The Range Extender
On November 30th, Tesla held their Cybertruck Delivery event at their facility in Austin, Texas - and while there’s much to say about the confirmed specifications of the new stainless steel pickup - and the presentation itself - Tesla also launched 24 accessories on their Tesla shop, as well as a surprise peripheral that hasn’t made it to the sales area yet.
And considering that pickups are all about the extra tools and toys - we wanted to get some of those covered here. And we’re not going to make you wait, we’re going to start with the Range Extender.
Completely ignored during the presentation, the only reason we know about the Range Extender at all is because it is listed in the Specs pages for the Cybertruck - and after folks in the community took notice, Elon himself answered some questions about it - so we know it’s real, we’re just not entirely sure if it’s available, or when it will be.
Let’s just take a look at the numbers to start.
On the website, Tesla says that the range extender takes the roughly 340 mile range of the Cybertruck, and bumps it to 470 plus - which is a giveaway that these are Tesla estimations based on tests for certification.
Regardless, let’s say that this is accurate and that the Extender manages to give the Cybertruck about 130 miles of extra range - bringing it closer to the originally promised 500 mile range.
The folks at Electrek did some quick napkin math for us to see how much the Range Extender could weigh, and how much charge it could hold - estimating that if the standard Cybertruck battery pack holds 123 kilowatt-hours worth of charge, and gets the Truck 340 miles of range; then the extended battery pack would need to hold about 47 kilowatt-hours to give that 130 mile range boost.
Carrying that further, they noted that the 75 kilowatt-hour battery pack in the Model Y - which is also made up of 4680 cells - weighs around 454 kilograms. So if the Range Extender uses similar architecture, then it would be about 300 kilos, or 660 pounds - or more once you factor in packaging, and other hardware. So if we say the Range Extender is roughly 700 lbs, that’s a fairly large chunk of the 2,500 lbs payload capacity you’re giving up just to have some extra range.
Now, most Cybertruck owners aren’t likely to need a 470 mile capacity for their day-to-day projects - but there are a bunch of other things this Extender could do. And we say “could” here because we’re still making guesses based on the available information - Tesla hasn’t put any information on the Extender’s capabilities up at the time of recording.
Okay so the most obvious use for the Range Extender, outside its intended purpose, is to act like a sort of on-site generator. The truck itself is capable of acting as a generator, with a confirmed Nema 14-50 outlet in the bed - but sacrificing some charge for camp use or powertool operation is a bit of a hard sell if the Truck is your only ride. The Range Extender definitely helps with that capacity.
But going further, we know that the Cybertruck has Bidirectional charging, and can be used to quickly charge other electric vehicles - other cars definitely, but also smaller things like motorcycles and ATVs. You could use the Range Extender like the EV version of a spare can of gas.
And that brings an even more interesting thought: that you could conceivably use the Range Extender as a Powerwall for your home, or a cottage. Back when the Bidirectional Charging feature was first announced, Tesla execs were quick to point out that a fully charged Cybertruck could possibly be used as an emergency generator for your home. And looking at the capacity of a Powerwall versus the Range Extender, it looks like the Extender has over three times the 14 kilowatt-hour capacity of the regular Powerwall unit.
There’s definitely other uses that the community is busy throwing around, but the last thing to wonder about this upgrade is the price.
As usual, Tesla fans are some of the more diligent people around, and so it didn’t even take a day for someone to find this number in the website’s source code:
Just next to the highlighted bit is a description of the line price for this item: “16 thousand dollars”. And that’s… well it’s a lot more than Cybertruck fans would like it to be that’s for sure. It’s important to note that since the item isn’t listed for sale, this is likely a placeholder, intended to be changed to the actual price once it’s available. That being said, it is likely close to the actual price Tesla has been considering, so we’ll have to wait and see on that one.
The Range Extender makes a lot of sense for a peripheral, and it’s good to see it on the offering table for the Cybertruck. Hopefully the option of having that extra range and utility will give Cybertruck even more flexibility.