A Tesla analyst believes the company is discounting the Cybertruck because consumers are thirsting for a smaller, more affordable all-electric pickup from the company.
The note, which came from Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry, comes just a day after Tesla listed several Cybertrucks on its Inventory website, which has drawn mixed reactions from investors and fans.
Some believe the move was a sign Tesla was having trouble moving Cybertruck as demand levels seem to be in question. It was the best-selling EV pickup in the United States for 2024 and the fifth-best-selling EV overall for the year.
Chowdhry believes the move to discount these trucks is exactly that: a demand issue.
He thinks that Tesla should develop a different Cybertruck version, one that would be smaller and more compact and would cost significantly less.
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The size should be reduced by 20 percent, Chowdhry suggests, which could help Tesla enable a price point between $40,000 and $60,000 for the Cybertruck. This would be close to where it was priced at the unveiling event in 2019, as it ranged from $39,990 for the Single Motor to $69,990 for the Tri-Motor.
Prices increased substantially between the unveiling and the first deliveries.
Chowdhry also believes that Cybertruck incentives will not spur demand, potentially because many people who are buying the pickup at its price of either $79,990 or $99,990 won’t qualify for the incentives anyway.
Cybertruck demand is certainly a topic that many might have questions about, and while it did sell strongly last year and rank highly, there are certainly some issues with the massive pre-order log that Tesla once claimed to have and the inventory.
If the pre-order log was over one million vehicles long, Tesla should have no inventory of the Cybertruck, even if half of those buyers decided to hold off because of the massive uptick in pricing.
Musk once said Tesla Cybertruck demand was “so far off the hook, you can’t even see the hook.” Last year, just under 39,000 Cybertrucks were sold, a far cry from the 1.9 million units that a crowd-sourced reservation tracker claimed.
Pricing is probably the biggest reason for having inventory on these pickups, but it might not hurt for Tesla to potentially encourage the idea of having something more compact as Ford has done. It would not be the worst thing in the world to have different options in the lineup, although it would increase manufacturing complexity.
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