Tesla’s Cybertruck Is a Bust
The truck that was supposed to revolutionize everything is flopping fast.
The hype is dead. The Tesla Cybertruck, once billed as the future of electric vehicles, is now looking like a commercial bust.
In the second quarter of 2025, Tesla sold just 4,306 Cybertrucks, down a staggering 50.8% from the 8,755 units it delivered during the same period last year, according to new data from Kelley Blue Book. This plunge is a signal that America’s most hyped truck may already be out of gas.
https://gizmodo.com/teslas-cybertruck-is-a-bust-2000629510Open linkView original on sopuli.xyz519
Comments174
I like how people don't hate it because its electric, they hate it because it's objectively terrible. Maybe if it didn't stink like a dead nazi, people would buy it.
It's ugly, and it looks like it jumped off the screen from the Cyberpunk 2077 world. It's poorly built and ineffective at the job it was designed to do. And then Elon did his thing, and now it's irrevocably tied to a dead Mid-20th Century ideology that the entire world fought to dismantle. I'm glad it's falling by the wayside. An object lesson -- don't build stupidly engineered items, and don't tout murderous ideologies that get a majority of the world against you.
It doesn't look like it came out of Cyberpunk, literally every vehicle in that game looks way cooler and more advanced. The Cybertruck looks like it came from a "futuristic" wireframe video game from 1985. It's obviously trying to play off DeLorean vibes, it's made as nostalgia for a 40-year old vision of a future that never came. It's like if someone made a 50s rocket-punk styled car in 1990, it's just a botched anachronistic mess, more past than future.
Its from the movie Freejack, trashy sci fi action flick from 1992, Mick Jagger drives something like it
that looks more like an APC.
IIRC it’s a real amphibious APC used by the Royal Marines painted red.
From a PS1 game
It looks like it came from the launch version of Cyberpunk running on a PS4.
I agree completely. I mean back in the 80's they were envisioning cool stuff like this:
... and instead Telsa decided to put out something that looks like some guy tried to turn his shed into a car.
Even amateur designers can start from the cyber truck design and make something a lot better with a few tweaks. The current design is just a great visualization of what happens when the boss purposefully ignores any suggestion and criticism from the employees. I mean, this not only happens with cars. There are many projects going that way. This is just a very visual high level example.
He didn't just ignore them. He fired anyone who spoke up about it.
That's how you get the best ideas. /S
It’s actually a decent little sci-fi from the Knight Rider/Airwolf era. It stares Desi Arnaz & Lucille Ball’s son.
Yes! It's a fun show, and Chuck Wagner had charisma for days!
Yeah when I think of a car that's actually cyberpunk it's some civic with mods.
Is that a countach with led strips?
Basically. It's a special effect done with reflective tape, I think? It's from the 80's TV show called "Automan."
Ah, reflective tape makes sense. Everything had to look like Tron for a while.
I'd say it looks more like a futuristic barn
its basically a giant metal coffin, which is also a charcuterie machine.
I get it kinda. I like Charcuterie.I abhor Cybertrucks. Aaaagghh. Dangit. Now I understand. Just gonna close my evening out feeling kinda meh. Thanks, I guess. For the ugly ass vehicle that has absolutely ruined my appetite for any charcuterie plates for me this week. Maybe it’s a good thing? It certainly wouldn’t kill me to est super clean for a week but f that.
remember the hand getting sliced open, the carrots. also it can cleave venison in half.
I dunno, I kind of like the smell of dead nazis.
Dead is the state I prefer them in, even!
Yeah I mean I don’t have an MBA or anything but I’m pretty sure “don’t praise Hitler” is pretty much Marketing 101?
Biggest takeaway; the media is still in denial.
The media is still
in denialreceiving money from the right.To be more generous, if you don't have a legal team on your editorial staff in your section, just don't mention the politics of billionaires.
Musk et al the 1%ers have lawyers on retainer whose only job is to litigate every mention of their name.
You can't sue against truth though
you absolutely can. one might even say that's the purpose of suing - to establish what is provably true
That's the only sentence acknowledging the MANY mechanical failures, too.
The range was fine for a mall crawler. If it sold enough for Tesla to build that extended battery, it would have had by far the most towing range for those who need it.
I don’t think initial quality and range were a real problem. T was the delay, the looks, the price over what was announced. But definitely its fate was sealed by musks disastrous foray into politics
Eh. Even if Musk still had his Iron Man in real life image the cyber truck would still be a complete failure.
Saying it's a shitty car and a failure by only looking at it as a car seems like good journalism. This isn't a good product that failed because people don't like Musk anymore.
Well yes, but if you want to explain why it flopped you devinetively have to mention Elon Musk Teslas sales overall dropped everywhere around the world by up to 50%.
While doing a product change over of their best selling vehicle.
Sales are still down, almost certainly because of Musk, but it's not as dire everywhere like that either.
E.g Spain where sales were bad and people like to cite a large number, was up 60.7% in June YoY. When you look at H2 2024 vs 2025, now it's only down 0.9%. 2024 was already a low year, so being lower than 2024 isn't good, but it's not like a monthly number makes it look.
They are still down in nearly every market yes, but you trying to imply its 50% in so many places and things are dire would also be shoddy journalism not taking into account the change over.
The UK for example only started getting the new Y in June, lets see what the UK in Q3 looks like with a full quarter of Y deliveries. It'll be down, but how much down.
Edit: Some clarity and other examples, but I also want to add, see how much more complicated an article can get rather than just focusing on the Cybertruck objectively on it's own?
Edit: Also you can't even buy the Standard Range RWD Model Y in all markets yet (~5k USD cheaper), but again, not that this alone will reverse the generalized sales decline induced by Musk.
I think Musk drew this thing on the back of an envelope and forced it through to production against the protests and objections of everybody in Tesla. It sucks as a truck, it sucks as an EV, it costs way too much money, it's so dangerous that it is banned in most of the world, it's impractical, costly to repair, uninsurable and it falls to bits. It's no wonder the thing failed.
It’s the delorian of our time. Go ahead and use it for the remake of back to the future.
I think you're catching downvotes cause most people now think the DeLorean was cool because of the movies.
They don't realize it flopped due to being insanely heavy, overheating, and other mechanical problems. Really expensive, as well. Also, the whole thing with the owner being busted for a massive amount of cocaine.
The parallels are actually pretty funny and you're not wrong.
Except it does still look cool. It's just that the drivetrain sucked. If I even got one, I'd replace it with an EV drivetrain. There's pretty good options now. You don't even have to pull parts from a totaled Tesla anymore.
John DeLorean also got acquitted on the drug trafficking charges when it was found he was entrapped.
If only weighs 2800lbs and most of the mechanical problems were sorted out quickly in production. The financial crash, high interest rates, negative publicity from the drug trial, and the election of Margaret Thatcher as British PM killed the company. It was a “death by 1000 cuts” situation.
To be fair I'm pretty sure the delorean was supposed to have a Ford V8, but supplier bailed last minute and left them scrambling. Thus the anemic puegot v6 it wound up with ..
At one point, it was suppose to have had a rotary engine, but I'm not sure when that was changed. There's one out there with a Mazda swapped in.
Marty even comments on the Doc's choice in the movie.
"You made a time machine... out of a DeLorean?!"
It was in the same weight range as what Ferrari was putting out at the time. Those stainless steel panels are very thin sheets over fiberglass. They don't add as much weight as you'd think.
Most of the other issues were fixed by VIN 3000, but their reputation was set by then. Getting framed by the FBI in a drug sting didn't help, either. It has a lot of very thoughtful features, like a gull wing door design that only comes out 11" and won't hit the car parked next to you.
It got caught up in a bunch of regulatory changes that were happening the late 70s/early 80s. Just a bad time to start a new car company, or to make a sports car at all. There aren't many memorable cars from the time period for anything other than looks.
I remember watching the director commentary on the first movie and they made a joke about the 88 mph thing because the car could barely do it. If I recall the later car in the films was a Volvo underneath.
I didn't know that about the Volvo, that's pretty funny. Means it was cheaper and easier to do a body swap than try and keep one properly running. Maybe it was just that hard to get parts.
https://www.hemmings.com/stories/so-where-are-all-the-remaining-back-to-the-future-deloreans/
A bit more info.
I had to look up a sand rail chasis. I'm more of a machine guy than a car guy. Totally a dune buggy pipe frame with integral roll cage.
I guess they did body swaps when doing offroad. Which totally makes sense. Not sure if the DeLorean is a sports car or a sedan, but the frame wasn't built for Hollywood stunts.
Please do not remake Back to the Future.
Good news Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale have the rights to approve any sequel or remake. They have both said absolutely no to any remakes.
Back to the Future IV....Ludicrous Mode, Elons Nazi Timeline.
We already have a Biff Tannon in the White House. Reality has usurped fiction in this regard.
Honestly that could be an interesting reboot.
Have you seen Hollywood recently? What isn’t a remake or revamp. Fuck they managed to get bill murray back into ghost busters. Hollywood is brain dead.
No.
I wanted one at $40k, but for $60k that is a no from me.
I would take one if they paid me $40k.
I wouldn't drive it though
Harvest the sheet metal and batteries…
You could probably use the batteries for your home
Well that was another thing - Elon did the usual bait and switch, promising a vehicle one price and then delivering something costing nearly double. He did the same with the Model 3 - promising 30k but launch price was nearer 60k.
Anyway I don't think this vehicle is worth 40k either. At least the Model 3 was fundamentally sound design unlike the Cybertruck.
They go from Zero to 1939 faster than one can ask Grok what time it is.
9:00am
Hey, Grok, what time is it?
NEIN
🤣
I don't think anyone credible sincerely thought the cyber truck was going to do well
It's a vehicle for stupid people with too much money to toss around or stupid people without money that are so caught up in the culture war trash they're willing to go into debt to make a really dumb statement.
When it was first proposed, it sounded like a great idea. Rust proof, no paint, secure bed area, hard wearing and easily cleaned interior, and very competitively priced.
Of course, that's not the vehicle that was delivered.
Sounds full of e-boobies.
Its a modern day DMC DeLorean which ironically also had a raw stainless steel body. Hopefully it tanks the company just like the DeLorean did.
I don't think the DeLorean reference is apt. That company was headed by a man who saw himself as a visionary, liked to highlight his middle initial "Z," and had a drug addiction. No connection whatsoever.
Delorean built his cars in Northern Ireland during the Troubles while also smuggling drugs to try to keep the company solvent, and he still managed to produce a better vehicle than Musk did. At least Delorean managed to pick a stainless steel alloy that was actually stainless!
First of all, it’s stain less not stain never. Second of all, Musk would do all the drugs instead of smuggling them. Finally, the cybertruck as is an engineering failure and no amount of money can fix it.
It's 301 stainless - the worst and cheapest stainless available. That crap rusts if you sneeze on it. It's what you sell to people who don't understand that there are different types of stainless steel.
The engineering was horrible down to material design and engineering. Different types of stainless have different applications. IIRC he announced that the same material used in SpaceX rockets would be used in the cybertruck - without considering if that’d be a good idea. Most people went crazy for it because SpaceX and did not consider that space ships and cars might require different formulations
Most people think of the thing in less like the tank in a tankless water heater, rather than like less sodium in reduced sodium soy sauce.
You made all my points for me, only one note: I can properly fix a cybertruck for $20USD. maybe less what have petrol prices been doing lately
That’s not a good idea as cybertrucks have materials that can be pretty toxic when ignited. Also, I think you can induce thermal runaway on the battery less than $20 if using 87 octane.
DeLorean was not smuggling drugs to keep his company alive. As his company was tanking, he agreed to do a large drug deal, hoping to use the profits to keep the doors open a bit longer, but it turned out to be an entrapment scheme, and he was found not guilty.
He basically tried the same thing that the Reagan Administration did during the Iran-Contra Scandal, but he got caught because the people who talked him into it were cops. But the idea that the DeLorean company was fueled by drug money is wrong.
At least DeLorean went out for something cool: smuggling cocaine in the vehicles.
The DeLorean looked WAY cooler.
I wonder, when they hit 88 Mph, does one transport back in time to apartheid South Africa?
If they go faster than 60 the wheels fall off
It’s a fair question. The whole 88 mph thing from back to the future was a joke because no one thought a delorian could go that fast.
Pretty sure the joke was 88 is a common Nazi code. Eight letter in the alphabet is alphabet is ‘h’ - it’s “HH” which stands for the obvious.
14 is another one. When MyPillow had a sale for $14.88, there was a reason for it…
I doubt the BttF writers were making a Hitler reference
But I figured the OP in the comment chain was.
I think OP was making a BttF reference.
Yup. It was only a Bttf reference. Nothing sinister here. Just goofing on Cybertruck b/c well, they just deserve all the ridicule. No codetalk here. I promise.
... By quoting the movie Back to the Future?
"We're gonna see some serious shit. ...Wait, this is a bit too serious."
I flip them off now. I'm doing my part!
I mean at least the Segway was built well
And they are fun
The owner of the Segway company managed to Segway themself off a cliff and died. I'm hoping history will repeat itself.
That wasn’t the man who created the Segway though. The inventor & original owner is Dean Kamen. The company was sold to Jimi Heselden in 2009, and it’s Heselden who rode one off a cliff a year later.
Yes, that's why I said the owner of the company and not the inventor. =)
Important to note, not the inventor of the Segway, Dean Kamen - he’s still alive. Just the guy who bought the company from him. Kamen seems to be a pretty cool guy, most of his inventions were about accessibility.
Yep, I realise that. As I said to the previous commenter it was the owner, not the inventor, as per my OG comment. =)
Driving a Cybercuck is a great way to tell society you're the village idiot.
Go Nazi Go Bust
I feel like 4306 units sold in one quarter is still quite a lot all things considered.
And only 4,200 of them will have panels falling off by the end of next quarter
I am so surprised by the panels falling off; I thought Elmer's glue was supposed to be pretty good.
They used the off brand Elmo's glue
The market comparison is important. It outsold the EV Silverado by about 1000 and was outsold by the F150 EV by about 1000 units. The market cooled on all electric trucks, probably due to price and current economic conditions.
What I’m mostly concerned with is the fact that there’s still so many people who are aware of all the things going on with Musk and the immediate hatred all Cybertrucks receive and still choose to buy one.
That’s what I was hinting at when I said "all things considered". For a car that’s so closely tied to fascism and that will get you shouted at and egged, 4000 units is still a lot.
I don't know, that's probably way below what supercar manufacturers sell, where exclusivity is part of the appeal of the brand.
Lamborghini sells about 10k (2.5/q) units per year, Ferrari about 14 (3.5/q). So that's a bit more than either of them but of course those are way more expensive and exclusive.
it was never the future, it was only meant to hype of the stocks so he can get that 56bn payout in '23, it just took longer than expected.
I drive a '96 Jeep Cherokee and yeah, I do the same. Haha!
The concept was quirky but it had a ton of hype. It wasn't helped by the fact that it has some fairly noticeable flaws, one being panels that are glued on and have been known to fall off. And headlights that are placed so close to the front bumper that any buildup of snow blocks them. Not smart design.
Teslastans hyped the fact that there were "2 million preorders" which was supposedly because of the mass appeal of the CT. Turns out once the novelty wore off, people just said 'meh, Id rather have a more normal truck for doing truck things' which is why the Rivian is still selling ok, the Ford Lightning is limping along and the Sliverado EV is actually a range champ with real world reports of over 800 km range that can actually tow a trailer for more than three blocks before needing a recharge.
Every time I see one I burst out laughing, they look so fucking stupid!
Cars in early PS1 games be like:
That’s still too many.
The stupid thing is, it was so easy to see what needed to be done. Tesla needed to release a pickup that appealed to Red State America. Functional first, but high end and ultra manly. Kind of like the F-150 lightning but cool.
Tesla needed to appeal to traditional pickup owners. Then Musk's run to the right would have actually fallen in line with that strategy. But the Cybertruck is the exact opposite of that. There are probably more techies who own cyber trucks than there are pickup owners, and that's pathetic. That's a failure to understand your target demographic. This really comes down to musks insane hubris.
Lol function first.
Most f150s are suburban grocery getters. They just needed to release a mall crawler and keep Elon out of politics
I think the F-150 has some really cool features for a serious work truck. The front with the low entry means you can put relatively heavy tools there. The power outlets add a ton of functionality. The only thing it really doesn't have IMHO is the ability to do serious towing... But that's a problem with all electric vehicles.
Now I'm not a serious pickup guy, but from what I've seen, the F-150 looks much more built for work than any other EV on the market (and most pickups).
The F-150 is very modular. You basically build whatever on the back for whatever job you need done. You can’t do that with the Cybertruck because it’s not built like that with a frame.
Maybe function first helps with cosplaying as rural. People get very up in arms about frame type. The twice yearly sedanfull of potting soil is incredibly serious.
Cybertruck sales not even nein thousand?!
Jeez, Tesla could have been such an interesting part of america’s success story (now China’s) if they just had leadership that was worth half a shit.
I point them out to my partner when we see one and we both laugh. It's the ugliest piece of shit on the road.
Yesterday, we were returning from a road trip and saw a semi hauling three of them. It was completely full. Other semis on the trip had like eight cars. How inefficient and riduclous they looked. We laughed at that, too.
I'm so sad that the nazi asshole's stupid truck is a failure. /s No I'm not. I love it.
"The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine into a car why not make it look ugly as fuck?"
The cybertrucks been a bust since the metal ball broke the window.
The media used to invent positive stories about Tesla, but now they are only looking for negative stories. For a stock whose entire value is based on a stock price supported by smoke and PR, that's a death sentence. Now that the bubble has popped, it will never re-inflate. Now Tesla has to fly based on the actual performance of its products, it's company, and it's leadership, which is abysmal on all counts. It will never return to its former glory, and will continue to slide as each quarterly earnings report gets worse and worse.
I give Tesla 2 years before it declares bankruptcy.
They'll get bought before that. Still has value in its IP, infrastructure and patents.
I'm thinking less than that before the Federal government enters a no bid contract for 50k units for ICE patrols. Their "breakup" is a ruse. Otherwise Trump would pull money from Elon's projects like any other congressionally approved spending.
What, an ugly ass vehicle that looks like it came from an early 90's video game is a flop? Whodathunkit?
I will forever point and laugh like Nelson at the morons who bought these Swastikar piles of shit.
Best clown car at a circus tho. Tho can't fit that many in it
Day one
sorry mate, maybe if you know, keep it from rusting, it might be a novelty some day. you can drive it in a funny car parade or something
I don’t have one?
i wouldn't admit it either!
Okay…
Sounds like a misunderstanding from the other party. It’s not always that bad. Welcome to Lemmy!
https://youtu.be/-aWcZShT4cI
Sadly, its numbers are comparable to Hyundai's Ioniq 6, which might be the best EV on the market right now. Seems a lot of EVs are tanking in sales now.
The only interesting parts are the steer by wire and the 48v system.
I took part in a team that reverse-engineered the cybertruck’s SBW system… let me just tell you, compared to european manufacturers of similar designs, the number of hardware safeguards present is about halved. Having looked at it, I’d never get behind a wheel of one.
And it’s really a matter of age. As components wear out, most SBW’s are designed to fall back into a “limp home” mode, where the car comes to as quick of a stop as possible while maintaining traffic safety, or the steering motor is at least partially controllable. Some manufacturers implement board-level redundancy, where the same motor is controlled by two functionally identical sides of the same board, so if one fails the other can take over.
With the tesla, at least as far as we could tell, if you lose SBW, you go into the wall.
take this with a grain of salt, as hardware reverse engineering tells you nothing about the software behind it.
It's the reversing documented publicly somewhere? Would be an interesting read
The specific one I worked on is internal as we were assessing how OEMs use chips designed by the company for which I work. There are reverse engineering sites like a2mac which (for a pretty hefty price tag) provide you the surface level assesment (chips used, supposed functions etc). It’s really expensive though since the sheer volume of work that goes on in reversing and analyzing is incredibly tedious.
I don’t know of any open-access ones, and (at least at the time when I worked on that project) we couldn’t find any official Tesla documentation.
Throttle-by-wire has been common for ages. Steering-by-wire is less common. Brake-by-wire is also less common, though it’s becoming very common with regenerative braking.
Busted ass truck is busted.
This is the Zune of cars man. What an eyesore. Shows what Elon can make when he tries it on his own.
Excuse me but I loved my Zune.
The zunehd was a great media player. Microsoft really botched the launch and just like phones gave up when it didn't immediately sell iPod numbers.
If Microsoft is good at anything, it's turning good hardware into trash
There are two Tesla dealerships within 15 minutes of my house. Both lots are filled with cyber trucks. Nearby, there's a mostly-empty office complex that has another 25+ cyber trucks in the parking lot, clearly being used for overflow. Crazy.
They will become quite valuable oldtimers. As hated as they are, they are kind of an iconic car. Unique design and there are (were?) a lot of Tesla fanboys around. Expensive. Really small production run, not many around. Owners crashing them left and right. Bad build quality. And it's kind of hard to think about one of them being able to really run in 30 years or so with how connected they are to Teslas software infrastructure.
They will be literally unmaintainable and the glue and tape holding them together cause them to fall apart.
Aside from a Tesla superfan who's into history I can't see them being collector's items. But I guess time will tell
How much are Edsels worth today? Not much I imagine.
Last time I checked, if you had bought an Edsel new, its value would have kept up with inflation. Some of the higher end trims do a little better than inflation. Which isn't a particularly good investment either way, especially one that needs to be maintained with more money and effort. Tossing it in t-bonds would do just as well or better with almost zero effort.
An Edsel is a hell of an automobile compared to that non-sense.
20 years from now: 2024 Deplorean, 40,000 miles. Battery range down to 18 miles and new batteries are unobtanium, but thoroughly communicates to all of your neighbors how far right you are.
$Eleventeen Kerbillion space bucks
No lowballers, I know what I've got
Hopefully 20 years from now expressing that you're far right is not a safe thing to do in society anymore and people only admit it behind closed doors.
I'll just be happy to not need to learn any new salutes
Between the motors and batteries, there's some good scrap value at least.
Nah, they'll dump whatever they can produce in the next few years trying to recover the cost of the production infrastructure.
The Segway of trucks. Lots of hype, overpriced, and generally impractical for the vast majority of people.
I read used EVs are selling well. Not so much current new models. People are probably holding on to their money.
I recall reading an article that said the cybertruck does not, in fact, count as a truck.
Its also had how many recalls
It should be called the modern version of a Studebaker. Biggest automotive flop before this Shitbox.
Do you mean the Edsel? Studebaker was a successful car manufacturer for decades, and is still beloved by many.
If it's a bust, then why do I see them fucking everywhere? They're as common as any other vehicle model on the road.
I've got some bad news about the quality of your neighbors.
Yeah, I live in a hcola and only one idiot in town blew his money on one. He lives around the corner so we all point and laugh when he drives by.
No shit, I live in a purple state lol
They stand out because they are ugly and large pieces of shit. I'm sure if you kept an eye out for late 90s very early 2000s Jeep Cherokees or Toyota Tacomas you'd see more of them.
They aren't common at all. I see perhaps 2 or 3 in an entire week, out of the thousands of cars going by.
Flip them off, my friend. Watch them vanish.
I already do every single time I see one. It's not working.