The latest word from Elon Musk about the Tesla Cybertruck seemed to acknowledge that the all-electric pickup truck sports a polarizing vehicle design, which he clarified is not the engineering focus. The Tesla CEO said the futuristic EV is more about performance and function, and the look, for the most part, takes a backseat on these chief considerations.
Still, Musk is far from apologetic that he unveiled a Cybertruck last year that is out of this world. He explained that his vision for the EV is that of a battle tank that people would normally see on sci-fi movies.
The Cybertruck might be odd-looking but Musk insisted that people are missing the point if they think that the electric pickup is all about the wow-factor. The key purpose of the EV is to deliver high-level functionalities, the company chief said.
"We want it to be something you could use to tow a boat, a horse trailer, pull tree stumps out of the ground, go off-roading and you don't have to worry about scratching the paint because there is no paint. You could just be smashing boulders and be fine," Electrek reported Musk as saying.
He added that the basic goal for the Cybertruck engineering is to deliver the highest possible power, all-jammed in a single vehicle that is tapped on a clean source of energy, which is electricity stored on battery.
Nonetheless, Musk admitted he expects a negative market reaction for the Cybertruck and Tesla has a "fallback strategy" if the all-electric pickup truck would fail to excite the consumers.
The plan was to build an alternative model, which the Tesla chief described as "some copycat truck," and it would be easy for the automaker. This will be implemented if it turns out that the Cybertruck is too weird-looking to attract actual buys.
Assembling a Cybertruck with a more conventional, however, appeared no longer necessary. The EV has so far listed more than 500,000 reservations and is the subject of growing attention and curiosity.
CNET said it's hard to deny that no matter the design language deployed with the Cybertruck, Musk has again hit a gold mine in the monster vehicle. This should encourage the automaker to stick with the futuristic vehicle design, which Musk joked is both awesome and apocalyptic ready.
Tesla said the all-electric Cybertruck will be mass-manufactured beginning in the last quarter of 2021 and the production activities could be in Austin, Texas where the automaker will construct a new Gigafactory.
When the powerful EV rolls out, the sticker price is said to start at $50,000 and the unit model will boast of 500-mile range in a single charge.
