Tesla Starts Taking Cybertruck Reservations In China

“The narrative is the product. They don’t make money selling cars,” Jim Chanos said about Tesla on Twitter Friday.

It’s a line that makes sense at almost every turn that Tesla makes as a company: constantly announcing and taking reservations for new products, while hurriedly trying to produce the model du jour (now the Model Y), which seems to fall apart almost as quickly as it rolls of the production line, according to a collection of recent reviews.

But that hasn’t stopped Tesla from opening up reservations for the Cybertruck in China. It’s yet another cash grab that will materialize in actual vehicles at a point in time that nobody seems to know yet. 

The reservations page for the Cybertruck on Tesla’s China page went live last week after the truck was unveiled in November of last year. Even in the U.S., the truck isn’t expected to go into production until late 2022. The Cybertruck already has over 250,000 reservations totaling $100 each. 

China’s appetite for the market is unknown. It’s not historically a county that comes to mind when you think about places to sell pickup trucks. Many trucks in China are even banned in city centers for emissions reasons, electrek writes. They also believe Tesla could be looking to establish “local Cybertruck production in China”. We guess demand doesn’t even matter at this point. 

And hey, what could be more cost efficient and space efficient during the midst of a global recession and in a densely packed country of 1.3 billion plus people than – well, this:

The reservation cost coverts to about $141, slightly more than the U.S. reservations. “Holders can lock in the Full Self-Driving package price at $9,000,” electrek writes.

As a reminder, full self driving does not exist.