At the size of Ford, sales numbers can be at a different mark for what is considered successful than others. Not to mention dealer gamesmanship fudges real sales numbers.
As to the Cybertruck it's both interesting and kind of ugly... repairability is another concern/issue as is pure cost...
I'm far more interested in the Slate[1] myself. It's probably closer to what a lot of consumers would want in an electric truck. It really feels like a spiritual successor to the OG Jeep (GP).
I see the slate as the successor of the now extinct (in Can + US) mini-truck. 90s trucks like the small Toyota Truck, old Ford Ranger, Nissan hardbody, etc.
The kind of trucks that landscapers are still using, that are beat to shit, and have three features, cheap, load carrying, reliable by way of simplicity.
It says a lot that spacex had to buy so many trucks just to help the sales numbers. I always thought the ford lightning was a better option for most people anyway. It is too bad they are stopping production when it seems to be the winner.
I'm sure the usual detractors will be here to whine "Electrek is biased against Tesla!"
To which I would ask: Is it "bias" because they simply report on Tesla frequently? Would it be "less biased" if they ignored Tesla? Obviously Electrek can't simply invent positive press for Tesla to report on.
Putting that aside though. The Cybertruck by all measures has been an abject failure. Its production run was so limited that insurance companies refused to cover it [1] and the NHTSA took something like two years just to crash test the thing due to how few of them there were on the road.
Combine that with 10 fucking recalls for absolutely horrific safety issues [2] and the company making the batteries taking a 99% slash in its $2.8 billion dollar contract [3] the thing is a complete travesty
I think the timing of the Cybertruck starting deliveries roughly aligning with when Elon got heavily involved in politics hurt it quite a bit. It is such a distinctive vehicle with a strong association with Elon, that there was an immediate brand association. It may have had poor sales anyway, but it certainly didn't help that many folks on the left, who are typically the most 'pro EV', had a large 'anti-Elon' shift around its launch.
That said, even though it's not to my taste, I do admire that they dared to do something different and took a big gamble on it. So many vehicles, especially in the truck space, are almost indistinguishable and lack any kind of imagination. Kudos to Tesla for trying to break the mold and push the category somewhere new.
The thing with Cybertrucks losing panels certainly didn't help.
A big part of the Cybertruck marketing was the robustness of its unusual design: exoskeleton! space grade materials! They smashed the door with a hammer and it didn't dent (just avoid pétanque balls...), Elon Musk commented that it would destroy the other vehicle in an accident. Morally dubious arguments sometimes, but it appeals to many potential customers.
And then, the vehicle that is supposed to be a tank falls apart by looking at it funny. And the glued on steel plates, is it that the exoskeleton? Not only the design is controversial, but it failed at what it is supposed to represent.
That is so right on the money. I attended the LA Auto Show a couple of months back and the takeaway was that every manufacturer pretty much makes the same safe car. There might be a feature here and feature there, but it's the same car.
In the years past they at least had lots of concept cars. This year, I maybe saw two and they weren't all that "concept".
You can attribute the failure of this vehicle to politics if you like, but it's fairly obvious to anyone watching why it failed - it came out at double the proposed priced with half the proposed range. It's not even the hideous design, there were hundreds of thousands of "pre orders" who knew about the horrible design. It's the price and range.
It's not just you, it's universally tasteless and that's the point: It is a contrarian vehicle.
In an age where the Internet has flattened subcultures into surface phenomenons, the only remaining way to publicly distance yourself from normality is by making patently, obviously bad decisions and using the backlash to further fuel your ego.
Elon going off the deep end is the tail wagging the dog. It's an objectively terrible car.
The collapse of the company overall, particularly the Model Y, which is a great car, is all about Elon. Not only his unveiling as a fascist, but he essentially looted the company.
Honestly, both the Lightning and the Cybertruck are just bad trucks. Some review of the Lightning I read said it has less than a 100 mile range towing a full load.
> I think the timing of the Cybertruck starting deliveries roughly aligning with when Elon got heavily involved in politics hurt it quite a bit. It is such a distinctive vehicle with a strong association with Elon, that there was an immediate brand association. It may have had poor sales anyway, but it certainly didn't help that many folks on the left, who are typically the most 'pro EV', had a large 'anti-Elon' shift around its launch.
IMO the sort of person who wants a vehicle like Elon's dumpster has a strong overlap with Elon's politics. Basically everything about its design and marketing was aimed at the sort of person who is focused on presenting a masculine image, who thinks they're going to be in a war zone on their daily commute, who wishes they could drive through a crowd of protesters, etc.
Basically the only thing "left wing" about it is the fact that it's electric.
> Kudos to Tesla for trying to break the mold and push the category somewhere new.
The only thing it actually did new was the drive-by-wire steering, which is by all accounts impressive but could have been done on any normal vehicle as well. The "unique" styling is mostly just re-learning lessons that John DeLorean taught the rest of the industry decades ago.
While largely true, that trucks have adorned the comforts of luxury cars, most are running 6' beds. This largely ignores the evolution of the truck and the job site. My family operates contracting and excavating businesses that operating in all manner of weather and terrain, no one is carrying loads in their truck beds anymore... its not even legal most places unless you convert to a dump bed...
Whats in their trucks? Well, a crew cab occasionally is used for car pooling workers, where they all park their vintage beater trucks at the business... Sometimes weather sensitive tools, or job related items, documents, you can just throw these in a glove box... The bed usually has a gas pump for refilling remote equipment. Cones and other safety shit. Sand hoppers for plowing. Yes they also use these "luxury" trucks to plow.
The thing is... These people are making decent salaries... my direct relatives are multi-millionaires who still pick up a welder, a hammer, a shovel.
Im see alot of assumptions about why trucks evolved the way they did, who owns them, and what for... I would argue the "luxury faker" is a very small crowd, one that likely moved to the cybertruck... and despite the trucks looking modernized, are beaten to pulp over long service lives.
Now, go get in a modern tractor, dump truck, or excavator. They are also all AC, Radios, Computers, Leather Seats, etc... People want to be comfortable.
I'm very much on the left, and I honestly like the design of the Cybertruck. (I know this puts me in a minority.) It is disappointing that the original "unibody" design was abandoned. The new design where the body panels just randomly fall off is silly.
If it was made by some other company I would genuinely consider buying one. But I would never buy another Tesla. I owned an older Model X, before Elon went full-fascism. And even ignoring Elon, the car was awful. It was shoddily built, kept breaking down, and the service experience was shockingly bad. Absolutely atrocious.
But after all that, I can't give money to Elon ever again. I can't fund America's descent into fascism. I could not live with myself.
I'm one of the few people that love the cybertruck design, but even I can't look at one these days and not think "swasticar". It's terribly disappointing, really. Fully self-inflicted.
Have we completely forgotten about how Tesla dealerships were shot up, firebombed? Video after video showing cybertrucks vandalized with scratches and spray paint?
It may be a terrible car from a terrible program, but these events at least bear mentioning. If you saw it happening in 2025, would it have a cooling effect on your decision to purchase? Who would want the trouble?
I mean as with most "product" things related to Musk, it's more about the meme stock than any fundamental coupling to finances in the real world.
Ford is a car company. They sell cars. The Lightning was a poorly selling car, so they stopped selling it. Pretty simple!
Tesla is a lifestyle company. They make line go up by owning the libs, catering to edgelord identity, and triggering speculation. The Cybertruck probably gained the company more memetic shareholder value than it lost as a real product.
As someone who has used both light and heavy pickups for work, recreation, and farm work for decades, the Cybertruck is absolutely terrible at everything you want a truck to do.
It's a brodozer for people that are slightly environmentally conscious or have Elon issues.
And again, I say this as an actual cowboy, in that yes, I own cows. And a lineman who ferries manly men (and a few manly women) to do manly man work on high voltage power lines that will kill you so dead it's a guaranteed closed casket funeral. Trucks aren't just dick compensators, they exist to do work. And the Cybertruck sucks at all of that work. The F-150 lightning was a useful fleet vehicle due to the 120VAC outlets alone, aside from being, you know, a usable truck.
There's a reason most of the offering are very similar. We figured out what work pickup trucks need to do and how they're engineered to do it 50 years ago. The Hilux and friends made it highly economical. So you've got the Hiluxies and the SuperManlyMinivans and those are the two main kind of pickup trucks.
That be easier to believe if there weren't so many Model 3 and Y vehicles that are clearly the new ones (changed headlights/taillights) all around. I'm sure Elon's "political" salutes gave their sales some headwinds, but I'm inclined to think it is more like 15% less sales (Q4 2024 vs Q4 2025). The CyberTruck factory is operating at <20% capacity.
The biggest problems are: it costs ~2x what Elon said it would, it has less than half the range he said it'd have, and it has had 10 recalls in its short life.
The recalls have been for things as basic as: light bar falling off, exterior trim falling off, bed trim falling off, the acceleration pedal falling off, inverter failures. It paints a picture of a low-quality product that has a very premium price.
How do so many people justify buying the new redesign? I mean it came out after the CEO went in front of the world and gave two nazi-like salutes, then did DOGE!
Do they buy his 'autistic' defense? Do they just not care about what the CEO does and support him with their money anyways? Do they actively support his ideology?
I suspect it's likely a mix of these depending on the person, and probably more that I can't think of.
I mean they're good cars, no doubt, and it's a damn shame many decent engineers and workers put in so much effort to have it all tainted by such nasty politics.
But I cannot ignore those salutes, nor the myriad other slights starting with calling those Thai cave-diving heroes pedophiles. Tesla is dead to me, a victim of this insane time and its CEO.
It's just a darn shame that we're reduced to a simple measure of a single dimension, whether a right or left point on a single axis. You'll find many EV owners are multidimensional, a little bit up and down and all around an x-y plane, or even x-y-z cube. Conservative and liberal progressive alike in Europe are sick of Musk and it shows on the Tesla sales tanking.
> I do admire that they dared to do something different and took a big gamble on it.
Why? Do you want your other tools to be _different_ for no reason at all? Do you want your drill come with sharp corners you can't touch just because it'll look different?
This is true. If I see a Tesla I don’t immediately assume that driver is personally aligned with Elon. It’s a popular and good car.
If I see a Cybertruck I’m extremely confident that driver approves of Elons antics and likely fervently supports them. It’s a physical manifestation of his ego and mostly bought by his legions of fans.
If you’re a Cybertruck driver and you don’t want people to think that, you’re in the wrong car.
Back in 2020, a friend working at Tesla told me how frustrated the engineers working on the cybertruck were, because they knew its design choices pushed by Musk made no sense, making the cybertruck way too complicated to design and build for no reasons, and everybody already knew the product would be a failure.
> So many vehicles, especially in the truck space, are almost indistinguishable and lack any kind of imagination. Kudos to Tesla for trying to break the mold and push the category somewhere new.
You haven't seen enough trucks and pickups then. The Cybertruck serves no utility purpose.
I was already a Tesla owner and I reserved a Cybertruck right after I saw the original Cybertruck Unveil live stream on November 21, 2019. The infamous one where the window glass shattered.
That was when it was supposed to cost around $35,000.
Four years later when my reservation was ready to order, on December 8, 2023, the CyberTruck cost more than $100k.
Because it cost almost 3x more than what was originally advertised, I cancelled the order. I know many other people who canceled for the same reason. Keeping in mind this was after several delays, so I and many others with reservations were already frustrated with the product before it became available to order.
> So many vehicles, especially in the truck space, are almost indistinguishable and lack any kind of imagination.
Because utilitarian design and purpose of this vehicles has been established long time ago.
Cybetruck "wanted to be different" but it fails in every aspect of its own "innovation". It's ultimately stupid vehicles with so many flaws that arguing it tried something is pointless. Like, having a man walking to North Pole in runners - he's not trying something new, he's straight stupid and should be treated like that
As an EV owner, it sucks that the main thing holding the technology back is misconceptions and misunderstanding, rather than actual practical matters.
People think EVs are cars with tanks of electrons, and run aground the same way you would if you thought horses were cars full of hay. It's a different transport tool that gives the same results, you just have to know how to use it properly.
The main thing holding EV back is the oil industry, not the tech. The US is the only country lagging on EV and its all because the industry puts so much effort in to squashing all progress.
EVs are simpler and cheaper. Look at how fast adoption is growing outside the US. If US citizens could buy a BYD for the same price as in China, the the US auto makers and oil companies would be in trouble.
Yes, I've had conversations with ice owners and the misconceptions are enormous in their minds.
Practically speaking¹, normal people could buy a tesla and drive it like a gas car, except with a full tank of gas every morning. They could still drive across the state once a month to grandma's and they could supercharge if range got low.
This is due to a couple things that were not in place for early EVs.
- teslas have a lot of range/battery compared to early EVs
- superchargers are in many locations, have plentiful charging spots, and are reliable
- teslas have a good UI to navigate and charge
[1] 99% of the time. If you're an apartment dweller in the artic circle with a supercharger 2000 miles away, please scroll onwards.
The main thing holding them back for me is the range.
A few times a year I do quite long drives, sometimes you get the odd road closure and you've added a day to your trip at best, could be stranded at worst.
There will be a phase shift where there are lots of fast chargers but in Australia we aren't quite there yet. Lots of my friends have EVs. The busiest routes are pretty good.
On the one hand I will be a late adopter of the tech but on the other at least I know it will be a significant upgrade when I get there.
Spot on. The misconceptions, even from other EV owners is astounding. People are constantly confused about kWh vs kW, Amps, voltage, temperature, range, mi/kWh, etc. Even PhD Computer Science and other highly educated folks who have owned EVs for a long time can't quite communicate the difference between those units of measurement. So of course when a curious person asks them or others, they only quote the falsehoods that someone told them.
Some examples:
1. I constantly see EV owners install 60A/11kWh service, costing them on average $10k when their driving needs don't require it.
2. People thinking they need more than 300mi of range and think they will run out of batteries like they do on their headphones.
All of this needs an understanding of the aforementioned units and basic physics. But, you're not going to get that by just talking to people. Salespeople are especially not going to do that, they can't even do that for combustion cars.
I wanted an F-150 Lightning when it launched. Demand was high enough that I was told I'd have to pay over retail. I did not buy an F-150 Lightning and bought an ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle. The depreciation of electric vehicles has made me appreciate those circumstances more and more.
I'm as much of a Tesla Fan Boy that you can be but I have to say, the F-150 seems like a darn good vehicle and it's sad they're killing it. I especially like the V2X features.
I don't think they're really killing it. The Lightning EREV is next, and my bet is it's almost identical to the BEV version but with an engine where the big beautiful frunk is now. Gives them something to sell the people who think they need big range numbers, but also gives them an easy path back to a full BEV. I kind of expect them to backpedal on the full cancelation and make both vehicles.
No shit. The CT is ugly to most consumers' sensibilities, and not a "real" truck to most consumers in the truck segment. It only survives as long as it serves Musk's ego. But that's ok -- Tesla is Musk's company and shareholders are happy with that status quo. Who else cares?
I think the dealership monopoly is partly to blame. Dealers get more reoccurring revenue from ICE vehicles, so they are incentivized to not stock EVs and to steer customers away from them. Ford seemed to understand this and attempted a direct sale program for EVs, but they canceled it due to dealer pushback.
They seem to be flooded on dealership lots and are not selling whatsoever. OEMs force dealers to take the crap vehicles if they are to get the good ones. You have a vehicle that started off as a hard sell to the crowd that normally buys the vehicle and then you make it so the price is astronomical...forget the dealer reluctance, what did you think was going to happen?
> Ford seemed to understand this and attempted a direct sale program for EVs, but they canceled it due to dealer pushback.
Why didn't they just do it anyways? Dealerships seem like a pointless middleman, but I know absolutely nothing about what leverage they have. Self-driving cars can not come fast enough
It wasn't canceled for poor sales. It was canceled because it was too expensive to produce, and would not fund all their other EV/battery projects. They found a better road to profitability in that front.
And because they have problems as it is sourcing aluminum for more profitable F150 variants. Ford lives or dies based on the F150, they needed to focus on higher profit margins on the trucks they could actually build.
This is the answer, CyberTruck achieved positive gross margins in Q3 2024. The F-150 never did. So the Lightning is canceled and the CyberTruck lives on.
Exactly. Their truck was apparently quite nice but expensive. And then dealers made it worse by adding a hefty markup to that. It would have done fine at a much lower price point. But that would have required a manufacturing cost level that Ford could not deliver:
There are a few reasons for that:
- Ford designed this as a one off vehicle, not as a platform to build multiple vehicles on. So, a lot of the manufacturing process is making components in low volume just for this truck that they are selling in small numbers. It never hit the economies of scale where they could optimize and lower cost.
- It's a big heavy vehicle that needs lots of battery. Batteries are expensive.
- The tariff situation made importing components from Mexico, China, and elsewhere prohibitively expensive. Ford can't source everything they need locally just yet.
All this drives the production cost up. When they launched the vehicle a few years ago, they were still able to import components. They had a shot at sourcing much cheaper batteries from China down the line. All that went away and locally produced batteries aren't as cheap.
Another factor is that it's a product that was designed to be premium and more expensive than the ICE F150 in order to protect sales of that. It was forever going to be compared to that in terms of performance and towing capacity. And the combination of being more expensive than that while having less range and even less while towing is not a great selling point.
Companies like Rivian or BYD that have no ICE truck sales to protect can operate differently. They simply make the best and most affordable vehicle they can without artificially making it needlessly expensive. Rivian isn't cheap of course but they sell well because it's a desirable product. And Rivian has done a lot of work to lower cost and is now introducing cheaper models on the back of that. BYD is cutting well below F150 ICE prices with their Shark truck. Because they can. Not for sale in the US of course but it makes F150 Lightning international sales a bit unviable. As a US only niche vehicle selling in the low thousands per year the Lightning had no future.
Just before its release there was some press about a few high ups at Tesla who urged Elon to make a “traditional” looking pickup alongside the cyber truck in case it was a flip, but Elon shut them down hard.
I’d be really interested to know if they’re going to do that.
The tech is incredible and will filter into all vehicles in a decade or so (48v, Ethernet instead of CAN, etc)
Do you know how pickups became the most popular vehicle in America? By not being appealing to just one type of guy. There is no "truck guy", there is "everyone." (well, yes, there are some anti-truck people, but they're niche and mostly online).
F-150 Lightning is better vehicle than Cybertruck - however Ford is a political company (not like Musk) as in the fortunes of Ford lie to an extent with politicians, unions etc
so hopefully ford can turn the F-150 into an Extended Range Electrical Vehicle
And they announced the next version of the Lightning last month. People don't like that it isn't purely BEV, but I don't see the big deal.
Unlike a traditional hybrid, the F-150 Lightning EREV is propelled 100
percent by electric motors. This ensures owners get the pure EV driving
experience they love — including rapid acceleration and quiet operation —
while eliminating the need to stop and charge during long-distance towing.
I love my EV, but for anything that needs the range they should have a super-efficient gas or diesel engine that can charge the batteries? It could be a much less complex engine.
That said, they big car makers only chased the government incentives, which was a great reason to have them.
Electric everything is the future. It is obvious (e.g. heat pumps, EVs).
Cybertruck is a gimmick. And the fad has passed. No wonder they're not selling well.
And they don't age well. Most of the ones around here are starting to look... grimy. Or dingy. After just a couple of years. It's a poor advertisement for itself.
And, yeah, then there's cultural eye-rolling. It's really the only vehicle I hear people openly mock when they see one... And that's not a Tesla/Elon thing entirely, since people don't have the same reaction to other Tesla vehicles.
Unless they come right back with a comparable implementation with a maverick/ranger type form factor, Ford is absolutely shot itself in the foot canceling the lightning. I’ve been Evie only for five years and have driven both the electric Silverado and the lightning. I bought the lightning. It’s fantastic. They are absolute idiots for discontinuing it.
Also bought a Lightning. I use it for plenty of truck related things that don't involve towing and it's great. I like to target shoot on family farm land, and it's awesome to toss my steel targets and equipment in the bed and offroad to the area I shoot on (there's an area pretty far in with a sharp elevation change that's created a large berm). Or going to lowes to get a ton of fertilizer/plants/gardening equipment for my spouse.
I also use it to commute, and it's even better at that (part of that is mine being the Platinum trim). Quiet, smooth, powerful, has Android Auto/CarPlay (unlike GM's products), etc.
They really are a fantastic vehicle for those who don't need to quickly tow heavy trailers 400 miles. Especially on the used market.
I think the issue was that Ford wasn't making much margin on them and they weren't moving sufficient volume to make up for that. (around 20K/yr avg)
imho, CT is horribly looking car with absolute disregard to any aesthetics. everything else is secondary. it has vibes of Aztec. one of the worst selling car ever.
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 90.9 ms ] threadAs to the Cybertruck it's both interesting and kind of ugly... repairability is another concern/issue as is pure cost...
I'm far more interested in the Slate[1] myself. It's probably closer to what a lot of consumers would want in an electric truck. It really feels like a spiritual successor to the OG Jeep (GP).
The kind of trucks that landscapers are still using, that are beat to shit, and have three features, cheap, load carrying, reliable by way of simplicity.
To which I would ask: Is it "bias" because they simply report on Tesla frequently? Would it be "less biased" if they ignored Tesla? Obviously Electrek can't simply invent positive press for Tesla to report on.
Putting that aside though. The Cybertruck by all measures has been an abject failure. Its production run was so limited that insurance companies refused to cover it [1] and the NHTSA took something like two years just to crash test the thing due to how few of them there were on the road.
Combine that with 10 fucking recalls for absolutely horrific safety issues [2] and the company making the batteries taking a 99% slash in its $2.8 billion dollar contract [3] the thing is a complete travesty
[1] https://www.cybertruckownersclub.com/forum/threads/insurance...
[2] https://www.cnet.com/home/electric-vehicles/every-tesla-cybe...
[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-29/tesla-cyb...
That said, even though it's not to my taste, I do admire that they dared to do something different and took a big gamble on it. So many vehicles, especially in the truck space, are almost indistinguishable and lack any kind of imagination. Kudos to Tesla for trying to break the mold and push the category somewhere new.
A big part of the Cybertruck marketing was the robustness of its unusual design: exoskeleton! space grade materials! They smashed the door with a hammer and it didn't dent (just avoid pétanque balls...), Elon Musk commented that it would destroy the other vehicle in an accident. Morally dubious arguments sometimes, but it appeals to many potential customers.
And then, the vehicle that is supposed to be a tank falls apart by looking at it funny. And the glued on steel plates, is it that the exoskeleton? Not only the design is controversial, but it failed at what it is supposed to represent.
That is so right on the money. I attended the LA Auto Show a couple of months back and the takeaway was that every manufacturer pretty much makes the same safe car. There might be a feature here and feature there, but it's the same car.
In the years past they at least had lots of concept cars. This year, I maybe saw two and they weren't all that "concept".
I think the Cybertruck was DOA and his involvement in politics got people who shared his views to buy one in order to signal the same.
It's not just you, it's universally tasteless and that's the point: It is a contrarian vehicle.
In an age where the Internet has flattened subcultures into surface phenomenons, the only remaining way to publicly distance yourself from normality is by making patently, obviously bad decisions and using the backlash to further fuel your ego.
The collapse of the company overall, particularly the Model Y, which is a great car, is all about Elon. Not only his unveiling as a fascist, but he essentially looted the company.
It's a fashion statement, not a work vehicle.
IMO the sort of person who wants a vehicle like Elon's dumpster has a strong overlap with Elon's politics. Basically everything about its design and marketing was aimed at the sort of person who is focused on presenting a masculine image, who thinks they're going to be in a war zone on their daily commute, who wishes they could drive through a crowd of protesters, etc.
Basically the only thing "left wing" about it is the fact that it's electric.
> Kudos to Tesla for trying to break the mold and push the category somewhere new.
The only thing it actually did new was the drive-by-wire steering, which is by all accounts impressive but could have been done on any normal vehicle as well. The "unique" styling is mostly just re-learning lessons that John DeLorean taught the rest of the industry decades ago.
Whats in their trucks? Well, a crew cab occasionally is used for car pooling workers, where they all park their vintage beater trucks at the business... Sometimes weather sensitive tools, or job related items, documents, you can just throw these in a glove box... The bed usually has a gas pump for refilling remote equipment. Cones and other safety shit. Sand hoppers for plowing. Yes they also use these "luxury" trucks to plow.
The thing is... These people are making decent salaries... my direct relatives are multi-millionaires who still pick up a welder, a hammer, a shovel.
Im see alot of assumptions about why trucks evolved the way they did, who owns them, and what for... I would argue the "luxury faker" is a very small crowd, one that likely moved to the cybertruck... and despite the trucks looking modernized, are beaten to pulp over long service lives.
Now, go get in a modern tractor, dump truck, or excavator. They are also all AC, Radios, Computers, Leather Seats, etc... People want to be comfortable.
If it was made by some other company I would genuinely consider buying one. But I would never buy another Tesla. I owned an older Model X, before Elon went full-fascism. And even ignoring Elon, the car was awful. It was shoddily built, kept breaking down, and the service experience was shockingly bad. Absolutely atrocious.
But after all that, I can't give money to Elon ever again. I can't fund America's descent into fascism. I could not live with myself.
It may be a terrible car from a terrible program, but these events at least bear mentioning. If you saw it happening in 2025, would it have a cooling effect on your decision to purchase? Who would want the trouble?
Ford is a car company. They sell cars. The Lightning was a poorly selling car, so they stopped selling it. Pretty simple!
Tesla is a lifestyle company. They make line go up by owning the libs, catering to edgelord identity, and triggering speculation. The Cybertruck probably gained the company more memetic shareholder value than it lost as a real product.
It's a brodozer for people that are slightly environmentally conscious or have Elon issues.
And again, I say this as an actual cowboy, in that yes, I own cows. And a lineman who ferries manly men (and a few manly women) to do manly man work on high voltage power lines that will kill you so dead it's a guaranteed closed casket funeral. Trucks aren't just dick compensators, they exist to do work. And the Cybertruck sucks at all of that work. The F-150 lightning was a useful fleet vehicle due to the 120VAC outlets alone, aside from being, you know, a usable truck.
There's a reason most of the offering are very similar. We figured out what work pickup trucks need to do and how they're engineered to do it 50 years ago. The Hilux and friends made it highly economical. So you've got the Hiluxies and the SuperManlyMinivans and those are the two main kind of pickup trucks.
The biggest problems are: it costs ~2x what Elon said it would, it has less than half the range he said it'd have, and it has had 10 recalls in its short life.
The recalls have been for things as basic as: light bar falling off, exterior trim falling off, bed trim falling off, the acceleration pedal falling off, inverter failures. It paints a picture of a low-quality product that has a very premium price.
How do so many people justify buying the new redesign? I mean it came out after the CEO went in front of the world and gave two nazi-like salutes, then did DOGE!
Do they buy his 'autistic' defense? Do they just not care about what the CEO does and support him with their money anyways? Do they actively support his ideology?
I suspect it's likely a mix of these depending on the person, and probably more that I can't think of.
I mean they're good cars, no doubt, and it's a damn shame many decent engineers and workers put in so much effort to have it all tainted by such nasty politics.
But I cannot ignore those salutes, nor the myriad other slights starting with calling those Thai cave-diving heroes pedophiles. Tesla is dead to me, a victim of this insane time and its CEO.
https://electrek.co/2026/01/06/tesla-full-2025-data-europe-t...
Why? Do you want your other tools to be _different_ for no reason at all? Do you want your drill come with sharp corners you can't touch just because it'll look different?
If I see a Cybertruck I’m extremely confident that driver approves of Elons antics and likely fervently supports them. It’s a physical manifestation of his ego and mostly bought by his legions of fans.
If you’re a Cybertruck driver and you don’t want people to think that, you’re in the wrong car.
It's clear the design was half baked from the start.
It seems to be a good product (with compromises as any product) but its not a slam dunk to choose that as a Model 3/Y is.
You haven't seen enough trucks and pickups then. The Cybertruck serves no utility purpose.
That was when it was supposed to cost around $35,000.
Four years later when my reservation was ready to order, on December 8, 2023, the CyberTruck cost more than $100k.
Because it cost almost 3x more than what was originally advertised, I cancelled the order. I know many other people who canceled for the same reason. Keeping in mind this was after several delays, so I and many others with reservations were already frustrated with the product before it became available to order.
Because utilitarian design and purpose of this vehicles has been established long time ago. Cybetruck "wanted to be different" but it fails in every aspect of its own "innovation". It's ultimately stupid vehicles with so many flaws that arguing it tried something is pointless. Like, having a man walking to North Pole in runners - he's not trying something new, he's straight stupid and should be treated like that
As an EV owner, it sucks that the main thing holding the technology back is misconceptions and misunderstanding, rather than actual practical matters.
People think EVs are cars with tanks of electrons, and run aground the same way you would if you thought horses were cars full of hay. It's a different transport tool that gives the same results, you just have to know how to use it properly.
EVs are simpler and cheaper. Look at how fast adoption is growing outside the US. If US citizens could buy a BYD for the same price as in China, the the US auto makers and oil companies would be in trouble.
Practically speaking¹, normal people could buy a tesla and drive it like a gas car, except with a full tank of gas every morning. They could still drive across the state once a month to grandma's and they could supercharge if range got low.
This is due to a couple things that were not in place for early EVs.
- teslas have a lot of range/battery compared to early EVs
- superchargers are in many locations, have plentiful charging spots, and are reliable
- teslas have a good UI to navigate and charge
[1] 99% of the time. If you're an apartment dweller in the artic circle with a supercharger 2000 miles away, please scroll onwards.
A few times a year I do quite long drives, sometimes you get the odd road closure and you've added a day to your trip at best, could be stranded at worst.
There will be a phase shift where there are lots of fast chargers but in Australia we aren't quite there yet. Lots of my friends have EVs. The busiest routes are pretty good.
On the one hand I will be a late adopter of the tech but on the other at least I know it will be a significant upgrade when I get there.
Some examples:
1. I constantly see EV owners install 60A/11kWh service, costing them on average $10k when their driving needs don't require it.
2. People thinking they need more than 300mi of range and think they will run out of batteries like they do on their headphones.
All of this needs an understanding of the aforementioned units and basic physics. But, you're not going to get that by just talking to people. Salespeople are especially not going to do that, they can't even do that for combustion cars.
The only EV pickups in the US are like $60-$120K. Price is a huge barrier to entry.
Average sale price, per Gemini:
There needs to be a sub $40K EV pickup for it to be a real option for many.It seems that the hybrid-first strategy has been working pretty well for them. (The 2026 RAV4s are hybrid-only with no ICE-only options, AIUI.)
https://fordauthority.com/2025/02/ford-ev-inventory-hub-syst...
[1]:https://youtu.be/F0SIL-ujtfA?t=532
Why didn't they just do it anyways? Dealerships seem like a pointless middleman, but I know absolutely nothing about what leverage they have. Self-driving cars can not come fast enough
There are a few reasons for that:
- Ford designed this as a one off vehicle, not as a platform to build multiple vehicles on. So, a lot of the manufacturing process is making components in low volume just for this truck that they are selling in small numbers. It never hit the economies of scale where they could optimize and lower cost.
- It's a big heavy vehicle that needs lots of battery. Batteries are expensive.
- The tariff situation made importing components from Mexico, China, and elsewhere prohibitively expensive. Ford can't source everything they need locally just yet.
All this drives the production cost up. When they launched the vehicle a few years ago, they were still able to import components. They had a shot at sourcing much cheaper batteries from China down the line. All that went away and locally produced batteries aren't as cheap.
Another factor is that it's a product that was designed to be premium and more expensive than the ICE F150 in order to protect sales of that. It was forever going to be compared to that in terms of performance and towing capacity. And the combination of being more expensive than that while having less range and even less while towing is not a great selling point.
Companies like Rivian or BYD that have no ICE truck sales to protect can operate differently. They simply make the best and most affordable vehicle they can without artificially making it needlessly expensive. Rivian isn't cheap of course but they sell well because it's a desirable product. And Rivian has done a lot of work to lower cost and is now introducing cheaper models on the back of that. BYD is cutting well below F150 ICE prices with their Shark truck. Because they can. Not for sale in the US of course but it makes F150 Lightning international sales a bit unviable. As a US only niche vehicle selling in the low thousands per year the Lightning had no future.
I’d be really interested to know if they’re going to do that.
The tech is incredible and will filter into all vehicles in a decade or so (48v, Ethernet instead of CAN, etc)
so hopefully ford can turn the F-150 into an Extended Range Electrical Vehicle
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a69147125/ford-f-150-light...
That said, they big car makers only chased the government incentives, which was a great reason to have them.
Electric everything is the future. It is obvious (e.g. heat pumps, EVs).
New started at 40k, went to 60k for sale, pre-order fulfillment fell off a cliff so it sunk to 56k, and settled around 50k.
2022: 15,617 sold
2023: 24,165
2024: 33,510
2025: “Around 27,300 units sold in the U.S”
$4k-$6k per battery module replacement. Full pack $25k-$50k.
And they don't age well. Most of the ones around here are starting to look... grimy. Or dingy. After just a couple of years. It's a poor advertisement for itself.
And, yeah, then there's cultural eye-rolling. It's really the only vehicle I hear people openly mock when they see one... And that's not a Tesla/Elon thing entirely, since people don't have the same reaction to other Tesla vehicles.
I also use it to commute, and it's even better at that (part of that is mine being the Platinum trim). Quiet, smooth, powerful, has Android Auto/CarPlay (unlike GM's products), etc.
They really are a fantastic vehicle for those who don't need to quickly tow heavy trailers 400 miles. Especially on the used market.
I think the issue was that Ford wasn't making much margin on them and they weren't moving sufficient volume to make up for that. (around 20K/yr avg)