New 2023 Tesla Cybertruck Competition

OK, so in light of the fact that we now know pretty much for sure that there is not going to be a Tesla Cybertruck coming this year, and with the expectation that we won’t be getting much in the way of solid updates any time soon; this might be as good a time as any to take a look around at just what’s going on in the electric pickup truck world.

Because we kind of had this question come to mind - Does it actually matter that the Cybertruck is delayed another year? Or could there be anything else that comes along in the meantime and renders the Cybertruck less relevant or exciting? You’d think that in two years somebody, somewhere would come out with something that at least matched or even exceeded the Tesla design, right? Let’s talk about it.

Let’s kick off with a quick update on our latest Cybertruck news. We’ve heard from Elon and Tesla that the production of the truck will not be happening until some point in 2023. The reason for that being that there is just too much going on right now at Tesla for them to expend energy on a new product - they don’t have any extra resources to put into a Cybertruck launch this year. Priority number one for Tesla in 2022 is going to be building and delivering the Model Y - getting cars in driveways, as many of them as they possibly can. And that means bringing two new factories online while continuing to increase capacity at the two existing plants. Tesla feels that throwing a new product release into the mix at this point would actually reduce the overall number of vehicles that they would be able to deliver, which would be totally counter productive.

That makes sense to me at least. Some will still say that Elon is just sandbagging, and the actual Cybertruck release will come sooner than what the official word is now saying. And while that certainly could be true, it’s probably not the case. 

We can refer back to the most recent sighting of a Cybertruck prototype, this video was taken at the Fremont California plant. Now, it’s tricky to say if this is the same prototype that was seen in Austin, Texas in January. It was about a week between the truck being last spotted on Joe Rogan’s Instagram and these drone shots coming out - so, more than enough time to drive back to California. 

Anyway, that’s not the point. The point that we’re trying to make is that we just very recently got a look at what Tesla are doing with the Cybertruck and it looks like they still have a bit of work to do. What we’re seeing here is a handful of Tesla staff working around a Cybertruck - they’ve got a bunch of boxes and stuff spread out all over the ground. The truck itself is covered in a bunch of black bags or something like that and there is a bunch of blue tape on the ground around it. Now I’m not going to claim that I know exactly what they are doing with any of this stuff, but I think we can go out on a limb and say that this is not just putting the finishing touches on. There’s still probably a way to go before the vehicle design is finished. And even when we do get there, there will be a lot of work to do to build the tools and machines that will produce that design at scale. So, we should probably believe Elon and Tesla when they say this is going to take another year, at least.

Anyway, that’s where Tesla is at with the Cybertruck. Now we ask the question: is anyone else really doing any better?

The Rivian R1T is out! At least a few of them are. A very small but non zero amount of Rivian R1T’s have been delivered. From what I understand, all of those trucks have gone to Rivian employees and company insiders, but let’s not take away the fact that they are delivering a real, working product. Good job Rivian, you have decisively surpassed Nikola in terms of realness.

All joking aside, the Rivian truck looks like a really great product, there have been some glowing reviews from some very legit automotive reporters, Doug Demuro made an incredibly thorough documentation of the quirks and features of the r1T, he seemed to really enjoy it and a lot of the stuff in the review looked really cool.

The Rivian seems to be very good for what it’s marketed as, a very fun, quirky adventure vehicle. It does not look sturdy enough to hold up as a work truck or a serious off roader, but that’s not what it’s meant to be, that’s not what it's trying to be. The only legitimate downside that stands out is that short bed, at 54 inches or 4 and a half feet, it’s shorter than the shortest F150 bed available. I don’t think you can even put a snowboard in there without having to wedge it at an angle or overhang the tailgate - so that kinda sucks.

As for deliveries, Rivian says that they are currently ramping up to just under 200 delivery ready units per week. In December 2021, they were averaging around 50 units per week. One thing that Rivian claims is slowing down their delivery rate of the R1T is the production of the R1S, which is the SUV version of the vehicle. Rivian uses the same chassis and puts two different bodies on top. And this basically reinforces what Elon was saying last month about introducing new products and slowing down the overall deliveries - Rivian is making the exact mistake that Tesla is actively avoiding. 

Our good old friends at Ford are still claiming that they will deliver the F150 Lightning electric truck this spring. 

There are currently 200,000 reservations on the books for this truck, a high enough demand that Ford had to close orders for the time being. There’s actually so much demand for the Lightning that Ford dealerships have been capitalizing with gigantic price markups that get as much as 30 thousand dollars extra. It’s basically an extortion of Ford customers by the franchised dealers, they’re making people pay big time for early access to the truck.

It got so bad that Ford had to specifically call it out and tell their dealership owners to knock it off. A leaked internal memo from early January from Ford’s VP of sales says this:

“It has come to our attention that a limited number of dealerships are interacting with customers in a manner that is negatively impacting customers and damaging to the Ford brand and reputation. Examples of these negative interactions include demanding that customers who are already on the reservation list for the F-150 Lightning make additional deposits or payments. These actions are perceived as threatening customers by withholding their opportunity to convert reservations to orders.”

Then in early February, CEO Jim Farley himself addressed the issue, saying: “We’re doing everything we can in our powers to increase our production and break constraints. We don’t like making our customers wait, and we’re taking action to ensure that they don’t pay unreasonable markups.” The CEO added that Ford planned on reducing EV allocations to dealers who are overcharging, saying: “And their future allocation of product will be directly impacted because of that policy.”

Will Ford overcome their supply chain woes and reign in the scumbag car salesmen enough to actually have a successful product delivery this Spring? Could go either way.

Next up we have RAM, the truck formerly known as Dodge with by far the most badass marketing slogan : “Guts. Glory. Ram.” These folks have committed to going electric in 2024. They’ve launched a new campaid called RAM Revolution, which promises a truck that will haul anything, anywhere on your command. They go on to say that the revolution doesn’t start when the first electric rolls off the line, but when the best electric rolls off the line. The point of the Ram Revolution is basically to crowdsource ideas from the public about what they want the electric RAM to be, the idea is that the customers will participate in an ongoing collaboration as they design and build the future of RAM trucks. 

So this company continues to be very good at marketing, I don’t think anyone can take that away from them. Will they also be very good at building EV pickup trucks? We’re pretty stoked to see what they come up with. The target launch date for the RAM 1500 EV is sometime in 2024.

Now let’s jump over to General Motors. They had a very successful Q4 2021 rollout of the brand new Hummer EV with a total of one delivery. Outstanding work team Hummer. In addition, Chevrolet delivered 25 Bolts in Q4 for a stunning total of 26 electric vehicles delivered in one quarter, in the year 2021. The sheer depth of the lead that General Motors posses in the electric vehicle market is just, beyond words. We are in awe of the capabilities.

OK, in all seriousness though. Despite GM claiming that they had begun deliveries of the Hummer EV in December, they actually just delivered one truck. Probably to Joe Biden. So, as Elon Musk has said, there is “Room to improve…”

And GM seems to be answering that call to do better with the unveiling of their brand new Chevy Silverado EV. This electric truck claims up to 400 miles of range, up to 664 horsepower, and up to 10,000 pounds worth of tow rating. Up to $105k for the fully loaded version down as low as $39k for the base model.

This is built on the same Ultium platform as the Hummer EV, though the Silverado will be a touch more narrow, and will have the same suspension and dual motor powertrain. The long range Silverado will also come equipped with Ultium’s gigantic 200 kilowatt hour battery pack, and while we don’t know what size of battery will be in the base model, it’s claimed to be coming with something between 250 and 300 miles of range.

The Silverado EV does have a very nifty split folding midgate that allows access between the bed and the cabin - it’s the same one from the old Chevy Avalanche, but still a good design and will make up for the somewhat short bed length at just 5.9 ft. 

This truck also gets the same 4 wheel steering setup from the Hummer, but does not include the locking differentials or the ‘crab walk’ feature associated with the Hummer.

Production for this one is slated to begin in the second quarter of 2023, beginning with the base model trim intended specifically for commercial fleet customers. The fancy version of the truck will be supposedly coming in the fall 2023.

So, is it really the end of the world that the Tesla Cybertruck isn’t coming until 2023? Would you be better off trying to get something else in the meantime? 

I’d say ‘no’ to the first, and ‘probably not’ to the second. Even though the Rivian is on sale today, and even if the F150 Lightning does ship this fall, the fact is, if you haven’t already ordered one, then it’s not coming until 2023 anyway. 

I think Ford will do pretty much the same thing as GM, deliver some small number of trucks just to say that they did and attempt to save face, while actually high volume production will still be a long way in the future.

I think that Rivian do have a fair shot at making it to a reasonable level of production volume this year, if nothing goes terribly wrong, they’ve already had a couple of small fires in the manufacturing plant, nothing serious but not a great sign either. 

What will RAM come up with from their whole collaborative design process with the good people of America? Not a clue, but actually pretty excited to see what they come up with.

Will the Silverado EV be the breakthrough hit of 2023? Well, it’s basically just the 2021 Hummer EV with a different skin and less features, so that seems like it would be pretty damn hard to get excited about. I’m sure Joe Biden is gonna buy it, so they’ll at least have one happy customer.