Featured Image Credit: ROBYN BECK / Contributor/FREDERIC J. BROWN / Contributor
Topics: Cars, Electric Cars, Elon Musk, Tesla, US News, Technology
Claire Reid
Topics: Cars, Electric Cars, Elon Musk, Tesla, US News, Technology
The first Tesla Cybertruck has rolled off the production line four-years after it was first revealed by Elon Musk.
Cast your mind back to November 2019 and you may remember the slightly chaotic unveiling of the electric-vehicle’s prototype, which saw when Tesla designer, Franz von Holzhausen, hurl a metal ball at the so-called ‘unbreakable’ windows, only for it to smash. Awkward.
You can see how that played out here:
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Days after, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, took to Twitter to explain why the supposedly unbreakable windows didn’t live up to their name - pointing out that prior to von Holzhausen throwing a ball at the window, he’d hit the door with a sledgehammer to demonstrate how strong the vehicle’s body panels are.
And, while the sledgehammer did do a very good job of showcasing the strength of the Cybertruck’s panel, in the process it had slightly damaged the glass - so that when the ball struck it caused the window to crack.
He wrote: “Sledgehammer impact on door cracked base of glass, which is why steel ball didn’t bounce off. Should have done steel ball on window, *then* sledgehammer the door. Next time…”
During that same presentation, Musk announced that production would begin on the Cybertruck in 2021.
However, due to numerous hold-ups caused by the model’s complex body shape and supply chain issues, it was only on Saturday (July 15) that the first production-ready Cybertruck was completed.
In a post on Twitter, the official Tesla account shared a photo of the first Cybertruck built at the company’s Giga Texas plant.
In the photo, dozens of staff, wearing high-visibility vests and hard hats, can be seen posing next to the gunmetal gray vehicle.
Tesla boss Musk shared the tweet with his 148 million followers, writing: “Congrats Tesla Team!”
Musk has previously said the unusual-looking truck ‘looks like it was made by aliens from the future' and has claimed that it would be able to ‘briefly serve as a boat’.
In a post on Twitter in September 2022, he wrote: “Cybertruck will be waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat, so it can cross rivers, lakes & even seas that aren’t too choppy.'
Musk had originally claimed the Cybertruck would cost $39,900 for a single motor version with 250 miles of range, but that's now expected to be around $50,000, according to TechCrunch.
The vehicle has been available to pre-order since it was unveiled in 2019 - and a report shared last November, stated that 1.5 million orders had been placed so far.