Tesla’s answer to Cybertruck’s falling sales? Make it 15k more expensive

As Cybertruck sales fall, Tesla raised the price of its top-end “Cyberbeast” model by $15k today, bundling some additional software and perks to go along with it. The top-end trim now costs almost three times as much as the truck’s originally-promised base price of $40k.

Tesla has been having a rough time in sales lately, owing primarily to its bad CEO, Elon Musk.

Sales are down in most territorie (despite a rising EV market), and earnings are dropping along with them. The company is also about to lose a revenue source worth billions of dollars which has at times been the only thing keeping Tesla profitable – and the company’s CEO gave hundreds of millions of dollars of his own money to ensure that Tesla would see this revenue dip.

Another reason for Tesla’s sales being down is due to the lack of new models. Recent refreshes haven’t helped, and the only new Model Tesla has released in recent years, the Cybertruck, is a flop.

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So, what’s a company to do to make a little more money? Well, rather than ending the CEO’s brand-destroying bad decisions, or making a model people can afford, Tesla has another strategy: price hikes on its most expensive models.

Last week, Tesla bumped the price of its aging Model S and X by $10k, adding a new “Luxe Package” which is a bundle of decidedly non-luxurious features (FSD, tire protection package, supercharging, and premium connectivity), putting the top-end Plaid model at a base price of $115k.

And today, it’s matching that with the price of its top-end “Cyberbeast” Cybertruck model, bumping its base price by $15k to $115k as well. In exchange for this, Cyberbeast purchasers get the same Luxe package – which was worth a $10k price bump on the Model S, but is apparently worth $15k on the Cybertruck.

The Cybertruck comes in three trim levels, with the same battery for each of them, but an increasing number of electric motors and more performance to match. The top-end Cyberbeast has three motors, with 11,000lbs towing capacity and 2,271lbs payload (both lower than Tesla’s originally promised numbers).

However, it’s capable of 0-60 in 2.6 seconds, which makes it one of the quickest pickup trucks ever sold (right up there with the new Rivian R1T Quad Max) – and quicker than most sportscars as well.

But that performance will cost you. The new $115k base price is pretty eye-watering on its own, but even moreso when compared to Tesla’s original promises for the vehicle.

When Cybertruck was first announced, it was supposed to have a base price of $40k, with the top-end tri-motor trim costing $70k. The price of that trim is now $45,000 more than Tesla’s original claim.

This could have something to do with why the truck isn’t meeting its original sales expectations. Tesla had originally claimed that it would be able to produce and sell 250,000 units of the truck per year, but is now selling around 5,000 per quarter.

In an environment like this, a $15k price bump is unlikely to increase sales. But given that the “luxe package” is mostly software (and deferred costs), it could provide a small margin boost in the short-term for the trucks Tesla is able to sell, to help make up for its seemingly likely fall toward unprofitability under the leadership of its bad CEO.

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