>The EV company sold fewer than 39,000 Cybertrucks in 2024, according to Cox Automotive data — far below the company’s eventual goal of 250,000 per year. As of October, Tesla had delivered just 17,317 units in 2025, a 42% drop compared to the same period in 2024.
A lucky break for Tesla, which is now a check notes robotics company. If it had been a success it would have taken their attention away from innovation in a truly profitable business space and they'd just be a car company.
I took my model Y in to the Tesla dealer yesterday for some minor repairs. It was taking longer than expected so they gave about 4 or 5 customers loaner cars so we could go do other stuff. Each of us got a Cybertruck.
It sort of speaks to the fact that it isn’t selling well that they are using them for loaners.
It's a bit encouraging to read about Edison's flops too. All my failures have just been preparation! One was a kind of 1890 Optimus, dolls he called "little monsters" with a built in miniature phonograph.
I am impressed by how much of commercial success is a matter of the product's tastefulness. Chamath Palihapitiya said this and I have to agree. It is easy to Dunning-Kruger your business to death without it.
What happens when sales just stop? I can’t imagine what it would look like if it were discontinued after only 2–3 years. Although, it might be smart to start shifting resources away from the Cybertruck and toward developing something else.
Aster Tesla's service center tried to extort us to receive a safety recall appointment time, we decided we were done with them.
We had a recall we called to try and schedule several times, and they always said, "we have no appointments available right now, but if you want to pay $400 for a new center console computer part too, we can get you in this week."
Shady.
(FWIW the car itself had so many issues. It didn't seal, so at highway speeds it would cause pressure waves inside, the door handles broke a bunch, the dashboard would regularly crash and need to be rebooted and we'd lose the speedometer, a bunch of fit and finish issues like threads that dangled from panels... and more)
Not mentioned in the article is that the truck isn't built as originally promised. The exoskeleton was supposed to do away with the need for an internal frame, giving it weight and cost advantages. Turned out they couldn't make it work for production, so it's built like a normal vehicle.
A normal carmaker would have shown the cybertruck as a concept, and the final product would have whatever compromises necessary to make it a successful production car. Tesla promised it would look exactly like that and took deposits, so they stuck with the weird design even after the engineering reason for it was gone.
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It sort of speaks to the fact that it isn’t selling well that they are using them for loaners.
It’s a pretty unappealing car.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edison%27s_Phonograph_Doll
I am impressed by how much of commercial success is a matter of the product's tastefulness. Chamath Palihapitiya said this and I have to agree. It is easy to Dunning-Kruger your business to death without it.
We had a recall we called to try and schedule several times, and they always said, "we have no appointments available right now, but if you want to pay $400 for a new center console computer part too, we can get you in this week."
Shady.
(FWIW the car itself had so many issues. It didn't seal, so at highway speeds it would cause pressure waves inside, the door handles broke a bunch, the dashboard would regularly crash and need to be rebooted and we'd lose the speedometer, a bunch of fit and finish issues like threads that dangled from panels... and more)
Biggest waste of an opportunity I've encountered.
A normal carmaker would have shown the cybertruck as a concept, and the final product would have whatever compromises necessary to make it a successful production car. Tesla promised it would look exactly like that and took deposits, so they stuck with the weird design even after the engineering reason for it was gone.