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Tesla has a backup plan for the Cybertruck, but don’t plan on seeing it
Tesla CEO Elon Musk indicated that if the company’s Cybertruck tanks in terms of sales, the electric automaker will design and manufacture a “normal” truck with a typical pickup design, but don’t bank on seeing it.
Tesla unveiled its Cybertruck in November 2019, and its design was met with both support and criticisms from automotive enthusiasts. Nobody had ever seen anything like it before: a stainless steel exoskeleton, wrapped over a futuristic and robust frame, powered by a series of electric motors that would give it impressive and useful capability on and off of the road.
Despite the truck’s unique design, it has accrued a massive amount of pre-orders and has caught the attention of many people around the world. Even though Tesla is prepared to design a new, “normal” pickup for those who would like sustainability while hauling, don’t hold your breath on seeing it.
During a recent interview with Automotive News, Elon Musk stated that Tesla was prepared to deal with slumping sales when the Cybertruck is released in late 2021. There is a possibility that the company’s first pickup will not do well, and Musk said that Tesla would adapt.
“If it turns out nobody wants to buy a weird-looking truck, we’ll build a normal truck, no problem,” the Tesla CEO said on the Daily Drive Podcast. “There’s lots of normal trucks out there that look pretty much the same. You can hardly tell the difference. And sure, we could just do some copycat truck. That’s easy. So that’s our fallback strategy.”
Reports from various media outlets, along with a Cybertruck reservation decoder, had estimated that the company’s pickup was pre-ordered over half a million times by the time February had arrived. The most recent update from the Cybertruck Owner’s Club came in late May, and the site had indicated over 713,000 total pre-orders for the truck so far.
One Cybertruck reservation holder who has pre-ordered two Tri-Motor configurations told Teslarati that the second reservation number indicated they were the 792,302 truck ordered. “On 6/15, I put in my 2nd Cybertruck reservation. According to the Cybertruckownersclub.com reservation decoder, that makes me #792,302.”
Although the prospective number of reservations is somewhat astronomical, that isn’t stopping Tesla from preparing for the worst. A back-up plan will be developed to be safe.
Interestingly enough, one of the first segments of the Cybertruck’s unveiling event last Winter started with a comparison of the currently-available pickup trucks that roam on streets in the United States. All trucks will have a cab and a bed, but the design of pickup trucks across manufacturers remains the same on a relative scale. There is very little individualism between vehicle designs. Without badges, it isn’t easy to decipher which car company is making each truck.
Tesla’s goal with the Cybertruck was to create something the world had never seen before. People hadn’t ever seen any vehicle with this type of design in the modern era, but if any company was going to do it, it was going to be Tesla.
Nikola Motors CEO Trevor Milton also offered Tesla and Musk a design for a “broader market.” Milton indicated in the Tweet from November 22, 2019, that Nikola doesn’t build cars or trucks, but their design would be donated to Tesla “just in case.” Since then, Nikola has developed the Badger, which is expected to enter the EV pickup market in the future.
https://twitter.com/nikolatrevor/status/1197749716580093952?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1197749716580093952%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.teslarati.com%2Ftesla-cybertruck-design-elon-musk-tweet-nikola-ceo%2F
Whether Tesla builds a traditional truck design remains to be seen. Judging on the popularity and pre-order estimations of the Cybertruck, Tesla will likely not need to design a new pickup that will appeal to a broader market. Of course, consumers will have to wait and see what happens with the car between now and the initial production runs, because Tesla is constantly changing the Cybertruck’s design to make it the strongest vehicle on the road.
“Things are seeming more apocalyptic these days. Let me tell you, the truck you want in the apocalypse is the Cybertruck,” Musk said.
The Cybertruck’s Dual and Tri-Motor variants will be available in late 2021, with the Single Motor configuration coming in 2022. The truck will be manufactured at Tesla’s new Austin, Texas Gigafactory.
Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) endured one of its sharpest single-day declines in years on July 23, tumbling approximately 14.5 percent and closing near $320 after opening the session around $374. The drop erased more than $140 billion in market value amid heavy trading volume and left the shares at multi-week lows.
The sell-off followed the company’s second-quarter 2026 results, released the previous evening. Tesla reported record revenue of $28.2 billion, up 26 percent year over year, driven by a Q2-record 480,126 vehicle deliveries. Energy storage deployments also rose strongly.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Yet profitability disappointed sharply. Operating income fell 57 percent to $398 million, compressing the operating margin to just 1.4 percent. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $0.33, well below the roughly $0.53 analysts had expected. Free cash flow turned negative by $1.1 billion as capital expenditures surged 142 percent to $5.8 billion, largely tied to accelerated spending on artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomous systems.
The losses on capex were expected, as Tesla said it would be spending heavily in 2026.
Investors also reacted to lingering uncertainty surrounding key product timelines. During the Earnings Call, management reiterated ambitions for Robotaxi deployment and the Optimus humanoid robot, but offered limited new concrete milestones, renewing questions about execution pace that have long accompanied Tesla’s ambitious roadmap.
The magnitude of the decline places it among Tesla’s more severe one-day percentage losses since its 2010 initial public offering. Historically, the two largest single-day drops (split-adjusted) remain September 8, 2020, when shares fell 21.1 percent amid broader market volatility and valuation concerns, and January 13, 2012, with a 19.3 percent plunge during the company’s early growth struggles.
Other notable declines include an 18.6 percent drop on March 16, 2020, at the onset of pandemic-related market turmoil. Thursday’s move ranks roughly ninth on the all-time list but stands out as the steepest in more than a year.
Despite the short-term pain, Tesla’s long-term trajectory has repeatedly recovered from such volatility. The latest results underscore both the strength of its core automotive and energy businesses and the near-term costs of heavy investment in next-generation technologies.
Elon Musk clapped back at France’s decision to withhold the approval for Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) Supervised system, projecting a clear and blunt message to French Transport Minister Phillippe Tabarot, after he publicly rejected the technology in its current form.
Tabarot outlines several concerns with Tesla Full Self-Driving in a detailed video statement, where he said, “The safety trade-offs are not yet sufficient to authorize it as it currently stands,” he said. He emphasized that FSD is not a true self-driving system and that the driver remains fully responsible.
Key issues Tabarot also brought up included allowing speeding when surrounding traffic exceeds limits and what he believes are insufficient guarantees of driver attention during complex urban maneuvers such as lane changes, intersections, and roundabouts.
Delaying the approval of FSD in France will cost lives
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
While acknowledging technological progress and France’s support for autonomous innovation, Tabarot stressed that deployment must prioritize road safety. He noted ongoing technical discussions with Tesla, the Netherlands, and other European partners, with further ecosystem meetings planned for the fall.
Musk’s rebuke highlights the human cost of regulatory caution. Tesla’s latest safety reports provide compelling data supporting accelerated adoption. In the most recent 12-month period, vehicles using FSD (Supervised) recorded one major collision per approximately 5.1 million miles driven, dramatically better than the U.S. national average of one crash per 698,000 miles.
Even Tesla vehicles driven manually with active safety features outperform the average by a wide margin. These figures come from billions of real-world miles of telemetry, showing FSD vehicles involved in far fewer incidents than both manual Teslas and the broader U.S. fleet.
Critics argue Tesla’s comparisons require careful scrutiny regarding reporting thresholds and fleet demographics, yet the data consistently positions FSD as a potential lifesaver. With road fatalities remaining a leading cause of death worldwide, Musk contends that proven safer technology should not face prolonged bureaucratic hurdles.
France’s measured approach reflects the broader European regulatory caution, which many, especially Musk, have been critical of in the past. However, as autonomous systems from Tesla and competitors like Waymo demonstrate superior safety in independent studies, pressure is mounting for harmonized approvals.
Musk’s warning carries the belief that every month of delay may equate to avoidable tragedies on European roads.
In a striking revelation that underscores the lucrative crossover between Big Tech and space exploration, Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, disclosed a massive $94.1 billion equity stake in SpaceX following the rocket company’s blockbuster initial public offering earlier this year.
The disclosure came in Alphabet’s quarterly filing, marking the first time the long-held private investment has been publicly valued at market prices. Google was an early backer, investing alongside Fidelity in 2015 with roughly $500-900 million at a time when SpaceX was valued around $12 billion.
That bet has delivered extraordinary returns, roughly a hundredfold, transforming a strategic play on satellite internet and launch capabilities into one of Alphabet’s largest assets.
Google, $GOOGL, has said they hold $94 billion in SpaceX, $SPCX, shares after IPO.
— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) July 23, 2026
Of the total holding, approximately $80 billion remains subject to short-term post-IPO lockup restrictions, preventing near-term sales. An additional $14.1 billion faces longer-term restrictions, extending into the third quarter of 2027. This structure limits immediate liquidity but protects against market volatility as SpaceX transitions into public trading.
The SpaceX position contributed significantly to gains in Alphabet’s broader investment portfolio, which also includes a major stake in AI leader Anthropic. Combined, these holdings helped drive nearly $100 billion in investment gains during the second quarter, providing a substantial boost to net income amid ongoing AI spending pressures.
Analysts view the disclosure as validation of Alphabet’s venture strategy beyond its core search and cloud businesses. The investment aligns with deeper ties, including reported multi-billion-dollar deals for AI computing capacity on SpaceX infrastructure. As SpaceX advances Starship flights, Starlink expansion, and ambitious Mars goals under Elon Musk, Google’s stake positions it to benefit from the commercialization of space.
For Alphabet, the windfall highlights how patient, forward-looking bets in transformative sectors can yield outsized rewards. While lockups temper short-term impact, the holding cements SpaceX as a cornerstone of Alphabet’s diversified portfolio in an era where aerospace, AI, and connectivity increasingly intersect. Investors will watch closely as restrictions lift and SpaceX’s public performance unfolds.
Tesla stock tumbles after earnings, one of its sharpest single-day declines
Elon Musk is not happy about this Tesla Full Self-Driving approval delay
