Christine Eichin knew she wanted a Cybertruck immediately. It was November 2019, and she was sitting in the audience at Tesla’s design center in Hawthorne, Calif. On stage, Elon Musk, wearing a black leather jacket, had just unveiled the Cybertruck, Tesla’s eye-popping take on the pickup. A three-ton wedge of stainless steel, it looked, as Musk once put it, like "an armored personnel carrier from the future." When the truck appeared through a cloud of smoke, “there was a moment of absolute silence in the room,” Eichin says. “It was so mind-boggling.” She went back to her hotel, and ordered her Cybertruck right away.
The event that day was memorable for its theatrics. Videos showed the Cybertruck’s body work resisting a bullet fired from a 9mm handgun. At the launch, one of Musk’s assistants took a sledgehammer to the doors to demonstrate their strength. They remained undented. In a moment that has gone down in automotive folklore, the assistant then threw a metal ball at the supposedly unbreakable windows, which promptly shattered. “Room for improvement” was Musk’s insouciant response.
But it wasn't the stunts that impressed Eichin, a 66-year-old businesswoman from California. It was the specs. The Cybertruck could accelerate faster than a Porsche and pull 14,000 pounds. It had higher ground clearance than any truck on the market and a range of up to 500 miles. Eichin runs a travel consultancy that specializes in safaris, and has a fondness for backcountry road trips. Here was an electric truck that could deal with rough terrain and long-distance driving—and with a starting price of $39,900 it seemed like a bargain.
She wasn't alone. Reserving a Cybertruck was cheap and easy. All it took was a deposit of $100 and you were on the list. So far, more than 1.7 million people have ordered one, making the Cybertruck the most coveted vehicle in the admittedly brief history of electric cars.
It is also the most elusive. More than three years and seven months have passed since Eichin placed her order. There is still no sign of her Cybertruck, and she has heard nothing from the company about when it will be delivered. Tesla initially said its first pickups would roll off the production line in 2021. Last week, Tesla unveiled what it said was the first Cybertruck produced at its factory in Austin, Texas. But the announcement met with skepticism from customers and industry observers, who regarded it as a publicity stunt ahead of an earnings call, rather than a sign that deliveries were imminent. (Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.)
During Eichin’s wait, much has changed. Tesla has weathered two storms. One was triggered by supply-chain issues that made producing cars—let alone developing new models—difficult and contributed to a more than 60% decline in Tesla’s market cap between November 2021 and December 2022. (The share price has since recovered some of those losses.) Elon Musk created the other maelstrom himself. His erratic performance as the owner and CEO of Twitter, and embrace of right-wing conspiracy theories, has left his personal reputation, and that of Tesla, tarnished.
The EV market has transformed too. Tesla now has stiff competition from both auto-industry incumbents and new startups that launched electric pickups. As a maker of electric cars, Tesla had a first-mover advantage. But as a truck-maker, it’s following companies like Rivian and Ford into the market.
The Cybertruck will be arguably the most important vehicle in Tesla's fleet. As Musk pointed out at the launch event, “the top three selling vehicles in America are pickup trucks. To solve sustainable energy, we have to have a pickup truck.” But as the company repairs the damage of the last two years, and its competitors lure potential customers, one big question hangs over the Cybertruck: Of the 1.7 million people who have made a reservation, how many of them still want one?
The odd Tesla out
The Cybertruck was always going to be a strange addition to Tesla’s line-up. Until its unveiling, the company had almost single-handedly popularized electric vehicles. It had done so not just by making excellent cars with long-range batteries but by making them approachable; Teslas’ technology is revolutionary, but their design is familiar.
Not the Cybertruck. It looks like an automobile from a 1980s sci-fi movie. Indeed, the last production vehicle made from unpainted stainless steel was the DeLorean, the car from the Back to the Future films.
“It doesn’t seem to fit with the way Tesla vehicles have been developed and designed,” says professor Dale Harrow, chair of the Intelligent Mobility Design Center at the Royal College of Art in London. “It seems to go against their whole design philosophy.”
The truck's eccentric looks appear to have caused manufacturing problems that the company is still wrestling with. Documents leaked by a Tesla whistleblower earlier this year showed that leaks, vibration, and excess noise have delayed its development. This may be because of the stainless steel, Harrow says. "You need a lot more pressure to press stainless steel than other kinds of steel," he explains. "That extra pressure can create problems, like crimping along the edges of body-work panels."
On top of that, COVID-related supply-chain issues hurt Tesla's operations along with those of other manufacturers of electric vehicles. China’s lockdowns shuttered Tesla’s Shanghai factory. Several of the company’s suppliers also suspended or radically reduced their production, and blockages at ports around the world slowed the supply of chips and steel.
The supply-chain problems have now eased. But pressure from investors continues to build. "Coming into this year, the stock had really taken a hit, and earnings and growth were starting to level out," says Garrett Nelson, an equity research analyst at CFRA Research. "Investors are really looking for the next catalyst." Tesla hasn't launched a new vehicle since the Model Y in 2020, and orders for its older models have flat-lined. Tesla needs a new vehicle to reinvigorate sales, and the Cybertruck is its answer. "They need this new vehicle to really drive volume growth," Nelson says.
Courting pickup drivers
So will those sales materialize? There are several reasons to question whether reservations will translate into purchases. First, truck drivers in the U.S. are proving skeptical about electric vehicles. "There’s a general mismatch in the demographics of traditional truck drivers compared to typical EV buyers," Nelson says. "The latter tend to be concentrated in urban and suburban areas and the former in more rural areas. The challenge of designing EVs that will appeal to traditional truck drivers is an industry-wide problem, as many traditional truck drivers have little interest in EVs in general."
Other EV truck companies are already struggling to shift their stock. After Rivian went public in 2021 with the sixth-largest IPO in U.S. history, reservations for its electric pickups and SUVs flooded in. But now it’s having trouble selling its inventory. Sales of the F-150 Lightning, Ford’s electric pickup, have been more sluggish than the company expected. Last week, Ford announced a 17% price cut for its electric pickup in a bid to win new buyers. But traditional truck drivers are hard to seduce. Eichin estimates that in her home town in California's Central Valley, 75% of people drive pickups. None of them want to replace their gas-powered models with an electric one; that includes her own son, who works in construction.
Some analysts argue that the Cybertruck is designed to appeal to a different cohort, and that this should insulate it from the cynicism of traditional truck drivers. “We view it as more of an urban and suburban vehicle,” Nelson says. “We put it in a category with the Hummer.”
But sales figures for the electric Hummer, manufactured by GMC, are hardly reassuring. In the first quarter of 2023, GMC sold just two. Yes, two. Even at the height of the Hummer’s popularity in the mid-2000s, the gas-powered version managed maximum annual sales of around 70,000. Tesla says it’s hoping to produce 250,000 Cybertrucks a year, rising to 500,000 once manufacturing capacity scales up. “The difference is that there is much more excitement surrounding the Cybertruck than the Hummer,” Nelson says. The question is whether that excitement can turn the Cybertruck into a mass-market vehicle rather than a niche premium product.
How much will the Cybertruck cost?
The Cybertruck almost certainly won’t carry a mass-market price tag, which brings us to the second problem: cost. Tesla has long abandoned the sub-$40,000 figure Musk announced at the 2019 launch. In October 2021, Tesla removed the Cybertruck’s price from its website. In a call with shareholders the following year, Musk admitted that “the specs and pricing will be different; I hate to sort of give a little bit of bad news.”
Just how bad the news will be is unclear: Tesla has yet to announce the new price. But industry observers suspect it will be high. “It will be a very expensive car,” says Harrow. “It will have to be. It looks like it has problematic manufacturing. I just can’t imagine they won’t sell it for a premium price.” The electric Hummer starts at around $90,000.
Swearing off Tesla
The third issue facing the Cybertruck is the Tesla brand itself. After Musk took over Twitter—laying off thousands of staff, using his own Twitter account to promote conspiracy theories, and funding investment in the platform by selling chunks of his own Tesla stock—a new hashtag circulated on social media: #nevertesla. Many customers posted about canceling their orders and buying from Tesla’s rivals instead.
This year’s Harris Poll, an annual survey of U.S. consumers that ranks companies by reputation, showed the damage clearly. Tesla plunged 50 places compared with 2022. In the fourth quarter of last year, the company reported that it had sold 34,000 fewer cars than it had made. To help account for this shortfall, Tesla knocked 20% off the Model Y’s sticker. Price cuts have helped to bolster sales but have pummeled profit margins. In the first quarter of 2022, Tesla's gross margin was 30%. A year later, according to last week’s earnings, that figure has almost halved.
Eichin is a die-hard Tesla fan. Until 2010, she had almost no interest in cars. “It was purely about getting from A to B,” she says. Then she read an article about Tesla’s long-range battery technology and the environmental benefits of electric vehicles. Since then she and her husband have not only bought four Teslas and joined the local owners club, but she has become an evangelist for the company: Eichin was invited to the Cybertruck launch as a reward for persuading so many of her friends to buy Teslas. But even she has soured on Musk: “I’m a Tesla fan for life, even though I’m not a fan of Elon.”
Cybertrucks for resale?
So where do Tesla’s travails leave Eichin and her Cybertruck? She remains optimistic that her Cybertruck will arrive some time in 2024. But she is bracing herself for the cost. She has reserved the tri-motor version, which has the longest range and will come with the highest price. Back in 2019, she was expecting to pay around $70,000. Now she is just hoping she will still qualify for the federal tax credit for electric vehicles, announced last year as part of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Her truck must cost less than $80,000 to make the cut.
And if not? “I would definitely not cancel,” she says, “but I may not get it myself, let’s put it that way.” Eichin says that four members of her Tesla owners club have already offered to buy her Cybertruck if she doesn’t want it herself.
“What we’ve seen in the industry for these kinds of highly anticipated vehicles is that people tend to end up taking delivery because there is a healthy resale market,” says Nelson. “A lot of people are selling these vehicles at a significant premium relative to what they paid.”
That may save Eichin’s order. But whether the Cybertruck can become the mass-selling truck the company needs is another story.
