(Chris Teague of TechTrader updates Elon Musk’s Cybertruck, the Tesla vehicle that can be turned into an RV with the Cyberlandr.)
Tesla Inc.’s Cybertruck pickup has fallen about a year behind schedule, the blog Electrek reported, citing remarks CEO Elon Musk made on a companywide call with employees.
The truck is expected to start production at the end of 2022 and won’t be made in volume until late 2023, Electrek said, citing unidentified sources who were on the call with Musk. The CEO told employees that ramping up output will be complicated by the amount of new technology the company will put into the pickup.
Tesla dropped several hints that its wedge-shaped pickup will be delayed. In April, Musk said both the Cybertruck and the Semi will run on new, larger battery cells that the carmaker is making on a pilot line in California. The CEO cautioned that volume manufacturing of those cells appeared to be roughly 12 to 18 months away. Tesla also recently updated its online configurator where customers can reserve their pickup to refer to production nearing in 2022, rather than late this year.
Tesla is to make 250,000 to 300,000 Cybertrucks per year, Musk says.
Musk first showed the Cybertruck in November 2019. A demonstration of the truck’s supposedly shatter-proof “armor glass” famously went awry when Tesla’s design chief smashed the prototype’s driver’s-side windows with a metal ball.
(Despite the delay, as reported in Yahoo News, the manufacturer of the Cyberlandr, a $50,000 camper that turns the Tesla Cybertruck into an RV, hit a preorder total of $80 million in August.)
