When a photo of a bare Tesla Cybertruck body popped up online a few days ago many said that its rear was the result of a single-piece casting possibly created in the new 9,000-ton Giga press. However, now that Sandy Munro of Munro Live has had a look at the photo, he says that it’s certainly not cast as a single piece and that it was most likely assembled from five individual cast pieces.
Sandy also says that Tesla probably hasn’t set up its new press manufactured by Italy’s IDRA Group. It was delivered to Tesla last month, but between then and when the photo surfaced, Sandy says there wouldn’t have been enough time for the press to be made operational.
The five pieces were most likely cast in the traditional sand casting technique, but this will most likely be changed for the finished production version, which should take advantage of the new Giga press and feature fewer larger castings.
The body in the photo is a prototype, according to Sandy, and it may not even be assembled into a complete vehicle. He says it could have been done just to make sure all the pieces fit together correctly, especially since there appear to be areas where aluminum will have to be welded (or fixed to) stainless steel, a potential source of problems.
There are apparently lots of visible welds and this to Sandy strongly suggests that this body is a prototype. Tesla is clearly preparing to put the Cybertruck into production, but it’s not clear from this photo how advanced development of the model actually is – production is supposed to start around six months from now at the Giga Texas facility near Austin.
Tesla has already begun tooling for Cybertruck production in Texas, where it’s also building an on-site battery factory to supply enough packs needed to meet Cybertruck production needs. The manufacturer says it plans to start production around the middle of next year, but it will take until the end of the year or early in 2024 for production to ramp up sufficiently in order to start filling in its 1.6-million pre-orders for the electric pickup.