Yesterday Tesla shattered market estimates for both their revenue and profits for Q3 2020. Despite the global pandemic dampening auto sales this year, it was the company’s best quarter ever. While on the conference call after the financial results were released, CEO Elon Musk was asked to shed a little more light on what we can expect from the upcoming Cybertruck and a timeline on when it might finally enter production.
This might not come as a surprise to Tesla skeptics, but according to Musk, the design of the Cybertruck still isn’t finished. Musk said he was working with Tesla’s design chief, Franz von Holzhausen, as recently as last week on tweaks to the Cybertruck’s design.
“I was in the studio last Friday with Franz and the team looking over some improvements on the Cybertruck,” Musk said on a call with the media after Tesla released the results. “[W]e always want to make the car that we deliver be better than the car we unveil. And that’s the goal with the Cybertruck … a lot of small improvements compared to what was unveiled. I think it’s going to be better than what we showed.”
We can’t be sure what these changes are, but we’d hazard a guess that the production version of the Cybertruck will be a refinement of the show truck, but not a sea change from the concept.
Musk also said he expects some Cybertruck deliveries to start in late 2021, but that’s only if the Gigafactory in Texas (where the truck will be built) is finished in time. Tesla has had trouble delivering cars on time in the past, but in more recent years—specifically in the case of the Model Y—the company has actually be ahead of schedule. Whether everything with the new Gigafactory goes perfectly to plan remains to be seen.
“It’s difficult to predict,” Musk said. “I would say there’s probably a lot of deliveries in 2022 and some deliveries towards the end of next year if things go well.”
