How the Tesla Cybertruck’s price and range will determine its fate

When Tesla Inc. starts delivering Cybertrucks to customers next week, it will answer a question with major implications for the broader automotive industry: How much does the thing actually cost?

When Elon Musk first unveiled a prototype in 2019, he touted a mid-tier version with more than 300 miles of range that would be priced at just $49,900. At the time, that was only a few hundred dollars from the average price consumers were paying for a Ford F-150, America’s best-selling pickup. The competitive price was as much a surprise as the Cybertruck itself.

But that was four years and a pandemic ago. Tesla has scrubbed specifications from its Cybertruck order page, and Musk has repeatedly warned about cost and manufacturing challenges. Inflation has driven up the average amount paid for new pickups by 28%. Some reservation holders planning to attend the Nov. 30 launch party in Austin fear a dramatic repricing that could relegate the Cybertruck to a toy for the rich.

How much is too much?

If Tesla’s intent is for the dual-motor Cybertruck to more or less track the F-150, its price will end up rising to roughly $60,000. That could be the dividing line used to distinguish between whether this is a product actually built for utility or one that more so appeals to vanity.

The Cybertruck could land on either side of that $60,000 mark. Since the 2019 unveiling, battery prices have declined 12% and the price of the company’s long-range Model 3 sedan is down 5%. After Ford Motor Co. dropped the starting price of its electric F-150 Lightning to $49,995 in July, Musk wrote that it was “a good vehicle, just somewhat expensive.”

Three months later, Musk tempered his braggadocio. “We dug our own grave with Cybertruck,” he told analysts on an earnings call, referring to how difficult it was going to be to produce the pickup in high volume.

The other key Cybertruck spec will be battery range. This is especially important to truck owners, as hauling heavy loads at highway speeds can easily cut the rated range in half, and charging takes more time for bigger vehicles. A 300-mile range no longer seems as impressive after General Motors Co. debuted a Chevrolet Silverado EV work truck that’s able to go 450 miles per charge.

A good metric for comparing pickups is vehicle cost per mile of range. A luxury adventure truck like the Rivian R1T can get away with a higher cost per mile of range, but Tesla has higher-volume ambitions for the Cybertruck. The company has said it will have the capacity to make 250,000 Cybertrucks a year, which is more than ten times the early annual sales of the Rivian R1T and Ford F-150 Lightning. Selling that many Cybertrucks some day will require class-leading cost-per-mile value that can appeal to wide swathes of the truck market.