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.
Fucking why dude? Elon shit aside, you ostensibly knew what this thing looked like, right?
The thing is, for a truck that’s used for truck shit, functionality, practicality, and reliability are probably the most important. Styling will always be relevant to customers, but should be a secondary concern for a tough utilitarian vehicle.
It’s too bad they flipped those priorities and made an overpriced junky status symbol. I think Elon wanting people to see the “amazing” design was one of the main drivers behind it getting released when it did. It was clearly not ready 5 years ago since it’s still not ready now.
I honestly don’t mind the design. Sure some people hate it, but I didn’t care about others opinions on my car. That’s why my current vehicle is 25 years old. At that time, I was looking for a larger EV and during that time large EVs were nonexistent.
What sold me was the functionality. The concept had bench front row seating so I could seat 6(which they removed in the final). It had a usable trunk unlike the EVs at the time. There was frunk which was only on Teslas at the time. Also Tesla at the time had the highest safety rating among all cars. A promising auto pilot (which is a lie).
It also claimed to have a bullet proof shell and glass. While Seattle is relatively safe, there have been many instances where people have been murdered for road rage or just existing at a red light
And it was the first electric truck for a little while, even though it ended up being delayed for so long and being an AWFUL truck and totally outclassed by both Ford and Rivian.