Impact of Cybertruck for 12 Volters

By Rich Truesdell

If you see a lot of new half-ton pickups in your installation bay, be prepared for a fundamental shift away from the established players in trucks to the Cybertruck from Tesla. With an advanced order bank of more than 1,500,000 reservations, the Cybertruck, due this fall, will impact sales of the established OEMs who are already struggling to sell their EV pickups at a profit. This problem is compounded by greedy dealers, especially Ford retailers, who add dealer markups of up to $30,000 on those F-150 Lightning EVs that are already hard to sell at MSRP prices over $80,000.

With the Cybertruck—whose introduction has been delayed for over a year and is expected to have a starting price of under $60,000—Tesla will be able to substantially undercut its competitors on price.  It will be built with an integrated structural battery pack and its industry-leading gigacastings will reduce the number of individual parts required. This will cut down assembly time and production costs.

Combining that with its direct-to-consumer retail distribution strategy, will make life miserable for the OEMs until they come up with their own “clean sheet” half-ton designs rather than electrifying their existing traditional body-on-frame platforms.

It is not good news for Tesla’s OEM competitors at Chevrolet, Ford, GMC, Ram, and Toyota, the current leaders in the half-ton pickup truck segment. And there are some warnings here too for our industry.

The Cybertruck’s infotainment and camera systems are expected to be deeply embedded into its electronic infrastructure. The mobile electronics aftermarket will have to find other upgrade opportunities.

This will be a fundamental change in the way the aftermarket can address the number one volume segment for new vehicle sales in North America. In a historical context, this presents a greater shift for the aftermarket than the introduction of the first GM Delco/Bose systems in 1983 or the optional Nakamichi-branded system in the 1989 Lexus LS400.

Takeaway Insight: It certainly bears watching as mobile electronics retailers plan for a new market landscape. Thankfully, with the rapidly growing compact pickup segment, savvy mobile electronics retailers should be able to capitalize on expanding opportunities in that vehicle category. But that’s a story for our next column.

Richard Truesdell

We introduce the newest addition to the CEoutlook contributor team, industry veteran and longtime automotive photojournalist Richard Truesdell.  He has served as an installer, a 12 volt retail store owner, and a car audio and automotive journalist.

Truesdell founded Kartunes Mobile Electronics in New Jersey in 1976 with a retail storefront from 1980 to 1992. He’s contributed to publications including Motor Trend and has been a full-time automotive journalist since 2000 to more than 30 magazines around the world.  He is also the co-author of three books with collaborator Mark Fletcher; Hurst Equipped (2012), 1970 Maximum Muscle (2021), and Hemi Under Glass (2021). Truesdell even appeared on Jay Leno’s Garage!

He will contribute news stories focused on the automotive industry and OEM topics that will interest 12 volt retailers. Truesdell welcomes questions from readers and he hopes to connect with colleagues from his many years in the car audio industry at [email protected]

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