The Cybertruck was supposed to make the F-150 obsolete. It wasn’t supposed to be boring, like a Ford or a Chevy. It was supposed to be “more truck than truck.” It turns out, people just wanted trucks that were trucks, and CEO Elon Musk announced on X earlier this morning is that the Cybertruck is dying.
I’m struck by this quote from the Cybertruck’s second unveiling in 2019, from Musk: “Trucks have been the same for a very long time, for basically 100 years.” It was meant as an insult. He then showed the front of a Ram 1500, a Ford F-150, and a Chevy Silverado with the badges off and said it was “hard to tell which is which.” That’s absolutely not true, and it turns out that in 100 years of making trucks, traditional truckmakers gained a decent sense of the market.
It’s going to be hard to write a eulogy for a vehicle whose meaning grew well beyond the actual truck itself. The Cybertruck, perversely, is this generation’s Hummer; an over-the-top expression of a particular worldview pregnant with so much cultural meaning that it’s impossible to see it through any lens than your own personal politics.
The jokes are already being made on X, with one poster requoting Musk by saying: “blue wave so big even the cybertruck got canceled.” The timing makes this kind of humor unavoidable, though it’s not entirely untrue. There’s a certain type of Silicon Valley psychosis that saw a quirk in electoral vote allocation as a dramatic shift in popular thought. The same people who believed online accounts with Roman bust avatars and ChatGPT-fueled misinterpretations of Thomas Hobbes were the new great philosophers embraced the Cybertruck.
If those are your politics, the Cybertruck, then, very much typifies a creatine-poisoned mindset. It would be comforting for a lot people to see the failure of the Cybertruck as the death of this whole era, supported by a dramatic legislative (and in Tesla’s home state, executive) shift. What this ignores is that basically no one has made electric trucks successful.
Elon Musk sold the Cybertruck as a vehicle that would be resistant to bullets, when really what he built was a truck that deflected objectivity. A sober, rational, completely neutral analysis would probably show that the Cybertruck is the best electric truck ever made. That, of course, is essentially impossible.
Tesla was clearly deluded when it thought it could sell 250,000 Cybertrucks in a year. In its best year, the Cybertruck couldn’t crack 50,000 sales, and it’ll be lucky to do half of that this year. It’s the rare example of the company, which popularized electric cars, getting high on its own supply.
It’s easy to say that the Cybertruck’s polarizing appearance or bro-ish, conservative aura killed the vehicle, but I think you could easily argue the opposite. Perhaps the in-your-face, high-T bravado is what helped it find any buyers at all. As a bit of a control group, look at the Ford F-150 Lightning. That truck was essentially an F-150 with an EV powertrain shoved in it. While it often outsold the Cybertruck, it barely did so, and not at any kind of volume that could support continued production.
In our first review of the vehicle, David pointed out that, while compromised, the truck was actually great:
It is a vehicle with a clearly-defined soul, and that, especially to car enthusiasts, is worth admiring. It did not succumb to the dreaded “death by a thousand cuts,” even if it will leave your forearm with a couple. It stands proudly with all of its flaws so that it can be what it set out to be: a Cybertruck.
And overall, it really is a compelling machine. I know I just spent this entire article talking about compromises (and I didn’t mention them all; the visor mirrors are hilariously tiny/useless, the automatic emergency braking is too aggressive, etc), but there are so many positive attributes worth mentioning, too. Obviously, there’s the ~600 horsepower that rockets the 6,600-pound vehicle from zero to 60 mph in about four seconds; the thing is quick.
But more surprising than that is the ride quality, which is simply phenomenal for a truck on 35-inch tires. The truck is quiet and rides like a magic carpet even over speed bumps; honestly, I can’t think of a vehicle that dispatches speed bumps as well as the Tesla Cybertruck — it’s remarkable.
Tesla and SpaceX lost nearly half a trillion dollars in value this week, as the hype around data centers and anything AI-related ran into the reality that these industries were likely to face some scrutiny, and it’s possible that this sudden midnight announcement from Musk is connected. My knock against the company has always been that Musk doesn’t want it to be a car company, but selling cars is still how Tesla makes money.
All of that capacity in Tesla’s Texas plant will have to be used for something and, according to Musk, it’ll be the Cybercab. Whether or not the Cybercab is another product for a market that doesn’t exist is another question, and one that only time will answer.
For all of Musk’s maybe playful shots at the F-150, the strangest outcome of all is that Ford has built a Tesla-inspired arm of the company to build EVs, and that vehicle’s first product will be the sub-$30,000 Ford Fathom. While Tesla made a big deal of rejecting what makes trucks like the F-150 so popular, Ford is embracing the efficiency and engineering advances that continue to make Teslas the best-selling electric cars not from a Chinese company.
Top photo: Ford/Tesla
I was never flat out against Tesla making a truck. I just hated most of what this thing was. They could have made a really nice EV truck that didn’t need to be marketed as a replacement of the big three. It could have been more of a competitor to something like the Tundra which is more of a lifestyle truck than anything. Elon is a dipshit though so that was never going to happen.
Rivian kinda already did that tho.
Yep and I think there’s room for others.
But, how will I now know who the dumbest, most insecure dude in each town is?
As long as RAM exists, you’ll know.
I look forward to a world with more Slate trucks and fewer Cyber trucks on the road.
In other news…hope to be around in 20 years to see the following Autopian morning headline for Shit Box Show Down:
2015 Tesla Cybertruck vs. 2014 Chevrolet Hummer EV – Which 7,000 lb EVs will you get a charge out of?
2015?
You are correct…2024 and 2025…need caffeine to kick in and edit to work correctly.
Septuagenarian me:
“Meh, I rather walk”
(Sadly) The hummer ev weighs around 9000 lbs, the cyberdumpster just under 7000 lbs.
Certainly ot will be interesting when both get to beater w/a heater age
ARE YOU SUFFERING LOW-T?
IS YOUR HAIR SLOWLY FALLING OUT?
DO YOU WANT ROCK HARD ERECTIONS AGAIN?
THEN BUY YOURSELF A CYBERTRUCK!
Oh wait, sorry, you can’t.
Don’t cry because all your hair is now in the sink. Literally me this morning. Then I read this.
Hopefully the CT serves as a lesson about hype, ego, manufacturing successes and failures, and small and loud voices versus quiet and disinterested masses.
It was never going to be as promised, and some saw that very early. But it also introduced interesting manufacturing choices, some of which have value.
Financially it’s a failure, but for the industry it’s a mixed bag.
Trucks that are bad at truck things are really just lifestyle accessories, and the Cybertruck is the ultimate example of that.
Oh darn. I can’t buy a vehicle that looks like some Roblox NFT. It’s proof “The Homer” would have had a market had it ever been actually built.
“Tesla was clearly deluded when it thought it could sell 250,000 Cybertrucks in a year. In its best year, the Cybertruck couldn’t crack 50,000 sales, and it’ll be lucky to do half of that this year.”
I think if it went on sale with the ~$40,000 basic RWD version that was initially announced AND Musk hadn’t lost his mind and gone Full MAGA, I think sales would have been a lot higher
And don’t underestimate the negative impact of Musk going Full MAGA. On more expensive vehicles like the Cybertruck, Model S or the Model X, image matters a lot more than on cheaper vehicles
And with Musk fully buying into Trump’s insanity, for MANY people (myself included), the image of Tesla and their products went from highly positive to highly negative.
When you have a positive image, you’ll have way more people willing to pay a premium for a given product and put up with the quirks.
When you lose that positive image and gain a dreadfully negative image, you have a public that at best, looks at the product like it can be anything else. And at worst, you have a large number of consumers that won’t touch your product no matter how good or cheap it is.
It’s really a shame because from a technical basis, it’s actually a very interesting vehicle.
Yep. I won’t even consider a Tesla with musk at the helm and neither will any of my friends. We all have electric cars.
Not a Tesla guy, and not my kind of truck, but I’m glad the Cybertruck was around. Always good to have a few wildcards to stir things up a bit.
I never really liked the looks, but I have to say, when I drove one, it was quite fun to drive. From an engineering standpoint, it’s quite an impressive vehicle, but engineering doesn’t sell cars. The drive by wire steering makes it a completely different driving experience from most everything else on the road… and I really enjoyed that it didn’t feel like anything else out there.
This means the used market value will drop enough soon that I can get a shitty one and modify it to have mechanical door handles and analog gauges (with a speedometer cable tapped from one of the drive units).
And a large, chrome column shifter lever that doesn’t do anything except make clunk sounds and communicate the drive mode over CANBUS like the roof buttons do, but which feels more romantic.
Elon is a big reason the Cybertruck failed. He’s a polarizing figure who loves screaming his…questionable…opinions into the void. He got involved in politics, siding with what was very clearly the losing side this time round. And he also made it very clear that the Cybertruck was his idea, that he’s the one who pushed for it to happen and came up with the specs it had to meet. It was already a polarizing design, but it was being shilled by a polarizing, out of touch trillionaire who has no concept of when to shut his mouth, or how to act like a decent human being, at all.
I think part of the Cybertruck hate isn’t just for the truck, or at least it isn’t for me. It’s because it represents Elon himself, and just how out of touch he is with the real world. They may as well have named it the “musk truck,” because that’s the association everyone makes. I’m not saying it would be a hit from any other automaker, but Rivian has proved that a unique EV truck will sell.
Very well put. I never took the Cybertruck seriously, and as Muskrat dove deeper off the deep end, that just worked against it. It became a joke of itself, Tesla, and especially Muskrat.
The media loved him until he teamed up with Trump. Then the media told the people he was now terrible and they followed their command…
I dunno, Musk wasn’t a popular figure even before his foray into the government. And people didn’t need the media to tell them he was awful, all you have to do is follow him on Twitter. I’ve known he was a shitbag since the whole cave-rescue submarine incident.
If there were doubt, the whole “salute” controversy (that he performed on more than one occasion) let the world discover what they I did Nat Zee before.
Correction: the media pumped him and Tesla up, then people saw who he was and how that reflected on Tesla products and walked/ran away. Plus the cybertruck is demonstrably ugly as F. Good god it makes the Aztec look aspirational.
Uh no. When he called the cave rescue specialist a pedo he blew his cover.
Man, it has been a long time since there has been such great news day after day.
Elon aside…these things were just annoying to have around.
They do not fit into parking spaces at our local markets…so they either take up several (typical) or squeeze in so tightly that the adjacent cars could not open their doors.
Not to mention…because you were forced to park close…the sharp edges came into play.
From what I can see…Tesla/SpaceX have been absorbing most of the recent production.
While the engineering was extraordinary…in my opinion…the effort was wasted on a Musk impulsive vanity project.
Unfortunately, these things will not rust away on blocks in someone’s back yard…they will stick around like atomic cockroaches until the batteries burst into flames.
Y’all are just brutal. My CT is hands down the best vehicle I’ve ever owned. It blows my Dodge hd out of the water in every aspect. Hauling is a dream, the ride is wonderful. The tech is off the charts.
All future Teslas (starting with cybercab and semi) are using the tech pioneered in this truck. It was truly a design and engineering marvel.
Too bad I’m a child of 80’s sci-fi and love the look. I guess that makes me an idiot with no critical thinking skills ????.
It’s a shame so many folks are judgemental of others like these comments show.
Personally, I think my BRZ is beautiful, and every Porsche ever made is hideous. Don’t see me going around making fun of folks for paying obscene money for those, well over the cost of a CT no less.
This is no different than being a Chevy/Ford/Dodge guy and bagging on the others. They are truly all horrible, overpriced vehicles from a rational standpoint. At least the CT is something new and far more advanced. It tries new things, changes perceptions (to those with open minds) and will convince anyone who gives it a chance that the existing overpriced trucks truly are crap in comparison.
Tesla 100% should have done a “normal” pickup beside the CT with the same tech, biggest f up they’ve ever done. But that would have sated the masses while still showing them how bad current trucks really are.
In my view, the problem isn’t that the CT isn’t a great vehicle. Personally I think it is… even in terms of style.
I think the biggest problems are the dreadful image it, Tesla and Musk now have. And combined that with it going on sale for a much higher price than initially advertised.
If they had eventually delivered on that basic RWD ~$40,000 version and if Musk had stayed out of politics, it would have sold in much higher numbers.
And I agree… Tesla should do a ‘normal’ pickup. Personally I think Tesla should do a ‘normal’ smaller pickup based on the current Model 3/Y.
Agreed. But I don’t buy a Silverado because I love Mary Barra. I get the political tsunami around musk, but right now, any product you buy is supporting the same kind of people and behaviors. Most are just much more quite about it.
You can’t “both sides” the things Elon Musk does, sorry.
Not any of the billionaires. You won’t be able to buy anything if you go down that road. And don’t think any other ceo is any better, that’s just lack of education on your part if you believe otherwise.
Did Mary Barra spend half a billion dollars on midterm races?
Did Mary Barra take her role as a defense contractor for the United States and unilaterally act against the interests of the United States without informing the President of the United States?
Did Mary Barra directly threaten the sovereignty of a US ally?
Did Mary Barra use her international social media platform to whip up sentiment in political races?
Did Mary Barra immediately go online and talk about election fraud when results started going against her?
This is all stuff Elon has done in the last week, so if you’re going to talk shit about how much more educated than me you are, go ahead and educate me. Otherwise, do me a favor and shut the hell up. Nobody with half a brain is going to let you piss down their neck and tell them it is rain just because you want to whitewash the fact that you like your Cybertruck.
Agreed. I also don’t recall Mary Barra getting onstage and doing multiple, clear as day, no other way to spin them, seig heil salutes.
The idea that there is NO difference is as silly as saying Henry Ford was the same as anyone else.
And the icing on the cake is the snide bit about “lack of education.” This is something someone says to cover up their own willful refusal to engage in reality.
From our prospective as consumers, literally no difference. But that would involve thinking past your own bias’.
Lol obviously I’m more educated than you, since I see the fallacy of your argument. But I’ll let you keep feeling smug about your stance. I’m nice like that.
Michael there is no need to denigrate a poster education over an opinion. This is Autopian, not Facebook. PS. The CEO of Costco is quantifiably better.
If someone deserves to be denigrated over their factually incorrect “opinion”, I’ll be there doing it. Head in the sand isn’t a method of education. Opinions based on one’s own viewpoint only, are as useless as a screendoor on a sub.
Tesla 100% should have done a “normal” pickup beside the CT with the same tech, biggest f up they’ve ever done. But that would have sated the masses while still showing them how bad current trucks really are.
I think the Slate will do exactly that.
The Slate has a tough hill to climb. On paper it makes perfect sense for the masses. I hope it is. But a lot of people fear EVs.
Is it fear or skepticism?
Finally, something to celebrate on Thanksgiving.
The tsunami of 11/3 in America is working somehow.
Matt, is the site having functionality issues again today?
Is it? What are you seeing?
not able to edit comments. thanks
Perhaps predictably, the rest of the comments (~150 at this point) are all fixated on the content of your post, but I had to jump on and give props for the style, to wit: the Grade A “resistant to bullets/deflected objectivity” line!
Well I am shocked.
Shocked I say.
Next we will learn that the Jewish Space Laser was not real either.
If it had been real Gaza would be slag now instead of rubble.
When the Cybertruck first appeared, I liked how different it was. I quickly soured on it when the window broke and more of Musk the person was revealed to the world. I couldn’t help myself!
Walter Isaacson’s biography is great for seeing how Musk thinks and operates. He is talented and hard working, while also deeply flawed. His flaws were exaggerated when he took a callous wrecking ball to federal agencies and went increasingly awry on corporate strategy. Emphasis on corporate. Other stakeholders in his companies should have worked aggressively to counter Musk’s demons and keep him focused. It was to their own peril that they did not. It’s a tragedy in many ways, and I still find his character repulsive enough to be annoyed whenever I see a Tesla, and especially the Cybertruck. Good riddance.
My thought about this is, I guess, a general rehashing of the we-need-small-trucks complaint that is ever popular, but I do wonder if a small electric truck would sell better.
The Cybertruck and Lightning are statement vehicles, and there are lots of people who want to make a statement, but there are also lots of business owners, handyman, small contractors, and landscapers who use trucks for hauling stuff around. If you’re using a truck for getting your tools and supplies from A to B in a city, a small electric truck seems pretty ideal.
But then maybe something like an electric Ford Transit Connect would be even better.
I just wonder about this because here, where I live in SoCal, the majority of the people driving Cybertrucks seem to be Asian immigrants who own a small business, like a restaurant, imported goods warehouse, sewing machine repair shop — things like that.
It’s too bad it’s gone even though I wouldn’t buy one. I had a Beast model for a week or so as a loaner and it really was a hoot to drive. I’m not into trucks/suvs (or whatever a CT is) but I can see the appeal. I’d have to wrap it though – that bare stainless is brutal for keeping clean.
I had to do the rounds with friends and family that all wanted to take pictures in it and drive it around. The a 2.x 0-60 is fun in something that size. The kids loved crawling all over it. Everyone had a great time.
The only downside during the time I had it was having to listen to the unsolicited opinions of the mouth breathers when I was just out minding my business getting groceries or running errands.
Owning a model 3 – I get so many opinions. I can’t imagine what the truck owners hear. People want to tell me why they “couldn’t buy one”. Bro – I don’t care.
Ha, you should try driving a Prius.
Not only opinions but people try to run you off the road.
Anyone who bought or got hyped on this officially outed themselves as having below average critical thinking skills. I will say though, I still think that they look somewhat neat, considering the leagues of faceless crossover blobs. But my word, that can’t even begin to crawl out of the hole that Elon dug for this thing
“The Cybertruck, perversely, is this generation’s Hummer”
Wasn’t there an EV Hummer recently that was just as crazy?
Yeah, I was thinking the Hummer EV is this generation’s Hummer.
I think the GMC HUMMER EV (why does it need “EV” in the name when it only comes as an EV?) sells in too miniscule numbers for that comparison. The Cybertruck probably does occupy the same cultural space the H2 did 20 years ago