Tesla Cybertruck appears to be facing significant sales challenges. After initial hype faded, and over a million reservations turned out to be as real as unicorns, Tesla is now enabling leasing options and free upgrades to move its inventory of the futuristic pickup truck. The company’s recent silence on the Cybertruck, even omitting it from their earnings call, speaks volumes about the situation.
Tesla initially projected sales of 500,000 Cybertrucks annually and established production capacity at the Giga Texas for 250,000 units per year. After working through the initial reservation backlog with fewer than 40,000 deliveries, the automaker is now struggling to sell the remaining vehicles.
This should surprise no one. The reception was poor, delivery was poor. It’s a niche market item in an existing niche market. On top of that, the de facto spokesperson of Tesla isn’t well liked by a lot of potential buyers.
“niche market,” is a way of saying they made a bad product few want.
pickup trucks are hardly a niche product especially in the us
To be fair, it’s valid to cater to niche markets.
However, that wasn’t what Tesla was aiming to do.
cybertruck is barely even a truck at all. its a truck shaped car for rich assholes to look rugged.
It makes more sense if you start from the other side - EVs are a niche market, and an electric truck is a small subset of that.
The Cybertruck sold 38,965 units last year, vs 33,510 for the Ford F150 Lightning.
One of the things I love about my Lightning is that it doesn’t look like a fucking cybertruck
They shipped 39k cybertrucks for backlogged preorders that were based on a completely different description of what the truck would be.
Which is mind boggling, as the Lightning seems like a good, attractive vehicle, while the cybertruck seems like a pile of shit
I don’t think I’d call that thing a pickup. I’m not gonna run to the farm and pick up a 1000lb bale of hay in that thing. A Baja looks like it has more bed space.
pickup trucks are hardly a niche product
Tanks camouflaged as pickup trucks are.
I mean off the bat that’s one of the worse combinations of people/product I’ve ever seen. I mean off the bat electric car’s target market is people that want to think they are doing something better for the environment.
So… then the guy making them goes loudly in the “fuck the environment” group.
To top it off though, Cybertruck itself always confuses me. I don’t know who the target audience is. The original tesla’s I could look at and think, that’s a cool car, if they ever came down in price I’d be interested.
Cybertruck you look at and think… What a car would look like if you scaled up games from the 32/64 bit console era and made them HD without increasing the polygon count.
We’re not all buying EVs for the environment. I bought an EV because I think the car is cool and it’s really enjoyable to drive. It’s nice that the “gas” is also significantly cheaper, but that wasn’t high on my list of reasons to get the thing, either.
The EV owners I’ve talked to didn’t buy them for the environment, either, but I haven’t talked to any Leaf owners or anything. Maybe they’re more environmentally conscious. It being better for the environment long term is definitely nice, and I hope progress continues on batteries made with less toxic components.
Thankfully, I did not buy a Tesla and they were never on my list of options because of Elon. So he definitely alienated a customer due to him being an awful human being. I also won’t use any of their charging stations, since I don’t want them to profit off of me.
You could say we bought our Teslas “for the environment” in a way, though a bit roundabout. When we bought them (2018), it was after having previously leasing a Leaf which had shit mileage and poor performance over 40mph. We wanted to signal to the industry with our dollars that we wanted the EV movement to succeed. Because apparently money is the only thing they listen to. We knew full well that EVs were only a step toward a greener future or whatever but we wanted the industry to take that step and understand that being environmentally friendlier was important.
My problem with Tesla is that so many things seem half-unthinking, half-finished or half-assed:
Unthinking: I know! I’ll put a ledge in from of the headlights, so snow can pile up while I’m driving!
Unfinished: all the seam mismatches and eternally unfinished-but-really-close! full self-driving (it ain’t gonna happen).
Half-assed: that recall they had to do because sometimes the latch doesn’t catch properly and the hood flies open when you’re driving and blocks your view. Tesla’s solution isn’t to fix or replace the hood latch so this doesn’t happen; they push a software up that monitors the hood latch and pops up a warning, telling you to pull over and check the hood latch. Because apparently fixing the issue that their poor design (see #1) and bad implementation (see #2) doesn’t warrant an actual fix, they’re just going to fob the risk , the cost and the work off to the customer.
I like the theory that Tesla had a long term roadmap before Elon scooped it up, and that he wasn’t able to do too much to disrupt that in the early years because he was focused on LARPing as Tony Stark on the Internet, and the team that developed around him to insulate the company from him were reasonably good at their jobs. But even the best can only hold back so few bad ideas while keeping up the illusion, and the result has been gradually diminishing amount of ass.
Until that roadmap ran out, and/or Elon stopped being distracted, resulting in them designing and building the Elon.
The target audience is monied tech bro millenials who really wanted a warthog out of Halo.
The problem is that the overlap between tech bros and nazi lovers is definitely not 100%, probably not even 10%.
“What?! You all wanted electric mail trucks, so here they are!”
(Sadly / Probably)
“Isn’t well liked” is quite the understatement. “Despised” is more like it. I actually like the way the cybertruck looks, I think the technology is interesting, and if I really wanted to, I could probably afford one.
I wouldn’t drive one if it was given to me for free. I’d rather take a taxi every day than drive a public display of support for the treasonous fascist manchild that owns the company.
Tesla’s second biggest problem is their shit standards and quality control. Their first biggest problem is their shit corporate leadership.
I swear that every time I saw one, the people around would point and laugh. 100k+ to drive a car that is always broken and mocked by everyone is quite expensive.
Plus the initial sales were to people who had already committed to preorders at a lower price for a truck that was hyped up to be far better than the end result.
Cybertrucks are basically No Man’s Sky but without the possibility of being good in a half decade.
It is jaw dropping that only 40,000 of their one million+ reservations actually turned into sales. Thats 4% conversion!
Also, trucks are not a niche market. And there is pretty minimal overlap between the kind of douche who wants one of these and people who object to Musk’s behavior. It’s designed for his cult, especially.
The best thing they could do for their sales is get rid of all ties to Elon Musk.
Also have anyone who understands basic car design point out why shit like door opening buttons are a terrible idea in emergencies. Or why requiring the doors to lock during a software update is stupid. Or why putting electronics not designed for extreme heat is terrible. Or that trying to use cameras in bad weather isn’t any better than human eyes…
Turns out the group of people who look at mid nineties Laura Croft and think “that low polygon count asthenic is exactly how I like my women and trucks, I’ve got lots of disposable income to buy a truck that can’t do many truck things well, and I’m glad a far right ketamine fueled tech bro is running the company!” Is a small number of people.
got treasure money now, no need to sell overpriced junk
It’s the price. I want a truck, not a Cadillac with a bed. A truck is meant for work not be a pavement princess. $50k was already high and the truck market is still stupid on price with most trucks going over $60k and Cybertruck starts at $75.5k. If the price was what Elon said when he announced the Cybertruck, it would be flying off the shelves $40k
I want a truck, not a Cadillac with a bed.
And that certainly ain’t no Cadillac.
As and when announced, it would have been one of the cheapest EVs. I’m not interested in a truck, but that announced price and done of the technology they promised, were very tempting. However now we see how preorders based on just an announcement are risky
Exactly, they were taking reservations at the $40k price for a really long time. I was looking to buy an EV in 2021 and at that price, it was significantly cheaper than anything being sold. I laughed at how fucking ugly the thing was, but it was so cheap that I didn’t hesitate to put down a reservation.
Then when it was released, it was like $100k. Ain’t no way am I paying that for that piece of shit. And in the meantime, Elon went full on Nazi. I could kind of ignore his dumbfuckery back in 2021 but not now.
