Tesla recently held its "Cyber Roundup" annual shareholders meeting, at which the CEO, Elon Musk, announced that prices and specifications for the highly anticipated Cybertruck are set to change.
This doesn't come as too much of a surprise, considering how much has changed since its unveiling in 2019.
At the time, the Tesla Cybertruck was the only electric ute to be mass market promised. But now, there's a fair amount of competition, with the likes of Rivian, Hummer, Ford, and LDV since releasing their own.
Tesla isn't used to being on the backfoot, but Ford’s F-150 Lightning has already seen huge demand and Rivian delivered it's first R1T electric utes last year with production increasing in 2022.
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When the vehicle was first announced, Elon Musk claimed that the Cybertruck would hit the market by 2021, however, this was pushed back in August last year when Tesla confirmed that production would begin in 2022. It was then announced that it would be in late 2022 that production would get going, and that significant volume production will not be achieved until late 2023. Now, reports are that Cybertruck production won't start until Q1 2023.
Some speculated that the delays were due to Tesla changing some specs and features to the Cybertruck in order to remain cutting-edge, and this appears to be the case.
At the recent meeting, an investor asked when prices for the Cybertruck would be announced. Musk replied: “Cybertruck pricing, it was unveiled in 2019, and the reservation was $99. A lot has changed since then, so the specs and the pricing will be different. I hate to give sort of a little bit of bad news, but I think there's no way to sort of have anticipated quite the inflation that we've seen and the various issues.”
It does make sense that prices would rise, considering the rate of inflation and other complications such as the conflict in Ukraine, the pandemic and lockdowns, supply chain disruptions, shortages, and price increases on basically everything.
It also makes sense that prices would change with the change in specifications. And while Musk didn't go into details about just how specs would be different compared to when it was released in 2019, he did say that "the Cybertruck will be one hell of a product" and "a damn fine machine."
Musk also reaffirmed that production would begin in mid-2023.
"We're going to be installing the production equipment, tooling and all starting in the next couple of months, we'll begin the installation, so we're aiming to be in volume production in the middle of next year," he said.