Maybe... But its worth remembering that the cybertruck design is extremely polarizing. The model S basically looked like a jaguar, and was targeted at the sort of people who had a jaguar. Thats an easy sell, apart from making the ICE-EV shift.
The cybertruck is something people lvoe or hate, PLUS initially people WILL stare at your truck a lot. They will take photos of it, they will want to pose with it, talk to the owner. Not everyone wants that, although I suspect the first 10,000 owners are going to be the kind who really do.
By the time Cybertruck has worked through the current order backlog, Tesla will have sold approximately a million cumulatively and the trucks will have been on the road for years. I expect the gawking and staring due to novelty interest will have worn off by then.
The radical departure from the norm is the biggest wildcard factor in my opinion. It might be positive, negative or neutral and it’s hard to tell the net effect until deliveries start. One thing is for certain however: the Cybertruck’s radical design is the reason why it will crush all competitors on every objective performance comparison that matters, such as range, towing, durability, miles per hour of charging speed, total cost of ownership, etc.
The design also is a reason why Cybertruck is somewhat of a hybrid between a pickup and a large SUV. Most trucks don’t come with this much lockable internal storage volume and this much cabin room. Cybertruck is uniquely positioned to cross-market itself to buyers who otherwise might’ve gone for a Chevy Suburban or a Toyota Highlander.
I think the cybertruck will do very well in North America, and also middle east if ever sold there, maybe also Africa if sold there. I'm not sure it’s 'bland' enough to completely dominate the market though, at least not for a good few years until everyone has seen one, and they start looking more normal.
Yes, and the Cybertruck will do very poorly outside of North America for quite some time…because it’s not even for sale elsewhere anymore. Since May last year, reservations can be placed only on the US, Canada and Mexico versions of Tesla.com. Tesla might still fulfill preexisting orders beyond this continent, but at what level of priority in the queue remains to be seen. Elon even stated in an interview in 2020 that “
We’re really, fundamentally making this truck as a North American ass-kicker, basically.”
North America is the primary relevant market for large pickup trucks in general. I’m having trouble finding good data on this that’s not behind a paywall, but from what I can find it seems the USA + Canada buy approximately twice as many new pickup trucks as the rest of the world combined. Mexicans also buy trucks, but not nearly as many new ones. The fact is that North America is uniquely the only area on Earth with all of: large wealthy population, wide roads, cheap energy, and a large percentage of the population living in low density communities, which is the recipe for making pickup trucks culturally common. Also, almost 90% of the North American sales volume is going to
, not
, due mainly to the vast 9x population size difference. Ford alone sold 1 million trucks wholesale last year just in the USA according to their 2022 10-K (although this is including medium and heavy duty trucks too). The domestic market is by far the most important for Cybertruck, and especially with the Inflation Reduction Act now in effect, there’s a huge financial incentive for selling production from Giga Texas within the US.
A smaller Cybertruck variant is likely coming in the future for the rest of the world, and when I’m talking about potential for 1M per year sold I’m including all sizes of CT that eventually get made, because that’s how other companies group their pickup truck families.
I'll continue to ponder upon suitable interpretations.
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