Cybertruck battery range pegged at about 350 miles as Elon Musk sets annual production target

The Cybertruck's range on a battery charge is expected to be at least 348 miles, roughly on par with the Tesla Model X Long Range. That's according to one talkative Tesla engineer, of the type riding Tesla's first electric pickups around town for testing purposes.

They got approached by a Cybertruck aficionado when one of the Release Candidate pickups broke down and wouldn't top up at a Tesla Supercharger, so it had to be towed away. The Tesla engineer wasn't really sure what Cybertruck range specs will be announced, as they could only deduce them from the battery gauge inside the vehicle. The employee, however, hinted that the Cybertruck's range seems to match and surpass that of the Model X performance SUV which tops out at 348 miles in EPA estimates.

This will be roughly on par with the 350-mile range that Tesla listed for one of the Cybertruck trims when it announced them a few years back. The Cybertruck's website still lists "up to 500 miles" range, but that version may be coming at a later date. At launch, the Cybertruck will reportedly have only two configurations - a dual-motor and a tri-motor Performance version - none of which seems like a prime candidate for a giant expensive 4680 battery pack that would allow to get 500 miles of range out of the 4-ton stainless steel truck.

It's precisely because of that unorthodox stainless steel build material and other design or drivetrain novelties that Tesla would be having trouble launching the Cybertruck in all of the versions it initially teased. On The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Tesla's CEO Elon Musk reiterated that the company is facing enormous mass Cybertruck manufacturing complexities, so it will take time to fully ramp up production.

During Tesla's Q3 press conference, he pegged 18 months as the timeframe it will take to match Cybertruck supply with demand. At the time, he mentioned that's how long it will take Tesla to reach an annual production pace of a quarter million units. In the talk with Joe Rogan, however, he no longer mentions 250,000 pickups per year, but rather reduced the production potential to 200,000 Cybertrucks when Tesla has all of its manufacturing ducks in a row.

It is not clear what happened to the rest of the projected Cybertruck production capacity between the Q3 earnings announcement and Elon's appearance before Joe Rogan, but this latest prediction lowers the pickup's production target from about 20,000 to 17,000 units a month, or a bit over 500 Cybertrucks per day. In any case, there is one big unknown variable - the Cybertruck's price - that will determine if Tesla will need all that Cybertruck production capacity to meet demand in the first place.

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