Believe it or not, even the spectacular unveiling of Tesla’s jaw-dropping electric pickup truck couldn’t prevent CEO Elon Musk from disappointing company shareholders yet again. To be fair to him, the Cybertruck did let him down in an unexpected fashion.
Looking like it would be better off trundling around in Mars than it would here on Earth, the Cybertruck looked more like a work of art than an actual vehicle as Musk revealed it to the world earlier this week in the company’s studio in Hawthorne, California. With an ultra-hard stainless steel “exoskeleton” and the kind of angular design you expect to see on fighter jets, the crowd was understandably dumbstruck.
Starting at $39,900, the Cybertruck will be available in three different versions, with the basic one being a single-motor rear-wheel drive that packs 250 miles of range, 7,500 lb worth of towing capacity, and an acceleration of 0-60 mph in just under 6.5 seconds. There’s also a dual-motor all-wheel drive featuring 300 miles of range and 10,000 lb of towing capacity that will be available for $49,900 and a triple motor all-wheel drive version that features a humongous 500 miles in range and 14,000 lb of towing capacity for the price of $69,900.
Ever the showman, Musk kicked off the presentation by getting his chief designer Franz von Holzhausen to strike the Cybertruck’s front door with a sledgehammer. With not a single dent appearing on the surface even after multiple attempts, the crowd went wild. He also proceeded to show clips of the space-age pickup truck beating the Ford F150 truck in a tug-of-war challenge and outdoing the Porsche 911 in a drag race. The combination of speed and power is truly remarkable.
However, with everything going rosy so far, things took an embarrassing turn as Musk decided to get von Holzhausen to throw a metal ball at the Cybertruck’s shatterproof armored glass windows. There shouldn’t have been a single crack on the windows, but the moment the ball made contact with them, they broke unexpectedly.
Visibly shocked, Musk attempted to cover up for this fiasco by saying, “It [the ball] didn’t go through, that’s the plus side.”
If Tesla’s eccentric CEO thought that the consequences of this incident wouldn’t go beyond embarrassing himself live in front of the world, he was seriously wrong. It wasn’t long before Tesla shares dropped by 6%, and Musk’s overall net worth plummeted by a considerable $768m as a result.
When all is said and done, there is a lot to look forward to as far as Tesla’s first electric pickup truck is concerned. It is a glimpse into the future of vehicular travel, and it looks stunning. While the Cybertruck hasn’t started production yet, pre-orders can be made at http://tesla.com/cybertruck.
