To no one’s surprise, the Tesla Cybertruck will cost more money than the promised price of $39,900 announced in 2019. During Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting, Elon Musk confirmed the bad news, saying that “a lot has changed” since then.
Tesla introduced the Cybertruck three years ago, promising an extremely attractive starting price of $39,900 for the single-engine, rear-wheel-drive model and several pricier configurations. The top trim would cost $70,000 and would offer a rugged, three-motor AWD design with a range of 500 miles and a 0-60 time of less than 2.9 seconds.
During this week’s shareholder meeting, Musk answered questions about the Cybertruck and said: “It was unveiled in 2019… a lot has changed since then, so the specs and the prices will be different. I hate to break some bad news but I think there is no way to anticipate the inflation we have seen and various issues.”
As we all know, production was originally supposed to start in late 2021. In typical Tesla fashion, the company announced a delay, pushing the arrival back to 2022. A few months later, that exciting $39,900 price tag disappeared from the Tesla pre-order website, suggesting a price increase is imminent.
Then, in March of this year, the company said it wanted to finalize the design of the cybertruck in 2022. A few weeks later, in April, however, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the cybertruck will “hopefully come out next year.”
During the Cybertruck announcement, Tesla also said that the Full Self-Driving software would add another $7,000 to the final price, but FSD is now $12,000. And considering the company has significantly increased the price of every electric vehicle it will offer in 2022, we can only imagine how much the Cybertruck will cost when it finally launches.
For example, the Model Y Long Range was $51,000 last year and is now $65,990, an increase of over 22%. Going by this example, the cheapest Cybertruck could be close to $50,000, but I doubt we’ll ever see one that cheap. To make matters worse, Elon Musk said for those wondering if the original Cybertruck prices on existing pre-orders would remain “grandfatherly.”
Nobody knows when the Tesla Cybertruck will come, how many models will be available and how much it will cost, but I bet it will be expensive.
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