Elon Musk recently sat down for the Ride the Lightning: Unofficial Tesla Podcast and touched on details for the upcoming Tesla Model Y, Tesla Roadster, and the Tesla Pickup, surprisingly revealing the truck will have to start at less than $50,000.
At around the 50 minute mark in the podcast, Elon Musk discusses his goals for the Tesla pickup, which has previously been teased to debut sometime this year. “You’ve got to be able to get a really great truck for $49,000, or less,” Musk said, which is a fairly surprising outlook considering the upcoming Rivian R1T is priced to start at $61,500 after the $7,500 federal tax credit (which Tesla buyers no longer benefit from in its full amount).
You also have to consider the long-promised $35,000 Tesla Model 3 took forever to finally go on sale, and even then it’s now nearly impossible to order.
Musk went on to confirm that the teaser image released after the Model Y reveal event was of the front of the truck, and he reiterated that it won’t look like a traditional truck, it will look like something out of science fiction and Blade Runner, and that it’s not going to be for everyone.
He also said it has to be better than an F-150 at truck things, and interestingly, it also has to be a better sports car than the Porsche 911. Just going to say it, but achieving both of those things in one vehicle seems extremely improbable.
The new Tesla Roadster was also discussed, with Musk saying it “will do things that are unfair to other cars,” but it hasn’t been brought up very often since its announcement because it’s just “dessert,” and the company still has a lot of other stuff to sort out. But he did say production probably wouldn’t be more than 10,000 roadsters per year.
For now, Tesla’s primary focus is to keep Tesla in good financial condition, produce the Model 3 at a high rate and get cars delivered, improve manufacturing efficiency and output and stay on track for building the Shanghai Gigafactory and production of the Model Y, which will be built in the Fremont factory and not at the Nevada Gigafactory, which was considered.
As always, Tesla has a lot on its plate, and Musk’s claims about the performance of both the Roadster and pickup sound impossible. It’s not hard to imagine trying to turn a pickup truck into a 911-beating sports car will cause the same headaches as putting falcon-wing doors on the Model X, but I can’t wait to see what Tesla and Musk have come up with.