The first deliveries of the Tesla Cybertruck may be just over a month away, but there are still some serious production difficulties that need to be solved.
The EV maker announced during its third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday that its latest vehicle will finally launch on November 30, more than four years after it was first announced. CEO Elon Musk then began tempering expectations for the “special product.”
“We dug our own grave with the Cybertruck,” Musk said, according to Business Insider.
Tesla Cybertruck
Tesla
During the call, Musk explained that the vehicle’s unique design, which has long been its most controversial element, has made it difficult to scale up production. This doesn’t come as a complete shock, since the executive has previously warned that the Cybertruck wouldn’t be ready for “volume production” until 2024. Musk now says it will take 18 months for the production line to be working at full capacity—at which point it will be able to build 250,000 vehicles per year—pushing that target back to 2025. That means the truck won’t become “cashflow positive” until the second half of the decade at the earliest.
“When you’ve got a product with a lot of new technology or any brand-new vehicle program, especially one that is as different and advanced as the Cybertruck, you will have problems proportionate to how many new things you’re trying to solve at scale,” Musk told investors.
Tesla did not immediately respond to Robb Report‘s request for comment.
Tesla
The Cybertruck may need time to succeed, but it remains to be seen if it will achieve it. The vehicle’s arrival comes at a tenuous time for the company. Tesla is still the dominant EV maker in the U.S., but its market share has taken a sizable hit over the last few years. In 2020, nearly 80 percent of EVs sold stateside were made by the company, but, through the first nine months of the year, that number has dropped to 56.5 percent.
Tesla’s market share isn’t the only thing shrinking. In Wednesday’s call, the company also revealed that its gross profit has declined 22 percent year over year, according to CNBC. This is likely due to the company having slashed the price of its vehicles several times this year. Unsurprisingly, this news, along with Musk’s gloomy Cybertruck outlook, has caused a sell-off of Tesla stock in the days since.