Buying Two Cybertrucks
after waiting four years
Four years ago, it was November 2019, I had just graduated from college and I was all in on Tesla stock. I was sitting around with my college buddies watching Elon unveil the Tesla Cybertruck. They had flames, smoke, and a crazy light show. The truck rolled out and my mouth fell open.
“It’s a triangle,” I said.
“That’s not the truck.” my buddy Tom said, “No. That’s not the truck. They are gonna bring out the real truck.”
Time went by and nope, that’s the real truck. The crowd was baffled. It was simply hard to believe. People said, “This is a publicity stunt, that truck will never get built.” Well, it’s four years later and that truck is getting built. After all, Tesla has ~2 million Cybertruck orders to fill.
After the initial unveil I was disappointed with the design. But 36 hours later I decided I wanted one. So I pre-ordered with a $100 deposit. The day after that I decided I might want two so I preordered a second. That was more than four years ago. I never asked for my $200 back, so I now have the reservation numbers 200,000 and 220,000 out of approximately 2 million.
Elon believes that Cybertruck annual production will reach 250k per year. That would be a massive achievement. The factory would need to crank out 5,000 cybertrucks every week. It’s easy to see that this is a novel product that’s never been built at scale. There are reasons that roads don’t have stainless steel vehicles on them.
“We dug our grave with Cybertruck,” Elon said. Elon knows the difficulty of scaling production and getting to cash flow positive. They experienced production hell with the Model 3 — and they made it through.
“You will have problems proportionate to how many new things you're trying to solve at scale. So I just want to emphasize that, one, I think this is potentially our best product ever. But it’s going to require immense work to reach volume production and be cash flow positive at a price that people can afford.”
“It's a great product, but financially, it will take a year to 18 months before it is a significant, positive cash flow contributor. I wish there was some way to be different but that's just my best guess,” said Elon.
Elon also said on the Lex Fridman podcast, “I’m pathologically optimistic with timelines.”
If Elon says 1 year to 18 months, it’s safe to assume it will be 2 years before they get to volume production and cash flow positive.
When I was shopping for my Model Y, I asked a Tesla employee if I should wait for the Cybertruck. He said that Elon says it’s sold out for the first five years of production. If they make it to 250k units per year, it would take eight years to get through the preorder bag log. If 40% of preorders are canceled then it’ll take five years to get to new orders.
If the average selling price for a Cybertruck is $70,000 and they have 2 million preorders then that is $140 billion dollars worth of preorders. These kinds of numbers are why Tesla is the most valuable carmaker in the world. I wrote about Tesla as an investment here.
On an earnings call in 2020, Elon said, “Punctuality is not my strong suit, but I always come through in the end.”
If I had to guess, I will have the opportunity to buy a Cybertruck in 2025, having reserved in 2019.
The key features are:
Stainless steel
No paint and paint is extremely durable
Sub 3 second 0-60
Adaptive air suspension
Autopilot
The infamous windows
11,000-pound towing capacity
2,500-pound payload capacity
Tri-motor configuration for off-roading
Huge battery with long range for backcountry expeditions
A unique angular design that looks like a zombie apocalypse death machine
People want to stand out and a Cybertruck definitely stands out.
I’m going to go ahead and buy at least one. It will be fun and I’ll share it with people by using it for ride-hailing and I might even rent it out on Turo. If there's still a long backlog when I get one then I imagine I’ll be able to resell it and get most of my money back or even make money. What do you guys think? Should I get a Cybertruck even though I don’t really need one? Should I get two?
What should I do with two cybertrucks? Let me know in the comments.
I’m launching the Chris James Podcast on my YouTube channel. I made a video based on this essay. Check it out on my channel: www.YouTube.com/@ChrisJamesPodcast
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