News
Electric pickup buyers hold multiple reservations as delivery date uncertainty looms: survey
With so many electric pickups set to hit the market in the coming years, consumers are playing their hands by holding reservations on multiple EV trucks due to the uncertainty of when they might be delivered.
A new survey from Recurrent shows that “about 89% of Tesla Cybertruck reservations overlap with another truck pre-order, and 100% of Ford F-150 and Chevrolet Silverado reservations also pre-ordered another vehicle on this list. ”
It is no secret a major focus of many electric automakers in 2021 and 2022 was the EV pickup. With trucks being such a popular body style in the United States and elsewhere, companies were fending to offer the first EV pickup, but also the most effective one. While Rivian’s R1T was the first electric pickup on the market, the GMC Hummer EV joined the list shortly after. However, notable newcomers and worthy opponents are coming, as the Tesla Cybertruck and Chevrolet Silverado EV are both expected to hit production lines in the next year. A breakdown of how many reservations each truck has, and how prospective EV truck buyers are playing their multiple pre-orders, shows the anticipation for the emergence of the electric pickup market.
“We knew that 2022 would be the year of the electric truck, and the year has not disappointed us, at least as far as pre-orders go,” Scott Case, CEO and co-founder of Recurrent, said. “But I’m also taking pre-order number claims by manufacturers with a grain of salt, because clearly not all of those orders are solid. Shoppers should not be scared off by long pre-order waits if they know the vehicle you want.”
It has been reported on numerous occasions that the Tesla Cybertruck has accumulated a massive number of pre-orders: 1.27 million+, according to Recurrent’s research. The F-150 Lightning is second with 200,000 pre-orders, and the Rivian R1T and R1S and Hummer EV have 90,000 and 65,000, respectively.
However, the breakdown of how these pre-orders are being played is most interesting. Recurrent surveyed over 200 EV shoppers in a partnership with AAA Washington to see what EVs buyers have pre-ordered and which they intend to actually purchase. The research showed that Tesla vehicles have 100 percent order fulfillment, while other vehicles, like the Chevy Silverado EV, only had a 20 percent fulfillment rate.
“In the case of Tesla, there is a non-refundable order fee that may weed out some impulsive reservations, as well as the knowledge that the market is hot enough to resell your order before you even take delivery,” the study said. Recurrent attributed the outliers above to three factors:
- Uncertainty on delivery time – or delivery at all – may cause some shoppers to modulate their enthusiasm for certain vehicles. Of course, the Tesla Cybertruck, with its seemingly infinite production delays, comes to mind here.
- Refundable reservations mean that customers can express interest in many cars and make the decision when they see when, and what, they can actually drive off in.
- With all the buzz around electric vehicles, manufacturers may be incentivized to make reservations easy for shoppers in order to pump up their numbers, even if these reservations don’t all turn into sales
In general, however, EV truck buyers are more likely to have multiple reservations. Recurrent says the strategy of over-ordering allows buyers to keep their options open, especially as production and delivery dates have not yet been solidified by the manufacturers, which gives the reservations holders more time to analyze their decisions. However, 89 percent of Cybertruck reservations overlap with another EV truck order, while 100 percent of Ford F-150 Lightning and Chevy Silverado EV orders are paired with another vehicle on the list Recurrent put together.
Credit: Recurrent
Additionally, the study found that Tesla brand loyalty runs deep. “Recurrent found that many families have gone all-in on Tesla. Around 50% of those who have reserved both a Telsa Cyber Truck and a Tesla car model plan to redeem both,” it said.
Tesla reservations do not seem to overlap with other brands, which would align with the company’s history of brand loyalty. “If you’ve reserved a Ford F-150, Rivian, or Chevy Silverado, chances are good that you may also have reserved a Tesla Cybertruck,” Recurrent’s study added. “But, if you’re interested in any of the new, non-truck options on this list, there is virtually no overlap with the Tesla brand. There is a clear chasm between non-Tesla cars and Tesla reservations.”
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News
Tesla seen as early winner as Canada reopens door to China-made EVs
Tesla had already prepared for Chinese exports to Canada in 2023 by equipping its Shanghai Gigafactory to produce a Canada-specific version of the Model Y.
Tesla seems poised to be an early beneficiary of Canada’s decision to reopen imports of Chinese-made electric vehicles, following the removal of a 100% tariff that halted shipments last year.
Thanks to Giga Shanghai’s capability to produce Canadian-spec vehicles, it might only be a matter of time before Tesla is able to export vehicles to Canada from China once more.
Under the new U.S.–Canada trade agreement, Canada will allow up to 49,000 vehicles per year to be imported from China at a 6.1% tariff, with the quota potentially rising to 70,000 units within five years, according to Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Half of the initial quota is reserved for vehicles priced under CAD 35,000, a threshold above current Tesla models, though the electric vehicle maker could still benefit from the rule change, as noted in a Reuters report.
Tesla had already prepared for Chinese exports to Canada in 2023 by equipping its Shanghai Gigafactory to produce a Canada-specific version of the Model Y. That year, Tesla began shipping vehicles from Shanghai to Canada, contributing to a sharp 460% year-over-year increase in China-built vehicle imports through Vancouver.
When Ottawa imposed a 100% tariff in 2024, however, Tesla halted those shipments and shifted Canadian supply to its U.S. and Berlin factories. With tariffs now reduced, Tesla could quickly resume China-to-Canada exports.
Beyond manufacturing flexibility, Tesla could also benefit from its established retail presence in Canada. The automaker operates 39 stores across Canada, while Chinese brands like BYD and Nio have yet to enter the Canadian market directly. Tesla’s relatively small lineup, which is comprised of four core models plus the Cybertruck, allows it to move faster on marketing and logistics than competitors with broader portfolios.
Elon Musk
Tesla confirms that work on Dojo 3 has officially resumed
“Now that the AI5 chip design is in good shape, Tesla will restart work on Dojo 3,” Elon Musk wrote in a post on X.
Tesla has restarted work on its Dojo 3 initiative, its in-house AI training supercomputer, now that its AI5 chip design has reached a stable stage.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed the update in a recent post on X.
Tesla’s Dojo 3 initiative restarted
In a post on X, Musk said that with the AI5 chip design now “in good shape,” Tesla will resume work on Dojo 3. He added that Tesla is hiring engineers interested in working on what he expects will become the highest-volume AI chips in the world.
“Now that the AI5 chip design is in good shape, Tesla will restart work on Dojo3. If you’re interested in working on what will be the highest volume chips in the world, send a note to AI_Chips@Tesla.com with 3 bullet points on the toughest technical problems you’ve solved,” Musk wrote in his post on X.
Musk’s comment followed a series of recent posts outlining Tesla’s broader AI chip roadmap. In another update, he stated that Tesla’s AI4 chip alone would achieve self-driving safety levels well above human drivers, AI5 would make vehicles “almost perfect” while significantly enhancing Optimus, and AI6 would be focused on Optimus and data center applications.
Musk then highlighted that AI7/Dojo 3 will be designed to support space-based AI compute.
Tesla’s AI roadmap
Musk’s latest comments helped resolve some confusion that emerged last year about Project Dojo’s future. At the time, Musk stated on X that Tesla was stepping back from Dojo because it did not make sense to split resources across multiple AI chip architectures.
He suggested that clustering large numbers of Tesla AI5 and AI6 chips for training could effectively serve the same purpose as a dedicated Dojo successor. “In a supercomputer cluster, it would make sense to put many AI5/AI6 chips on a board, whether for inference or training, simply to reduce network cabling complexity & cost by a few orders of magnitude,” Musk wrote at the time.
Musk later reinforced that idea by responding positively to an X post stating that Tesla’s AI6 chip would effectively be the new Dojo. Considering his recent updates on X, however, it appears that Tesla will be using AI7, not AI6, as its dedicated Dojo successor. The CEO did state that Tesla’s AI7, AI8, and AI9 chips will be developed in short, nine-month cycles, so Dojo’s deployment might actually be sooner than expected.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s xAI brings 1GW Colossus 2 AI training cluster online
Elon Musk shared his update in a recent post on social media platform X.
xAI has brought its Colossus 2 supercomputer online, making it the first gigawatt-scale AI training cluster in the world, and it’s about to get even bigger in a few months.
Elon Musk shared his update in a recent post on social media platform X.
Colossus 2 goes live
The Colossus 2 supercomputer, together with its predecessor, Colossus 1, are used by xAI to primarily train and refine the company’s Grok large language model. In a post on X, Musk stated that Colossus 2 is already operational, making it the first gigawatt training cluster in the world.
But what’s even more remarkable is that it would be upgraded to 1.5 GW of power in April. Even in its current iteration, however, the Colossus 2 supercomputer already exceeds the peak demand of San Francisco.
Commentary from users of the social media platform highlighted the speed of execution behind the project. Colossus 1 went from site preparation to full operation in 122 days, while Colossus 2 went live by crossing the 1-GW barrier and is targeting a total capacity of roughly 2 GW. This far exceeds the speed of xAI’s primary rivals.
Funding fuels rapid expansion
xAI’s Colossus 2 launch follows xAI’s recently closed, upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, which exceeded its initial $15 billion target. The company said the capital will be used to accelerate infrastructure scaling and AI product development.
The round attracted a broad group of investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, and Baron Capital Group. Strategic partners NVIDIA and Cisco also continued their support, helping xAI build what it describes as the world’s largest GPU clusters.
xAI said the funding will accelerate its infrastructure buildout, enable rapid deployment of AI products to billions of users, and support research tied to its mission of understanding the universe. The company noted that its Colossus 1 and 2 systems now represent more than one million H100 GPU equivalents, alongside recent releases including the Grok 4 series, Grok Voice, and Grok Imagine. Training is also already underway for its next flagship model, Grok 5.
Tesla seen as early winner as Canada reopens door to China-made EVs
Tesla confirms that work on Dojo 3 has officially resumed
