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Tesla Finally Gives a Cybertruck Release Date: November 30

It’s coming. Probably.

Robinson Meyer •
10/18/2023
A Tesla Cybertruck.
Heatmap Illustration/Tesla

Tesla’s electric Cybertruck might actually hit the roads before the end of the year.

The automaker will deliver its first pickup trucks on November 30, it announced today, amid a disappointing set of financial earnings that saw its sales rise but profits fall.

“I’ve driven the car — it’s an amazing product,” Elon Musk said on Wednesday evening. “But I do want to temper expectations for Cybertruck,” he added, warning that production of the vehicle will take at least 18 months to scale. “While I think this is potentially our best product ever, I think this is going to require immense work to reach volume production and be cashflow-positive at a price that people can afford,” he said.

The delivery will (probably) end a chapter of the Tesla-made pickup’s nearly decade-long odyssey to market. As early as January 2014, Musk expressed interest in selling an all-electric pickup. Two years later, he mentioned a pickup in the company’s master plan, before teasing the truck again in early 2019.

Musk finally unveiled the Cybertruck in November of that year — you might remember him accidentally smashing the truck’s window when trying to demonstrate its shatterproof glass — and he promised to deliver the first vehicles by 2021. But the stainless-steel-clad pickup faced supply chain and scaling issues, and its debut was kicked to 2022 … and then to early 2023 … before getting delayed again to late 2023. We’ll see next month whether the automaker can hit this final deadline; in the meantime, Ford beat Tesla to market with an all-electric pickup, and Musk bought a social network.

Setting aside its production delays and Pokemon-like geometry, the Cybertruck may help the broader car industry better understand the contours of the electric-pickup market. Ford, GM, and other automakers have slowed down their EV pickup build-outs after initially embracing the body type. Tesla says that nearly two million people have paid $150 to “preorder” the Cybertruck, but it has yet to announce a price for the vehicle, and Musk sounded uncharacteristically daunted on Wednesday by how challenging its scale-up might be. Now we’ll see whether customer interest for the Cybertruck translates into actual demand — and whether America’s most famous electric automaker can produce, and sell, America’s most iconic type of vehicle.

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Robinson Meyer profile image

Robinson Meyer

Robinson is the founding executive editor of Heatmap. He was previously a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covered climate change, energy, and technology.

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Sparks

The Country’s Largest Power Markets Are Getting More Gas

Three companies are joining forces to add at least a gigawatt of new generation by 2029. The question is whether they can actually do it.

Matthew Zeitlin •
02/26/2025
Natural gas pipelines.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Two of the biggest electricity markets in the country — the 13-state PJM Interconnection, which spans the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest, and ERCOT, which covers nearly all of Texas — want more natural gas. Both are projecting immense increases in electricity demand thanks to data centers and electrification. And both have had bouts of market weirdness and dysfunction, with ERCOT experiencing spiky prices and even blackouts during extreme weather and PJM making enormous payouts largely to gas and coal operators to lock in their “capacity,” i.e. their ability to provide power when most needed.

Now a trio of companies, including the independent power producer NRG, the turbine manufacturer GE Vernova, and a subsidiary of the construction firm Kiewit Corporation, are teaming up with a plan to bring gas-powered plants to PJM and ERCOT, the companies announced today.

The three companies said that the new joint venture “will work to advance four projects totaling over 5 gigawatts” of natural gas combined cycle plants to the two power markets, with over a gigawatt coming by 2029. The companies said that they could eventually build 10 to 15 gigawatts “and expand to other areas across the U.S.”

So far, PJM and Texas’ call for new gas has been more widely heard than answered. The power producer Calpine said last year that it would look into developing more gas in PJM, but actual investment announcements have been scarce, although at least one gas plant scheduled to close has said it would stay open.

So far, across the country, planned new additions to the grid are still overwhelmingly solar and battery storage, according to the Energy Information Administration, whose data shows some 63 gigawatts of planned capacity scheduled to be added this year, with more than half being solar and over 80% being storage.

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Sparks

An Emergency Trump-Coded Appeal to Save the Hydrogen Tax Credit

Featuring China, fossil fuels, and data centers.

Emily Pontecorvo •
02/18/2025
The Capitol.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

As Republicans in Congress go hunting for ways to slash spending to carry out President Trump’s agenda, more than 100 energy businesses, trade groups, and advocacy organizations sent a letter to key House and Senate leaders on Tuesday requesting that one particular line item be spared: the hydrogen tax credit.

The tax credit “will serve as a catalyst to propel the United States to global energy dominance,” the letter argues, “while advancing American competitiveness in energy technologies that our adversaries are actively pursuing.” The Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association organized the letter, which features signatures from the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Clean Energy Buyers Association, and numerous hydrogen, industrial gas, and chemical companies, among many others. Three out of the seven regional clean hydrogen hubs — the Mid-Atlantic, Heartland, and Pacific Northwest hubs — are also listed.

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Sparks

Why Your Car Insurance Bill Is Making Renewables More Expensive

Core inflation is up, meaning that interest rates are unlikely to go down anytime soon.

Matthew Zeitlin •
02/12/2025
Wind turbines being built.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Fed on Wednesday issued a report showing substantial increases in the price of eggs, used cars, and auto insurance — data that could spell bad news for the renewables economy.

Though some of those factors had already been widely reported on, the overall rise in prices exceeded analysts’ expectations. With overall inflation still elevated — reaching an annual rate of 3%, while “core” inflation, stripping out food and energy, rose to 3.3%, after an unexpectedly sharp 0.4% jump in January alone — any prospect of substantial interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve has dwindled even further.

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