Elon Musk Thinks Making Money Off The Upcoming Cybertruck Is Akin To Digging Your Own Grave

FREDERIC J. BROWN. Getty Images.

SOURCE - Musk says he has driven the Cybertruck and "it is an amazing product." But "there will be enormous challenges in reaching volume production with the Cybertruck and in making the Cybertruck cash-flow positive."

 Making the production version for sale to customers is "10,000 percent harder," he insists, because the truck is so "radical" and "special." Those are polite ways of saying stainless steel is hard to work with, and flat expanses of bodywork are unforgiving when it comes to gaps, fit, and finish.

"We dug our own grave with Cybertruck," Musk told investors, calling it the type of special product with lots of bells and whistles that only comes along once in a while.

Is the Cybertruck too awesome? Is Elon Musk an ideas guy that gets in way over his head far too often? I think it's likely just a combination of both things. I think if you gave an 8 year old a sketchbook, he'd come up with an incredible Cybertruck looking thing with all kinds of features. It would be an amazing car but not something that can be produced. Especially at this initial price point:

FREDERIC J. BROWN. Getty Images.

They've since moved off of that amount. But why announce that at all? It seems like chaos for the need of chaos. Some of these issues are outside of Musk's control like rising interest rates making buying a car more difficult. But how can you expect anyone to buy something without having any real grasp of what it would cost?

Apparently the other issue is production. Musk says he has a waiting list of a million people for this. I don't even know what that means considering no one really knows what this will cost but I'm willing to believe him. The issue is Musk says that they can only product 125,000/year (and even that is optimistic as the stainless steel is difficult to work with).

I'm the low man on the Barstool totem pole and he's the richest man in the world but this seems like a pretty easy problem to fix. When the demand exceeds the supply, you raise prices. That's Econ101. I get Musk wanting to make this available to as many people as possible but you can always lower prices if the Cybertruck takes off. 

I know Tesla has had issues and people either love them or hate them but damn does that Cybertruck look cool as fuck. It might be the closest thing to a Batmobile I've seen that is (or at least could be?) mass-produced.