Musk says Tesla takes 200,000 orders for polarising Cybertruck

The Driven

Tesla CEO and co-founder Elon Musk says that the California car maker has taken 200,000 orders for its controversial Cybertruck – its electric ute – since the official unveiling of the prototype late last week.

The Cybertruck has polarised opinion – on its ground-breaking design right from the outset, and also on its value for money, whether this will be a winner for Tesla and the long-term impact on its share price.

The orders, however, have flooded in. Musk initially advised over the weekend – via Twitter, of course, that 146,000 orders had been received, and updated this to 187,000 early Monday (Sydney time) then 200,000 as of mid-Monday.

At $US100 a pop, this equals some $US20 million ($A29 million) for the Cybertruck, its all-electric utility truck (more commonly known as a pickup in the US and ute in Australia) that features an apparently undentable cold-rolled steel exoskeleton that takes durable utilitarian design to the nth degree.

Even so, the launch event was marred when Tesla designer Franz von Holzhausen put two serious dents in the truck’s armoured glass with a steel ball (Musk immediately admitted this needs “some improvements”).

To read the full story on RenewEconomy’s electric vehicle dedicated site, The Driven, click here…