It’s been almost four years since we were able to write “Absolutely smashing: Musk shows off Tesla’s ‘bulletproof’ low-poly pickup, hilarity ensues”.
The world was a simpler place. COVID hadn’t happened, Russia was mostly keeping to itself, and the Tesla CEO hadn’t blown $44 billion on buying Twitter.
So a car crash (pun intended) unveiling of Tesla’s tilt at the pickup truck market was big news – Elon Musk’s antics hogged far fewer headlines back then.
If you recall, much was made of the futuristic, Blade Runner-esque Cybertruck being “literally bulletproof.” However, when Musk and team attempted to demonstrate the truck’s credentials outside LA on that fateful November evening of 2019, a weighty metal ball thrown by chief designer Franz von Holzhausen was able to shatter the “armor glass” on the prototype.
Going by Musk’s physical response, it was an embarrassing gaffe for the electric car company. But what might have been even more embarrassing is that the Cybertruck was supposed to begin production in 2020-21.
OK, no one could have predicted that the worst pandemic in decades was going to dominate those years, and Musk cited component shortages as the reason why production had been pushed back.
Those provisional deadlines flew past, and it took until the beginning of this year to get solid confirmation that production would soon begin on the cyberpunk pickup. Musk told an earnings call in January that the vehicle wouldn’t have a meaningful impact on Tesla’s product line until 2024, saying: “The start of production is always very slow so I wouldn’t put too much stock in start of production. It’s kind of when does volume production actually happen, and that’s next year.”
Over the weekend, though, it appeared that Tesla had ironed out the kinks with the first Cybertruck rolling off the assembly line at the Giga Texas factory in Austin, with Tesla and Musk marking the occasion on Twitter (where else?).