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.
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.