Tesla’s Missing Cybertruck Is a Problem for the EV Revolution
Musk’s struggle to balance costs and demand is a challenge plaguing the whole industry.
Finding the right match.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
The case of the missing Cybertruck bodes ill, and not just for the company making it. Lower-priced versions of Tesla Inc.’s angular behemoth have disappeared from its online ordering page; the two now available, both “limited edition,” start a hair’s breadth under $100,000. This undercuts the usual strategy of scaling up by bringing prices down, suggesting that making a cheaper version just isn’t worth it, at least for now.
This has emerged as a common, and troubling, trend bedeviling the US electric vehicle industry. Tesla has struggled to balance costs and demand across its EV lineup for nearly two years (see this, this and this). Having expanded manufacturing capacity aggressively, Elon Musk’s automaker cut prices for most models to juice demand — only to reap weaker sales and margins.