Cybertruck Could Beat Model 3 First Week Pre-orders

One week after Tesla unveiled the Model 3, the company collected 325,000 reservations:

Tesla Motors Inc. said it has received more than 325,000 reservations for the Model 3, far exceeding its expectations as customers line up to pre-order the $35,000 electric car more than a year ahead of when the more-affordable model is slated to hit the streets.

The pre-orders represent “about $14 billion in implied future sales, making this the single biggest one-week launch of any product ever,” the company said in a blog post Thursday. After Tesla got more than a quarter-million orders in the first three days, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk had said even that number was at least twice what he had expected.

Dana Hull, Bloomberg, 2016

70 hours in, Tesla had 200,000 orders for Cybertruck:

These 200,000 orders represent about $12 bilion in implied sales.

If Cybertruck can collect more than 325,000 orders by Thursday night, it will best the Model 3 and become the new reservation king. That shouldn’t be hard given the size of the pickup market and the fact that Cybertruck reservations are only $100 (compared to $1,000 for the Model 3).

It’s important to note that the Model 3 was a $35,000 car with an expected average selling price of around $45,000. The Cybertruck reservations collected so far have an average selling price of around $60,000.

What do you think? Can the Cybertruck beat the Model 3? Or will the Model 3’s (slightly) more conventional approach prove more popular?

One thought on “Cybertruck Could Beat Model 3 First Week Pre-orders

  1. Well, at this point, I guess it’s pretty clear that it won’t quite beat Model 3 in first-week reservations — though it should come pretty close…

    More important however is that while the initial peak was a bit flatter, the data points published thus fur suggest it isn’t ebbing off quite as quickly… Reflecting the almost universal sentiment that people hate the radical design at first, but then it grows on them.

    This means that despite lower first-week reservations, it seems quite likely that the count will actually surpass Model 3 medium-term — in a significantly smaller addressable market!

    Of course it’s not directly comparable due to the lower reservation fee — yet it’s frankly more than I expected. But then again, I wasn’t expecting this price, these features and specs, *or* the amazing design 🙂 I expected a somewhat unconventional truck that would compare well with combustion trucks and upcoming electric trucks from other makers — not the total game changer we got…

    What amazes me most though (beside the truck itself 😉 ) is the reaction of the stock market.

    To be frank, I fully expected there would be a drop after the reveal: it appeared so over-hyped, it seemed inevitable it would be a disappointment… Except it wasn’t — it turned out way better than imagined!

    Still, I’m not surprised about the initial drop after the reveal. I knew all these stuffy analysts and institutional investors would label it niche because of the looks alone: they just lack the imagination to realise that it checks all the right boxes both for contractors, farmers etc. (rugged, capable, affordable — who cares about looks), *and* for the testosterone crowd (entirely new level of badass).

    What actually leaves me stumped though is that the reservation numbers do not seem to have tipped them off that somehow their initial assessment must have missed the mark?…

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