General Motors (GM 1.85%) made a splash this week when its GMC brand revived its hummer with all-new guts: battery-powered electric motors. The truck's specs were impressive. The top-end version of the new hummer will boast 350-plus miles of range on a single charge, the equivalent of 1,000 horsepower, and a zero to 60 miles per hour (mph) acceleration time of less than three seconds. Available in late 2021, the new truck appears aimed directly at Tesla's (TSLA 1.53%) Cybertruck, which is slated to start production late next year.
With GMC's new hummer fresh on everyone's minds, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was sure to weigh in during the electric-car maker's earnings call this week with an update on the Cybertruck -- and the CEO seemed as confident as ever that the new vehicle won't disappoint.
Cybertruck. Image source: Tesla.
Expect small improvements
"[T]here's like a lot of small improvements compared to what was unveiled," said Musk about the Cybertruck during Tesla's third-quarter earnings call. "I think it's going to be better than what we showed."
Unfortunately, Musk didn't provide any specifics. Nevertheless, that's a pretty high bar, as Tesla shared some pretty wild specs for the vehicle when it was unveiled late last year. The fully loaded tri-motor version of the Cybertruck will boast a zero to 60 mph time of less than 2.9 seconds, over 500 miles of driving range, and a towing capacity of more than 14,000 pounds. It will also come standard with Autopilot technology, the company said when the vehicle was first shown off.
There may be "some Cybertruck deliveries toward the end of next year," Musk says. In 2022, however, "there's probably a lot of deliveries," he added.
There was no mention of GMC's new electric hummer during the earnings call -- either from analysts or Musk.
Cybertruck could be a huge catalyst for Tesla
Though the Cybertruck design took many people aback at first glance, it apparently warmed up to at least several hundred thousand people. Over the weekend following the truck's unveiling, Tesla racked up 200,000 reservations for Cybertruck. A few months after the truck's unveiling, Tesla said the demand for the vehicle was greater than it had seen for any vehicle previously.
Image source: Getty Images.
"I think ... we'll sell as many as we can make, it's going to be pretty nuts," Musk said in the company's fourth-quarter 2019 earnings call.
Of course, it's no secret that there's a massive market for pickup trucks. Ford has shipped over 40 million F-150's over the past 60 years. Further, over 3 million pickup trucks were sold in the U.S. alone in 2019.
A fully electric truck could prove to be a massive tailwind for Tesla.
