Tesla briefly increased the deposit amount for the Cybertruck last night before reverting to the original price.
Is the automaker signaling a deposit increase with the launch?
While the vehicle’s premiere in 2019 wasn’t without issue or criticism, with the unbreakable window demonstration failing, it also helped generate a lot of attention. CEO Elon Musk announced that Tesla received over 250,000 reservations for the Cybertruck within a week of unveiling the vehicle.
Generally, Tesla receives a lot of reservations early after an unveiling, and then things taper off – but this wasn’t the case with the Cybertruck.
Even throughout the pandemic, insider sources told Electrek that some Tesla stores were getting hundreds of Cybertruck reservations per week and that pre-orders even helped boost sales of other Tesla vehicles.
By 2021, a crowdsourced Cybertruck reservation tally was putting the pre-orders at over 1 million units.
Two years later, the same tally put the number of reservations at 2 million, and Musk confirmed that it was over 1 million.
The only thing that undermined the impressive level of reservations is the fact that Tesla set a much lower refundable deposit amount, $100, to reserve the Cybertruck.
Previously, Tesla asked for a $1,000 deposit for new vehicles pre-delivery.
Last night, Tesla briefly updated its pre-order page for the Cybertruck with a $250 deposit.
Several readers reported the change made overnight:
However, by the time I could check for myself this morning, Tesla had reverted to a $100 deposit in the US ($150 CAD in Canada).
It’s unclear why Tesla made the update or why they reverted to the original amount.
Electrek’s Take
When Tesla starts deliveries of a new vehicle, the process generally involves converting reservations into orders by asking for a bigger deposit – between $1,000 and $2,500 depending on the time and model.
The total amount for the purchase is required at delivery.
Top comment by BarelyLucid
"The only thing that undermined the impressive level of reservations is the fact that Tesla set a much lower refundable deposit amount, $100, to reserve the Cybertruck."
That's not the only thing undermining reservation numbers. There's the whole Tesla isn't going to sell the Cybertruck for the price they announced issue. A lot of reservations were in anticipation of a $40,000 truck... which isn't happening.
Edit now that we have official word from Tesla: the RWD trim is currently projected at an estimated $60,990, expected in 2025. That's a 50% price bump.
To make that happen, Tesla opens up its online configurator, but the process has changed with different vehicles.
It’s possible that Tesla doesn’t open the Cybertruck configurator to everyone right away on Thursday as it slowly reaches out to employees and early reservation holders to convert their reservations into orders.
During that time, it’s possible that Tesla will ask for a bigger deposit for new reservations, and we saw a glimpse of that with this overnight update that was reverted.
What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.
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