If Elon Musk tells you that the Cybertruck is a boat, you drive your new boat into the ocean, dammit. That’s at least what’s going on in the world of Cybertruck testing right now after the Tesla CEO claimed the vehicle should be able to be used as a temporary water-bound vehicle.
We’re starting to close in on the actual release of the Cybertruck. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has promised that the first vehicles will get into the hands of customers by the end of the year. The company is set to host its anticipated delivery event later this month on November 30th. As recently reported by Business Insider, an executive at the company said that there may only be 10 Cybertrucks actually delivered to customers at the event.
Why so few? Well, it could be because the company is drowning some of them in the ocean. As reported by Electrek, someone spotted the company water-testing a Cybertruck prototype in the ocean in Mexico. That’s likely because Elon Musk said the truck would be waterproof enough to “serve briefly as a boat.”
“Cybertruck will be waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat, so it can cross rivers, lakes and even seas that aren’t too choppy…Needs be able to get from Starbase to South Padre Island, which requires crossing the channel.”
While the video doesn’t show the vehicle actually riding out into the ocean and floating along the coastline, it does appear that the company is making sure the truck meets the claims that Musk has made about it. You can watch the video in the Electrek article linked below:
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While the company could find itself losing quite a few Cybertrucks in the ocean in order to turn it into a boat, that’s not the real reason that the company will only deliver 10 Cybertrucks to customers at its delivery event later this month. A report from Ming-Chi Kuo in October said that the company would, at best, only deliver between a hundred to two hundred vehicles by the end of 2023. However, production is expected to ramp up significantly in the years after:
The current shipment estimates for the Cybertruck in 2023, 2024, and 2025 are 100–200, 100,000–120,000, and 240,000–260,000 units, respectively.
Elon Musk has already said that the company has “dug our own grave” by trying to will the Cybertruck into existence. The Tesla CEO, on the company’s most recent earnings call, described the truck as “one of those special products that comes along only once in a long while. And special products that come along once in a long while are just incredibly difficult to bring to market to reach volume, to be prosperous.”
Despite all of the concern, worry, and outright scorn towards the design, the company is only about a week away from actually getting the first vehicles into the hands of customers. We’ll see how the Cybertruck does when Tesla officially launches it on November 30th!
