Now, before I get into this, I need to make one thing clear. No matter what anybody is saying now, and no matter what the internet will say about the Cybertruck in the months ahead, Tesla is going to sell as many Cybertrucks as they can make for the next three years at the very least. By that time, a lot is going to be different with the Cybertruck.
In case anybody has forgotten, Tesla never stands still. Let's rip the Band-Aid off and talk about the pricing. I know many are disappointed. This group is split into two. Those disappointed because they can't afford the truck now and those that think Tesla has failed.
To the former, I can't really help you. To the latter, I have a few thoughts. Number 1. When demand is this high relative to supply, Tesla would be foolish to not charge prices commensurate with that situation. Over time, Tesla can and will drive down prices as they achieve better economies of scale and the supply-demand balance well comes back into balance.
Tesla should absolutely let the early adopters pay the premium pricing they are still going to pay, gladly or reluctantly, it doesn't matter. Don't forget, the all-wheel-drive variant is under $80,000 so it does qualify for the IRA tax credit that will be point of sale in January. These tax credits, by the way, did not exist back in 2019. Tesla is simply playing its current hand the best way it can.
The problem with using an inflation adjustment calculator is that they use the reported on figure. They know that real-world inflation is much higher than what they're reporting. Looking at the all-wheel drive Cybertruck at $79.9000, subtracting the $7,500 tax credit brings us to $72,490. At the unveil event, Tesla was estimating, not promising by the way, $49,990 for the dual motor all-wheel drive. Doing simple, straight-line math, that works out to 11% inflation per year, probably right in line with the real-world supply chain inflation costs.
My point here, Tesla is not that far off from its pricing guesstimates and to think Tesla has failed somehow is silly and disregards the rest of the content of this episode. Plus, if you look at the average transaction price of a full-size pickup in the US in October, it was $66,000.
The reality now is that the all-wheel drive Cybertruck gets a tax credit and can have up to 470 miles of range with a range extender. Had Tesla just jammed more batteries into the base pack, it would not have qualified for the credits. One last thing, Tesla is using 4680s for the Cybertruck which are continually improving and scaling in their own right. As these sales become more energy-dense, Tesla will incrementally improve the range of the Cybertruck while also driving the price down.
I'm really glad Tesla was able to implement the steer by wire which will be an awesome feature overlooked by most. This was much harder to pull off than you may think. This is not something that's done all the time, it's actually done in mass market cars very infrequently, like almost never. But no worries, Tesla will do it safely, there are redundancies so it'll be failproof or NHTSA would not have allowed it. But from a user perspective, the locking ratio will be much smaller so no hand-over-hand turning. It'll adjust dynamically based on your speed and it'll have a very tight turn radius, tighter than the Model S. With no mechanical linkage between the driver and the wheels, you know what they say, the best part is no part. Long term, hopefully this reduces manufacturing complexity.
On the event, my initial reaction was the same as yours, we want more information. Show us some features, show us the interior, show off the new 18.5 inch display with the Cybertruck UI, even the little stuff like the drain plug in the hidden vault storage or the bottle opener on the side of the vault bed, or that the buttons on the steering wheel are actual buttons that click and move, not the haptic simulation like in the past.
Why didn't they show the storage functionality of the back row? I just wanted them to take some time to explain the engineering genius of the vehicle and all of the new technology that's packed into this truck. How about explaining how orders are going to work?
And yes, the truth is Tesla does not need any more demand right now, they have plenty so overselling is not needed. I also know that this way the internet will have plenty of things to dive into and research and keep searching for which will keep interest higher for longer. But just to appease the Tesla fans, everybody that traveled to be there, to show off the talent of the engineers and the team, I think the event should have been more in depth with a bit more preparation.
There were some awesome parts like the Cybertruck beating in Porsche 911 and the Drag Race while the Cybertruck towed a Porsche 911, but there was just so much that Tesla decided to keep under wraps or not mentioned. I have to say it, the baseball throw was a cringe moment for me for sure, I would have been fine with them skipping that altogether. That's just more fodder for the media to take and run with.
Ultimately though, I just want more of the general public to learn about and appreciate the masterclass Tesla is putting on from an engineering and tech perspective, it's incredible and most people don't know anything about it. I mean, Tesla literally did not even mention the new power share at the event, so Tesla has now appeased those asking for bidirectional charging, home backup, using tools on the job site, charging other EVs. Now if you don't have a power wall, you will need the universal wall connector, the gateway and an optional backup switch which all will be sold separately. And this will work out to be even more incentive for somebody to buy a power wall.
There's also some interesting deep in the weed speculation out there that the actuators being used to steer the wheels may be the same as the optimus actuators, so there could already be some manufacturing crossover. The less skews Tesla has company wide, the better.
On the range let down, I'll be honest, I was expecting the top of the range without an extender to be a minimum of around 450 miles. And I know that it is with the range extender but without it, the top of the range right now is 340 miles. This is certainly more than enough for most use cases and the people that drive around 40 miles per day on average. The truth is though, having extra range is desired if not required in three scenarios, towing, cold weather and road trips. Those may not happen all the time but then questions arise about the range extender and the practicality for when they do. How removable is it?
For now it sounds like it's going to be installed by a service center, implying it takes a little know how. Given that it's a 50kWh pack and the entire truck pack is 123kWh so we've been told it might be higher, I'm guessing it won't be light and something that my wife can quickly detach and set in the garage. Drew Baglino did say it's the size of a toolbox but this image leads me to believe Ashley would be struggling to remove or install this. We don't know the exact cost but the word is it could be around $16,000 to add 120 to 130 miles of range to the base configurations.
Even in the cold though, Tesla's thermal management system has been head and shoulders above the rest and I'm assuming the same will be true with the Cybertruck. Let's not forget, Tesla could have stuffed more cells into the Cybertruck for longer range but using 4680's Tesla is going to use the market data it has to provide the range it thinks most people will be pleased with while balancing the need to conserve cells as Tesla continues to improve the energy density and production rate of the 4680 lines.
Quickly from a Tesla stock perspective, this probably won't be too impactful until late 2025 or 2026. If we assume 350,000 deliveries in 2026 with an average sale price of $85,000 at 30% margins factoring in FSD and accessories, that's $29.8 billion in revenue or about $9 billion in profits. If you then divide that by the diluted shares outstanding, that's $2.61 in earnings per share for 2026. Marginally, for context, Tesla's trailing 12 month earnings per share has been $3.11 so an extra $2.61 is certainly not trivial.
Back to the manufacturing prowess here though, Monroe Live nerding out on this truck is going to be epic. If you're new to the channel, I don't think I've ever said that term in the history of the channel. Those of you that have been around, let me know. There are some new motors in the Cybertruck that have not been seen in other Tesla vehicles that we'll learn about in time with a host of other manufacturing genius moves that I'll trickle out in the months ahead.
On the safety front, John from Dr. Know et al. said he talked to a Tesla engineer and their crash simulation was a perfect one for one of what actually happened in the real-world test. AKA, Tesla's simulators knew exactly how the Cybertruck would respond to that crash test, which is wild. Jason Camisa, a world-renowned car guru, just said quote, this is a 3100 pound cart and it just hit the Cybertruck at 33.5 miles per hour and the Cybertruck is barely deformed. It didn't even break the doorglass after a crash test that totals most cars. The Cybertruck would be back on the road with two new doors, airbags and some trim.
Real quick, if you guys want to support a community member, I'll have the shows linked below. He puts in all kinds of TLC to these Cybertruck wood burnings in Slovakia. This is not a sponsor, nothing like that, just a friend of the channel.
Speaking of a production of sorts, the word from the factory tours is there's a significant amount of automation on the Cybertruck line. These are not being hand-built as TeslaQ would have you believe, so this is great to hear for future prospects. We still need to keep expectations and check for the production ramp volume, but the more automation, the better. And yes, I know you can over automate as Tesla has already learned that lesson back with the Model 3. But let's not forget that originally part of the design of the Cybertruck was so that manufacturing in the long run would be easier.
I have to at least mention Cybertruck 4 police fleets. Larry Ellison has already talked about his plans for one, so there's a chance that over time, the Cybertruck becomes a more popular vehicle for police fleets than the Model Y. Now that the Cybertruck is confirmed to be over £6,000, with a passenger vehicle over that £6,000 mark for business purposes, you can accelerate the depreciation. Not financial advice, talk to a CPA, but for business owners, this will be nice.
We still have plenty of questions, how will the original reservations be handled? Will Tesla Honor that original $7,000 FSD price? Then will the new reservations be ready for actual configuration? What are the delivery timelines for the next few weeks? Are accessories ready to be shipped? For the first time ever, we get a front camera on a Tesla. How is that going to help with the vision-based parking? MKBHD did say the rear window into the vault does not open or close, so does that mean that we can't heat the vault and sleep there with the tent? How will the 800 volt architecture interface with Tesla's V3 Superchargers? V2 and V3 are capped at 500 volts and even V4 dispensers are still hooked up to V3 cabinets.
Now I know Drew did give some insight into this saying that the pack splits into two to charge natively on existing 400 volt charging infrastructure, no costly, lossy booster required. But we still need to learn about the charging curve of the Cybertruck. And how about the engineering feat of moving the low voltage architecture to 48 volts? You can accurately describe this move as ground breaking. For decades now, the auto industry has operated on 12 volts, but no longer at least for Tesla. This will absolutely save Tesla money in the long run once they establish the new supply base.
I really just wanted to provide some initial thoughts in this video and I have to say, even the people that think this truck is ugly will indirectly help Tesla with marketing. The design evokes emotions. It's unlike anything we've ever seen. It's going to be a conversation starter, a head turner, and how polarizing it is will lead to more people being exposed to Tesla. Plenty of people can hate it. Tesla only needs a few hundred thousand every year to love it, and they will. Just pay attention to the views and engagement of all of these videos and posts about the Cybertruck and what they're going to get in the months ahead. The interest in this truck is off the charts, and we know the truck will continually get better. This is just version one.
When you zoom out and compare everything about this truck, the utility, performance, features, technology, durability, safety, and things like the IT factor, this could very well prove to be the best truck ever built. There really is so much new technology in this truck that it just cannot be fully appreciated in a few hours or even a few days or weeks. It'll take time for the reality of what this truck is and what it can do to set into the market and we still have a lot of these new features that we need to learn more about.
There's undoubtedly going to be a lot of news about Tesla's failure to hit promises from four years ago and the media trying to paint the Cybertruck in a negative light compared to other trucks. Like always though, it's just going to end up being noise. Think about how much Tesla's other vehicles have improved since their launch. The same thing is going to happen with the Cybertruck.
You know, growing up I was never a car guy, definitely never a truck guy. But here we are and I'm spending inordinate amounts of time covering Tesla and the Cybertruck. In part, that's because I love the tech, I love the risk taking, I love how they're pushing the boundaries of what's possible and you know what they say, the future isn't going to invent itself.
The Cybertruck won't be for everyone but just remember, it doesn't have to be. It's an engineering masterpiece that will be desired by many. In the future we'll cover this a lot more in depth but for now, to anybody that says Tesla should never have created a Cybertruck implying the world would be better without it, you can go.