American auto manufacturers have long felt confident about how they’ve locked down the pickup truck market. They used to feel that way about the minivan market, but were roundly overtaken by innovative imports such as the Honda Odyssey and the Toyota Sienna. This time around, the pickup truck market is the literal lifeblood of the American car companies, and carry the future of Ford and GM with it. Tesla has just targeted that market with a very useful all electric vehicle.
You don’t have to own a pickup to be familiar with it’s “body-on-frame” design. The marketing department’s like to use that term to describe how tough their brand’s trucks are, and they all do it. Tesla threw that design philosophy out the window and built the strength of the structure into an exoskeleton.
Elon Musk thinks by first principles, or the most basic order of a thing. When he focused on manufacturing, he said “look, the production rate of a manufacturing facility boils down to volume divided by production density times velocity.” and said that viewed through the lens of actually adding value to the product sold, most factories were only 10% ‘dense’. He said “I think we can get density up to 20 or 30%, easy”, which implies that the production value per cubic foot of facility space doubles or triples. The costs of infrastructure are substantial, so being able to produce the same numbers of units as the competition, but in half the space, would be a competitive advantage.
They also unveiled an All Terrain Vehicle which fits in back & plugs in
Musk appears to have applied the same kind of thinking to the pickup truck. If you think of the truck as a tool, and want to figure out how to improve utilization-density, you basically have to remove anything that isn’t adding value off the vehicle, or at least stack as much wasted spaces into the same wasted space. Musk viewed the body-on-frame design approach to be a waste of space, and basically eliminated it entirely, replacing those functions with an exoskeleton. This means the vehicle strength and stability is built into the shell. The design pieces are actually structural pieces, so the industrial look is indicative of it’s utility. And it allows everything inside of the to have the design flexibility of the interior of a shipping container; it’s open space, do whatever you want.
Tesla put in a 6.5 foot long bed with a lockable and retractable cover which they claim is strong enough to stand on. There’s also a four door cabin with seating for six. CyberTruck is unpainted steel, so it can’t get keyed, or scratched, of dinged the way normal trucks are. During the unveiling, the design chief hit the drivers door with a sledge hammer twice and didn’t even ding it.
Hilariously, Franz then broke both side windows during a demonstration of how tough they were. He was tossing a metal ball bearing about the size of a pool ball at them, and put nasty breaks in both. Granted, the thing would have gone through normal side windows, but Franz and Elon were shocked that the glass broke. Musk joked “we’ll fix it in post”, meaning post production, which of course doesn’t apply to live broadcasts. Not everyone appreciates his sense of humor as much as I do.
Comparison of the three models unveiled
|
$39,900 |
$49,900 |
$69,900 |
Range (miles) |
250+ |
300 |
500 |
0-60 (seconds) |
<6.5 |
<4.5 |
<2.9 |
Wheel Drive |
Rear |
All |
All |
Motors |
One |
Two |
Three |
Bed Load (pounds) |
3,500 |
3,500 |
3,500 |
Tow rating (pounds) |
7,500 |
10,000 |
14,000 |
All models seat six, include 110v and 220v outlets for power tools, and have air suspension. This allows 16 inches of ground clearance when the suspension is raised to max, while lowering down for aerodynamic efficiency on the highway. The air suspension also powers automatic load-leveling and provides a built-in air compressor for everything from adjusting tire pressure to powering pneumatic tools. Those aren’t option upgrades, every truck gets all of that which makes this truck an incredible value proposition.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about this truck is how many use cases it covers. Or perhaps better said, how few use cases it doesn’t cover. Although it won’t have the efficiency of a smaller vehicle, it can still be used in Tesla Network as a robo-taxi once full self driving becomes ready and legal. Nearly every work site truck scenario is covered, including long range towing of heavy trailers. This truck will accept charge rates over 250watts, so adding useful range quickly will be comparable to a gas vehicle in the 500 mile range version. (I should note that battery size impacts this because the battery charges fastest when it’s lowest. So if you begin charging the 500 mile-range battery while it still had 100 miles of range on it, you will probably be able to add another hundred miles range with a 250 watt charging station in about the time it will take you to use the bathroom and wash your hands. If the battery is over half full, you won’t get the same charge speeds.)
This truck is only possible because of the new battery technology that Tesla is bringing online. Between range, charge rate, price point and primary market, it is clear that this truck will benefit from the technology obtained through the Maxwell acquisition. Tesla has said that they’ll have a battery-day for investors in the spring, so we may not know the details until then, but some believe that Tesla has integrated capacitors into the 2150 format cells, to offer this combination of performance and price. The only cars being introduced by other manufacturers that have over 250 miles of range and are priced below $40,000 dollars are small hatchbacks. That places competitors two generations of vehicles behind, and they’re only just now getting to market.
Tesla hopes to begin deliveries by late next year, with the high-end versions arriving the following year. With the Tesla Semi also slated for 2022, along with the new Roadster, that will be a busy year. And that doesn’t even include the Model Y, which will consume much of Tesla’s focus in 2021. Well, that and getting GigaFactory three up to production in China, and breaking ground on GF4 in Germany.
Exciting times. The pace of change in the transportation sector is gathering speed, and not all manufacturers are going to be able to adjust.
Finally, keep in mind that Tesla actually considers itself an energy company, not a car company. But that’s for another diary.