Tesla has delayed production on the highly-anticipated Cybertruck until 2023, a whopping four years after the electric pickup truck was first unveiled.
According to TechRadar, the Cybertruck has been delayed again due to the pandemic and “a crippling global microchip shortage”.
Speaking in a private meeting, Tesla CEO Elon Musk reportedly said that production is now starting in late 2022 with volume production in 2023.
The new date comes after Electrek reported last month that the Tesla website had updated the Cybertruck order page with a disclaimer that “you will be able to complete your configuration as production nears in 2022”.
According to the website, this applies to the single-, dual- and tri-motor models of the truck. This is particularly interesting considering Tesla has previously stated that the higher-end dual- and tri-motor models would be arriving first.
The official news of the delay comes just a month after Tesla’s VP of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy said the Cybertruck was “at a stage where we finished basic engineering of the architecture of the vehicle,” during a second-quarter earnings call.
Moravy also asserted that the EV giant was “moving into the beta phases of Cybertruck later this year.” So it’s not exactly surprising that the truck won’t be hitting driveways until at least 2022. But now Tesla has officially confirmed it on the website.
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Since being unveiled back in 2019 — and being memed into oblivion shortly thereafter — the Cybertruck has faced its fair share of issues on the road to production.
For starters, the engineering design for the highly-anticipated truck was only finalised as recently as January 2021.
“So we finished almost all of the Cybertruck engineering. So we’re no longer iterating at the design centre level or design level. We’ve got the designs fixed,” Elon Musk said during Tesla’s Q4 2020 earnings call.
The vehicle has proven particularly difficult to produce because features, like the meme-worthy exoskeleton body that looks like something out of a Mad Max film, required entirely new manufacturing processes.
Despite the delay, you can still preorder a Tesla Cybertruck on the website with a $150 deposit. According to a crowdsourced tally, more than 1 million preorders have already been placed so far.