When Elon Musk unveiled the Cybertruck, he promised a vehicle that would redefine pickups and sell in the hundreds of thousands. A year into deliveries, the numbers tell a very different story.
Last year, Tesla sold just over 20,000 Cybertrucks in the US, according to numbers from Cox Automotive released on Tuesday. That figure alone wouldn’t look disastrous if expectations had been modest. They weren’t. Musk once talked about 250,000 sales a year. Even more striking, sales dropped sharply toward the end of 2025, signalling that early curiosity has not turned into sustained demand.
The gap between hype and reality started early. Over a million people reserved the Cybertruck, drawn in by bold claims and a futuristic price tag teased at around $40,000. When deliveries finally began, the starting price had nearly doubled. For many would-be buyers, the Cybertruck quietly slipped from “maybe” to “not a chance”.
Then came the quality issues. Since launch, the truck has faced a long list of recalls. Some fixes arrived through software updates. Others felt harder to ignore, involving accelerator pedals, exterior parts, and basic components that simply should not fail on an $80,000 vehicle. For buyers, confidence matters. Once that cracks, it rarely returns quickly.
Design hasn’t helped either. The sharp, stainless-steel body turned the Cybertruck into a rolling spectacle. That attention brought unexpected consequences. Some owners reported vandalism and harassment, turning ownership into a social statement rather than a practical choice. A pickup meant for utility became a symbol people reacted to, for better or worse.
Tesla has tried to steady the ship. Marketing shifted toward positioning the Cybertruck as a work vehicle. SpaceX added some to its fleet. Sales expanded to a handful of new countries. But geography poses limits. Safety rules make Europe and China difficult markets, cutting off two of Tesla’s biggest growth engines.
This struggle also fits a wider pattern. Big electric pickups are losing momentum across the industry. Ford is pivoting away from fully electric trucks. Stellantis has paused its plans. Incentives have faded, costs remain high, and buyers appear unconvinced that EV trucks offer enough upside yet.
For Tesla, the Cybertruck no longer looks like a growth engine. At best, it sits as a niche product with devoted fans. At worst, it stands as a reminder that attention does not equal adoption.
Musk continues to praise the vehicle publicly. The market, however, seems less impressed. Whether Tesla can reset expectations, rethink pricing, or reshape the Cybertruck’s role remains an open question. What feels clear now is that the truck designed to break every rule has also broken one of Tesla’s most reliable patterns: hype leading smoothly to scale.
Emmanuel Oyedeji
