Motorcycle (and backpacking) camper here, so right there are my credentials for being able to shove a camping loadout into a vehicle.
For $3000, you can buy an entire high end backpacking setup, and also be able to use it without the presence of your stupid truck. And when I say entire, I mean it: A nice free standing tent you could probably pitch inside the truck bed if you had some creativity and really wanted to, a premium cot or inflatable pad, very competent sleeping bag, backpack, stove, water filter, hiking poles, a chair, a nice knife, the whole lot.
With change left over. I just added up the full list prices of everything in my core loadout and you could buy it all (including the backpack, which you don't need for truck camping) for $1418.82.
Yeah, even a high-quality truck or SUV compatible tent is a minor fraction of the cost here. I could walk into an REI with $3,000.00 and end up with an incredible kit of camping gear. This is highway robbery.
I’m pretty sure what happened is that they were essentially pitching a shell for the back of the truck. And if it’s rigid and made of metal and maybe folded down to act as a cover while driving, fine. That’d still be a lot more than what the average truck/SUV convertible will cost. But it’s Tesla so it’s expected.
But then they changed to this BS and couldn’t reduce the price without recognizing the drop in expectation so here we are.
This requires a cybertruck. And there's a whole class of people that already have crossbars on their cars. I priced out a Thule kit for my wagon and it was about 2400 bucks for the whole kit including the mounting hardware for my roof rails. And it's modular, and will work on any vehicle.
free standing tent you could probably pitch inside the truck bed if you had some creativity and really wanted to
The cyber truck bed is ~72x51(I have also seen 49"). Most 2 person tents are 50-54x78-88. I couldn't find the bed length with the tailgate down, but the interior height with the cover closed is about 20", so we can assume the available length would be over 90". The other issue is most 2 person tents are side opening and getting out would be a bother, but a head or foot opening tent could totally work.
You could squeeze in a very nice 2 person head opening tent and spend under $800 easily, you can have a nice tent for $250. A custom 4 season tent is still only about $1,000.
But truck bed tents do exist, and those would fit easily and are under $500 all day.
Hell, for 3k you could hire someone to haul a tent out to you. Maybe even air drop the damn thing to you.
The self-assembling tent I used to use was only $50.