Tesla’s Cybertruck Will Cost More and Launch Later

Consumers will have to continue to wait for Tesla’s electric pickup truck, known as the Cybertruck.

At a shareholder meeting in early August, Elon Musk announced the Cybertruck would be more expensive than the originally-announced $39,900, according to The Verge. He also said in July the car would not come until 2023, another delay.

“I hate to give a little bit of bad news,” he said at the meeting.

The major factor driving a potential price increase, Musk said, is inflation. The product was first announced in 2019.

“It was unveiled in 2019… a lot has changed since then,” Musk said at the meeting, according to IFL Science. “So the specs and the pricing will be different… but there’s no way to sort of have anticipated quite the inflation that we’ve seen and the various issues.”

This is another delay in an ongoing series of delays.

According to Tesla’s website, the Cybertruck design will be blocky and angular, “with a nearly impenetrable exoskeleton.” It also has “vault-like” storage.

Cybertruck at Giga Texas pic.twitter.com/c1RuektPnN

— Tesla (@Tesla) April 16, 2021

The company is currently not taking reservations for the car but a crowdsourced report from Wedbush put the number at over 650,000 in June 2020, per Electrek. As The Verge noted, Rivian and Ford, Tesla competitors, are hard at work at bringing their electric trucks, the F-150 Lightning and the R1T truck, respectively, to market.

You can put in a reservation for an R1T truck, but deliveries aren’t expected to begin until late 2023, per Rivian’s website. You cannot purchase a F-150 Lightning retail but can contact a local dealer.