Tesla to Move into Beta Phases of Cybertruck Production Later this Year

Photo: Vincent Yu/Tesmanian

Tesla is committed to starting production of Cybertruck as quickly as possible, but not before Model Y at Giga Texas. Production of the electric pickup truck is expected in late 2021 and is already moving into the beta phases.

Cybertruck will be a great product and Tesla CEO Elon Musk believes it can be the company's "best product ever." Nevertheless, Cybertruck has a lot of fundamentally new design ideas and its production is associated with some difficulties, which the Tesla team talked about during the Q2 2021 Earnings Call. No one has ever made such a car, so the company expects challenges to arise.

Vice President of Vehicle Engineering at Tesla Lars Moravy said the Cybertruck is currently in alpha stages. The company has completed the basic design of the vehicle architecture. Since the pickup truck carries much of the structural pack and large casting designs of the Model Y being built in Berlin and Austin, its production will only be launched after Model Y. In terms of production ramp, the compact SUV obviously has a big advantage over the all-new Cybertruck, but Tesla is already moving to beta phases for the pickup truck later this year. The company is looking to increase production after Model Y is launched at Giga Texas. "We are moving into the beta phases of Cybertruck later this year, and we will be looking to ramp that in production and take it to Texas after Model Y is up and going," said Moravy.

Musk added that it is extremely difficult to scale up production, especially large manufactured items. However, once this is done, the size of the item will no longer matter, since all production processes and supply chains will already be established. Musk stressed that in order for Cybertruck, as well as for Semi, to scale to volumes that are significant for customer delivery, Tesla must solve for the chip shortage problem that hit the entire automotive industry, establish a supply chain, and secure sufficient production of battery cells. He explained that the company could manufacture a small number of vehicles but would not get the desired effect, as the costs would be very high compared to the costs with large-scale production.

© 2021, Eva Fox. All rights reserved.

_____________________________

We appreciate your readership! Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Article edited by @SmokeyShorts, you can follow him on Twitter

Follow @EvaFoxU