Tesla Cybertruck: electric pickup will cost more than expected

Car price inflation dooms Tesla to change Cybertruck prices.

Tesla’s Cybertruck garnered everyone’s attention when it was unveiled in 2019, largely due to its unusual exterior styling (a monochromatic exoskeleton made from cold-rolled 30X heavy-duty stainless steel) and also due in part to its low starting price set at $39,900. If the sci-fi-inspired design of the Tesla Cybertruck persists on models that launch by mid-2023, then that won’t happen to the multi-year promised price as it will finally be driven up by inflation.

Tesla bad news for Cybertruck

During a Q&A session held at the automaker’s shareholder meeting, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was asked about the price of the Cybertruck and whether it would still cost $39,900… The manager was openly involved (and in the midst of a lawsuit with Twitter) confirmed that the pickup’s specs and price will be different from those leaked in 2019, before saying that it hates to “deliver a bit of bad news.”

Tesla Cybertruck’s original price of $39,900 only applied to the single-engine, rear-wheel-drive model. The two-engine all-wheel-drive version of the pickup was supposed to start at $49,900, while the top-end three-engine version would start at $69,900. This price grid was seen as a bargain in 2019, so it’s no surprise that Tesla is implementing new pricing given the inflation-related issues that many automakers are currently facing.

No Tesla Cybertruck until 2023

Initially, Tesla said that the Cybertruck would roll off the production line at the end of 2021, with the most powerful three-motor version coming at the end of 2022. Now, Elon Musk claims that automaker Electrical plans to start production in mid-2023 after several years of delays, some of them due to the COVID-19 pandemic and semiconductor shortages.