A More Normal Tesla Cybertruck is Not Being Ruled Out

Published on August 4, 2020 in Electric by Guillaume Rivard

The Tesla Cybertruck is as polarizing as it gets, especially with its extremely futuristic design a la Blade Runner. It certainly looks much more like a concept than a production vehicle.

According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, this was all done on purpose. In fact, in a recent interview with Automotive News, he admitted the Cybertruck was developed with no prior market research or focus groups. None. The goal was to “kick the most amount of ass possible” while still being “highly functional.”

That’s right, the company didn’t even bother surveying potential customers first.

So far, it doesn’t appear to be a problem, though, with more than 600,000 pre-orders reportedly in the bank for this electric pickup, which is slated to arrive in the fall of 2021 from a new Gigafactory in Austin, Texas.

Musk says he feels no pressure for the Cybertruck to succeed in its current shape and form. Why? Because Tesla has a back-up plan.

“If it turns out nobody wants to buy a weird-looking truck, we’ll build a normal truck, no problem,” he told Automotive News. There’s lots of normal trucks out there that look pretty much the same; you can hardly tell the difference. And sure, we could just do some copycat truck; that’s easy. So that’s our fallback strategy.”

In related news, Musk confirmed back in the spring that the Cybertruck will retain its original dimensions, which can be compared to some of the larger versions of the Ford F-150. At least in North America.

Replying to a European Tesla fan on Twitter, the CEO is now saying that a smaller Cybertruck is “highly likely down the road” in Europe, although he didn’t specify the timeframe. Don’t expect to see it here, however.

Then again, with Tesla and Musk, anything’s possible.