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
My apologies if someone already asked this, but will these ever be collectable?
I worry about all that tech being unsupported, glue failing et cetera. Making keeping one of these on the road, in what 10 years from now challenging to say the least?
A really high profile failure tends to be collectible because of the story. It’s an artifact of the worst instincts of the 2020s.
Though, as you said, keeping these on the road is going to be pretty much impossible. Notoriously unreliable in every single aspect, plus a fairly limited number of spares, it’s really a race to see which important part doesn’t exist anymore first.
Yes but in a different way. Like Vector. The value will ebb and flow as people forget about it then look back with amusement
I think a lot of people are wrong to put the blame of the Cybertruck’s failure in the market on Elon not being popular.
Frankly the Cybertruck was shit at being a Truck.
Stainless steel panels on an aluminum unibody bonded (AKA GLUED) together.
Now if it was marketed as a pickup, was Ford Maverick Sized, used M3/MY Drivetrain parts where possible, and used aluminum body panels (which you can make bulletproof and you can also anodize!) Then it probably would have sold a lot better.
Also would have helped having mechanical door handles, a regular steering system, etc.
Look at the Towing capacity Telo has managed. As a compact pickup the Cybertruck could have been fairly easily made to tow as much as the Full size one, not far mind you, but no EV pickup tows long distances well, due to the inefficiency and the lack of trailer friendly EV charging infrastructure.
Per chatGPT (prompt: “ Can analyze teslas loss on the cybertruck? Overall investment minus sales over number of vehicles sold?”)
Assumption – Base case
Lifetime units sold
90,000
Average selling price
$85,000
Manufacturing cost per unit
$88,000
Revenue per truck less unit costs
−$3,000
Cumulative unit contribution
−$0.27B
Total program investment and fixed costs
$3.00B
Net wind-down costs
$0.40B
The base-case calculation is:
\[
\frac{\$3.00B+\$0.27B+\$0.40B}{90,000}
=\$40,778
\]
In other words, in this scenario, Tesla effectively loses approximately $41,000 for every Cybertruck sold after accounting for the program’s total costs.
That is a modeled estimate, not a disclosed Tesla loss. The uncertainty is substantial because Tesla doesn’t publish Cybertruck-specific manufacturing costs, development spending, or operating profit.
Good riddance Cybertruck!! Ketamine is a Hell of a drug. Ain’t it Elon? 😉
People love to point out that Elon spent $500 million on the election. It was 0.05% of his net worth. One-twentieth of one percent of his wealthy is what he spent.
A trillion is a thousand billions is a thousand millions is a thousand thousands.
Maybe that’s the problem right there.
Every time I see one of these monstrosities, I’ll flip the driver off.
Those poor hourly workers stuck driving these things for advertising.
A friend tosses his dog doo bags into the bed if he sees a CT during a walk. It’s petty and I don’t condone it, but it does make me chuckle.
Hot take, if all the lifted diesel HD brodozers magically turned into cyber trucks it would be a massive improvement. At least the cyber trucks have legal heigh bumpers and won’t flip over by looking the wrong way.
Musk is so wrong about one thing, trucks are one of the few vehicle classes that you can tell what they are without a badge. Grey blob CUV’s are indistinguishable.
What vehicle am I going to give the bird to now? I’d imagine most Trump bumper stickers will soon be disappearing, so along with the cyberdump, how shall I keep my middle man strong?
I am curious how long these will survive; will Tesla pull back on providing support and updates to hide this embarrassment?
What will the owner of my local cbd/vape shop use as a tax write off now??
I heard there was some Chinese sports car out now.
So, when are they cancelling the 3 and Y to make room for more robots nobody wants?
My mom sees quite a few of these during her morning walks; she waves at them, and says the drivers always wave back. I’ve told her that she’s probably the only person who ever offers them a friendly gesture.
Plenty of people buy trucks for looks, but at the end of the day they’re still truck-shaped for a reason: it works. Elmo seemed to think the Cybertruck was competing with/meant to replace pickup trucks, but the way the thing was styled made it a competitor for lifestyle vehicles.
Honestly I thought he would have kept it around just for his own vanity, even if it was selling 100 units a month or something low.
I would buy one of those 2 dr cabs, if it had a steering wheel and pedals and such….
I saw one in the city a couple days ago (being driven; it looked like there was a steering wheel in there). It looks absolutely horrific. The proportions are wrong in every way, the wheeldisks look ridiculous, it is oddly narrow and tall for something that is attempting to look sporty. It is also quite large for a two-seater.
Agreed, especially if it had AWD.
Faretheewell IncEL Camino. Good riddance.
At first I read this as InconEL Camino, which also works
I just thumbs-downed one of these yesterday.
I liked a few things about the CT, it was novel and different in style, good performance and they dared to push the boundaries. But material, quality and too aggressive styling didn’t help. So it’s no loss that’s gone.
Obviously, the reason the Cybertruck failed is the lack of gullwing doors.
/s
Interestingly, I see more Vinfasts than Cybertrucks here in the Raleigh, NC area, so this news is a big ol’ nothingburger to me.
The market – and the people – have spoken.
Hi, I’m in Raleigh, too. I’m sad to say I see at least a couple Cybertrucks each day. I know it’s not the same one because of their vinyl wraps – black, blue, white.
Weird. I’ve only seen one Vinfast, and it was in San Diego. I wonder if there is some distributor of Vinfast there in Raleigh?
They were planning on opening a factory in Moncure, NC about 20 miles south of Raleigh, and there is a dealership in Apex.
They might be trash, but at least they don’t look like a dumpster!
I’m not politically opposed to the cybertruck. I think it looks stupid as fuck, but I’ve owned Volvos and a Honda Element and an ’02 Civic Si and a Toyota C-HR so who am I to say. My main issue with it is it looks homemade. Like something some alcoholic dumbass built in his yard.
This is the correct take.
Like something some alcoholic dumbass built in his yard.
This what I thought when I saw the cybercab, before I knew it was the cybercab.
I thought it was some cardboard and gold painted hypermiler someone bodged together.
I blame all the pizza boxes laying around at the time.
This is my favorite form of separating the art from the artist. In this case, the art still sucks.
Rest in piss, Incel Camino….light up that Cybertruck pack
I just want you to know that I’d love to nominate like a good 3/4 of your comments for COTD, but we do try to keep COTD closer to PG, maybe PG-13 on some days. Just know you win the COTD of my heart!
(Platonically, of course. I don’t want to piss off HR, which is me.)
I would wager a majority of the people here are feeling much the same as I do. Relieved. Like we were on the edge of a precipice with no real clear outcome except that if it continued it would drag the entire country down with it. And now we got a nice reminder that most of the country felt the same. And hopefully the start of the end of this nightmare.
Rec’d both of you. Agreed with a lot of the sentiment.
I liked driving the CT when I test drove one. Very spacious inside, good forward visibility (let’s not talk about rear visibility without the cameras) and excellent for a truck vehicle dynamics. The tech it’s packing is good for the US too. If it wasn’t so expensive and styled like it was, they would have sold more.
If they came out with a facelift that looked more like a regular truck and had a better bed they’d probably sell 50-60k a year.
If they had kept the front end, given it a flatter roof, flat bed tops (maybe with some flying buttresses like an Avalanche), and kept it within, say 20% over what they initially promised it would sell for, their biggest problem would be where to keep all the stacks of hundred dollar bills they were bringing in.
This was really just the second-last brick to fall into place for a “Back to the Future remake (the final one is probably when Bob Gale passes away, sadly).
Ostentatious, connected to scandal, stainless steel body, ultimately unsuccessful? It’s the perfect DMC12 for the 2020’s.
The kid from Percy Jackson as Marty McFly: “You built a TIME MACHINE… out of a Cybertruck??”
Thanks! I hate pretty much everything about that idea.
Agreed, but still my stupid brain immediately thinks “Oh, the Mr Fusion could be used to power both the truck and the time circuits. They’d have to completely rework the third movie.”
Damn it brain, don’t justify this.
The irony. The cybertruck became one of the symbols of… the last two years. Ridiculous, very poor quality, And now that the CEO of the company that made it will probably be packing some bags for South Africa before he’s dragged in front of a court of inquiry over meddling in our political system. Time to put his company up for sale. And hopefully to someone or another company that will shut the fuck up and stick to cars.
He could probably try to work remotely from Mars, but the delay on the Zoom calls will be pretty bad.
Had to look it up: Between 3 minutes and 23 minutes of delay!
That’s not too bad. I feel like Zoom at work for us has a pretty nasty lag.
I think Teams is a bit better, but Elon’s not a team player.
It’s very on point for the new Gilded Age. I’ll warrant you that.
I’m glad to see it go. While the wank panzer was different and striking it wasn’t different in a good way and I say a Rivian R1T was a better pickup simply because it had rear headroom, a bed side you could reach over and doors that wouldn’t cut your hand.
The Cybertruck was the Hummer H2 of our time and I disliked it for similar reasons and welcome its passing
The Cybertruck is so terrible and also associated with douchebaggery that it makes the new EV Hummer (which should be the Hummer H2 of our time) look like a classy choice.
I desperately wanted the Cybertruck. The unveil was awesome, the features were great, specs even better! What we got was a poor attempt to appease Elons pay plan.
Did you see the same unveil as the rest of us? The brick through the window was a pretty good indication of where this was going the whole time…