Since Tesla dissolved its PR department last year, the company’s CEO Elon Musk is the one responsible for answering the queries — and he does it efficiently via his Twitter feed most of the time. He has revealed some new information about the Cybertruck production and upcoming variants in one of his tweetstorms yesterday.
Back in mid-October, Tesla removed the ability for Cybertruck reservation holders to choose the variant they want to buy. Now, when placing a pre-order for a Cybertruck, the configuration page says “You will be able to complete your configuration as production nears in 2022”.
This change in the Cybertruck online configurator created rumors that Tesla is perhaps getting rid of the single motor RWD variant, just like it did with the Model Y SUV.
Addressing one such tweet by @WholeMarsBlog, Elon Musk stated that Tesla will start production with the Quad-Motor Cybertruck (4 motors, 1 on each wheel). This is in line with Tesla’s production-start tradition, the highest variant goes into production first. “Initial production will be 4-motor variant, with independent, ultra-fast response torque control of each wheel,” Musk tweeted.
The Cybertruck production start was originally scheduled towards the end of 2021 but Tesla gave preference to Model Y production at Gigafactory Austin and put the Cybertruck on the backburner for a while. Now the production of the Cybertruck has been pushed into 2022, still not with a definitive date or month but mid-2022 would be a good guess.
Insane technology bandwagon
Elon Musk on Cybertruck
The need for a 4-motor Cybertruck emerged when Rivian showed how its Quad-Motor R1T can perform a tank-turn and GM’s Hummer EV demonstrated crab mode. Tesla cannot be left behind in innovation, so the automaker started working 4-wheel steerability for the Cybertruck earlier this year.
Elon Musk confirmed that the Quad-Motor Cybertruck will not just be able to perform the tank turn but it will also be capable of driving diagonally like a crab.
The 4-motor Cybertruck reservation never reached the Tesla online configurator website and the pricing is not yet revealed. Most likely, reservation holders will have the option to upgrade to the Quad-Motor Cybertruck for varying additional costs depending on their reserved variant (single, dual, tri-motor).
Elon Musk gave a vague response when asked for the upgrade option, “But yes,” he said.
When asked for more updates about the Cybertruck its production timeline, Elon Musk said, “Product roadmap update on next earnings call”. The next Tesla earnings call will be Q4 2021 and most probably take place in the 1st or 2nd week of January 2022, after the quarterly financial results are released.
Cybertruck reservation numbers update
In the meantime, an interesting development is taking place, the Cybertruck reservations are growing each day. A public reservation tracker shows that the total Cybertruck pre-orders have crossed the 1.2 million mark. These 1.2 million orders roughly translate to more than $81 billion USD in potential revenue for Tesla (TSLA).
This publicly-gathered data by the reservation holders shows some interesting facts. The share of the Single-Motor RWD variant is just 7.2% of the total 1,276,212 reservations till yesterday. The majority opted for the Dual-Motor (47.7%) and the Tri-Motor (45.1%) variants.
A whopping 70.4% of the reservation holders also bought the $10,000 Full Self-Driving (FSD) package as well. This is an unprecedented number of FSD purchases besides the fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) being thrown at Tesla by the major media outlets for this self-driving software.
However, Elon Musk did not answer anything about the Single-Motor RWD variant in this tweetstorm,
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