The bulletproof Cybertruck is perhaps Tesla's biggest gamble to date. It's not clear if Elon Musk will be able to sell enough of the $100,000 vehicles to break even — or if he'll even be able to sell them at all outside the United States. Love it or hate it, the electric truck is turning heads and grabbing headlines.
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00:00 With its bulletproof shell, lightning-fast acceleration, and head-turning looks, the
00:08 Cybertruck is well on the road to becoming an auto icon.
00:12 It's huge, it's angular, it's boxy, it doesn't even have paint on it, it's just raw stainless
00:17 steel.
00:18 It's a radical new design for pickup trucks.
00:20 But it's also run into trouble, perhaps too much for its six-figure price tag.
00:25 Pre-orders for the electric truck are through the roof, but it's unclear if the vehicle
00:30 will ever turn a profit, or if it'll do more damage than good to the Tesla brand.
00:36 We took a look behind the stainless steel panels of the $100,000 Cybertruck to see how
00:41 much bang owners are getting for their buck.
00:46 The first pickup truck rolled out of a Ford factory in 1925, and since the 1940s, the
00:52 design has mostly stayed the same.
00:55 A cab in the front, and a flatbed at the back.
00:59 Pickups account for one in five vehicle sales in the U.S.
01:03 It's a market that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been eyeing since 2012.
01:11 When the Cybertruck was unveiled to the world in November 2019, it was a game-changer.
01:19 Even with its broken window.
01:21 Oh my god, well, maybe that was a little too hard.
01:26 All cars basically look the same.
01:27 You have a hatchback, you have a sedan, you have a full-size SUV in the suburbs, and this
01:32 is the first thing I've seen in my seven-plus years of covering the automotive industry
01:36 that actually looks different and is exciting.
01:39 So whether you love or hate it, I think there's a little bit of people paying attention to
01:42 something new on the roads.
01:44 What stands out is the Cybertruck's exoskeleton of stainless steel.
01:49 Something not seen since the days of the DeLorean.
01:52 Each panel is formed using a technique called airbending, which uses air at very high pressure
01:57 to shape the tough steel.
02:00 It's also bulletproof.
02:04 Up to a point.
02:08 I am very satisfied with how bullet-resistant the Cybertruck is.
02:12 It works on 9 mil, 22, anything faster than that, and there's going to be a hole.
02:17 I don't know how many trucks, on average, get shot at every year, but I guess for the
02:20 right person who has $100,000 to spend on a truck, bulletproof is certainly something
02:25 they're looking for.
02:29 Tesla has kept the research and development costs of the Cybertruck under wraps, but company-wide
02:33 R&D spending shot up in 2023.
02:36 The electric vehicle was the first to be built at Tesla's brand-new Gigafactory in Texas,
02:41 which Musk said cost more than $10 billion to build.
02:45 It's a whole new line to build vehicles on.
02:48 You've got the stamping press to build the whole new design and get that huge rolls of
02:52 steel.
02:53 Just every single bit of it seems like a very expensive input.
02:56 It's not like he could take something from the Model 3 line, the Model S, the Model X
02:59 line and put it on this truck.
03:01 It's all very custom-built and very expensive to make.
03:05 The release of the Cybertruck was delayed by four years because of supply chain issues
03:10 and the company making changes to the truck along the way.
03:14 Some thought it was so ambitious it would never see the light of day.
03:18 Even Elon Musk wasn't optimistic.
03:20 I mean, we dug our own grave with Cybertruck.
03:22 Cybertruck is one of those special products that comes along only once in a long while.
03:29 And special products that come along once in a long while are just incredibly difficult
03:32 to bring to market, to reach volume, to be prosperous.
03:36 When the Cybertruck finally did hit U.S. streets, the price of the triple-motor Cyberbeast,
03:41 Tesla's top-range model, had gone up from $61,000 to $100,000.
03:47 There's a few things in there.
03:48 Materials costs have got way higher.
03:50 And I think Elon is in a tricky situation with margins, too.
03:54 Another change since the 2019 launch event is the vehicle's range.
03:58 At the time, Tesla boasted a range of 500-plus miles, far better than any other EV on the
04:03 market at the time.
04:05 Today's Cybertruck has a maximum range of 440 miles when using a battery range extender
04:10 sold separately.
04:12 Without one, that reduces to 320 miles.
04:16 However, owners are saying they're not getting anywhere near that range.
04:20 But what's been grabbing the most headlines isn't how far it can drive, but how fast.
04:29 For their $100,000, owners of the Cyberbeast have a pickup capable of doing 0-60 mph in
04:36 2.6 seconds, according to Tesla.
04:39 That's as fast as high-end sports cars.
04:43 Tesla promotional videos show a Cybertruck out-accelerating a Porsche 911, while towing
04:50 a Porsche 911.
04:51 It's got about 845 horsepower.
04:54 It has torque vectoring at the rear.
04:57 And it's absurd.
04:59 When YouTuber Marcus Brownlee got behind the wheel, he was impressed by the power.
05:04 Holy...
05:05 Come on.
05:06 As I'm in the driver's seat, that's going to be this new 18.5-inch touchscreen in the
05:12 center.
05:13 Biggest ever in a Tesla.
05:14 It's also their biggest ever car.
05:15 Performance and gadgets aside, owners and onlookers have noticed that not everything
05:20 is quite going to plan.
05:22 Yes, it climbs steep valleys, but viral videos show Tesla's Cybertrucks getting stuck in
05:28 the snow.
05:29 Others reveal large gaps between the stainless steel panels.
05:33 Like even just this huge front piece here has a little bit of like wavering.
05:38 It's not quite a perfect flat line.
05:42 And Pharrell Williams demonstrated that parking can be a little tricky too.
05:46 It's certainly not a good look for the Cybertruck to be struggling to do truck stuff in the
05:50 very first months after it got launched.
05:52 Keep going.
05:54 It's no surprise that such a heavy, fast, angular truck is a concern for pedestrian
05:59 safety experts too.
06:01 Advocates are really worried that it's just another really unsafe vehicle on American
06:05 roads that are known for being super deadly to begin with.
06:09 In fact, the Cybertruck's sharp edges don't pass current European safety regulations.
06:14 And its weight is also a problem.
06:16 At over four tons, it's too heavy for a standard EU driving license, requiring owners to get
06:21 a truck license instead.
06:23 There's also concerns over the Cybertruck's environmental footprint.
06:27 Yes, it's emissions free on the road, but its massive battery pack requires metals like
06:32 lithium, graphite and nickel, all of which come from complex supply chains with a track
06:37 record of human and environmental exploitation.
06:41 The delayed launch of the Cybertruck means it's entering an already crowded EV pickup
06:45 market, having to compete with the likes of Ford's electric F-150, Rivian's R1T and
06:52 the GMC Hummer.
06:53 Meanwhile, Tesla has competition when it comes to global sales.
06:57 Chinese company BYD overtook Tesla for the first time, selling more cars in the last
07:03 quarter of 2023.
07:05 If pre-orders are anything to go by, the Cybertruck may yet prove a hit.
07:10 By March 2024, a reservations tracker estimated the number of pre-orders at over 2.2 million.
07:16 It's really hard to say if all these pre-orders for the Cybertruck are actually going to materialize.
07:21 There's a huge difference in sending a refundable $250 and then shelling out $100,000 more for
07:27 a truck.
07:28 It'll be really interesting to watch how Elon talks about the demand going forward.
07:32 If you sell the higher margin Cybertruck first, it's going to make it a lot easier to make
07:36 new ones and keep selling them.
07:38 If you were to sell the bare bones truck with a tiny margin, that's not going to leave
07:42 you much room for error and it's not going to turn on the profits that investors expect
07:46 at this point.
07:47 To turn a profit, Musk needs as many pre-orders of the top-range Cyberbeast as possible to
07:52 convert to sales.
07:54 I think if you asked a lot of Tesla investors, it's been a huge distraction.
07:58 But like many of Musk's businesses, like SpaceX, Starlink, and X, formerly Twitter, controversy
08:04 may well be part of the business plan.
08:06 The Cybertruck was able to give Tesla a ton of earned media and basically free advertising,
08:11 so it keeps the brand fresh.
08:12 It reminds people Tesla still exists, even as a ton of competitors from all over the
08:17 world hit the market.
08:18 It's likely the Cybertruck will keep turning heads and making headlines, especially while
08:23 engineers push the boundaries of what qualifies as a pickup.
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