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Tesla released the Cybertruck RWD to make the AWD look like a deal
Cybertruck LR RWD is effectively a $69,990 pickup that does not have 120V and 240V power outlets on its bed or 120V outlets in the cabin.
Tesla released the Cybertruck Long Range Rear Wheel Drive (LR RWD) recently, and it quickly received mixed reactions from the electric vehicle community. While the truck was praised for its long range, many argued that it was far too expensive due to the long list of features that it is missing compared to the Cybertruck All Wheel Drive (AWD), the mid-range variant of the all-electric pickup truck.
A look at the Cybertruck LR RWD’s pricing and features suggests that Tesla designed and priced the vehicle to push more buyers to opt for the Cybertruck AWD instead.
So Much Missing
The Cybertruck LR RWD costs $10,000 less than the Cybertruck AWD, but it is substantially less equipped compared to its mid-range counterpart. While the Cybertruck LR RWD’s slower 0-60 mph time, lower towing and payload capacity, textile seats, and fewer speakers are understandable, missing features such as the lack of air suspension, HEPA filter, and active noise cancellation make the vehicle truly a stripped down version of the all-electric pickup truck.
Considering that it is the most affordable Cybertruck available today, it would be fair to expect the vehicle to be geared for consumers who truly use their trucks for work. However, the Cybertruck LR RWD seems like a pretty expensive and under-equipped work truck, as it is effectively a $69,990 pickup that does not have 120V and 240V power outlets on its bed or 120V outlets in the cabin. It doesn’t even have otherwise basic Cybertruck features like the rear light bar, which is part of the pickup truck’s iconic, futuristic look.
Must Be Cheaper
The long list of missing features from the Cybertruck Long Range RWD has incited a lot of conversations among electric vehicle enthusiasts on social media, with some EV fans stating that the cost of the features that Tesla removed in the LR RWD seem to be worth far beyond $10,000. Others noted that with its (very) stripped-down nature, the Cybertruck Long Range Rear Wheel Drive should have been priced around $55,000, or at least closer to Elon Musk’s previous comments about electric pickup truck prices in the past.
Back in 2019, Elon Musk noted during an interview on the Ride the Lightning podcast that he believes consumers should be able to purchase a decent electric pickup truck for less than $50,000. “You should be able to buy a really great truck for $49k or less,” Musk stated then.
The Cybertruck was ultimately unveiled in November 2019 with a starting price of $39,990. If one were to adjust for inflation, Elon Musk’s sub-$50,000 Cybertruck price estimate would be worth $62,811 today, which is roughly the price of the Cybertruck LR RWD with the federal tax credit. For context, the Cybertruck’s $39,990 base price during its November 2019 unveiling is worth $50,249 today if adjusted for inflation.
A Boost to Cybertruck AWD
One would not be faulted to speculate that Tesla released the Cybertruck Long Range Rear Wheel Drive as a way to encourage customers to purchase the more expensive Cybertruck All Wheel Drive. For just $10,000 more, after all, customers would be getting a substantially better-equipped vehicle with better performance and far more utility.
It remains to be seen how well the Cybertruck LR RWD would sell, though considering its stripped-down nature, there seems to be a chance that the variant would follow the same path as the $35,000 base Model 3 Standard Range RWD, which was briefly sold but eventually retired due to low orders. What the $35,000 Model 3 did, however, was push a lot of sales of the Model 3 Standard Range Plus, which ultimately became one of Tesla’s volume sellers and is still in production today simply as the Model 3 RWD.
Tesla engineers deflected calls from Apple on a daily basis while the tech giant was developing its now-defunct electric vehicle program, which was known as “Project Titan.”
Back in 2022 and 2023, Apple was developing an EV in a top-secret internal fashion, hoping to launch it by 2028 with a fully autonomous driving suite.
However, Apple bailed on the project in early 2024, as Project Titan abandoned the project in an email to over 2,000 employees. The company had backtracked its expectations for the vehicle on several occasions, initially hoping to launch it with no human driving controls and only with an autonomous driving suite.
Apple canceling its EV has drawn a wide array of reactions across tech
It then planned for a 2028 launch with “limited autonomous driving.” But it seemed to be a bit of a concession at that point; Apple was not prepared to take on industry giants like Tesla.
Wedbush’s Dan Ives noted in a communication to investors that, “The writing was on the wall for Apple with a much different EV landscape forming that would have made this an uphill battle. Most of these Project Titan engineers are now all focused on AI at Apple, which is the right move.”
Apple did all it could to develop a competitive EV that would attract car buyers, including attempting to poach top talent from Tesla.
In a new podcast interview with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, it was revealed that Apple had been calling Tesla engineers nonstop during its development of the now-defunct project. Musk said the engineers “just unplugged their phones.”
Musk said in full:
“They were carpet bombing Tesla with recruiting calls. Engineers just unplugged their phones. Their opening offer without any interview would be double the compensation at Tesla.”
Interestingly, Apple had acquired some ex-Tesla employees for its project, like Senior Director of Engineering Dr. Michael Schwekutsch, who eventually left for Archer Aviation.
Tesla took no legal action against Apple for attempting to poach its employees, as it has with other companies. It came after EV rival Rivian in mid-2020, after stating an “alarming pattern” of poaching employees was noticed.
There are a lot of Tesla bulls out there who have astronomical expectations for the company, especially as its arm of reach has gone well past automotive and energy and entered artificial intelligence and robotics.
However, some of the most bullish Tesla investors believe the company could become worth $100 trillion, and CEO Elon Musk does not believe that number is completely out of the question, even if it sounds almost ridiculous.
To put that number into perspective, the top ten most valuable companies in the world — NVIDIA, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, TSMC, Meta, Saudi Aramco, Broadcom, and Tesla — are worth roughly $26 trillion.
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Cathie Wood of ARK Invest believes the number is reasonable considering Tesla’s long-reaching industry ambitions:
“…in the world of AI, what do you have to have to win? You have to have proprietary data, and think about all the proprietary data he has, different kinds of proprietary data. Tesla, the language of the road; Neuralink, multiomics data; nobody else has that data. X, nobody else has that data either. I could see $100 trillion. I think it’s going to happen because of convergence. I think Tesla is the leading candidate [for $100 trillion] for the reason I just said.”
Musk said late last year that all of his companies seem to be “heading toward convergence,” and it’s started to come to fruition. Tesla invested in xAI, as revealed in its Q4 Earnings Shareholder Deck, and SpaceX recently acquired xAI, marking the first step in the potential for a massive umbrella of companies under Musk’s watch.
SpaceX officially acquires xAI, merging rockets with AI expertise
Now that it is happening, it seems Musk is even more enthusiastic about a massive valuation that would swell to nearly four-times the value of the top ten most valuable companies in the world currently, as he said on X, the idea of a $100 trillion valuation is “not impossible.”
It’s not impossible
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 6, 2026
Tesla is not just a car company. With its many projects, including the launch of Robotaxi, the progress of the Optimus robot, and its AI ambitions, it has the potential to continue gaining value at an accelerating rate.
Musk’s comments show his confidence in Tesla’s numerous projects, especially as some begin to mature and some head toward their initial stages.
Elon Musk
Celebrating SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy Tesla Roadster launch, seven years later (Op-Ed)
Seven years later, the question is no longer “What if this works?” It’s “How far does this go?”
When Falcon Heavy lifted off in February 2018 with Elon Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster as its payload, SpaceX was at a much different place. So was Tesla. It was unclear whether Falcon Heavy was feasible at all, and Tesla was in the depths of Model 3 production hell.
At the time, Tesla’s market capitalization hovered around $55–60 billion, an amount critics argued was already grossly overvalued. SpaceX, on the other hand, was an aggressive private launch provider known for taking risks that traditional aerospace companies avoided.
The Roadster launch was bold by design. Falcon Heavy’s maiden mission carried no paying payload, no government satellite, just a car drifting past Earth with David Bowie playing in the background. To many, it looked like a stunt. For Elon Musk and the SpaceX team, it was a bold statement: there should be some things in the world that simply inspire people.
Inspire it did, and seven years later, SpaceX and Tesla’s results speak for themselves.
Today, Tesla is the world’s most valuable automaker, with a market capitalization of roughly $1.54 trillion. The Model Y has become the best-selling car in the world by volume for three consecutive years, a scenario that would have sounded insane in 2018. Tesla has also pushed autonomy to a point where its vehicles can navigate complex real-world environments using vision alone.
And then there is Optimus. What began as a literal man in a suit has evolved into a humanoid robot program that Musk now describes as potential Von Neumann machines: systems capable of building civilizations beyond Earth. Whether that vision takes decades or less, one thing is evident: Tesla is no longer just a car company. It is positioning itself at the intersection of AI, robotics, and manufacturing.
SpaceX’s trajectory has been just as dramatic.
The Falcon 9 has become the undisputed workhorse of the global launch industry, having completed more than 600 missions to date. Of those, SpaceX has successfully landed a Falcon booster more than 560 times. The Falcon 9 flies more often than all other active launch vehicles combined, routinely lifting off multiple times per week.
Falcon 9 has ferried astronauts to and from the International Space Station via Crew Dragon, restored U.S. human spaceflight capability, and even stepped in to safely return NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams when circumstances demanded it.
Starlink, once a controversial idea, now dominates the satellite communications industry, providing broadband connectivity across the globe and reshaping how space-based networks are deployed. SpaceX itself, following its merger with xAI, is now valued at roughly $1.25 trillion and is widely expected to pursue what could become the largest IPO in history.
And then there is Starship, Elon Musk’s fully reusable launch system designed not just to reach orbit, but to make humans multiplanetary. In 2018, the idea was still aspirational. Today, it is under active development, flight-tested in public view, and central to NASA’s future lunar plans.
In hindsight, Falcon Heavy’s maiden flight with Elon Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster was never really about a car in space. It was a signal that SpaceX and Tesla were willing to think bigger, move faster, and accept risks others wouldn’t.
The Roadster is still out there, orbiting the Sun. Seven years later, the question is no longer “What if this works?” It’s “How far does this go?”
Tesla engineers deflected calls from this tech giant’s now-defunct EV project
Tesla to a $100T market cap? Elon Musk’s response may shock you
