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.
I certainly find it funny that Tesla’s waiting list went from five years down to zero. Even Tesla’s biggest fans who actually stumped money on this thing produced video after video griping about its price & brokenness.
But frankly it was kind of obvious from the get-go that it would be an expensive, uninsurable, lemony asshole death mobile. I wonder if the next time Tesla announces something and Musk spews lie after lie about it that people will start to cotton on that nothing he says can be taken at face value.
If somebody like Trump’s words still get reported like they mean anything, Musk has a long way to go.
If things stay normal, I would expect anything Tesla announces to get reproduced in the news in full with a little caveat somewhere that says musk is known for optimistic or aggressive timelines.