Tesla announced that it is bringing the Cybertruck on a tour in China, but it likely won’t be available there. At least not anytime soon, according to CEO Elon Musk.
The Cybertruck’s novel design has made it super hard to get approved for US roads, even though that’s the market it was designed for.
It made the prospect of bringing the Cybertruck outside of North America unlikely.
CEO Elon Musk was recently asked about bringing the Cybertruck to China, the world’s biggest car market, but the CEO threw cold water on the idea:
“Getting Cybertruck road legal in China would be very difficult, but we could ship some prototypes over for display.”
But it looks like Tesla has followed through with Musk’s idea.
Tesla is now letting Chinese customers know that they will be able to see the Cybertruck in person in China:
The automaker is talking about a multi-city tour where customers will be able to vote on where the electric pickup truck will come first.
Electrek’s Take
I don’t think we are likely to see the Cybertruck become available to Chinese buyers in an official capacity.
This is more of a marketing effort.
As we have previously noted, Tesla has successfully used Cybertruck to get customers in stores in an attempt to get more visibility for its other electric vehicles. This effort appears to be in the same vein.
I think it’s not impossible that Tesla would bring Cybertrucks to the Chinese market at some point, but I don’t see it happening for a few more years, if ever.
On the other hand, I think it’s a bit of stepback for Canadian reservation holders. They have been holding to the fact that Tesla already brought Cybertrucks in stores in Canada as hope that Tesla will quickly launch the vehicle in Canada, which normally takes a while after a new vehicle comes to the US.
But it’s now clear that Tesla uses these display vehicles to bring people in stores more than anything else.