Were you considering buying a Cybertruck from electric vehicle giant Tesla (TSLA) in the near future? You may want to reconsider, as some believe the cost of a Cybertruck is about to fall in the range of “actually reasonable for a new vehicle.” The reports were welcome to shareholders, who gave Tesla shares a boost of nearly 3% in Monday afternoon’s trading.
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Car reviewer—and car pricing expert—Doug DeMuro believes that the Tesla Cybertruck will start selling for $35,000 in the next year and a half. More trucks are reaching the two year mark, DeMuro noted, and since Teslas do not hold value very well, the price on these should be starting to drop.
Indeed, DeMuro pointed out that Cybertrucks selling in the $60,000 range have started to emerge in the wild, and some of them are quite close to slipping into the $50,000 range. And the Cybertruck’s sales price curve is sufficiently steep, reports suggest, that a price tag of $35,000 may not be too far off. This would be rough for early adopters, especially as some actually did pay the $80,000 for the early models. But the fact that a lot of pre-orders did not translate into actual purchases did not help matters much for Tesla here.
The Tesla Door Handle Body Count
On a much more disturbing note, reports have emerged from Bloomberg that the number of people dying in Tesla crashes who were unable to exit the vehicle due to door handle failure has now reached 15. There are no official statistics maintained about deaths as a result of door handle failure, so Bloomberg looked at the issue and dug up some numbers.
Tesla, meanwhile, has not responded to the concept much, beyond the usual assertions that it takes safety seriously and also notes that other automakers have similar problems. But Tesla also noted, “(Tesla may engineer) a way to disable the locks automatically when battery voltage runs low, and to release the doors in the moments leading up to the battery dying.” This would likely not be a bad idea.
Is Tesla a Buy, Hold or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on TSLA stock based on 11 Buys, 12 Holds, and nine Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 11.75% rally in its share price over the past year, the average TSLA price target of $382.87 per share implies 20.03% downside risk.
