Yahoo Finance autos reporter Pras Subramanian joins the Live show to examine Tesla's schedule to start manufacturing on the Cybertruck, as well as EV maker Canoo's plans to fundraise $52.5 million in discounted shares sale.

Video Transcript

JARED BLIKRE: Elon Musk first unveiled Tesla's Cybertruck, window smashing and all, more than three years ago. And the EV maker says it will finally start building the vehicle by the end of this year, 2023. Senior auto reporter Pras Subramanian is here with the details. Pras

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah. You know, Jared, we saw last earnings release with Tesla talk about how we're going to see this truck go into production mid-2024, 2023, this year, volume production, beginning of next year. And they said that it would add considerably to the bottom line, right? So this is a big release for them, supposedly on track for a two-year delay, three-year delay, right?

But I think there's some other question marks here with this truck, you know. Big nice piece in "The New York Times" about how the stainless steel construction that they want to use for this truck is actually not that conducive for kind of mass production because it's hard to work with that material. It's difficult to weld. It's heavier. It can't be stamped or molded like regular steel parts, also bad for safety, right? Because it's not it-- It can't crumple like most other types of metal. So kind of a problem here. You know, and what was the last car that was a stainless steel?

- The DeLorean

JARED BLIKRE: The DeLorean, exactly. We all know where that went. But I think the bigger point is aside from production issues, things like that, the design is so polarizing. Are people going to actually buy this truck versus the Rivian versus the Lightning versus the Silverado that's going to come out soon? So I think that, for me, is the big question, is this thing going to be a mass market car when it just looks so out there?

- It is the perfect embodiment of Elon Musk-- polarizing, sharp edges. We shall see. All right, shares of Canoo sinking today on news that the EV startup is trying to raise some cash by selling discounted shares. What's the latest here?

JARED BLIKRE: I mean, Canoo has just been in the news for all the wrong reasons with money problems, a big kind of raise here, 100-- up to $100 million-- 100 million new shares, I'm sorry, very heavily dilutive to current shareholders. You're not happy about that. The companies have been struggling to get their one sort of product off the ground, this delivery van you're seeing right here.

They have a big deal with Amazon, about almost 5,000 units that they want to sell to them. But the question is, can they have enough money to build these things, then enough runway to continue and survive? I think that's the problem. I think the actual vehicle, I've seen it in the flesh. It actually is pretty interesting, a very cab forward, a lot of space inside that cab there, supposedly autonomous, things like that.

But can they get this thing off the ground? How much is going to cost to make? What are your margins going to be? These are the big questions that you ask for any EV company, let alone Canoo, which has been kind of struggling for a while now.

JARED BLIKRE: Yeah, it looks like they're at least sweetening the deal with those stock warrants. But any time a company is trying to sell stock and they've got to add a sweetener to it, a little bit wary here. Thank you for that, Pras Subramanian.