Tesla Cybertruck pre-orders rise to over 650,000, says new report

Tesla has now over 650,000 reservations for the Cybertruck electric pickup, according to a new report from Wedbush.

The automaker is no stranger to receiving incredible numbers of pre-orders or reservations after unveiling a new vehicle.

Tesla used that model to prove demand and raise money to finance the production capacity.

It has happened with virtually all new vehicles launched by Tesla, most famously with the Model 3, but orders generally quickly slow down after the buzz of the unveiling, which usually happens a week or two later.

With the Cybertruck, Tesla also managed to secure an impressive number of reservations.

After the unveiling, the automaker started taking pre-orders for the truck with a $100 deposit per reservation.

CEO Elon Musk announced that Tesla received over 250,000 reservations for the Cybertruck within a week of unveiling the vehicle.

Tesla stopped updating its reservation tally, but other crowdsourced estimated counts put the total between 450,000 and 500,000 Cybertruck reservations a few months after the unveiling.

As we previously reported, sources told Electrek that Tesla Cybertruck pre-orders are already helping boost sales. Tesla employees say that they are seeing a surprising number of potential customers coming into the store because of the electric pickup truck.

Even throughout the pandemic, sources told us that some Tesla stores were getting hundreds of Cybertruck reservations per week.

Now Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives is out with a new note to clients today, and he says that the firm puts reservations at now over 650,000 Cybertrucks.

According to a previous tally, only 17% of reservation holders want the single motor Cybertruck, which is the less expensive version starting at just $40,000.

The rest want the dual motor and tri-motor versions at an almost even split with a slight edge for the dual motor version, which starts at about $50,000.

The automaker said that it plans to launch the two higher-end versions of the Cybertruck in late 2021.

Those two electric trucks will have between 300 and 500 miles of range and be equipped with dual- and tri-motor powertrains.

Electrek’s Take

As usual, I like to emphasize that with only a $100 deposit, we can’t really expect a super-high conversion rate to orders.

However, even if the conversion rate stands at 20%, we are talking about more than 130,000 Cybertrucks and $8 billion worth of sales.

It would likely take Tesla two to three years to ramp up production and deliver that kind of volume, especially since it plans to do it with a brand-new factory in Austin.

So no matter how you look at it, the Cybertruck is a success so far, despite a lot of people not liking the design.

Now it’s about Tesla bringing the vehicle to production and having the battery cells to match the volume.

Those are both extremely difficult tasks. The former is hard due to the Cybertruck being built using a new exoskeleton type body, and the latter because I estimate Tesla is going to need at least 15 GWh of battery cells per year just to make 100,000 Cybertrucks per year.

That’s likely on the low side. Tesla could be aiming to produce as many as 500,000 Cybertrucks per year, but I think 300,000 to 400,000 is more likely to happen.