> Tesla's EV trucks need to deal the same hard kick to diesel trucks that they did to cars
That won't happen until they design a normal truck. The Lightning sold more than the CT and it still ended up getting canceled(ish). It isn't going to be Tesla that does it, it will probably be someone else, and the driving factor is battery capacity. We've got a ways to go yet. It would help to have 400+ kWh batteries and megawatt chargers.
That's why I said (ish). I agree, it's predominantly an EV. I hope they backpedal on the decision a bit and offer both an EREV and a regular EV at the same time. I'm quite happy with my Lightning and will buy another, but I'm not super interested in the EREV as it just adds expense, complexity, and maintenance requirements without offering me much additional functionality for my use case.
The whole point is to sell more cars, the EREV Lightning will not be cheaper to produce or sell.
At current prices, the standard range battery in a Lightning (which is nominally about 107kWh or so) should cost under $10K. They will not be able to shrink the battery enough to offset the cost of putting in an engine and generator. For one, they have to stay competitive with the Dodge EREV pickup, which will have a ~90kWh battery.
My guess is they leave out one or two modules from the standard range pack and price the truck starting at $70K. They won't make a ton of money, but they might be able to get a nice boost in volume to make up for it.
That won't happen until they design a normal truck. The Lightning sold more than the CT and it still ended up getting canceled(ish). It isn't going to be Tesla that does it, it will probably be someone else, and the driving factor is battery capacity. We've got a ways to go yet. It would help to have 400+ kWh batteries and megawatt chargers.