The Tesla Cybertruck electric pick-up is not currently planned for sale in Australia – or for production in right-hand drive, Drive has learned.
Drive understands that a right-hand drive version of the Cybertruck is not currently being developed for sale in markets such as Australia, the UK and Japan.
Multiple Tesla sources have told Drive that the Texas factory where the Cybertruck will be exclusively produced – based on plans publicly confirmed by the company to investors – has not been configured to support the production of right-hand-drive vehicles.
It is believed that there is nothing to stop the factory being converted to right-hand drive at a later date, if Tesla changes its mind and wants to sell the Cybertruck in Australia and New Zealand.
And a right-hand-drive version could instead be developed and produced at one of Tesla’s other factories – namely Shanghai, China and Berlin, Germany – for export markets.
But – at the time of going to press – Drive has been told there are no current plans to do either.
The case for a right-hand drive Cybertruck is helped by the fact that the pickup is steer-by-wire – so there is no mechanical connection between the steering wheel and the front wheels, which theoretically makes it easier and cheaper to move the steering wheel to the other side.
However, an investment in a right-hand drive version of the car – and the production line – would still be required if Tesla were to go down this route.
Steer-by-wire technology has already been fitted to Nissan’s Infiniti luxury cars in Australia and is planned for the Lexus RZ locally at a later date.
Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk, have not announced whether the company will build the Cybertruck in right-hand drive and sell it in Australia.
It is worth noting that the Tesla Australia website only allows interested buyers to join a mailing list for the vehicle, rather than placing an order as on the US website.
The information, provided to Drive by multiple sources within the company, is the latest blow for Australian fans of the Tesla Cybertruck, which was unveiled in its final production form on Friday morning.
When the wedge-shaped electric pickup was unveiled as a concept in November 2019, buyers in Australia – as well as most other markets around the world where Tesla sells cars – were able to place a refundable $150 pre-order to secure their place in the production queue.
At the time, Tesla did not explicitly say whether it would bring the Cybertruck to Australia, but the ability to pre-order led many to believe that the vehicle would eventually come here.
The road to Australia for the Tesla Cybertruck soon began to crack.
In late 2021, Tesla removed the ability for buyers outside of North America – the US, Canada and Mexico – to place a pre-order for the vehicle, which by then had fallen behind its originally projected launch date of late 2021.
Comments made by Elon Musk in the years since the pickup was revealed as a concept have suggested that the Cybertruck will not meet European motor vehicle regulations – to which Australia is more closely aligned compared to US standards – and that export markets outside the US may not be well suited to the vehicle’s size.
Earlier this year, Tesla pulled the plug on right-hand-drive versions of the updated Model S sedan and Model X SUV due to “changes in the vehicle program”.
These vehicles were unveiled in early 2021 with full Australian pricing – and a planned local arrival date of 2022 – but in the two years since, Tesla has removed pricing from its website and removed the button to place an order, before announcing that right-hand-drive models would not be built.
The latest Model S and Model X were launched in the right-hand drive markets of the UK and Japan, but as left-hand drive vehicles. It is not legal to sell a new left-hand drive car in Australia.
Research by Drive shows that only 10 of the 45 markets where Tesla sells cars are right-hand drive. It is estimated that only 10 per cent of the cars sold by the company last year have the steering wheel on the right-hand side.
To put this in context, about 30 per cent of countries have the steering wheel on the right, accounting for about 25 per cent of global new car production.
Tesla’s 10 right-hand-drive markets are Ireland, the UK, Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand.
The US electric car specialist is unlikely to need right-hand-drive countries to boost demand for the Cybertruck.
CEO Elon Musk told investors in October that the company has around one million pre-orders for the vehicle worldwide – but it only plans to build 250,000 Cybertrucks a year, and a slow production ramp-up means it won’t reach that figure until sometime in 2025.
If all pre-orders make it to production – which isn’t expected, especially if the electric pickup isn’t sold in Australia and the showroom version is $20,000 to $30,000 more expensive than the prices announced for 2019 – new buyers would face a wait of more than four or even five years.
The first customer deliveries took place on 30 November, US time – four years to the month after it was unveiled as a concept, and about two years behind Tesla’s original launch schedule.
