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.
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.
It’s ugly
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.
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!
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
Yeah when I think of a car that’s actually cyberpunk it’s some civic with mods.
I’d say it looks more like a futuristic barn
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.
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.
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?
Maybe if it didn’t stink like a dead nazi, people would buy it.
I dunno, I kind of like the smell of dead nazis.
Dead is the state I prefer them in, even!
But almost six years later, the truck’s surreal design, awkward size, high price, and late delivery have turned it into a niche curiosity, not a mass-market hit.
How the fuck do you write an article about the failed Cybertruck and not acknowledge Elon’s political bullshit impacting Tesla sales?!?
Dishonest shit.
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%.
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.
Early reviews raised red flags over software glitches, poor fit and finish, and disappointing range for a vehicle of its size.
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
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
I will forever point and laugh like Nelson at the morons who bought these Swastikar piles of shit.
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 flip them off now. I’m doing my part!
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.
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.
Most people think of the thing in <thing>less like the tank in a tankless water heater, rather than like less sodium in reduced sodium soy sauce.
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
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.
The DeLorean looked WAY cooler.
At least DeLorean went out for something cool: smuggling cocaine in the vehicles.
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.
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.
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!
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 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.
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. =)
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. =)
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.
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.
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.
“Wait a minute, Doc: are you telling me you built a time machine - out of a Cybertruck?!”
“The way I see it, if you’re gonna build a time machine into a car why not make it look ugly as fuck?”
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.
You live in a place full of stupid rich people. Or stupid people that don’t understand what debt is.
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.
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
Flip them off, my friend. Watch them vanish.
I already do every single time I see one. It’s not working.
They aren’t common at all. I see perhaps 2 or 3 in an entire week, out of the thousands of cars going by.