At the beginning of March, Tesla held its annual Investor Day at the Texas Gigafactory, or ‘Giga Texas’. There, the company brought out the ‘pre-production beta’ Cybertruck with a few pieces of new specs to divulge….but still no price. Based on everything that was gathered by attendees like shareholder Matthew Donegan-Ryan, it is pretty safe to assume this vehicle will not start at the originally-promised low price of $40,000. Let’s take a look at what Tesla currently has in store for the production Cybertruck, but remain cautious about what you read here, since the company has a tendency to change specs on a dime.
Every trim of Cybertruck will come with rear-wheel steering and an air suspension standard, the latter apparently utilizing air cylinders that are larger than those found on the RAM 1500 and 2500. The front bench seat from the prototype was a no-go, as packaging prevented Tesla from offering it. There’s a center console instead. The touchscreen is the largest Tesla has ever offered – 18.5 inches, but there’s no head-up display or small LCD instrument cluster like on Model 3 and Y. This means you will always have to look down and to the right to see your current speed and other vehicle metrics.
The entire structure of the vehicle is actually about 5% smaller than what we first saw in November 2019. It’s 231 inches in overall length and 84 inches wide, minus the side mirrors. That makes it smaller overall than a Ford F-150 Raptor, but it reportedly has a longer bed than the Ford by six inches.
Tesla will potentially offer just two variants at launch – dual-motor and tri-motor, the latter serving as the Performance model. Musk has previously said that the Performance model would utilize a quad-motor setup, though recent rumors concur with this alleged new product planning decision. Perhaps Tesla needed to cut costs, so they utilized the tri-motor array already found in Model S/X Plaid. We won’t really know for sure until the production truck is finally, truly, 100% released into the world. If things continue in the right direction, it seems the stainless steel body may actually make it all the way there.
More on the Tesla Cybertruck here.