Yahoo Finance’s Julie Hyman and Brian Sozzi discuss Tesla’s Cybertruck delay until 2023 and how dogecoin is surging after Elon Musk begins accepting the crypto for some merchandise.
Video Transcript
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JULIE HYMAN: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. Want to bring you some other movers that we are watching this morning besides of course, The Big Bang. Got to talk about Tesla here for a moment on two fronts. Let’s start with the Cybertruck, shall we, because the company apparently has pushed back production of the Cybertruck to the first quarter of 2023. This is according to a report by Reuters.
The Cybertruck is already something of a punch line, Brian Sozzi, because when it was introduced–
BRIAN SOZZI: Yes.
JULIE HYMAN: –Let’s say there were some problems with even the demo version of the thing. And we’re seeing a lot of other truck makers come out and actually produce electric trucks. So this is maybe another speed bump for Tesla.
BRIAN SOZZI: No, I saw what you did there, Julie. No, I’m actually starting to think that maybe the Cybertruck just doesn’t even come to market, and we just saw a couple of prototypes created by Tesla and Elon Musk to drive excitement around the company’s car portfolio, which clearly, they do a heck of a lot better getting cars out the gate than these large trucks that are really shaped like giant squares or cubes going down the road. And if it does come to market, and when it does, should it come to market, what does it even look like? I think the team over at Tesla is still trying to get the design right, to the point where they can make these trucks and actually make money off it. And now, as they’re trying to figure this stuff out, you’ll have Ford coming out here, pumping out electric F-150s, all electric, at some point this year, and really, starting to establish a marketplace.
JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, and you have Rivian making trucks. Yeah, they’re making fewer than they had initially hoped to, but they’re actually making and selling them. So that’s two in the column versus Tesla with none. Of course something that Tesla’s Elon Musk is very good at producing is tweets, and he produced another winner last night, where he said that the company would be accepting Dogecoin for its merchandise– not the cars itself, I don’t believe, but just like gear schwag around Tesla, right. This is something the company had teased before, but I guess it’s actually doing it now. And so we’re seeing a bump in prices of Doge on that headline.
BRIAN SOZZI: I think you saw a little Elon Musk trying to flex to start off of the year. We’ve seen a lot of weakness in cryptocurrencies the past month and a half. So it could be Elon trying to, I think, remind a lot of folks out there that he is a market mover in all things crypto, coming out here, and tweeting what he did on Dogecoin– Dogecoin reacting positively. But we were joking a little bit about this in our Slack channels, Julie, this morning. I’m over these tweets from Elon Musk. I just want to focus on the Tesla business, trying to top really what was a strong 2021 for him. You have to give a tip of the hat to Elon Musk and what they achieved last year.
JULIE HYMAN: Yes for sure. So we’ll see if he gets the head down, and gets that Cybertruck rolling.
