Did Tesla Just Pull in a Year’s Worth of Orders for the Cybertruck?

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Last week, Tesla released a new version of the AWD Cybertruck, one that cost only $59,990. That’s not the same as the $49,990 price Tesla said it would sell the base AWD Cybertruck for when it unveiled the truck 7 years ago, but it’s better than it was. That said, the price was only on offer for a short time. In fact, the price is no longer available, and the trim now costs $69,990.

Well, the trick short-term lower price worked, it seems. If you order a Cybertruck today, the delivery month is estimated to be April … of 2017. A week ago, the estimated delivery time was June 2016. So, the implication is clear: Tesla took in enough orders for the Cybertruck in a week to eat up the next year or so of production.

Are there other possibilities? Sure, but the most likely explanation by a wide margin is that orders for the Cybertruck flooded in. Or, well, sort of flooded in. Everything is relative, as they say.

Our friend Madan Rajan sent in an interesting points. “Cybertruck: declared a flop has suddenly got 15 months worth of orders in just 10 days with the introduction of a base trim with lesser options priced at $60,000. How many orders is that? If we assume a 2,000 / month rate based on 20,000 sales last year, then its just 15 months * 2,000 / month = 30,000 units which is not big,” he said.

Tesla sold about 20,000 units of the Cybertruck last year. So, yeah, without any significant changes in production capacity or production patterns, one would assume that a year of order backlogs means approximately 20,000 vehicles. It’s basically just that, though — one year — since the current estimated delivery date is April 2017.

There is the possibility that Tesla could increase the vehicle’s production rate. If it was planning to increase the production rate by 50%, then the order number could be about 30,000, but I think that’s being very generous. In either case, though, this is nowhere near the 150,000 to 250,000 annual sales target Elon Musk was expecting.

If orders kept pouring in, that could be a different story, but as noted at the top, the price of the base AWD Cybertruck has now gone back up by $10,000. So, one would think that surge of orders in the past week or so must have totally dried up. Customers new the price was going to rise again, so anyone planing to order one would have been smart to get their orders in ASAP.

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