Elon Musk delivers his Cybertruck: Tesla’s futuristic electric pick-up costs US$60,990 | VIDEO

Four years after showing his design to the world, Elon Musk delivered this Thursday the first units of Cybertruck, the new electric pick-up from tesla, “soft” but powerful, faster than a Porsche and resistant to bullets, according to the businessman. A car of the future “that looks like the future.”

From the Tesla workshops in Austin, Texas, the billionaire held a live broadcast where he boarded several customers of his new star vehicle.

READ ALSO: Elon Musk expresses his concern with artificial intelligence: “What happens if it stops being friendly?”

It is a “troca”, as they would call it in Mexico or in the Latin communities of the United States (for truck, truck or van in English), although in a cybernetic version: angular, uniformly gray and made of flat stainless steel plates .

Cybertruck Delivery Event https://t.co/rWd111HvHc

—Tesla (@Tesla) November 29, 2023

“It is very rare that a product appears that experts said was impossible (…) I think it is our best product. It will be a unique thing on the roads. “Finally, the future will look like the future,” Musk said.

Musk showed videos where the Cybertruck has greater towing force than other electric and diesel trucks on the market, and where his vehicle outruns a Porsche 911, even while towing another Porsche.

“Great work, like me”

In another video, the “exoskeleton” of the vehicle receives impacts from a 45 caliber machine gun and 9 mm caliber weapons, without piercing the body. This time he successfully tested the strength of the glass with what appeared to be a baseball (four years ago, it was broken by a metal ball).

Tesla is an electric pick-up. . (Photo: X)

The purchase price for the basic model, according to the Tesla website, is $60,990, available in 2025, up to the “Cyberbeast” for $99,990, with greater power and towing capacity. The latter can reach 210 km/h, with a range of 515 km and a towing capacity of 5 tons. The intermediate model costs 79,990.

Analysts have called the Cybertruck a high-risk project compared to other Tesla vehicles. But, for Musk, “it is an incredibly useful truck. It’s not just a great masterpiece, like me.”

The presentation occurs at a time when Musk has had to apologize after being accused of replicating anti-Semitic expressions on the platform

“Video game fantasy”

“The launch of Cybertruck is important to Tesla’s growth story in the coming years and will also demonstrate to skeptics that Musk can successfully expand Tesla’s halo, as more consumers go down the path of electric vehicles,” said Wedbush consulting firm analyst Daniel Ives.

In recent months, Musk has tried to limit expectations about the vehicle’s commercial potential, warning in October that it would be “incredibly difficult” to achieve mass commercialization.

As Musk has previously said, the car is intended to be a cross between a “Blade Runner” model and the amphibious vehicle ‘Wet Nellie’ seen in “The Spy Who Loved Me” (1977) of the James Bond saga. Although it also reminds us of the cars from “Mad Max Fury Road”.

The billionaire managed to personally present and deliver the first units of his long-awaited vehicle. (Photo: AFP) (TOBY MELVILLE/)

According to an article in The American Prospect, the stainless steel used does rust and the rigid material could be fatal in car accidents.

Instead of focusing on building more affordable electric vehicles, Tesla “wasted four years and billions of dollars on Elon Musk’s teenage video game fantasy,” the magazine said. “Megalomaniacal, conspiracy-minded billionaires are not the key to a carbon-neutral transportation future,” he said.

“Difficult to manufacture”

The manufacturer enters an already occupied electric pickup market, particularly by its rival Rivian. Ford launched the F-150 Lightning last year, an electric version of its best-selling model in the United States, for about $50,000. Pick-ups are very popular vehicles in the country.

The vehicle’s style, which uses large flat plates of stainless steel, poses manufacturing challenges, said Art Wheaton, a transportation industries expert at Cornell University. “It looks ‘cool,’ but it is extremely difficult to manufacture successfully,” he said.

Musk has previously revealed that he already has more than one million orders and that he hopes to reach production of 250,000 units by 2025.

Wheaton compared the Cybertruck to the Chevrolet Corvette, which is not a big seller but attracts buyers to other GM vehicles. “It works as a kind of attention getter,” he added.

Source: Elcomercio