The Tesla Cybertruck was supposed to be a big seller when it went on sale a few years back, according to CEO Elon Musk. The space-age-designed, stainless-steel-bodied electric pickup garnered an incredible 200,000 refundable pre-orders within the first five days of its unveiling in late 2019, with that number reportedly growing to over 1.2 million pre-orders by mid-2021.
After repeated delays, the Cybertruck finally went into production in late 2023, and sales haven’t exactly kept up with expectations. It was the fifth-best-selling EV in America in 2024, garnering nearly 39,000 sales, according to Cox Automotive estimates. In 2025, that number plunged by nearly 50% in 2025 to just over 20,000 units.
Those figures fall far short of Musk’s predictions. In late 2023, right before the Cybertruck went on sale, he told investors the Cybertruck would be selling at more than ten times what it actually did in 2025:
“If you say, ‘well, where will things end up?’ I think we’ll end up with roughly a quarter-million Cybertrucks a year. And I don’t think we’re going to reach that output rate next year. I think we’ll probably reach it sometime in 2025. That’s my best guess.”
Apparently, things are even worse than they seem for Cybertruck sales. According to sales data from S&P Global Mobility seen by Bloomberg, it seems nearly 20% of the Cybertrucks sold through the last three months of 2025 were simply sold to other companies also controlled by Musk. From the report:
SpaceX, the Musk-led rocket and satellite maker, accounted for 1,279 — or more than 18% — of the 7,071 Cybertrucks registered in the US during the fourth quarter, according to registration data that S&P Global Mobility provided to Bloomberg News. The billionaire’s other ventures acquired another 60 vehicles during those months.
That means almost one in every five Cybertrucks registered during the period were delivered from one part of Musk’s sprawling business empire to another. And the purchases, likely exceeding $100 million in value, have continued into this year.
In addition to SpaceX, Bloomberg says Cybertrucks were also sold to xAi, the Boring Company, and Neuralink, all also Musk-led companies. While it’s not clear whether these companies needed these trucks, I can sort of see why SpaceX and the Boring Co. would have some uses for them. But xAi and Neuralink? I can’t imagine those examples are doing anything more than just sitting in parking lots or being driven back and forth to work by employees.
There are a few reasons why Cybertruck sales haven’t reached the heights Tesla expected. For one, it came out two years later than it was originally supposed to, at a price more than double than originally promised (the first Cybertrucks were nearly $100,000, versus a promised sub-$40,000 base price). Pair that with the truck’s polarizing design and Musk’s divisive involvement in federal government affairs last year, and it’s easy to see why some buyers might’ve been turned off.
There’s also the greater flattening of EV sales as a whole in America, in part due to the $7,500 federal tax credit ending back in September. It’s not like the Cybertruck is the only electric truck that’s suffering. Sales of what was formerly the most popular battery-powered pickup, the F-150 Lightning, fell by 60 percent in Q4 before Ford took it out of production permanently in December. Meanwhile, the Chevy Silverado EV, its closest competitor, managed to scrape up just 2,756 sales through the entirety of 2025. Sales of the Rivian R1T fell by 33% in 2025 to just 7,416 units, according to Cox Automotive.
Musk essentially just moving his products from one of his companies to another to possibly inflate sales numbers is objectively pretty funny, and comes at a time when Tesla isn’t doing as well as it used to. The company’s sales peaked in 2023 at 1.81 million deliveries, then fell to 1.78 million in 2024 and 1.63 million in 2025. It’s been overtaken by Chinese carmaker BYD as the world’s largest carmaker, and while sales were up slightly in the first quarter of 2026, they still fell short of analyst expectations.
How does Tesla plan to turn things around? If you believe Musk, it’ll be humanoid robots and autonomous robotaxis that will push the company’s value to the next level. But, as Bloomberg points out, those things are still years away from becoming profitable arms of the business. So in the near term, Tesla still needs to sell cars. In addition to swapping Cybertrucks between Musk-led companies, the CEO also proposed targeting more fleet sales:
“There’s obviously a market there for cargo delivery,” he said in January during a Tesla earnings call. “There’s a lot of cargo that needs to move locally within a city, and an autonomous Cybertruck could be very useful for that.”
To boost sales in other parts of the lineup, Tesla revealed cheaper versions of the aging Model 3 and Model Y back in October. And according to another report released last week, the company is looking into building an entry-level, $25,000 EV that Musk himself once called “silly” and “pointless,” reportedly due to the lagging adoption of autonomous vehicles in some worldwide markets.
Seeing as how affordability is at the front of everyone’s minds these days, introducing a back-to-basics, entry-level car that people can actually afford seems like a smart move. But Tesla is known for reversing plans and years-long delays (that Roadster is coming any day now), so it’s tough to say right now whether the company can jumpstart sales in a meaningful way.
Top graphic image: DepositPhotos.com
“Get Your Ass To Mars”
“But xAi and Neuralink? I can’t imagine those examples are doing anything more than just sitting in parking lots or being driven back and forth to work by employees.”
My imagination makes them criminally insane AI beta platforms that escape the parking lot to autonomously hunt cyclists, pedestrians, children and pets.
That’s a shame. 10 years ago Tesla was cutting edge. Now they just make mediocre EVs with considerably sketchy build quality.
Elon is well on his way to making another post from The Onion come true–in this case, the one where his neighbors are complaining about all the dead Cybertrucks parked on his front lawn….
https://theonion.com/elon-musk-s-neighbors-fed-up-with-eyesore-yard-covered-1851446594/
Elon and our president are the epitomes of “too big to fail”. You’ve never seen either them fall down any stairs because if they ever did, they’d defy gravity and fall up them
The quarter million a year idea was always crazy, but it’s especially nuts considering that the iteration of the cyberpunk/vaporwave aesthetic fad this was designed within was pretty much over by the time the thing was announced!
I would have walked out at that moment. Shame on anyone who bought into that delusion.
Remember when getting a company car was a huge perk?
OK, but which sucker got stuck with the other 80% of CyBerTruKs?
People who believed the PrOpaGanDa?
“There’s a lot of cargo that needs to move locally within a city, and an autonomous Cybertruck could be very useful for that.”
This isn’t actually wrong, but surely a vehicle that was optimized for the task would better fit the bill. Thinking of you, Rivian Amazon van.
Yeah the CyberTruck is not built for this use case, and is either too small, or too large to fill this need. For something like a grocery or food delivery vehicle, it’s too tall, and hard to navigate tight city spaces. For last mile delivery it’s too small to carry enough cargo to make it worthwhile.
The only common use cases I can think of for something with that kind of storage volume are things like medical couriers, pastry deliveries, floral deliveries, and similar. But those all need climate controlled cargo space and they certainly don’t need a near 6 figure vehicle to do it.
The actual running gear of the CT would lend itself very well to a box van. The DBW steering means any seating position or just fully autonomous.
That’s the thing that I find so uniquely aggrivating about the CT. There are things that are actually pretty clever or actually good (credit where it’s due) about the mechanicals but the truck is so utterly compromized because it “had” to look the way it does.
A company willing to be a little less “based” and a little more ruthless in seeking new markets would probably have engineered a van or SUV body for the CT frame already.
The CyberTruck is just into Looksmaxxing, you wouldn’t understand because you’re a beta sigma jestergooning cuck. Or whatever the hell buzzwords those “Alpha Bros” use.
The big problem I see with it is he’s leaning more on it from an “autonomous” point of view where he sees Tesla’s autopilot as the main benefit and the CT is just the only Tesla that could carry cargo.
But cargo deliveries within a city are basically the worst case scenario for autonomous driving. The routes are constantly changing, there are a ton of unpredictable variables, and you still need someone on board to unload the cargo at the right place, so there’s no labor savings even if you can get the autonomy to work.
Tesla has some great tech, to be sure, but if you’re constantly trying to sell it on the autonomy bit you’re not going to get far.
I see a perfect use case for the Tesla robot, nothing could possibly go wrong… /s
It’s like the AI bubble economy, just money being shuffled around 4 companies and stock prices going up.
If you take a dollar from your left pocket and put it in your right pocket, you don’t suddenly have two dollars.
But according to the markets, you do. Line must go up!
But if you take a dollar from your left pocket, put it in your right pocket, and you make an AI bot that says you have $5 in your pockets then your company is worth $42 billion.
You do if your accountant is creative enough!
Is this related to the political action committees buying loads of politicians’ books to make them “best sellers”??
That’s not creative enough. You gotta place your people in the companies and change “best selling list” into “what I like list”. For example the New York Times list is not 100% based on sale #’s.
Or publishers giving multimillion dollar advances to politicians to write books that immediately get dumped into Ollie’s discount stores
Can’t these just go away already. And take Trump’s Himmler while we’re at it. Goose stepping POS.
Even my teenage kids know these rolling dumpsters are ugly. They call them out every time we see one. And I didn’t even have to point out how garbage they are. When you’ve lost the kids, you’re product is doomed. They ridicule them. They’re not cool. And that doesn’t bode well.
Have you seen the two most recent Regular Car Reviews? Something tells me you’d be amused…
https://youtu.be/L3oO510dyVI?si=EmrJeWjHSwyXgZi6
https://youtu.be/txb79zMKFv4?si=Go6Yq79LZHmvzN3w
Clearly this means a rental car company is the logical next acquisition for Musk, because those are rookie numbers. Could easily get that to 40% or more that way
Honestly, I’m kind of surprised he hasn’t already done this. It would be a convenient way to “unload” unsold stock or use as an excuse to juice sales numbers. Line must go up!
The failure of the Cybertruck gives me at least a modicum of hope that our nation actually still has a maximum threshold for performative dipshittery.