Tesla wants to reinvent the pickup with the $39,900 Cybertruck

On Thursday night, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed his company’s take on that most quintessentially American of automobiles, the pickup truck. “Trucks have been basically the same for 100 years. We want to do something different,” Musk told a rapturous audience. He wasn’t underselling things. Tesla’s design is called the Cybertruck, and it looks like a cross between the Aston Martin Bulldog—a wedge-shaped concept from the early 1980s—and that cool APC you remember from Aliens.

“We moved the mass to the outside,” Musk said, referring to the fact that the Cybertruck has a stainless steel monocoque construction, like the Model 3. Criticizing the body-on-frame construction technique used for most heavy trucks on sale today, Musk told attendees that “the body and the bed don’t do anything useful,” before launching into a lengthy demonstration of people hitting or shooting body panels and glass from the Cybertruck to prove the toughness of the exterior.

The shape is highly unconventional, but the size could have been picked by a focus group—almost exactly as wide and tall as a Ford F-150 and about as long as some four-seat versions of America’s favorite pickup. At the rear, the 6.5-foot (2m) bed—called the Cybertruck Vault here—has a lockable aerodynamic cover that gives the vehicle 100 cubic feet (2,831L) of protected cargo storage. The Vault will also support loads of up to 3,500lbs (1,588kg).

Some of the Cybertruck’s other features suggest that Musk might be paying attention to Bollinger, which is working on a very un-Tesla-like range of boutique battery EV off-roaders. A Bollinger will have 15 inches of ground clearance via its air suspension, so the Cybertruck will have 16 inches, Musk revealed. Like the Bollinger, the Cybertruck will also offer 110V and 220V AC outlets, so the vehicle can act as a power source on remote job sites.

There will be three versions of the Cybertruck. The single (rear) motor configuration will have a range of 250 miles (400km) with a towing capacity of 7,500lbs (3,402kg) for $39,900. For an extra $10,000, there’s a dual motor (all-wheel drive) variant, which ups the towing capacity to 10,000lbs (4,536kg) and drops the 0-60mph time by two seconds. A trimotor Cybertruck—presumably with one front motor and two rear motors—will cost $69,900 and is tow-rated for 14,000lbs (6,350kg), but you get 500 miles (800km) of range.

Tesla is now accepting $100 refundable deposits for the Cybertruck, which the order page says will go into production in late 2021, with the three-motor version following a year later.

Listing image by Tesla