After the launching of Cybertruck in 2019, Tesla has said that the electric pickup truck should make it to the market towards the end of 2021. Now deliveries have been postponed until 2022, according to Tesla’s online ordering information.
It was Electrek who broke the news first. They point out that as recently as the quarterly results released in July, Tesla adhered to the same timeline as before, writing that Cybertruck production would begin at the Texas plant right after the start of Model Y production. Tesla hinted the 2021 target might not be realistic before; Elon Musk said in January that there would only be a “few deliveries” of Cybertrucks in 2021, and the mass production would be set in 2022.
Tesla is not the only one that has experienced delays in pickup production. Competitor Rivian recently announced that they had to postpone deliveries on their R1T from July to September this year, thanks in part to the corona pandemic.
Their European factory, located in Austin, is still under construction, and there is a certain prestige attached to which of the factories opens first: Austin or the new factory in Berlin, Germany. Originally, the plan was for Model Y for the European market to be produced in Berlin, but delays have led Tesla to choose to offer European customers China-produced Model Y for deliveries in August instead of waiting for Berlin-produced cars.
With deliveries next year, Cybertruck will also end up in the middle of the crossfire from a number of competing models. The Hummer EV is an example, and also the Ford F-150 Lightning, the electric version of the best-selling car in the USA every year for the last 40 years.
Tesla has more than 1 million Cybertruck reservations, I think there will be a lot of buyers now who will have second thoughts later when they eventually could place the orders.
