting at $40,000:
However, Tesla removed Cybertruck specs and prices from its website late last year. An update on pricing and specs has been expected ever since.
When asked if Tesla is going to increase Cybertruck prices and if it will honor the prices originally announced in 2019 at Tesla’s shareholder’s meeting yesterday, Musk responded:
Cybertruck pricing, it was unveiled in 2019, and the reservation was $99 – and a lot of changed since then. The specs and the pricing will be different. I know it’s a little bit of bad news, but there was no way to anticipate the inflation that happened and various issues, but what I can say is that Cybertruck is going to be one hell of a product. It’s going to be a damn fine machine.
It sounds like we can expect a price increase and different specs for the Cybertruck.
During the meeting, the CEO again said that Tesla is tracking to start Cybertruck production in the middle of 2023, though this time he specified “volume production.”
He added:
We are going to be installing production equipment in the coming months.
Tesla plans to build Cybertruck at Gigafactory Texas in Austin, and we recently reported that Idra is about to deliver a new giant Giga press designed to produce the Cybertruck’s body.
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