How Quickly Tesla Could Deliver 3 Million Cybertruck Orders

We recently just heard news that Tesla may be up to 3 million Cybertruck reservations. This is a large number of reservations and is much more than Ford, Rivian, or any car maker making trucks. Let's see how long it would take Tesla to deliver 3 million Cybertrucks.

Lately, the Cybertruck has been a topic of great interest and there are many reasons for this. We have seen Tesla text a Cybertruck owner who is preparing for delivery. Tesla would not do this if they weren't getting ready to deliver the Cybertruck soon.

There is also a beta image of the Cybertruck that is being posted. Many are wondering if the Cybertruck is going to look exactly like it did at the reveal event on November 21, 2019. I'm very interested in what the final version of the Cybertruck is going to look like and how many castings will be used to build it.

And there are reports that Tesla has 3 million pre orders for the Cybertruck now, which far exceeds any other auto maker including Ford and Rivian. I wish Tesla would give us the exact number of pre orders for their vehicles, so we could hear it from the source, but there is a good case to be made here for the number of Cybertruck reservations.

These Things Will Make Production Fast for the Cybertruck

One thing to know is that the Cybertruck is not going to have any paint on it. This is going to save on time and cost to produce the Cybertruck. Paint shops are expensive and have to be maintained. Paint itself costs money. The people and robots who paint the cars take time and money and take up space.

If you look at the Cybertruck pictures, you can tell that there doesn't appear to be any round parts to it like there are on the other vehicles Tesla produces. If Tesla can also make the frame quicker, considering there aren't as many round parts to it, I think that will also help speed up production.

That's two advantages to building the Cybertruck, lack of paint, and lack of curved parts for the frame or windows. I took a look at typical truck pictures, like the Ford F-150, and sure enough, there are curves in the frame, like above the tires. If you look at the Cybertruck, you'll notice that there is no curve above the tires. It's straight lines forming the edge of it and that seems like it'd be easier to scale.

These Things Will Make Production Slow for the Cybertruck

The Cybertruck is a new vehicle that Tesla has never reached volume production in. No matter how much Tesla prepares, there's always going to be "hiccups" or things you couldn't have seen coming. I remember when the Model 3 was ramping to volume production. It was a really difficult time for Tesla and Elon Musk had all hands on deck to make it a success.

If there are parts the Cybertruck needs that become scarce or backlogged, I could see that causing a delay as well. But Elon Musk seems confident that the chip shortage should be resolved sometime next year in 2022.

Besides this, I can't see much stopping the Cybertruck from quickly reaching volume production. Now, let's crunch some numbers.

How Fast Tesla Could Ramp Cybertruck

Without touring the Giga Austin, Texas factory and talking to employees at Tesla to get information, the best I can do is make an informed guess. I can take what I know about the design of the Cybertruck, along with it being a new product and compare it to what Tesla has already done and how fast they have ramped their current vehicles.

Let's use Giga Shanghai as an example of Tesla's best functioning factory at the moment. I believe Giga Texas will have improved upon Giga Shanghai even.

We know the Model 3 and Model Y in Giga Shanghai are rapidly accelerating in production. In September, 2021, we saw some amazing numbers for the Model 3 and Model Y in Giga Shanghai. 25,864 Model Y units and 24,394 Model 3 units, totaling 50,258 cars were produced. Let's break down these numbers:

September has 30 days.
For the Model Y, that is 862 a day.
For the Model 3, that is 813 a day.
Incredibly impressive numbers!

Now, let's do some backwards math on this, to when the Giga Shanghai factory first started production in December of 2019. In fact, let's take January of 2020 as our starting point to simplify this and be more conservative. That means:

It took Giga Shanghai 21 months to reach 862 Model Y vehicles produced a day and 813 Model 3 vehicles a day, for a total of 1,675 vehicles per day. We know that Giga Shanghai didn't ramp to this number right away and that it took time. I've heard news that Giga Shanghai was producing 3,000 vehicles per week in January 2020. Let's start with that and work our way to September 2021.

January 2020:
About 13,285 vehicles total using a weekly rate of 3,000 vehicles per week.

September 2021:
About 50,258 vehicles total using a weekly rate of about 5,863 vehicles per week.

That gives us about a 95% total increase in 19 months, or a 5% growth each month over 19 months. Great, I think we have enough numbers to do some math to see Tesla get to 3 million Cybertrucks produced.

Let's assume that the first month, Tesla will make 1,000 Cybertrucks, which is about 250 per week and then continue to ramp from there. In the first year, I expect the ramp rate to be much more than 5%. I'm going to use 25% for the first year, 10% for the second year, and 5% each year after that to mirror what Giga Shanghai is now. Let's see how long it takes to get to 3 million:

Date Amount Total
08-01-2022 1,000 1,000
09-01-2022 1,250 2,250
10-01-2022 1,563 3,813
11-01-2022 1,953 5,766
12-01-2022 2,441 8,207
01-01-2023 3,052 11,259
02-01-2023 3,815 15,073
03-01-2023 4,768 19,842
04-01-2023 5,960 25,802
05-01-2023 7,451 33,253
06-01-2023 9,313 42,566
07-01-2023 11,642 54,208
08-01-2023 14,552 68,760
09-01-2023 16,007 84,767
10-01-2023 17,608 102,375
11-01-2023 19,369 121,743
12-01-2023 21,305 143,049
01-01-2024 23,436 166,485
02-01-2024 25,780 192,264
03-01-2024 28,358 220,622
04-01-2024 31,193 251,815
05-01-2024 34,313 286,128
06-01-2024 37,744 323,872
07-01-2024 41,518 365,390
08-01-2024 45,670 411,060
09-01-2024 47,954 459,014
10-01-2024 50,351 509,365
11-01-2024 52,869 562,234
12-01-2024 55,512 617,746
01-01-2025 58,288 676,034
02-01-2025 61,202 737,237
03-01-2025 64,262 801,499
04-01-2025 67,476 868,975
05-01-2025 70,849 939,824
06-01-2025 74,392 1,014,216
07-01-2025 78,111 1,092,327
08-01-2025 82,017 1,174,344
09-01-2025 86,118 1,260,462
10-01-2025 90,424 1,350,886
11-01-2025 94,945 1,445,831
12-01-2025 99,692 1,545,523
01-01-2026 104,677 1,650,200
02-01-2026 109,911 1,760,111
03-01-2026 115,406 1,875,517
04-01-2026 121,176 1,996,693
05-01-2026 127,235 2,123,929
06-01-2026 133,597 2,257,526
07-01-2026 140,277 2,397,803
08-01-2026 147,291 2,545,093
09-01-2026 154,655 2,699,749
10-01-2026 162,388 2,862,137
11-01-2026 170,507 3,032,644

And the date I get is:

November, 2026

This assumes Tesla has to deal with some issues initially with a completely new product, but figures out ramping and that ramping tapers over time to 5%.

Giga Texas is a mile long and a quarter mile wide. Perhaps Tesla will surprise us with just how quickly it is able to ramp. I challenge Tesla and Elon Musk to beat my November 2026 estimate!

There you have it, this is our estimate of when Tesla will reach 3 million Cybertrucks.

How fast do you think Tesla could deliver 3 million Cybertrucks? Are our estimates too optimistic or not optimistic enough?

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Jeremy Johnson is a Tesla investor and supporter. He first invested in Tesla in 2017 after years of following Elon Musk and admiring his work ethic and intelligence. Since then, he's become a Tesla bull, covering anything about Tesla he can find, while also dabbling in other electric vehicle companies. Jeremy covers Tesla developments at Torque News. You can follow him on Twitter or LinkedIn to stay in touch and follow his Tesla news coverage on Torque News.

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