San Luis Potosí, Mexico – Deliveries of the Tesla Cybertruck won’t begin before late 2021 but, with a reserve price of just US $100, the California company has already received pre-orders for more than 250,000 units. It turns out 15 of these come from Adrián Esper Cárdenas, the mayor of Ciudad Valles in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, who has confirmed the $1,500 deposit is funded with his own money.
The Cybertruck comes with an industry-standard 6.5-foot pickup bed and a 3,500-pound cargo capacity, and it’s available with either a single-motor / rear-wheel-drive setup, a dual-motor / all-wheel-drive setup, or a tri-motor / all-wheel-drive arrangement. For off-roading, it features a 35-degree approach angle, 28-degree departure angle, and it can tow up to 14,000 pounds. And since this is an EV truck with an air suspension, electric outlets and air lines for power tools are literally built into the package.
“I reserved 10 two-motor and five three-motor models,” Adrián Esper Cárdenas commented during a press conference. “We’ll take a photo and send it to Elon Musk, to see if he gives us a discount.”
Esper said he did not consult his constituents about the purchase but said his decision to buy the electric vehicles for police, trash collection and other uses was “common sense.”
“It’s not about speed, because we don’t want speed. What we’re looking for is torque in order to haul water pipes, the garbage trailers. They’ll have twice the loads of a normal truck,” he said.
Although the models Esper ordered come with price tags of $49,900 and $69,900, he claimed they would generate savings as high as 24 million pesos ($1.2 million) annually, since the zero-emission trucks require little maintenance and no gasoline to operate.
“The important thing is that regardless of the fact that the cost can be a little high, the benefit is that if you don’t have to perform maintenance or put gas in them, you’ll be able to save 24 million pesos a year, and with that you’ve paid back half of the investment,” the mayor added.
Sources: motor1.com • businessinsider.com