Tesla Cybertruck: the forerunner in the electric pickup truck revolution

Tesla Cybertruck is the one responsible for putting the electric vehicle revolution in top gear but wait — Teslas only have a single gear — let’s say it has put this movement in Ludicrous Mode, that would be more in line with the Tesla nomenclature that later on other manufacturers can adopt.

Although the Rivian R1T electric pickup truck was already introduced to the masses, the outreach of the word of mouth or going viral on the Cybertruck’s level wasn’t there — Tesla’s low poly diagonal design disruption has not been less than iconic since its launch last year. Even if the Cybertruck cannot perform the R1T Tank Turn, we did a detailed spec-for-spec comparison of both these powerhouses to get an idea of their size and capabilities against each other.

Throughout the last year, Rivian received multiple investment rounds from Ford, Rivian, and Cox Automotive accumulating around $1.5 billion in total — this plus a 100,000 electric delivery vans contract for Amazon gives Rivian more chances than any other electric vehicle startup in becoming a reality in the near future.

Cybetruck’s launch and later on becoming a viral phenomenon even pushed GMC to announce the HUMMER electric pickup truck that the US automaker intends to reveal on 20th May this year, the Hummer EV has some impressive performance numbers mentioned on GMC’s website such as 0-60 in 3.0s, up to 1,000 hp, and 11,000 lb-ft of torque capacity — but starts at $70,000 and looks nothing like futuristic and production is expected to start in 2022.

Till 2022 no one knows how many Tri and Dual-Motor Cybertrucks will be sold in the United States and GMC missed the point on the price, Tesla Cybertruck pricing starts at only $39,900 for Single Motor, $49,900 for Dual-Motor AWD, and $69,900 for the Tri-Motor AWD variant — Cybertruck top variant price = Hummer EV base variant — ouch GM, that’s probably not going to work.

In the following video by Two Bit da Vinci, the host of the show Ricky discusses the following electric pickup trucks one by one, of course saving the Tesla Cybertruck talk for the end of the video:

Rivian R1T
Dongfeng Rich 6 EV (NISSAN)
Bollinger B2
Ford F-150 EV
Lordstown Endurance
Atlis XT
GMC Hummer EV
Neuron EV
Nikola Badger
Karma Pickup Truck
Tesla Cybertruck

Above: Cybertruck and the rise of the electric pickup trucks (YouTube: Two Bit da Vinci).

The boxy Bollinger B2 claims to be the world’s most capable electric pickup truck but it has yet to be tested — the specs of the B2 are impressive except for the 200 miles of range, yikes! — the Cybertruck’s range starts at 250 miles for the base RWD variant, 300+ miles for Dual, and 500+ miles for the Tri-Motor version, for an EV range overcomes almost every other feature, in the end, Bollinger needs to re-think their sales strategy here or can meet the fate of legacy automakers that fail to produce an EV with a reasonable range.

Nissan partnering with the Chinese automaker Dongfeng and producing a ~$18,900 electric pickup truck is amazing because of its price tag and for this much low cost the Rich 6 EV can go up to 175 miles on a single charge — an affordable pollution-free truck is a good choice and since the chances of the Tesla Cybertruck reaching the Chinese market anytime soon are thin, this is a good option until then.

Although the Ford F-150 EV prototypes have been spotted getting tested in the wild and last year Ford released the following video showing the F-150 electric version towing 1 million+ pounds — since then we haven’t heard of it much — no specific launch timeline, range, and other vital information has been shared by the automaker yet, let’s see if the electric variant of the F-150 is able to dent some of the 500,000+ Tesla Cybertruck reservations, to do that Ford will need to hurry up and start production.

Above: Ford Motor Company demonstrating the electric F-150 towing power.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Design Chief Franz von Holzhausen’s engineering and design genius have also given the Cybertruck another edge in the tooling and production cost department, the Tesla Cybertruck can be produced at only 15-20% of capital expenditure (CapEx) compared to the gasoline-powered Ford F-150 according to Sandy Munro who is a long time vehicle teardown expert — that’s why the Cybertruck’s starting price tag is so low compared to to the other electric pickup trucks.

I had originally written this story on X Auto.

Featured Image: Galileo Russel / Hyperchange TV

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By Iqtidar Ali