Tesla has removed any mention of the year 2022 from the Cybertruck website, a bad sign for anyone hoping to get their hands on the electric truck before the end of the year. Don’t say we didn’t warn you back in 2019.
The removal, first spotted by Mashable, likely happened in mid-December, according to pages archived by the Internet Archive, but this is the first anyone had noticed. Tesla purged any mention of pricing or model information back in October, but this most recent scrub of the electric car company’s website removes the year 2022.
The Cybertruck was first announced in 2019, and hailed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk as something close to the, “armoured personnel carrier from the future.” But the vehicle became the subject of ridicule when its “indestructible” windows were obliterated at the unveiling and the prototype’s unwieldy shape caused Musk to hit a traffic pylon after having dinner in Malibu.
Production was supposed to start in 2021, but as recently as August, Tesla announced it was pushing back production on the vehicle until 2022. Now that entire timeline seems to be in question, though Musk has yet to comment on the most recent change. Tesla infamously got rid of its public relations team so there’s no one for Gizmodo to reach out to for comment about the move.
When Musk first announced the Cybertruck, he promised it would cost $US39,900 ($54,890), would tow up to 7,500 pounds, and would be able to carry a 1,588 kg payload in its bed. But all of those promises have disappeared in the past couple of years, with the year of production in 2022 just being the latest failure.
Tesla is supposedly going to produce the Cybertruck at its factory in Austin, Texas, but, again, there’s no way to reach out for confirmation on any of this information. Musk, the wealthiest person on the planet, decided he really doesn’t need a PR team and can just tweet out important announcements to control the narrative — a narrative, it should be noted, that often looks like cryptocurrency pump and dumps.
Musk has a long history of making outlandish promises that he can never deliver on, including robotaxis that were supposed to arrive by 2020. Or how about claims Musk made in 2016 that his Tesla vehicles would be fully self-driving by 2018?
Preorders for the Cybertruck are still available with a $US100 ($138) deposit. But will Musk’s strange, electric truck of the future arrive before the flying car? That remains to be seen.