Elon Musk bet big on the Cybertruck.
It didn’t emerge from focus groups, mimic successful truck models, or even resemble Tesla’s own—at the time—successful S, X, 3, and Y lines. It was an ugly monstrosity that failed to live up to Musk’s lofty promises. But Musk thought he knew better than everyone else.
Of course, that’s not how he sold it. Ever his own hypeman, Musk claimed to have 1 million reservations for the vehicle, and he built an entire factory in Austin, Texas, designed to crank out 125,000 Cybertrucks annually, with plans to double that. His fanboys cheered. Wall Street nodded along.
So how many Cybertrucks did Tesla actually sell?
A March recall—in which Cybertruck panels were literally falling off due to faulty glue—betrayed the number: 46,096 sold in the 14 months since deliveries began. That’s less than 3,300 per month.
It was already clear then that the vehicle would never meet Musk’s absurd targets, but Tesla’s latest delivery numbers suggest that things are even worse.
Tesla reported another steep decline in vehicle deliveries, down 13% year-over-year in the second quarter. But check out the actual numbers:
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Model 3/Y: 373,728
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Other models: 10,394
That “other models” bucket includes the premium yet geriatric Model S, Model X, and—shocker—the Cybertruck.
That’s less than 3,500 of all three combined that are sold per month.
Models S and X make sense, since neither vehicle has meaningfully changed in years. Tesla—and Musk—have been distracted by the Cybertruck and, hilariously, robots—of which Musk now claims Tesla will sell 1 million. Models S and X are expensive and tired, and premium competitors like Rivian, Lucid, and Mercedes-Benz have left them in the dust.
So we can reasonably extrapolate that Tesla sold maybe 1,000 to 2,000 Cybertrucks in its second quarter, which is beyond hilarious. At this rate, Tesla may have to shut down entirely. There’s no way it comes close to recouping the massive capital sunk into manufacturing.
But is anyone actually surprised? Not only is it the ugliest vehicle on the road, but it’s also become a rolling MAGA meme. Many of the Teslas on the road were bought back when Tesla was the only electric vehicle option—when Musk still claimed that his mission was to save the world.
Drivers of older Teslas get grace—and I’m one of those, so I know it first hand. But the Cybertruck? By the time that launched, everyone knew who Musk really is. No one driving one of those is innocent.
And it’s all Musk’s fault.
Musk torched his relationship with the very people who made Tesla successful: liberals. The early adopters, the tech-forward, and the climate-conscious fled as soon as he went full anti-woke, anti-trans, anti-everything-but-him. The guy who once positioned himself as a futurist became just another dime-a-dozen grievance-peddling reactionary on the podcast circuit.
Musk’s obvious hope—delusional as it was—was that anti-EV conservatives would replace the lost liberal customers. Musk even staged an unseemly Tesla sales event at the freakin’ White House. But then he blew that up, too, by picking a fight with President Donald Trump.
Now Trump is threatening to deport Musk and unleash his DOGE “monster” to destroy his companies—cutting off the federal contracts that keep Tesla and SpaceX alive. Musk was once the patron saint of culture war capitalism, but now he’s getting excommunicated by the very people he tried to impress.
So who’s left to buy Teslas? Crypto grifters? Joe Rogan stans? That’s not a customer base; it’s a comment section. And Tesla’s sales numbers reflect that.
But the robot stuff will be totally different, right?