The age of the Cybertruck is upon us.

Nearly four years after Elon Musk famously unveiled "Cybertruck," the Tesla (TSLA 3.06%) CEO's vision of how a 21st Century electric pickup truck should look, the first production model of the Cybertruck finally rolled off the assembly line last Saturday. 

Tesla has officially entered the electric truck wars.

Everybody into the pool

But the Cybertruck arrives to find a field already crowded with competitors who got there first.

Tesla's Cybertruck.

Image source: Tesla.

Rivian (RIVN -1.59%) is probably the highest profile of these competitors, but its R1T electric pickup has struggled with hot and cold demand, possibly exacerbated by a sky-high MSRP or sticker price. Ford Motor Company (F 1.70%) arguably poses an even bigger threat. Long the dominant force in trucks with its best-selling F-150 line of pickups, Ford began selling its F-150 Lightning electric pickup last year -- and at least initially at more attractive prices. 

Ford famously marketed the F-150 Lightning as a budget-friendly alternative to Tesla's pricey electro-buggies, promising at its unveiling that base "work truck" models of the Lightning would retail for as little as $40,000. Shocked into compliance, General Motors (GM -1.68%) quickly followed suit, promising to build an electric Silverado EV pickup truck and sell it, too, for a $40,000 MSRP.

Granted, Ford later reneged on its promise, hiking the base price on an F-150 Lightning Pro as high as $60,000 before rolling it back to $50,000 last week. GM, too, seems to be walking back promises to price the Silverado EV below $40,000. Elon Musk, too, initially named "$40,000" as the target price for his Cybertruck -- and while some have doubted that this price will stick, he recently hinted that at least some versions of the Cybertruck will sell for less than Ford's latest $50,000 price. 

Tesla versus Ford versus General Motors

So where does this leave truck buyers interested in acquiring an electric pickup? And what does it mean for investors in these three publicly traded automotive giants? Crunching the numbers, it appears the landscape now looks something like this: 

 

Horsepower

Range

Price (base model)

Ford F-150 Lightning Pro

452

230

$49,995

Chevy Silverado EV

510

400

$52,000

Tesla Cybertruck

<670*

250

$39,900

Data sources: Car and Driver magazine, Carbuzz.com, manufacturer websites. *Tesla has not yet confirmed the horsepower rating for its lowest-tier Cybertruck.

At first glance, this all appears to give the advantage to General Motors' Silverado EV. On the one hand, the company is setting its starting price a bit higher than that of the competition. On the other hand, GM also appears to be offering more for a truck buyer's money -- more horsepower and more range at the entry level.

That being said, you should probably add a few dashes of salt to all of these numbers before swallowing any of them at face value (to mix a few metaphors). The prices Ford is willing to accept for its F-150 Lightning, for example, seem rather fluid, changing by as much as 50% over the past year -- and as much as 17% over the past week. And it wouldn't be any great shock if we saw GM's competing offering, the Silverado EV, rise and fall to match Ford's pricing going forward. At the same time, and as multiple automotive journalists have already pointed out, it seems kind of crazy to expect Tesla to give away gigantic Cybertrucks for $39,900, when its website plainly prices plain vanilla versions of its Model 3 econobox for $40,240. 

Expect that Cybertruck price tag to drift higher over time as well.

Perhaps most importantly, as we've all seen over the past few years, automakers with limited production capacity for EVs, but massive demand for their products (among early adopters of the first batch of production models at least), have tended to emphasize production of higher-trim models first, making it hard for budget-conscious car buyers to get hold of any base model vehicles at the advertised prices. Truck shoppers may think this unfair, but it does make economic sense for manufacturers to sell their highest-priced, highest-profit-margin vehicles first, and use the profits to expand production later to satisfy any thriftier consumers who remain.

If recent history is any guide, therefore, it's likely that all the numbers stated above will remain rather theoretical over the next few years, as most electric trucks sold will offer greater capabilities -- and sell for much higher price tags -- than the numbers given so much publicity when the trucks were first announced.