Full disclosure: I work for a competitor to Tesla so I'm a bit biased.
The Cybertruck I thought was initially kind of neat but when you try to use one as a truck you quickly can see some glaring problems that most people who buy a truck want. Towing with an EV is terrible. I've heard there's power stations with pull throughs but havent' seen them personally. The truck bed isn't practical for anything but a lawn mower. When I ride in one it rides like a car. It doesn't look good dirty. I just think they were going for warthog from Halo and thought the rest would work out. It's also super expensive for all these issues. It's a hobby vehicle. A toy.
I think Tesla is struggling personally. The marketing tactics of showcasing cars we'll never be able to buy just to cause a scene. Don't get me wrong the new Roadster my jaw dropped and I agree with Elon now that SpaceX and Tesla are the 'same' company I think it's great but let's be realistic. Most people want cars that are cheap, dependable and sort of cool. Not everyone can afford multiple cars, and a corvette that isn't feasible. Like I said I work for a competitor (GM) and I fear China is going to eat our lunch. Unless we make infrastructure for charging better and make it a no brainer.
After Helene knocked out power in parts of my area for a little over 14 days, I found out that a friend of ours used his cybertruck to power his house through the entire mess. He'd run the house on it for a couple of days, then drive the cybertruck over to a super charger station, recharge, then come home and plug the house back in.
The battery capacity on those things is equivalent to 9 Tesla Powerwall units or something close to it.
They may be ugly, but the emergency prepper in me always wanted one after hearing that story. Before, I always wanted to install powerwalls...but I never considered in an extended event being able to drive my powerwalls somewhere to recharge them.
- The emissions credit market (where Tesla made most of its money) is dead due to lowered standards.
- Manufacturing costs haven't come down.
- EV sales share in the US is down to 6% (and falling every quarter).
- Chinese EVs are dominating every market outside the US.
- All the overhyped moonshots (sub-$30K car, unsupervised autopilot, autonomous robots) are nowhere to be seen.
It's hard to see where Tesla goes from here as a company. The stock is still surviving on Elon hype but has been stagnant for 5 years. The day he gets bored and decides to resign to focus on SpaceX full time the company is basically done.
There are a lot of lenses through which to view the failure of the cybertruck: aesthetics, not enough truck not enough SUV, size, association of aesthetics with politics, etc. But I think the main one that is ignored is price.
The cybertruck was built in an era of high truck prices driven by zero interest rates. It bet on the price of trucks going up, just as the Ford F150 electric did. That was the wrong bet.
If it was a $40,000 truck, it would have a much bigger market despite all the other explanations of its failure. The market moved under it.
From my perspective, owning a truck and SUV and using them differently for various use cases, the cybertruck is neither. So even if I ignore everything else I feel about it’s aesthetic, Musk, politics, etc. It simply does not serve many real world needs that I have. It put itself in a very narrow box of, only people that really like this quirky design and also like/feel indifferent to the tangential stuff will want to buy this truck. Oh, also you have to be able to afford it too. This is such a small addressable market for a vehicle to target. Was never going to work.
However, it provided content and distraction and kept the stock high longer than it should have and I feel like that’s what Musk continues to excel at.
The absurdity is the best part of it. Finally it was something new, in a landscape where every car and truck has looked the same for the past 20 years. I'm happy someone designed and built something so crazy and different.
It probably would have been better had they not been mass produced, and maybe did a very limited quantity run - make it more like a collector item... I suppose thats what it'll be now. I see quite a few on the road, it takes away from the uniqueness.
Kids really love these things and get very excited to see them on the road.
They are going to be very valued collectors items in 30 years once the kids of today have enough disposable income to buy whichever are left roadworthy by then.
I get so much joy from seeing these on the road. They are not to my taste, but it’s so nice to see something new on the road.
I still remember years ago seeing one in a grocery store parking lot, with a banana yellow wrap and the Zelda unlock sound as its lock chime. A brief moment of inconsequential joy.
Lastly, having the cyber truck drag race a Porsche 911, while towing a Porsche 911 (and win) has to be one of the best marketing stunts of all time.
politics aside, Cybertuck is/was an engineering breakthrough.
48 volts, steering wheel, no paint ( better durability), trunk, wipers etc.
the car pushed the boundaries. If you compare level of creative thinking of cybertruck vs lets say electric ford, it's not even comparable. I respect that despite one person behind it. I don't care how it looks. It's polarizing. oh well.
My 11 y.o. relative from abroad asked me to take rl pictures of the truck, after he heard my neighbor bought it.
All other things aside, the worst part of the Cybertruck's design, to me, was its sloped truck bed walls (on the sides). Anyone who frequently uses their truck bed will know that getting access to stuff quickly and easily is key. And the Cybertruck's sloped walls go too high for anything in the very back of the bed to be reached. That just seems like such an unnecessary functional miss.
I really thought it would have had a lot of potential for cheaper manufacturing. No paint process is huge. And originally they were talking about basically building it like origami from a sheet of steel.
I’ve been seeing complaints on the internet about how all cars look the same nowadays. I think the cybertruck proves why. A lot of design has coalesced around the same thing, not just for cars but for websites and apps, logos, furniture, etc. because people like that stuff.
Something new and fresh can be accepted and loved, but it still needs to be familiar and somewhat iterative. A radical change like the cybertruck is hated for that reason. (People also hate it because of Elon, but they don’t hate the other Teslas nearly as much as they hate the cybertruck)
I suspect the semi truck will be next on the chopping block. Tesla being merged into Spacex would have resulted in the shutting down of the car business and a focus on robots. I doubt that robots will be a money maker, it's only useful on mars because people can't live there.
The good: someone trying a radically new design. Polarizing like the Fiat Multipla or Pontiac Aztek or even the first Chrysler minivan, but credit for trying.
The bad: didn't seem to be very good as a truck (eg build quality). That would not have been too bad, but it's dangerous when the design already alienates some buyers. Carmakers need time to get it right, and that needs sales.
The terrible: Elon torching his reputation in all sorts of ways and essentially insulting his past and future customer base. The politics, the bait and switch over features, etc etc. Eventually people tire of it.
It's tragic, because for better or worse Americans love their trucks, so the team that solves the electric transition is doing the world a huge favor.
Electric trucks in general seem terrible. You only see Rivians and Cybertrucks in urban settings, the electric F150 was discontinued. Anybody who knows how people that actually need trucks use trucks saw this coming, I never once saw a cybertruck used as a truck.
I noticed that the cyberpunk wedge cars that inspired it are 2 seaters… maybe this shape isn't right for much larger cars?
DeLorean is the real life 80s reference of course, but in cyberpunk revival media like the coupe in Ghost in the Shell 2017, the spinner in Blade Runner 2049—those cars are all much smaller cabins than the cybertruck
The dimensions felt off to me. I had it as a loaner and enjoyed it a bit, especially since it had HW4. But I would never buy one.
The size is just too impractical. It would never fit in my garage. On top of that, the standby drain was significant. Just sitting idle, it would lose 10 to 20 miles of range.
I think what also contributed to the commercial failure is that it actually looked great at the early prototype stage, but the production car turned out to be uglier. Most people don't notice this, but they feel it subconsciously.
Go find early pre-production Cybertruck photos and compare with the actual prod car. It became subtly bulkier, uglier, less streamlined, and IRL it looks even worse than on the photos. Probably they had to do this due to production difficulties or to meet some standards, or to cut costs, whatever. But it was a mistake.
I live in SF (and sometimes NYC), so those are the only places I've really seen them. They're enormous, and incredibly unwieldy in an urban environment.
I think they'll be a hard sell in rural areas, too... where the Cybertruck isn't really competitive with traditional pickups for the actual things they're used for.
It's cool, though. Even if you don't like the look, there's something whimsical about seeing a vehicle that doesn't look like every other car on the road. I just don't think there's a big enough market for it.
I would have liked a 3-row SUV based on the Cybertruck; but the Cybertruck was just too expensive to be competitive. At least the Model Y's price dropped (right after I bought one) to something more reasonable.
What's most frustrating is that I had to trade in my Model 3 for a 3-row SUV, and Tesla just didn't have anything competitive in that segment.
Why would they focus on "cybercab" over this. Everything that makes the cybercab cool will never be legal in a consumer product. Cybertruck is definitely more useful to an average person.
I liked the styling. Thought about getting one. Got a chance to get in one the other day. and it was so uncomfortable. felt like sitting on a park bench. I thought this was supposed to be not a real pickup. Rather a suburban big old thing with blade runner styling and reviews said lots of comfort. No, just a big old vehicle, that's not even that roomy on the inside (hip room felt like that of my old integra), with the comfort of an 80's pick up. not much of a point to it.
Hopefully they make some sort of "Signature Edition" version as a last hurrah.
The upsides were the steer by wire which once you drive it feels amazing and an exterior surface unlike painted vehicles you can choose to neglect and it doesn't matter.
The major downside was the price. I feel if they could have gotten it in the mid/low 40K range for an entry model it would have sold more units.
They look quite silly but I really love it when a car manufacturer takes a chance and does something out of the ordinary. In a few years these are going to be really popular at car shows.
I love my Cybertruck. It's absolutely amazing for road trips with my dog. I watch movies and work on my projects (using a voice app I built) while FSD drives. It's basically a mobile apartment for me. I sleep comfortably in the truck bed when needed. I installed MOLLE panels on the L-tracks in the bed and 3D printed various accessories.
Sad to see it go but glad I got mine. Oh and kids love it. My Sentry mode clips are full of kids asking their parents to take pics with it.
They can cancel it, but it will always symbolize the time period and culture associated with its creator, that probably just ended. I bet future generations will use its image that way.
Fun fact from Denmark: you could never buy one here anyway. It never got EU type approval, mostly due to pedestrian safety rules (sharp edges, rigid steel body). Curious whether that limited market was part of why volumes stayed low.
Truly one of the most baffling stories in recent automotive history. All they had to do was make a normal pickup truck with Tesla tech. Hell, go ahead and use it as the testbed for 48V, steer-by-wire and whatever else if you want to - but the amount of time and money wasted to make what was in the end an absolute monstrosity that failed to deliver on any of its price, performance and range promises strains credulity. Cybertruck is the most visible inflection point marking Elon's descent into madness.
I'm not a fan, but I was hopeful that the direct sales model would drive others to confront the dealership tax. Ford floated the idea with the Lightning, but faced a mutiny.
I am the exact target audience of their new Fathom, but I abandoned my preorder sign up process when I saw the phrase "dealerships set the final price".
Winding down production of this abomination isn't enough. The ones already on the road should be rounded up, crushed, and recycled. This is urban blight on wheels. Citizens have a right to streets free of these eyesores.
I legitimately would have bought it if they made it look more like a regular pickup truck, and if Elon didn't go full crazy.
I did buy a Model-Y shortly before his Trump endorsement, and then sold it for technical reasons.
On a cold January morning, I was pulling up to a stop-sign, didn't have any autopilot turned on, and the car accelerated.
I think there is just too much software between gas pedal and the machinery of the car. They're honestly kind of dangerous vehicles. The average person can't handle the responsibility of a self-driving vehicle.
I told all of my friends and family that I would not recommend the vehicle yet to a non-technical person, even when I was myself driving it and loving it.
As a Tesla owner and fan, their 5 year consumer strategy is unclear. Their 3 upscale / luxury products have been canceled, and there's no clear "growth" roadmap for their existing owners. And although they have exceptional technology, innovation for the Tesla badge has stalled.
I can tell they are likely investing all of their production capacity into Cybercabs, in order to tap into a growing rental market (mostly short term, possibly some long term), and adjust to shrinking vehicle ownership.
But as someone who enjoys driving, car ownership, road trips, spontaneity -- I don't have a clear picture of what my next Tesla purchase would be in 5 years.
I have very little interest in electric vehicles, Tesla, Elon Musk, etc. But I still think the Cybertruck, at least the design, looks awesome. It looked like something you'd see in the "Another World" or "Out of this World" intro cinematic.
Reading through some of the comments in this thread feels like being in the Twilight Zone. This is the company of a man who poured almost half a billion dollars into the US election to try to buy favor in Texas. He tried basically bribing voters in Wisconsin before. Weeks ago, he used Starlink for political retribution against Ukraine. He’s unelected, unaccountable and has repeatedly and brazenly tried to undermine US democracy and insert himself in international affairs.
And yet some of the comments talk about this like these cars exist in a vacuum, detached from the realities of the person behind them. Some of them even praise this hideous, low quality, overpriced, impractical abomination of a truck. Parts of the tech world really do live in a bubble.
I have very mixed feelings about the Cybertruck. Personally I absolutely hate it, it's just not my cup of tea and I would never in a million years buy one. However as a general lover of cars, I have to appreciate just how striking the design is and how it was a complete departure from pretty much any other car on the road.
There's nothing quite like the Cybertruck and I don't think there ever will be again.
I love that they took a swing for the fences. Car makers are so fucking safe these days. Sadly it didn’t land, but it’s awesome that it exists. I think if it had used a more conventional design it would have done so much better. Owners report an incredible driving experience. I also think battery technology held it back. It was originally advertised as having much better towing range, and production came in very underwhelming. This made it much less appealing as a utility vehicle. It ended up being used for picking up groceries and this wasn’t broad enough a market.
Sad, but reminds me of the Model S line teardown in making space. CB truly was ahead its time in how it pushed Tesla's tech, and will always be futuristic. Still, I can't help but to feel like it died too early. Its spirit lives on in the Roadster, and I sure hope this won't be the last "truly exceptional" Tesla among their "quality sleeper" EV's.
No other car is as awe-striking to see on the streets, especially in the EU. This will be the Mustang Fastback or Testarossa of the 2040's ...
I had a pre-order. The reason I canceled was because the delivered product had a lot less range and was much more expensive than previously announced.
There were other things that contributed to the decision, too: the announced "stressed skin" exoskeleton was panned in favor of adhering the body panels to the body with glue, it became clear that Tesla's profit and valuation were funding Elon's right-wing political project, and I would have preferred a solid-axle design.
The absurdity was not what was wrong with it. It's OK to be absurd. I really liked the stainless steel design. Less trail damage when off-roading and no need to worry about paint scratches causing body rust. The door wedge design? Meh. But it enabled the stainless steel body.
In the end, I want what the Cybertruck failed to deliver: a full-size electric pickup at a good price with excellent range. I currently have my eyes on the RAM REV. We'll see if that one gets axed, too.
Behold the Toyota Hilux [1], a truck so reliable that it is the truck of choice in many developed nations and even less developed ones. It's so cheap and reliable it became the platform for a war [2]. It also has a truck bed equivalent to a Ford F150, a vehicle significantly larger. But you can't buy a new Hilux or equivalent in the US because cars younger than 25 years cannot legally be imported [3] (to stop grey imports on Mercedes in the 1980s, originally) and because of CAFE standards [4].
Electric vehicles obviously don't have the hurdle of meeting emissions standards so Tesla, or any other company really, had (and has) the opportunity to create a small, cheap, mass market utility truck that no gas-powered vehicle can compete with. This is what the Cybertruck should've been.
There have been breakdowns of the Cybertruck and it is such an incredibly bad design. Things like the weight of stainless steel panels but with an aluminum frame. Why is that a problem? Because aluminum is prone to catastrophic failure with the up and down motion of towing a heavy load than stainless steel simply isn't [5].
The rumor has been that the only thing propping up Cybertruck demand is Elon forcing his own companies like SpaceX to buy them [6]. Other than that, the Cybertruck became a weird political statement [7]. Those people are getting crucified on resale. It's even a trend on Tiktok and elsewhere to watch these trade in videos. People who paid $150k+ are getting <$70k less than 2 years later.
Anyway, I'm shocked no US manufacturer is tackling the EV small utility truck market. Yes there was the F150 Lightning but it's still too big (and thus expensive).
no one here will say it because the Musk glazing is crazy, but it was always his own little pet project, he really pushed for it and now it's obvious that it's stupid and a failure and he was wrong for entertaining this idea
I mean as much as I love thd idea of actually doing something bonkers, the lack of sales seemed inevitable to most I assume, so that should come as no surprise. Should have stayed a concept car.
The Cybertruck wasn't really designed as a volume item, it was designed as the testbed for Tesla's next gen tech (ethernet-based fieldbus, 48V tech). You can do only so much in the lab, and sometimes you have to push your tech into production to find the last few% of failures, which will cost you dearly if you actually put them into your volume sellers.
I mean it's probably not that comforting for owners to unknowingly have signed up for a beta test, but that was the plan for Tesla for a while with the Cybertruck.
This was also the reason for sloppy stuff like steel panels glued to the aluminium frame, and not following up on their initial promises - the car morphed from a serious project into a low volume testbed sometime during its production.
Tesla seems to be killing its non volume cars the S and X are dead as well, I've heard rumors the Model 3 might be on its way out.
I wonder if we will see less aggressive and generally hostile car designs in the future, now that public sentiment towards the tech oligarchs seems to have shifted.
Renault is designing cute things again, so that's a good development. So is Citroen, apparently?
The overall positive responses here are kinda...concerning.
This sharp edged, fire hazard which was aimed at a certain group of people who seem to be dangerous themselves is not really something that should be cheered.
And yes, it looked different but there are different looking cars all over the world. They usually serve a purpose though like kei cars in Japan.
Truly the peak of 2020s antisocial car design. The car looks designed to plow through other vehicles, barriers, and pedestrians without slowing down to count the bodies. "Bulletproof bodypanels" is only a selling point on a mass production car if you routinely piss people off enough to make them grab iron. Folks who need pickup trucks for the utility they provide have stuck with trucks that are actually fit for purpose. It was a way to signal to the world that you had extremely poor judgement and low standards.
I'm convinced that Elon made it just because he thought it would be funny. "Let's make a truck that looks like it came out of a 90s low-polygon video game! That'll be hilarious!" He never cared for one moment if it was actually a good product.
The poor people that bought them were the butt of his joke.
Tesla's forgotten how to make actual products people want to buy thanks to its meme stock status, government handouts, state & federal tax and carbon credits, not to mention the absurdly high tariffs on foreign competitors. It has received zero actual feedback from the market so the new products are based on ketamine high visions rather than market needs.
It'll probably be folded into SpaceX by the time the feedback arrives.
Tesla's forgotten how to make actual products people want to buy thanks to its meme stock status, government handouts, state & federal tax and carbon credits, not to mention the absurdly high tariffs on foreign competitors.
It has received zero actual feedback from the market so the new products are based on ketamine high visions rather than market needs.
It'll probably be folded into SpaceX by the time the feedback arrives.
>The US EV maker only began delivering the Cybertruck to customers in late 2023. According to Kelley Blue Book, the company only sold 20,237 Cybertrucks in the US last year, down 48% from 38,965 in 2024. Before the pickup truck launched, Musk had predicted annual sales of 250,000 units.
Unloved and unwanted is outright false. Go to cybertruckownersclub.com for a more balanced take. Somehow Wired managed to completely miss the best U-word description of it: Ugly.
So this leaves Tesla with two car models, a Robotaxi that doesn't work very well, and a humanoid robot operation that didn't ship product on schedule[1]. Why is this worth a 1.4 trillion dollar market cap?
No fan of Elon here but I prefer Cybertrucks to Hummers based solely on observed owner behavior. Hummer drivers are DICKS. Cybertruck drivers are just driving around in some metallic 3-D geometry with little (observable) ill intent
The cybertruck was announced like a bad meme and now dies as one too. What we see is the logical and long overdue conclusion of a story that lasted longer than it should have.
The cybertruck is baffling to me because it has the political connotations of a Hummer, but the beauty and gadget-obsession of a Pontiac Aztek.
IMO the Aztek is a perfect comp to the Cybertruck, actually. Both were crammed with features intended to revolutionize their market segments. Like the Cybertruck, the added value from those features was... dubious, at best.
Both are hideous. Both had a longer production run than you'd expect given their lofty goals and poor sales.
The Aztek has taken on a sort of ironic-cool status among some car nerds. It wasn't a bad car per se, just ugly and weird. Nowadays it's just a funny curio of the early 2000s.
It'll be interesting to see how the Cybertruck ages in the public eye. With time, maybe it'll be easier to separate it from its context as a Hummer for tech douchebags, and it'll just be a funny ugly car with some goofy features.
Someone knows the government infinite money machine, which Tesla, SpaceX, Solar City, and many other Musk companies took advantage of, is about to get cut off.
I still remember the marketing for the Cybertruck. Tesla teased a partial neo-noir silhouette of the truck which had everyone guessing which part it belonged to. Childhood fantasies about Blade Runner designs were conjured in people’s imaginations. Fanboys were truly generous with the design expectations. Embarrassed to admit now, I did go to the unveiling and when it rolled out I thought this must be a gag and the real Blade Runner would follow any second now, only to realize that this ugly thing was it. If you could only see the collective shock amongst the attendees. Only the drunks were cheering. Then the boss had the designer throw a ball through the window. Twice.
(Edit: the actual designer had the assistant designer throw a ball through the window.)
side-topic: why trucks are so popular (especially USA)? Is it all in the fake testosterone virtue signalling and pretending to be hard working country people?
To me trucks are the most useless type of vehicle apart from niche utilitarian cases in farming or construction. Super heavy, gas guzzling, open bed, compromised handling, pedestrian crushing death machine.
If you want big family hauler, grocery getter: mini-vans, wagons.
If you are in trades: van, box truck or flatbed box truck (where bed is useful shape and size, and all sides can be removed if needed).
No, you don't need 3 tonne vehicle with bajillion horsepower as a daily, because you may need to pull a trailer with your inflatable dinghy once in a two years.
If you want truck adjacent vehicle, get Toyota 4runner or Highlander. Humongous cars, vast and closed cargo space. It will pull a trailer, it will haul all your stuff and family.
I recently had a Tesla service call at my house (routine maintenance for my Y). He showed up in a darkly wrapped Cybertruck. It didn’t occur to me that they’re just dogfooding their own vehicles to use them up.
Hilarious but a logical end state option for them.
It did sort of identify/lean into something that I think many people don't really want to acknowledge, which is, yes the "truck" has become a status symbol rather than a work vehicle.
Had Musk leaned into it as the "luxury"/GT of trucks (like the H2), there probably would've been less pushback. Granted he's functionally incapable of not just lying about things being the best every and setting stupid impossible goals, but I do think there's outcomes where we see more things "akin" to the cybertruck, leaning into the Pavement Princess market.
We can add the truck’s 25,000 annual unit sales versus Musk’s 250,000 prediction to the long list of his other failed and bogus predictions. The top of that list has many contenders: date of mars colonization, date of driverless car, everything about his ridiculous tunnel system in Las Vegas. Yet the media regularly credulously report, “Elon Musk says…”.
Well this thread has taught me that “I don’t like Elon, but “ appears to be the new pronouns for people that find it important to signal their left wing bona fides.
I can only imagine how many people told Musk that the Cybertruck was a horrible idea and he completely ignored them and probably fired a lot of them. Musk basically re-enacted the Simpsons episode where Homer's brother lets him design a car and it is so bad it bankrupts the company.
Tesla is now two cars away from offering no cars? There's just model x and y which was built off of x. It does seem like they'd do fine as a meme-stock company though.
I taught my now 4 year old that those are called dumpsters, so he very reliably says, "Hey Dad! A dumpster" whenever he sees one. The number of people he has loudly roasted while getting out of their dumpster is too high to count. Perhaps my proudest parenting achievement so far.
I just imagine what an incredible success Tesla would have had just making a "boring" Tesla branded competition to the F150. "Just" a model 3 with a standard pickup body.
Americans, for whatever reason, only buy SUVs and trucks. They've left the whole truck market untapped by creating a vehicle only a very small niche could/would want.
I don't understand what product marketing was up to, or if they just completely lacked the spine to stand up to Elon.
I struggle with why I should care. A low selling, controversial truck that is the brainchild of an eccentric billionaire is being discontinued. It's a triumph of Tesla marketing that anyone should care.
They have sold 70k Cybertrucks since 2023. Ford has sold more than 10 times that alone of F-series. Toyota sells that many RAV4s every two months.
For anyone that bought one and loves it - I'm not questioning your choice and I hope the vehicle will be well supported. Many popular vehicles that sell better have been discontinued like the entire companies of Geo, Saturn, and AMC. The Chevy Malibu sold twice as many cars per year pre-Covid than total Cybertrucks have been sold, and they were discontinued in 2024.
It's relatively neat that Tesla tried something new but they should consider focusing on operations and not losing further ground to BYD globally.
Surprise: a car that can only be legally sold and used on mainstream roads in the US makes poor sales, even in the US, after its design was widely ridiculed.
The Model 3 was a masterpiece of design, the Cybertruck is more like Cybercuck.
All the clown show at Tesla had to do is clone the F-150. This was one of the easiest product failures to predict in recent memory. Musk can't help himself. Tesla continues to desperately need a Shotwell at the helm.
At present all Tesla has propping it up is bubble dust and one car model (one increasingly dated car model). Somehow after 14-15 years (Model S released in Summer 2012) these people still can't release a real SUV of any sort. The model Y is a grotesque joke of a fake SUV, a mutilated model 3 that doesn't really look like an SUV in any regard. The model Y is an SUV like the Cybertruck is a truck. They might as well have unlimited money to do it, and they can't do it. Same reason they couldn't release the roadster even after all this time. It's a fundamentally broken company because Musk won't get out of the way. Whatever Musk is good at it, it's not running a large scale automotive company.
Ok, I know I will take a lot of flack for this here with all the Enron fanboys but..
On one hand: "Ha ha!"
On the other, oh no, all these yahoos that bought this trash may make their money back if they hold on to this garbage long enough for the rarity to drive up the value as a collectors item.
Musk was a fool to mistake the hollering of a small group of enthusiasts for that of the truck-buying U.S. population. Nobody was actually wanting for the CyberTruck. He should've listened to his marketing people and not be guided by social media and his right-wing instinct.
Then again, he's a con-man who's now quietly distancing himself from CyberTruck ("I had nothing to do with it") and moving on to the next con-trick: the CyberCab.
Very happy to see this incel dumpster disappear. It's a great example of how aesthetics can be so horrible that they become a kind of moral contagion. The cybertruck's metallic exterior is the g4m3r equivalent of Trump's gold foil. Do love that Elon spent half a billion to get BTFO in Texas though. Good riddance. And lol at all the HN Elon fanboys. Guess I shouldn't expect more from this crowd. If there's one thing that MAGA slackjaws and SF tech nerds have in common it's zero taste.
Tesla to wind down Cybertruck production
(nbcnews.com)715 points by PLenz 10 hours ago | 1527 comments
Comments
The Cybertruck I thought was initially kind of neat but when you try to use one as a truck you quickly can see some glaring problems that most people who buy a truck want. Towing with an EV is terrible. I've heard there's power stations with pull throughs but havent' seen them personally. The truck bed isn't practical for anything but a lawn mower. When I ride in one it rides like a car. It doesn't look good dirty. I just think they were going for warthog from Halo and thought the rest would work out. It's also super expensive for all these issues. It's a hobby vehicle. A toy.
I think Tesla is struggling personally. The marketing tactics of showcasing cars we'll never be able to buy just to cause a scene. Don't get me wrong the new Roadster my jaw dropped and I agree with Elon now that SpaceX and Tesla are the 'same' company I think it's great but let's be realistic. Most people want cars that are cheap, dependable and sort of cool. Not everyone can afford multiple cars, and a corvette that isn't feasible. Like I said I work for a competitor (GM) and I fear China is going to eat our lunch. Unless we make infrastructure for charging better and make it a no brainer.
The battery capacity on those things is equivalent to 9 Tesla Powerwall units or something close to it.
They may be ugly, but the emergency prepper in me always wanted one after hearing that story. Before, I always wanted to install powerwalls...but I never considered in an extended event being able to drive my powerwalls somewhere to recharge them.
- The emissions credit market (where Tesla made most of its money) is dead due to lowered standards.
- Manufacturing costs haven't come down.
- EV sales share in the US is down to 6% (and falling every quarter).
- Chinese EVs are dominating every market outside the US.
- All the overhyped moonshots (sub-$30K car, unsupervised autopilot, autonomous robots) are nowhere to be seen.
It's hard to see where Tesla goes from here as a company. The stock is still surviving on Elon hype but has been stagnant for 5 years. The day he gets bored and decides to resign to focus on SpaceX full time the company is basically done.
The cybertruck was built in an era of high truck prices driven by zero interest rates. It bet on the price of trucks going up, just as the Ford F150 electric did. That was the wrong bet.
If it was a $40,000 truck, it would have a much bigger market despite all the other explanations of its failure. The market moved under it.
However, it provided content and distraction and kept the stock high longer than it should have and I feel like that’s what Musk continues to excel at.
It probably would have been better had they not been mass produced, and maybe did a very limited quantity run - make it more like a collector item... I suppose thats what it'll be now. I see quite a few on the road, it takes away from the uniqueness.
They are going to be very valued collectors items in 30 years once the kids of today have enough disposable income to buy whichever are left roadworthy by then.
I still remember years ago seeing one in a grocery store parking lot, with a banana yellow wrap and the Zelda unlock sound as its lock chime. A brief moment of inconsequential joy.
Lastly, having the cyber truck drag race a Porsche 911, while towing a Porsche 911 (and win) has to be one of the best marketing stunts of all time.
48 volts, steering wheel, no paint ( better durability), trunk, wipers etc. the car pushed the boundaries. If you compare level of creative thinking of cybertruck vs lets say electric ford, it's not even comparable. I respect that despite one person behind it. I don't care how it looks. It's polarizing. oh well.
My 11 y.o. relative from abroad asked me to take rl pictures of the truck, after he heard my neighbor bought it.
Make it a federal law that the cars wifi/SIM card phone home crap needs to be easily removable.
This protectionism around American cars is a hidden tax on everyone of us.
It's cheaper to let Tesla, Ford, etc all collapse and arrange direct social support for laid off workers.
I want a 15k byd. I don't need a 25k Slate.
Something new and fresh can be accepted and loved, but it still needs to be familiar and somewhat iterative. A radical change like the cybertruck is hated for that reason. (People also hate it because of Elon, but they don’t hate the other Teslas nearly as much as they hate the cybertruck)
Also, all the top level comments sound the same. Is there a reason?
The bad: didn't seem to be very good as a truck (eg build quality). That would not have been too bad, but it's dangerous when the design already alienates some buyers. Carmakers need time to get it right, and that needs sales.
The terrible: Elon torching his reputation in all sorts of ways and essentially insulting his past and future customer base. The politics, the bait and switch over features, etc etc. Eventually people tire of it.
It's tragic, because for better or worse Americans love their trucks, so the team that solves the electric transition is doing the world a huge favor.
DeLorean is the real life 80s reference of course, but in cyberpunk revival media like the coupe in Ghost in the Shell 2017, the spinner in Blade Runner 2049—those cars are all much smaller cabins than the cybertruck
The size is just too impractical. It would never fit in my garage. On top of that, the standby drain was significant. Just sitting idle, it would lose 10 to 20 miles of range.
Go find early pre-production Cybertruck photos and compare with the actual prod car. It became subtly bulkier, uglier, less streamlined, and IRL it looks even worse than on the photos. Probably they had to do this due to production difficulties or to meet some standards, or to cut costs, whatever. But it was a mistake.
I think they'll be a hard sell in rural areas, too... where the Cybertruck isn't really competitive with traditional pickups for the actual things they're used for.
It's cool, though. Even if you don't like the look, there's something whimsical about seeing a vehicle that doesn't look like every other car on the road. I just don't think there's a big enough market for it.
What's most frustrating is that I had to trade in my Model 3 for a 3-row SUV, and Tesla just didn't have anything competitive in that segment.
The upsides were the steer by wire which once you drive it feels amazing and an exterior surface unlike painted vehicles you can choose to neglect and it doesn't matter.
The major downside was the price. I feel if they could have gotten it in the mid/low 40K range for an entry model it would have sold more units.
Sad to see it go but glad I got mine. Oh and kids love it. My Sentry mode clips are full of kids asking their parents to take pics with it.
I've rented a Cybertruck, and whatever you think if you drive one you'll be blown away.
I am the exact target audience of their new Fathom, but I abandoned my preorder sign up process when I saw the phrase "dealerships set the final price".
I did buy a Model-Y shortly before his Trump endorsement, and then sold it for technical reasons.
On a cold January morning, I was pulling up to a stop-sign, didn't have any autopilot turned on, and the car accelerated.
I think there is just too much software between gas pedal and the machinery of the car. They're honestly kind of dangerous vehicles. The average person can't handle the responsibility of a self-driving vehicle.
I told all of my friends and family that I would not recommend the vehicle yet to a non-technical person, even when I was myself driving it and loving it.
I can tell they are likely investing all of their production capacity into Cybercabs, in order to tap into a growing rental market (mostly short term, possibly some long term), and adjust to shrinking vehicle ownership.
But as someone who enjoys driving, car ownership, road trips, spontaneity -- I don't have a clear picture of what my next Tesla purchase would be in 5 years.
And yet some of the comments talk about this like these cars exist in a vacuum, detached from the realities of the person behind them. Some of them even praise this hideous, low quality, overpriced, impractical abomination of a truck. Parts of the tech world really do live in a bubble.
https://archive.is/Q8NSx
There's nothing quite like the Cybertruck and I don't think there ever will be again.
No other car is as awe-striking to see on the streets, especially in the EU. This will be the Mustang Fastback or Testarossa of the 2040's ...
There were other things that contributed to the decision, too: the announced "stressed skin" exoskeleton was panned in favor of adhering the body panels to the body with glue, it became clear that Tesla's profit and valuation were funding Elon's right-wing political project, and I would have preferred a solid-axle design.
The absurdity was not what was wrong with it. It's OK to be absurd. I really liked the stainless steel design. Less trail damage when off-roading and no need to worry about paint scratches causing body rust. The door wedge design? Meh. But it enabled the stainless steel body.
In the end, I want what the Cybertruck failed to deliver: a full-size electric pickup at a good price with excellent range. I currently have my eyes on the RAM REV. We'll see if that one gets axed, too.
Electric vehicles obviously don't have the hurdle of meeting emissions standards so Tesla, or any other company really, had (and has) the opportunity to create a small, cheap, mass market utility truck that no gas-powered vehicle can compete with. This is what the Cybertruck should've been.
There have been breakdowns of the Cybertruck and it is such an incredibly bad design. Things like the weight of stainless steel panels but with an aluminum frame. Why is that a problem? Because aluminum is prone to catastrophic failure with the up and down motion of towing a heavy load than stainless steel simply isn't [5].
The rumor has been that the only thing propping up Cybertruck demand is Elon forcing his own companies like SpaceX to buy them [6]. Other than that, the Cybertruck became a weird political statement [7]. Those people are getting crucified on resale. It's even a trend on Tiktok and elsewhere to watch these trade in videos. People who paid $150k+ are getting <$70k less than 2 years later.
Anyway, I'm shocked no US manufacturer is tackling the EV small utility truck market. Yes there was the F150 Lightning but it's still too big (and thus expensive).
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Hilux
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War
[3]: https://www.octane-magazine.com/articles/features/usa-25-yea...
[4]: https://www.thedrive.com/news/heres-how-regulations-accident...
[5]: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nZcb9TTyneFbxiDav/the-giga-p...
[6]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-16/tesla-lea...
[7]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/02/12/tesla-...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21602437
Haven’t explored it yet, but it might be interesting to see how the sentiment shifted.
I mean it's probably not that comforting for owners to unknowingly have signed up for a beta test, but that was the plan for Tesla for a while with the Cybertruck.
This was also the reason for sloppy stuff like steel panels glued to the aluminium frame, and not following up on their initial promises - the car morphed from a serious project into a low volume testbed sometime during its production.
Tesla seems to be killing its non volume cars the S and X are dead as well, I've heard rumors the Model 3 might be on its way out.
Who would think we could get satellite internet that works?
Renault is designing cute things again, so that's a good development. So is Citroen, apparently?
So that's a good development
This sharp edged, fire hazard which was aimed at a certain group of people who seem to be dangerous themselves is not really something that should be cheered.
And yes, it looked different but there are different looking cars all over the world. They usually serve a purpose though like kei cars in Japan.
The poor people that bought them were the butt of his joke.
It'll probably be folded into SpaceX by the time the feedback arrives.
It has received zero actual feedback from the market so the new products are based on ketamine high visions rather than market needs.
It'll probably be folded into SpaceX by the time the feedback arrives.
On the surface, it seems to take the wind out of their sails.
They told us the cybertruck was awesome.
They told us flying cars soon.
Now we see the fate of the first promise.
I would have delayed this announcement for as long as possible after the flying car show from a PR perspective.
Which makes me think this announcement is throwing a bone to the financial bean counters ahead of the potential merger with SpaceX.
Cleaning the companies books of fat before the big game.
Who's doing the proofreading at Wired now? Is it all just AI?
ouch
[1] https://optimusk.blog/blog/tesla-optimus-production-timeline...
Good riddance.
IMO the Aztek is a perfect comp to the Cybertruck, actually. Both were crammed with features intended to revolutionize their market segments. Like the Cybertruck, the added value from those features was... dubious, at best.
Both are hideous. Both had a longer production run than you'd expect given their lofty goals and poor sales.
The Aztek has taken on a sort of ironic-cool status among some car nerds. It wasn't a bad car per se, just ugly and weird. Nowadays it's just a funny curio of the early 2000s.
It'll be interesting to see how the Cybertruck ages in the public eye. With time, maybe it'll be easier to separate it from its context as a Hummer for tech douchebags, and it'll just be a funny ugly car with some goofy features.
(Edit: the actual designer had the assistant designer throw a ball through the window.)
Tesla could simply come up with a more conventional looking EV pick-up truck of course.
To me trucks are the most useless type of vehicle apart from niche utilitarian cases in farming or construction. Super heavy, gas guzzling, open bed, compromised handling, pedestrian crushing death machine.
If you want big family hauler, grocery getter: mini-vans, wagons.
If you are in trades: van, box truck or flatbed box truck (where bed is useful shape and size, and all sides can be removed if needed).
No, you don't need 3 tonne vehicle with bajillion horsepower as a daily, because you may need to pull a trailer with your inflatable dinghy once in a two years.
If you want truck adjacent vehicle, get Toyota 4runner or Highlander. Humongous cars, vast and closed cargo space. It will pull a trailer, it will haul all your stuff and family.
Hilarious but a logical end state option for them.
RIP Cybertruck
It brought joy and anger to many people.
https://x02.me/i/esVNQF.jpeg
Just kidding.
It can never shake the "Ugh, get a load of this guy" factor, and it's a wonder it stayed in production this long.
Had Musk leaned into it as the "luxury"/GT of trucks (like the H2), there probably would've been less pushback. Granted he's functionally incapable of not just lying about things being the best every and setting stupid impossible goals, but I do think there's outcomes where we see more things "akin" to the cybertruck, leaning into the Pavement Princess market.
Wired: special purpose vehicles
Also i wonder whether in 5-7 years Model 3 and Y will be around
Honestly thought we’re done with that …
It was so bad, yet, Musk managed to make buying one became an identity thing, selling far more than the product warranted.
Hah, feels like when someone says they're going to stop dating the unemployed slob to focus on dating the alcoholic.
A taxi with only 2 doors, what an improvement!
Americans, for whatever reason, only buy SUVs and trucks. They've left the whole truck market untapped by creating a vehicle only a very small niche could/would want.
I don't understand what product marketing was up to, or if they just completely lacked the spine to stand up to Elon.
They have sold 70k Cybertrucks since 2023. Ford has sold more than 10 times that alone of F-series. Toyota sells that many RAV4s every two months.
For anyone that bought one and loves it - I'm not questioning your choice and I hope the vehicle will be well supported. Many popular vehicles that sell better have been discontinued like the entire companies of Geo, Saturn, and AMC. The Chevy Malibu sold twice as many cars per year pre-Covid than total Cybertrucks have been sold, and they were discontinued in 2024.
It's relatively neat that Tesla tried something new but they should consider focusing on operations and not losing further ground to BYD globally.
The Model 3 was a masterpiece of design, the Cybertruck is more like Cybercuck.
No point in editorializing it.
At present all Tesla has propping it up is bubble dust and one car model (one increasingly dated car model). Somehow after 14-15 years (Model S released in Summer 2012) these people still can't release a real SUV of any sort. The model Y is a grotesque joke of a fake SUV, a mutilated model 3 that doesn't really look like an SUV in any regard. The model Y is an SUV like the Cybertruck is a truck. They might as well have unlimited money to do it, and they can't do it. Same reason they couldn't release the roadster even after all this time. It's a fundamentally broken company because Musk won't get out of the way. Whatever Musk is good at it, it's not running a large scale automotive company.
On one hand: "Ha ha!"
On the other, oh no, all these yahoos that bought this trash may make their money back if they hold on to this garbage long enough for the rarity to drive up the value as a collectors item.
Then again, he's a con-man who's now quietly distancing himself from CyberTruck ("I had nothing to do with it") and moving on to the next con-trick: the CyberCab.
https://evwire.com/etrucks/market-share