I know.
I’ve been picking on Elon a lot lately.
ICYMI: Two weeks ago, I spent an entire post explaining why he’s a sad little bitch with no friends.
In my defence, he keeps giving really rich material.
Truck Dumped
Cybertruck drives off into the sunset
Elon says Tesla will wind down Cybertruck production at its Texas factory around mid-2027.
Before the line gets dismantled, Elon also says Tesla will add another shift to work through all those outstanding orders.
How big is that backlog?
Elon isn’t saying.
Could the Cybertruck be built somewhere else?
Also unclear.
What we do know is that Elon wants the Texas floor space for more Cybercab production.
This isn’t how the Cybertruck story was supposed to end.
The $39,900 Truck That Never Was
Bulletproof? Not even baseball-proof.
Back in 2019, Elon showed us a stainless-steel pick-up that looked like it had escaped from a Blade Runner video game.
The bulletproof windows cracked during the initial demonstration.
Yep, on stage.
But the price got everyone’s attention.
Cybertruck was supposed to start at $39,900 USD, with production beginning in late 2021.
But we know how Elon is with dates.
The first customer deliveries arrived in late 2023.
By then, Tesla’s lowest listed price was $60,990, and that version wasn’t immediately available.
Inflation explains some of that delta.
But the $39,900 truck never made it to a Tesla Supercharger or any Tesla fanboy’s driveway.
Tesla did briefly offer a different dual-motor Cybertruck for $59,990 this February. As of November 6, the cheapest version you could order was the $92,490 Premium AWD, according to Electrek.
Sure, that’s a better-equipped truck than the original single-motor pitch.
It’s also a long way from the affordable pick-up that got a lot of people excited enough to put down a deposit.
Lots of Attention. Fewer Trucks.
Within five days of the 2019 reveal, Elon said Tesla had 250,000 preorders.
Of course, a refundable $100 deposit is a lot easier to commit to than a truck payment.
Elon later talked about building roughly 250,000 Cybertrucks a year.
That didn’t happen.
Cox Automotive estimated 38,965 US Cybertruck sales in 2024.
That fell to 20,237 in 2025, a 48% drop, Reuters reported.
For the first nine months of 2026, Cox estimated another 11,586 U.S. sales, down 28% from the same period a year earlier, according to Tesla North. (They’re estimates because Tesla doesn’t break out Cybertruck deliveries.)
Cybertruck wasn’t alone. Cox estimated overall US EV sales fell about 30% over those same nine months.
Who was one of Tesla’s largest Cybertruck customers in 2025?
SpaceX, which bought $131 million worth at list price.
I said Elon had no friends.
Turns out he has at least one loyal customer.
Himself.
“Dug Our Own Grave”
Elon warned us himself.
In 2023, he said Tesla had “dug our own grave” with the Cybertruck, The Guardian reported.
For once, he wasn’t exaggerating.
The unusual stainless body and manufacturing process made it a tough vehicle to build at scale.
The recalls didn’t help, either.
Reuters counted 11 recall campaigns involving the Cybertruck since its launch.
Some were software fixes.
Others needed physical repairs, including an early recall for accelerator pedal pads that could come loose and get stuck.
A stuck accelerator on a stainless-steel wedge.
What could possibly go wrong?
In Good Company
Tesla isn’t the only one to learn that getting truck buyers to go electric is harder than the launch party might suggest.
Cybertruck is joining a growing club of defunct trucks.
Lightning might strike twice
The F-150 Lightning.
Ford ended production of the all-electric Lightning in December 2025.
The workers who built it were moved to Dearborn Truck to build more gas and hybrid F-150s.
The Lightning name is supposed to come back on a range-extended EV.
Ford hasn’t confirmed if or when that might happen.
Who knows, maybe Lightning will strike twice!
Lordstown had no Endurance
The Lordstown Endurance.
Remember Lordstown Motors? It was building the Endurance electric pick-up in an old GM plant in Ohio.
In June 2023, Lordstown filed for Chapter 11 after its funding deal with Foxconn fell apart.
The company was worth roughly $5 billion at its 2021 peak.
By the time it filed, its market cap was about $30 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.
That’s a lot of zeros to lose on a truck that almost nobody drove.
Lordstown sold fewer than 40 trucks.
The RAM that never REV-ed
The Ram Ramcharger.
Back in 2023, Ram showed us two electrified pickups: the all-electric 1500 REV and the range-extended Ramcharger.
Ram cancelled the all-electric truck outright, then gave its REV name to the Ramcharger.
Confused yet? So am I.
Did Stellantis hire Elon as project manager?
It sure sounds like it.
The Ramcharger was supposed to go on sale by the end of 2024.
The latest supplier memo puts production in mid-April 2027.
Ram quietly parked a production-ready one at this year’s Detroit Auto Show.
As it stands today, here in 2026, you still can’t buy one.
A cancelled Ford.
A bankrupt start-up.
A Ram with a launch date written in pencil.
Cybertruck isn’t an outlier.
It’s in good company.
IMHO
I like that Tesla tried something different.
Cybertruck has some genuinely clever engineering, including steer-by-wire and rear-wheel steering. Its lead engineer says some of that work lives on in Cybercab.
And Cybertruck did have the world’s largest windshield wiper. So, that’s a thing.
Tesla did report a positive gross margin on the Cybertruck in one quarter of 2024.
Whether the program ever paid back its development and factory costs is anyone’s guess.
Maybe that doesn’t matter when your owner is a trillionaire who plans to hide all his car company follies in an AI-and-space-launch company merger.
But as an attempt to build an affordable, high-volume pick-up, the Cybertruck failed.
It arrived late.
It cost more than advertised.
It lost sales after its first year.
And now its Texas production line has a date with the wrecking ball.
If Elon had friends, maybe one of them would have told him that his truck wasn’t going to be a mass-market success.
I like it when folk in the industry make interesting and bold things.
But as I said about the Roadster, the vehicle that earns the praise is the one people can actually afford.
Hey, Elon. Build one of those.