It’s just show and tell for Elon Musk’s biggest, boldest and baddest - right hand drive is in the ‘too hard’ basket.

FRESH comment from Tesla chief executive Elon Musk about why his opus, the Cybertruck, won’t be built in right hand drive any time soon, if ever, has been shared as the make prepares to tour the angular outlier model through New Zealand.

Musk has informed investors that even potential for the stainless steel bodied utility to hit any country outside of North America, the only lace it is currently sold, will not be considered feasible for at least another year, at the earliest.

That’s because the Cybertruck would require design changes to meet international standards.

In current state, the model is only engineered to meet North American motor-vehicle regulations, which are generally not as stringent as Europe's standards.

A respected motoring website in Australia, where the display vehicle bound for NZ is currently touring, says that even if a version is created for Europe and China, there is no guarantee the Cybertruck would be manufactured in right-hand drive for sale in our part of the world, because that will require even more engineering and expense.

The drive.com.au site has been keeping close tabs on Cypertruck and its RHD and Australasian potential. It was first to report that the left-hook display vehicle was coming here. It also exclusively reported late last year there were no immediate plans for a right-hand-drive Cybertruck, nor to re-tool its Texas factory to produce vehicles in this configuration.

It also reported comment yesterday attributed to Musk, made at an investor call, in which he made clear Tesla might be able to certify the model for other left hand drive markets “sometime next year (2025), but for sure this year it’s just North America.”

“We did design the car to North American requirements, because if you start going with the superset of all international requirements, it forces a lot of constraints on Cybertruck that would make the product, frankly, worse.

“I think we’ll need to make a special version that is, for example, China-compliant or Europe-compliant, but it doesn’t really make sense to add that complexity until we’ve achieved higher-volume production on Cybertruck.”

Musk has reportedly said Cybertruck production would need to ramp up – and its price reduced through manufacturing efficiencies – before a global export plan can be considered.

“There’s still a lot of work to do on cost-down for the Cybertruck ... To go from prototype to production is 100 times harder, and once you reach production, to improve the cost of goods by 20 per cent, is harder than reaching production in the first place,” Musk said.

“It's mega pain. And to be frank, it's not the 'funnest' (sic) job in the world.”

In addition to being the world’s most talked-about and identifiable vehicle of the moment, Cybertruck has also been arguably the most globally controversial, with numerous reports of faults and failures since its much delayed release finally occurred.

The model has been in NZ already, when Musk ran late development trials here, mainly at the Southern Hemisphere Proving Grounds, a cold weather testing area between Queenstown and Wanaka. 

That Tesla has yet to share a schedule for the NZ tour is not unusual; the company is famously close-lipped since it dropped its communications department years ago. The vehicle is thought to currently be in Canberra, Australia, and is reported to be coming here in a matter of weeks.