We all know the Cybertruck is a monumental failure. By now, that point has been hammered home hard. But there is a surprise twist to the Cybertruck tale, because it seems like old Elon is up to his usual tricks in a desperate attempt to save this hot mess. Well, not so much “save” — the Cybertruck is far from saveable. No, this is about saving face. After all, the Cybertruck wasn’t just Musk’s pet project. It was the first time he truly took control and micromanaged Tesla. He knows that the Cybertruck is a reflection of himself, not just as a CEO, but as a person. He also knows he can’t extinguish this trash fire, but maybe he can find a way to soften the flames and regrow his eyebrows.
This all started with the latest Cybertruck sales figures, and guess what? They are bad…
It turns out Tesla has only sold 16,000 Cybertrucks so far this year (Q1 — Q3), meaning they are on track to sell about 20,000 by the end of the year. That might sound generally okay, but don’t forget that by now, Tesla planned on producing and selling 250,000 units per year. In other words, annual Cybertruck sales are about 92% lower than expected…
Last year, Tesla sold 39,000 Cybertrucks. They expected to sell 50,000, indicating that even this “boom” was 22% off the mark. But this means sales have roughly halved since last year! That is an unprecedented fall-off for a vehicle that has been on the market for less than two years.
This means that Tesla has only sold around 60,000 Cybertrucks over a nearly two-year period.
Okay, this alone sounds bad, but then there is the context of the Cybertruck backlog.
At its peak earlier this year, Tesla had 10,000 unsold Cybertrucks, and that was after they had paused production to downscale it! That is the equivalent of $800 million of product that Tesla can’t shift. Now, there has been no news as to whether this backlog has been sold, but reports suggest Tesla is still sitting on a huge amount of Cybertruck inventory.
In other words, 62.5% of Cybertruck sales this year could have been fulfilled by excess production from last year. That should tell you just how badly Cybertruck sales have flopped.
This inventory issue is then made even funnier by the fact that Musk claimed Tesla had a million reservations for the Cybertruck, yet Cybertruck inventory started to pile up after delivering less than 40,000 units. So, either that was a bare-faced lie to boost Tesla’s value, which would be highly illegal, or the Cybertruck was so horrifically bad that over 96% of reservation holders cancelled…
Then there is the context of the wider EV market.
Firstly, EV sales in the US are up 29.6% year over year. So, in order to keep up with the market alone, Cybertruck sales should have increased by nearly a third, not dropped by half like they have. As such, the effective drop in demand for the Cybertruck is more like 80%!
And then you look at the competition. Rivian, whose R1S and R1T are effectively both competitors to the Cybertruck, sold 51,579 units in 2024, meaning they sold nearly as many units as the Cybertruck has in two years in just one. Ford has sold 23,024 F-150 Lightnings so far in the first half of this year and has sold 10,000 more units in Q3. As such, the F150 Lightning is on track to outsell the Cybertruck 2:1.
But this is the really important part. While both Ford and Rivian have had to revise down their planned sales of their electric trucks, they have both hit their initial planned sales figures. As such, they haven’t had to waste much time and money building out capacity that didn’t get used.
That isn’t true for the Cybertruck. Musk was trying to rapidly ramp up production to 250,000 units per year. So, the fact that the real-terms production rate (i.e., one that clears the backlog before demand totally dries up) is currently only about 10,000 units per year is shocking! That means Tesla is only utilising 4% of the production capacity they invested in and has wasted hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars either preparing to build out or building out unnecessary production capacity.
This is a problem because Tesla is never going to see a return on the Cybertruck. The development of this fridge on wheels cost Tesla (conservatively) over $2 billion. Tesla’s overall operating profit is just 2%, meaning they are only making about $1,600 per Cybertruck. That means Tesla has only made about $96 million from the Cybertruck so far and is set to make roughly $32 million from it this year. This means that if Cybertruck demand somehow stays at approximately 20,000 units per year, it would take Tesla over 62 years to break even on its Cybertruck investment!
Okay, so the point was hammered home yet again. The Cybertruck is possibly the worst sales flop in automotive history.
But what if I told you that Musk seems to have artificially inflated this year’s Cybertruck sales?
Electrek has reported that Musk’s SpaceX and xAI have been buying Cybertrucks from Tesla by the literal truckload. In fact, they suggest that Musk could have already sold thousands of Cybertrucks to his own companies and that these “sales” are expected to continue.
So, how many of those 16,000 sales were actually Musk buying his own product? Electrek’s report suggests that anywhere from 5% to 15% of Cybertruck sales could have been artificial self-purchases.
Now, I can already hear the Musk lovers saying it makes sense for SpaceX and xAI to buy these vehicles, as these companies are currently undergoing huge construction projects. But, if that is the case, why didn’t they buy them back in May when inventory was piling up to embarrassing levels?
These construction projects were ongoing back then, and it was clear the Cybertruck production line had enough surplus to supply the vehicles they needed. Do you think they didn’t take them then because the Cybertruck is a terrible commercial vehicle that has no real use in an actual construction site, thanks to its tiny bed, fragile build, horrific off-road ability and abysmal range and charge speeds?
Do you think that means SpaceX and xAI have been forced into buying millions of dollars’ worth of Cybertrucks they have no need for?
It just looks like Musk has used the huge amount of venture capital floating around in his private companies to artificially make Tesla’s biggest mistake not seem quite so horrific.
But why does that matter?
As I said at the beginning, the Cybertruck isn’t just a product. We know Musk micromanaged the Cybertruck from inception. As such, it is a direct reflection of Musk. His arrogance, his ignorance, his authoritarian inability to listen to experts, his flagrant disregard for safety, his prioritising aesthetics over substance, his constant failed promises, his dystopian idea of the future and his constant manipulation of Tesla’s stock are written all over the Cybertruck. The Cybertruck has failed so hard because Musk had too much control. Its sales flop isn’t just a rejection of the Cybertruck but of Musk too. And now, he is trying to soften that painful blow to his ego, to his brand image, and to the mythology that props up the value of his empire by obviously inflating Cybertruck sales. How pathetic.
We are lucky because Tesla is a public company, and we can see this at play. For example, this is why we have access to Cybertruck sales figures and know the level of control Musk has within the company. But with his private companies, like SpaceX and xAI, we don’t get this critical information.
This is why the Cybertruck matters. It is emblematic of what happens when Musk gets the level of control he wants. So, if he has fucked up this dramatically with the Cybertruck, how badly is he messing things up behind the scenes at xAI and SpaceX, where he is less scrutinised?
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Sources: BI, The Verge, Electrek, Will Lockett, Inside EVs, Jalopnik, Inside EVs, Inside EVs, Will Lockett