Cybertruck Delivery Preparations
We are just eight days out from Tesla’s Cybertruck Delivery event on November 30th, and it’s starting to feel like the days leading up to a holiday - right up to Tesla fans trying to find out anything new about the truck.
Over the passed few weeks we’ve seen more and more information steadily leaked as the stainless steel pickup truck needed to interact with the public, or Tesla themselves had to submit specifications for paperwork - but with just a week to go, there might not be much more left to discover.
On November 15th, a video detailing the interior of the Cybertruck was posted on TikTok - and it’s very clear that Tesla did not want it out in public.
It’s been reported that some people who have shared this video around, and who had invitations to the Cybertruck Delivery Event have had that invitation revoked after sharing this around. It’s still unclear exactly who shot this film - but if they’re Tesla employees, it’s safe to say they won’t be for much longer.
The video itself shows a closer view of what we’ve seen previously - although this Cybertuck is much more finished than the earlier prototypes. The back seats are folded up to accommodate a tarp, and we get a good look at the center display - which is likely the real reason Tesla is coming down so hard on this video.
On the screen, a bunch of information is displayed - most importantly is the navigation calculations, and the current battery life. The navigation shows that there are 16 miles left in the current trip, and that the computer expects the battery to be down to 65% charge by then - 6% lower than the current 71% displayed in the upper right of the screen.
Some quick and clever math shows that this Cybertruck has a functional range of around 267 miles at 100% charge. No wonder Tesla didn’t want this getting out.
The company has been advertising that their Dual Motor version would have a range of at least 300 miles, so seeing otherwise on a real-world vehicle is a little worrisome.
That being said, this calculation is rough, and based on the estimates of the onboard navigation computer - it’s not the very well-tested EPA benchmark that will be published when the Cybertruck is officially launched - so it’s not likely that the figure we’re seeing in the video is correct. That doesn’t stop it from panicking some pre-order holders though.
Regardless of this sort of leak though, Tesla has been steadily preparing for their Delivery event - with showroom models popping up all over the West coast. One Cybertruck was seen at the Tesla store in Westfield UTC Mall in San Diego on November 19th - and another was delivered around the same time to the company’s San Jose location.
We’ve been seeing trucks loaded with pristine Cybertruck units leaving Giga Texas for the last few weeks now, and it wasn’t hard to guess that they were intended as showroom models. And we’ve been seeing Release Candidates driving all over California, Texas, and even Canada as the company does some subtle marketing while testing their on and off-road capabilities.
As for the Delivery Event itself, the only new information this week comes to us from Tesla product design director Javier Verdura who made a comment about the Event while at a conference in Monterrey, Mexico on November 7th. He said,
“We are going to deliver the first 10.”
And that’s not really surprising - Tesla doesn’t have a habit of delivering too many vehicles during their events, 15 Semis were delivered to PepsiCo in December 2022, and 30 Model Ys were delivered to new owners when GigaBerlin opened their production lines in March 2022. Given how involved Cybertruck’s production is, it makes sense that we’d be seeing a number much closer to the Semi here.
But unfortunately that’s all we know about the Cybertruck Delivery event for now. Based on previous events, we can guess that there will be a slick presentation and probably some un-televised parts of the event that we’ll be hearing about afterwards - just like with the Investor Day event in March.
That said, we won’t have long to wait now, only eight more days till Delivery Day.