The new Tesla Cybertruck is still very much in the release-candidate (RC) phase, with a new leaked video published on the Tesla CyberTruck Facebook group by Chane Eckert showing a single unit being assembled by hand on the floor of the company’s Gigafactory in Texas, where full-scale production is scheduled to begin next year.
The short video was shot from the passenger seat of a shop floor transport vehicle and gives us a glimpse of a yet-to-be-finished Cybertruck body surrounded by Tesla employees who are doing their part in assembling the all-electric truck.
The vehicle is not on an automated assembly line as is the case with the marque’s other passenger vehicles, but rather on a trolley that can make it easier to move the body from one section of the factory to another.
It’s hard to notice fine details, but from what we can gather, the pickup has its interior already installed, as well as its windshield. At the same time, the doors and all the other bolt-on body parts are still missing, probably because the workers still had to fit interior pieces or accessories that sit under the bodywork.
It’s worth noting that this approach is generally used by all the major automakers out there, assembling a new model by hand and working out all the problems before the model goes on the automated assembly line to be produced for customer deliveries.
Judging from previous official photos released by Tesla, the metal structure of the Cybertruck is already put together by various robots, but the final assembly now seems to be in the hands of employees, quite literally.
During the company’s Q2 2023 Earnings Call, it was announced that the all-electric pickup is currently in the pre-production phase at Giga Texas, with initial customer-intent production on track to begin later this year.
At the same time, Tesla claimed that the much-anticipated and – at the same time – delayed Cybertruck is the first sub-19 feet truck with 4 doors and a bed that’s longer than 6 feet.
“As far as we know, Cybertruck will be the first sub-19 ft. truck (fitting into a garage) that has both four doors and a 6+ ft. bed,” the company said. “Both technologically and architecturally, this vehicle will break a lot of boundaries – very much in line with how we think about vehicle engineering and manufacturing.”
The Cybertruck was unveiled back in 2019 and was supposed to enter production two years later, but the pandemic came and put the brakes on development. Now, almost four years after the reveal, the highly anticipated angular truck is inching closer and closer to full-scale production, with Elon Musk saying that demand for it is “so off the hook, you can’t even see the hook.”
