During Tesla’s Q4 and full year earnings call yesterday, Elon Musk warned that the Tesla Cybertruck may not see deliveries before the end of the year. The Tesla CEO said they would be “lucky” if they delivered any before 2022, meaning volume deliveries will definitely not take place before then.
Tesla announced production of the new all-electric truck would begin in 2021 during its unveiling in 2019. A timeline that seemed a little ambitious, even for Tesla. Now, Musk is backtracking, warning that the challenges that come with new manufacturing methods could cause delays in production.
During a conference call following the release of Tesla’s Q4 2020 earnings, Musk admitted that Tesla would be “lucky,” if they managed to do “a few deliveries” of the Cybertruck by the end of the year: “If we get lucky, we’ll be able to do a few deliveries toward the end of this year, but I expect volume productions to begin in 2022.”
In regards to Cybertruck production, the CEO commented: “We finished almost all of the Cybertruck engineering. So we’re no longer iterating at the design center level or design level. We’ve got the designs fixed. We will soon order the equipment necessary to make the Cybertruck work. We’re actually going to be using even bigger Tesla machines for the rear body of Cybertruck because we’ve got, obviously, it’s a bigger vehicle and you’ve got a long truck bed. So we’ll be using an 8,000-ton casting press for the rear body casting as opposed to 6,000-ton for Model Y.”
Tesla recently received a massive casting machine at Gigafactory Texas, which is expected to house Cybertruck production. However, this specific casting machine is expected to be utilized in Model Y production.