Tesla launches $59
990 Cybertruck trim, lower towing and cheaper interior signal cost tradeoffs, working-man repositioning follows weak 2025 sales
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Tesla is trying to make the Cybertruck less of a stainless-steel meme and more of a SKU.
According to Business Insider, Tesla has announced what it calls its “most affordable Cybertruck yet,” priced from $59,990 in the US. That is still a premium pickup by normal standards—Ford’s gas F-150 starts far lower—but it is a notable step down from the Cybertruck’s early pricing arc, where the cheapest all-wheel-drive version was near $100,000 in 2024 and is now listed from $79,990.
The new “budget” Cybertruck is not simply a discount; it is a feature and capability trade. Tesla’s own comparison chart shows towing capacity reduced to 7,500 pounds, down from 11,000 pounds on the higher-end “Premium All-Wheel Drive” and “Cyberbeast” variants. Inside, the cost-cutting is literal: heated seats only in the first row and textile seats instead of the more expensive trims’ “premium” interior.
That list is revealing because it points at what’s actually expensive in an electric pickup—and what isn’t. Heated rear seats and interior materials are cheap relative to battery cells, power electronics, high-current cabling, thermal management, and the structural choices that make a vehicle tow heavy loads without cooking itself. If towing is being cut, the likely constraints are not marketing but margins: drivetrain sizing, cooling headroom, and the battery-to-vehicle mass ratio that defines range under load.
Tesla is also trying to sell “working man” credibility at a moment when the numbers look stubbornly non-apocalyptic. Business Insider cites Cox Automotive data showing Tesla sold 20,237 Cybertrucks in the US in 2025—about half of 2024’s volume and nowhere near Elon Musk’s 2023 projection of 250,000 units a year.
The Cybertruck has also arrived with a Silicon Valley pattern: the demo worked, the edge cases arrived later. Tesla has issued recalls involving the rearview camera and windshield wiper, and there have been reports of accelerator pedals jamming, Business Insider notes.
Tesla is now treating Cybertruck as a platform to be iterated into a price band that can move units, not a single flagship object. In the electric-vehicle world—where pricing is often a proxy for subsidy capture, brand identity, and executive ego—it almost counts as a novelty.