The Tesla Cybertruck - Tesla's strange, wedge-shaped battery-electric pickup truck that was unveiled last November - has amassed an impressive number of preorders, despite the fact that no one yet knows what the finished product will look like. As of March 30, the Cybertruck had some 622,000 preorders, according to the company, with additional preorders coming in all the time.
Late last November, the last time we got an official update on Cybertruck preorders, the total stood at roughly 250,000, meaning an additional 372,000 have come in over the past four months. That's an average of around 3,000 new preorders every day, which is, like, a lot.
No doubt Tesla's easy, non-binding preordering system for the truck has played a big role in the number of preorders amassed. To secure a place in line, Tesla requires only a completely refundable $100 deposit, making the likelihood that every one of the company's Cybertruck preorders will translate into a sale very unlikely.
By comparison, the Ford Mustang Mach-E commands a $500 reservation fee, although that sum, too, is refundable.
According to Tesla's data, the basic single-motor trim makes up a slim minority of Cybertrucks preordered - just 143 of the 1,826 trucks for which a trim was specified, or a little less than 8 percent. The top-performing tri-motor Cybertruck makes up more than 42 percent of those preorders, while the dual-motor is by far the most popular with nearly 50 percent.
Granted, despite the uncertainty around how many of the Tesla Cybertruck's 622,000 preorders will translate into actual sales, there is some valuable data to take away from all this. Tesla says that preorders for its low-cost Model 3 sedan totaled around 518,000 approximately four months after its unveiling, so we can say the Cybertruck has generated essentially the same level of interest as that vehicle.
The Tesla Model 3 hasn't been slacking in the showroom, either, blowing away the competition with more than 300,000 units sold worldwide in 2019. If the Cybertruck sells even half that volume over the course of a full year, it will be a homerun.
