Tesla has announced that by the end of the year, the current Cybertruck production line will be fully ramped to 2500 trucks a week, or 125,000 Cybertrucks per year. Musk has also confirmed that Cybertruck’s starting price will be $20,000 less.
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Tesla Cybertrucks have been popular on the secondary market, with some individuals even selling their Cybertrucks for as much as $250,000. To stop these bad actors, Tesla requires every Cybertruck buyer to sign a purchase agreement that bans the owner from selling his/her vehicle for a year.
If new Cybertruck owners fail to comply, Tesla says, the company can sue the new owners for more than $50,000 in damages. In this instance, Tesla will also ban individuals from being able to purchase the EV maker’s vehicle in the future.
However, despite Tesla’s warnings, several Cybertrucks are publicly available for sale on the secondary market. One such owner who sold his Cybertruck on the secondary market revealed that Tesla had permanently banned him from purchasing any of the company’s products in the future.
Although Tesla is taking action to deter people from flipping their Cybertrucks on the secondary market, such behavior remains rampant until today.
However, there are effective ways to discourage people from purchasing a Cybertruck to profit by reselling it in the secondary market. The two main solutions are quickly increasing production to address the pent-up demand in a timely fashion and slowly decreasing the vehicle price as production increases.
According to Tesla and Elon Musk, Tesla is doing precisely that and relatively soon. During Tesla’s 2024 shareholders’ meeting, a Tesla investor asked Musk when the EV maker would stop selling “Foundation Series” Cybertrucks.
If you are unfamiliar with the various Cybertruck trims, Tesla is currently only selling early “Foundation Series” Cybertrucks. These Cybertrucks come with a few added exclusive and nonexclusive options over the regular Cybertruck, but they also increase the vehicle's starting price by $20,000.
So what do you get for your extra $20,000? Outwardly, the most apparent change is that the Foundation Series Cybertrucks have a laser etching that reads “Foundation Series.”
Since the Cybertruck does not have any outward badging, people unfamiliar with Tesla and who run into a Cybertruck in public have even asked the Cybertruck owners, “What company is Foundation Series that makes these vehicles?”
In addition, the Foundation Series Cybertrucks include Tesla’s full self-driving package. Elon Musk has previously stated that by the end of June, Cybertrucks will get Tesla’s next-generation, most advanced FSD version.
Other standard equipment in the Foundation Series Cybertrucks includes Power Share hardware and installation costs. This allows your Cybertruck to serve as backup power for your home or business.
In the higher-end Cyberbeast variant, you also get the light-bar accessory included, as well as other minor changes.
Other than the $8,000 FSD package and the approximately $3000 for installing the Power Share equipment, the Foundation Series and regular Cybertruck variants are similar.
It appears that Foundation Series Cybertruck owners are paying a $10,000 premium to be the first to buy the truck.
People can argue the merits and the drawbacks of the Foundation Series Cybertrucks; however, as mentioned above, Musk asked when Tesla will stop selling Foundation Series Cybertruck at the recently held shareholders’ meeting has revealed that the EV maker will stop selling the Foundation Series Cybertruck next quarter.
Q3 2024 runs from July to September, and somewhere in this timeline, Tesla will stop selling Foundation Series Cybertrucks. As alluded to in the title, this will lower the starting price of the Cybertruck All-Wheel-Drive from the current $100,000 to $79,990 and the price of the Cybertruck Cyberbeast from $120,000 to $99,990.
In turn, you lose the laser-etched Foundation Series insignia, which is almost free for Tesla, along with FSD, worth $8000, and Powershare equipment and installation, worth around $3000.
If you are not interested in any of these added options, your effective Cybertruck price will decrease by $20,000. However, even if you spec your vehicle with FSD and get Powershare equipment installed, you will get a $10,000 discount.
At this point, you might wonder why Tesla offered the Foundation Series Cybertrucks in the first place. As with any mass-market product, the cost to produce the Cybertruck will initially be high, and Tesla, by selling the Foundation Series Cybertrucks, appears to be trying to minimize the losses by increasing margins.
However, according to Elon Musk, Tesla is quickly ramping up Cybertruck production. During the same shareholders’ meeting, Musk said Tesla had already reached peak Cybertruck production of 1300 trucks per week.
When extrapolated to a year, Tesla has achieved a Cybertruck production run rate of 75,000 trucks annually.
This is exciting; however, in a Twitter thread Tesla’s official X account posted about the shareholders’ meeting, we also learned that by the end of the year, Tesla plans to increase Cybertruck production to 2500 trucks per week.
When extrapolated out to a full year, this amounts to 130,000 Cybertrucks annually. What’s interesting about this number is that Tesla has stated that the installed capacity of the current Cybertruck production line at Giga Texas is around 125,000 trucks per year. This means that unless Tesla decides to build a second Cybertruck production line, the truck will be fully ramped up before the end of 2024.
This is certainly exciting, and by all accounts, the Cybertruck production ramp appears to be going smoothly. Next year, Tesla plans to introduce an even cheaper rear-wheel-drive Cybertruck variant for $61,000, further decreasing the price of the all-electric trucks.
Currently, this is all the information we have regarding the Cybertruck; however, we’ll be sure to keep you posted once we learn more about Tesla’s plans. Until then, visit our site, torquenews.com/Tesla, regularly for the latest updates.
So, what do you think? Do you think prices of Foundation Series Cybertrucks will increase once Tesla stops selling the option? Also, what’s your view of the Cybertruck production ramp thus far? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below by clicking the red “Add new comment” button.
Image: Screenshot from Elon Musk’s TED interview
For more information, check out: Elon Musk Shows-Off 3 Next-Gen Tesla Vehicles, Including a Tesla Van—Musk Says, "We Got Some New Products We're Working On, They're Going to be Pretty Special”
Tinsae Aregay has been following Tesla and the evolution of the EV space daily for several years. He covers everything about Tesla, from the cars to Elon Musk, the energy business, and autonomy. Follow Tinsae on Twitter at @TinsaeAregay for daily Tesla news.
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