Elon Musk wager huge on the Cybertruck.
It didn’t emerge from focus teams, mimic profitable truck fashions, and even resemble Tesla’s personal—on the time—profitable S, X, 3, and Y traces. It was an unsightly monstrosity that failed to live up to Musk’s lofty guarantees. However Musk thought he knew higher than everybody else.
In fact, that’s not how he bought it. Ever his personal hypeman, Musk claimed to have 1 million reservations for the automobile, and he constructed a complete manufacturing unit in Austin, Texas, designed to crank out 125,000 Cybertrucks yearly, with plans to double that. His fanboys cheered. Wall Avenue nodded alongside.
So what number of Cybertrucks did Tesla really promote?
A March recall—during which Cybertruck panels had been actually falling off resulting from defective glue—betrayed the quantity: 46,096 bought within the 14 months since deliveries started. That’s lower than 3,300 per 30 days.
It was already clear then that the automobile would by no means meet Musk’s absurd targets, however Tesla’s newest supply numbers counsel that issues are even worse.
Tesla reported another steep decline in automobile deliveries, down 13% year-over-year within the second quarter. However try the actual numbers:
-
Mannequin 3/Y: 373,728
-
Different fashions: 10,394
That “different fashions” bucket consists of the premium but geriatric Mannequin S, Mannequin X, and—shocker—the Cybertruck.
That’s lower than 3,500 of all three mixed which can be bought per 30 days.
Fashions S and X make sense, since neither automobile has meaningfully modified in years. Tesla—and Musk—have been distracted by the Cybertruck and, hilariously, robots—of which Musk now claims Tesla will promote 1 million. Fashions S and X are costly and drained, and premium opponents like Rivian, Lucid, and Mercedes-Benz have left them within the mud.
So we are able to moderately extrapolate that Tesla bought possibly 1,000 to 2,000 Cybertrucks in its second quarter, which is past hilarious. At this charge, Tesla could need to shut down solely. There’s no means it comes near recouping the huge capital sunk into manufacturing.
However is anybody really stunned? Not solely is it the ugliest automobile on the highway, but it surely’s additionally change into a rolling MAGA meme. Most of the Teslas on the highway had been purchased again when Tesla was the one electrical automobile choice—when Musk nonetheless claimed that his mission was to avoid wasting the world.
Drivers of older Teslas get grace—and I’m a type of, so I do know it first hand. However the Cybertruck? By the point that launched, everybody knew who Musk really is. Nobody driving a type of is harmless.
And it’s all Musk’s fault.
Musk torched his relationship with the very individuals who made Tesla profitable: liberals. The early adopters, the tech-forward, and the climate-conscious fled as quickly as he went full anti-woke, anti-trans, anti-everything-but-him. The man who as soon as positioned himself as a futurist turned simply one other dime-a-dozen grievance-peddling reactionary on the podcast circuit.
Musk’s apparent hope—delusional because it was—was that anti-EV conservatives would exchange the misplaced liberal clients. Musk even staged an unseemly Tesla gross sales occasion at the freakin’ White House. However then he blew that up, too, by choosing a combat with President Donald Trump.
Now Trump is threatening to deport Musk and unleash his DOGE “monster” to destroy his firms—reducing off the federal contracts that hold Tesla and SpaceX alive. Musk was as soon as the patron saint of tradition conflict capitalism, however now he’s getting excommunicated by the very folks he tried to impress.
So who’s left to purchase Teslas? Crypto grifters? Joe Rogan stans? That’s not a buyer base; it’s a remark part. And Tesla’s gross sales numbers mirror that.
However the robot stuff can be completely totally different, proper?
