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Tesla Cybertruck delay pushes pickup to late 2022, Elon Musk reportedly says

The Tesla CEO reportedly held an internal meeting to provide a little more detail on the electric truck's already confirmed delay.

Tesla Cybertruck
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Tesla Cybertruck

Are we surprised? No.

Tesla

The Tesla Cybertruck delay was already a known fact, but CEO Elon Musk's latest reported comments add a few more details to the picture. Citing sources familiar with the meeting, Electrek reported Thursday that Musk held a company-wide call and said the Cybertruck should be ready for production in late 2022.

This follows comments back in July from Lars Moravy, the automaker's vice president of vehicle engineering, who basically did his best to tip-toe around a delay. 

"[The] Cybertruck is at a stage where we finished basic engineering of the architecture of the vehicle. With the Cybertruck, we are redefining how a vehicle is being made," Moravy said. "As [Musk] said, it carries much of the structural pack and large casting design of the Model Y being built in Berlin and Austin. Obviously, those take priority over the Cybertruck, but we are moving into the beta phases of Cybertruck later this year and we will be looking to ramp up production at Giga Texas after Model Y is up and running."

If the company plans for beta trucks later this year, that leaves nowhere near enough time to start actual production in late 2021.

Following his comments, Tesla updated the Cybertruck's reservation page to note production will fire up in 2022. Though, according to Musk, we're not looking at early 2022 or anything like that. And as we suspected, the CEO underscored the electric truck's volume models may not be ready until sometime in 2023. If Tesla follows this timeline, we'll get the priciest tri-motor model in 2022, then the dual- and single-motor trucks in 2023. 

Tesla does not operate a public relations department to field requests for comment, so we'll take this production news with a grain of salt. However, it doesn't seem far-fetched in the slightest. Musk just this week confirmed another new vehicle, the Roadster, is also subject to further delay. The electric sports car was meant to begin production next year, but he said 2023 is the car's new target production date, citing production shortages.

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Sean Szymkowski
It all started with Gran Turismo. From those early PlayStation days, Sean was drawn to anything with four wheels. Prior to joining the Roadshow team, he was a freelance contributor for Motor Authority, The Car Connection and Green Car Reports. As for what's in the garage, Sean owns a 2016 Chevrolet SS, and yes, it has Holden badges.
Sean Szymkowski
It all started with Gran Turismo. From those early PlayStation days, Sean was drawn to anything with four wheels. Prior to joining the Roadshow team, he was a freelance contributor for Motor Authority, The Car Connection and Green Car Reports. As for what's in the garage, Sean owns a 2016 Chevrolet SS, and yes, it has Holden badges.

Article updated on September 3, 2021 at 5:19 AM PDT

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Sean Szymkowski
It all started with Gran Turismo. From those early PlayStation days, Sean was drawn to anything with four wheels. Prior to joining the Roadshow team, he was a freelance contributor for Motor Authority, The Car Connection and Green Car Reports. As for what's in the garage, Sean owns a 2016 Chevrolet SS, and yes, it has Holden badges.
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