The “Cyberpunk” Tesla Pickup “Hopefully” Will Be Unveiled This Summer
Last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the Tesla electric pickup truck will start under $50,000 and he announced at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in California that it “hopefully” will be revealed “this summer.” The all-electric pickup truck is slated to go into production after the Model Y compact crossover in 2020, and Musk told one investor that it will have no problem towing a horse. He added that the towing capacity for the pickup will meet or exceed the F-150’s tow rating, which can tug up to 13,200 pounds.
Prior to this, Musk has tweeted the pickup will have dual-motor all-wheel drive, lots of torque, and a suspension that dynamically adjusts for load. If it can indeed come to market at that $50K price point, it would significantly undercut the all-electric Rivian R1T by at least $20,000. Plus, according to Musk, it’s a “cyberpunk” truck, so for those operating in dystopian, lawless wastelands dominated by oppressive technological forces, cool. Cool, cool, cool.
It remains to be seen if the pickup will reach production on schedule, but don’t expect to see Tesla’s bigger commercial truck—the all-electric semi—this year. It has been delayed to late 2020 due to a lack of batteries available for its production at this time.
“We might get into the mining business. I don’t know,” Musk said as a possible solution to solve the problem and help lower production costs. He also joked about Tesla engineers designing a submarine car, so who knows?
Musk also stated that the company is on track to reach its production targets by the end of 2019 and sales have far exceeded production. He also said the competition has yet to beat the range of the original Model S. “It won’t be long before we have a 400-mile range car,” Musk boasted during the nearly two-hour meeting.
It’s an amount of range that we don’t doubt is within reach, considering the updated 2019 Model S has 370 miles of maximum range. Our colleagues at MotorTrend recently ran an example from the Bay Area to Los Angeles without recharging.
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