US automaker Tesla Inc on Saturday announced that its first electric pickup — a slick-looking silver Cybertruck — had rolled off the assembly line at its huge plant near Austin, Texas.
“First Cybertruck built at Giga Texas!” says a tweet from the company, accompanied by a photo of the vehicle amid a sea of helmeted and yellow-vested Tesla workers.
Elon Musk, who owns both Tesla and Twitter Inc, reposted the tweet with the comment “Congrats Tesla Team.”
Photo: AFP
Tesla did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment on Saturday.
The company had promised in April that it would be rolling out the first Cybertrucks before the end of the year. Plans for the vehicle, with its silvery, tortoise-like shape and unusual angles, were first announced in November 2019.
Its original introduction went awry when Musk urged an employee to strike one of the prototype’s windows with a hunk of steel to show its solidity. The window broke — drawing a laugh and a curse word from Musk — as did a second window on an ensuing attempt.
Yet within two days, Tesla said it had received nearly 150,000 advance orders.
In May, Musk said the company hoped to build 250,000 of the trucks a year — a number he said could eventually double, given a relatively accessible price tag.
Tesla will be making three models of the Cybertruck, a vehicle that can accelerate from zero to 60 miles per hour (96.56kph) in less than three seconds. The basic model is to cost US$39,900 and offer a 400km range between charges; the top-line truck is to have twice that range and sell for US$69,900.
Separately, Twitter has lost roughly half of its advertising revenue, Musk said on Saturday.
“We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50 percent drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load,” the billionaire said in a post, responding to a user who was giving suggestions on financing for the social media platform.
“Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else,” he added, without further elaboration.
Insider Intelligence has reported that Twitter was set to earn less than US$3 billion this year, down one-third from last year. Changes instituted by Musk since his takeover of Twitter in October last year have turned off users and advertisers alike.
Twitter is thought to have around 200 million regular users, but it has suffered repeated technical failures since Musk bought the platform and sacked thousands of staff.
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