US automaker Tesla Inc on Saturday announced that its first electric pickup — a slick-looking silver Cybertruck — had rolled off the assembly line at its huge plant near Austin, Texas.
“First Cybertruck built at Giga Texas!” says a tweet from the company, accompanied by a photo of the vehicle amid a sea of helmeted and yellow-vested Tesla workers.
Elon Musk, who owns both Tesla and Twitter Inc, reposted the tweet with the comment “Congrats Tesla Team.”
Photo: AFP
Tesla did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment on Saturday.
The company had promised in April that it would be rolling out the first Cybertrucks before the end of the year. Plans for the vehicle, with its silvery, tortoise-like shape and unusual angles, were first announced in November 2019.
Its original introduction went awry when Musk urged an employee to strike one of the prototype’s windows with a hunk of steel to show its solidity. The window broke — drawing a laugh and a curse word from Musk — as did a second window on an ensuing attempt.
Yet within two days, Tesla said it had received nearly 150,000 advance orders.
In May, Musk said the company hoped to build 250,000 of the trucks a year — a number he said could eventually double, given a relatively accessible price tag.
Tesla will be making three models of the Cybertruck, a vehicle that can accelerate from zero to 60 miles per hour (96.56kph) in less than three seconds. The basic model is to cost US$39,900 and offer a 400km range between charges; the top-line truck is to have twice that range and sell for US$69,900.
Separately, Twitter has lost roughly half of its advertising revenue, Musk said on Saturday.
“We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50 percent drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load,” the billionaire said in a post, responding to a user who was giving suggestions on financing for the social media platform.
“Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else,” he added, without further elaboration.
Insider Intelligence has reported that Twitter was set to earn less than US$3 billion this year, down one-third from last year. Changes instituted by Musk since his takeover of Twitter in October last year have turned off users and advertisers alike.
Twitter is thought to have around 200 million regular users, but it has suffered repeated technical failures since Musk bought the platform and sacked thousands of staff.
Semiconductor business between Taiwan and the US is a “win-win” model for both sides given the high level of complementarity, the government said yesterday responding to tariff threats from US President Donald Trump. Home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), Taiwan is a key link in the global technology supply chain for companies such as Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp. Trump said on Monday he plans to impose tariffs on imported chips, pharmaceuticals and steel in an effort to get the producers to make them in the US. “Taiwan and the US semiconductor and other technology industries
SMALL AND EFFICIENT: The Chinese AI app’s initial success has spurred worries in the US that its tech giants’ massive AI spending needs re-evaluation, a market strategist said Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek’s (深度求索) eponymous AI assistant rocketed to the top of Apple Inc’s iPhone download charts, stirring doubts in Silicon Valley about the strength of the US’ technological dominance. The app’s underlying AI model is widely seen as competitive with OpenAI and Meta Platforms Inc’s latest. Its claim that it cost much less to train and develop triggered share moves across Asia’s supply chain. Chinese tech firms linked to DeepSeek, such as Iflytek Co (科大訊飛), surged yesterday, while chipmaking tool makers like Advantest Corp slumped on the potential threat to demand for Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators. US stock
The US Federal Reserve is expected to announce a pause in rate cuts on Wednesday, as policymakers look to continue tackling inflation under close and vocal scrutiny from US President Donald Trump. The Fed cut its key lending rate by a full percentage point in the final four months of last year and indicated it would move more cautiously going forward amid an uptick in inflation away from its long-term target of 2 percent. “I think they will do nothing, and I think they should do nothing,” Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis former president Jim Bullard said. “I think the
Cryptocurrencies gave a lukewarm reception to US President Donald Trump’s first policy moves on digital assets, notching small gains after he commissioned a report on regulation and a crypto reserve. Bitcoin has been broadly steady since Trump took office on Monday and was trading at about US$105,000 yesterday as some of the euphoria around a hoped-for revolution in cryptocurrency regulation ebbed. Smaller cryptocurrency ether has likewise had a fairly steady week, although was up 5 percent in the Asia day to US$3,420. Bitcoin had been one of the most spectacular “Trump trades” in financial markets, gaining 50 percent to break above US$100,000 and
RSS