46,000 Cybertruck Sales Sure Isn't A Lot For A Truck That Allegedly Had 1 Million+ Reservations

Tesla recalled the Cybertruck again this week, the eighth time it's done so since the electric truck went on sale at the end of 2023. And while some of the recalls have been relatively minor, this particular recall was issued because pieces of metal bodywork keep flying off Cybertrucks, which we can all agree is pretty bad. It also covers 46,096 vehicles, essentially every Cybertruck ever sold. That's a lot of trucks if you're, say, Fisker, but it's also far fewer than you would expect given Tesla's claims of more than a million reservations. 

Musk also claimed Cybertruck production was initially set up to build 250,000 vehicles per year, and he could eventually double that number. And yet, when it came time for people to actually hand over their money in exchange for a title and some keys, the demand just wasn't there. Sure, Tesla got some orders, and there are plenty of automakers out there that would kill to sell 40,000 units a year, but last year, the Cybertruck barely outsold the Hyundai Santa Cruz, a vehicle that I love to see on the road but also legitimately assumed had maybe two production years max before Hyundai inevitably pulled the plug. 

If you know anything about Tesla and its CEO, you already know you can't trust a thing Musk says. Remember when the Cybertruck was supposed to have a stainless steel exoskeleton, and then the production truck ended up just being a basic unibody design with stainless steel panels glued on? Exactly. Design-wise, it looks pretty wild, but the way it's constructed, it isn't that different than that Santa Cruz with an electric powertrain. Could Tesla actually build 250,000 Cybertrucks in a year if it had enough orders? Maybe, but also maybe not. 

Could Tesla have actually had more than a million reservations at some point? There, I'm less skeptical. A whole lot of people got pretty excited when Musk revealed the Cybertruck, and reservations were only $100. I personally know one person who reserved two that he planned to wrap and use them as rolling billboards for his company. He didn't balk when they announced pricing, either. It's entirely possible Musk exaggerated the number of Cybertruck reservations or announced they'd hit a million before it actually happened, but I just haven't seen enough evidence to suggest the number was fake. 

The $100 million interest-free loan from reservation-holders was probably a nice boost for Tesla's bottom line, though.

There are, of course, plenty of people who would never buy a Cybertruck based on the styling alone, and even more people who refused to support Tesla because of Musk's ultra-far-right politics even before he set up his gaming rig in the White House. The Cybertruck's buyers were never going to be regular people, though. Every single Cybertruck buyer is rich, and that demographic is all about lower taxes and fewer regulations, so you wouldn't think the people who saw the production truck and pricing would walk away just because Musk became a vocal Trump supporter. 

That family friend, for example, definitely isn't a MAGA die-hard, but he's also probably never voted further left than Libertarian. There's also no reason to believe he'd take issue with Musk's bigotry. That should have been two easy sales for Tesla, and yet, he never went through with it.

The CEO moving right should have only helped attract more people who could actually afford to buy one. And yet, Tesla couldn't even sell 100,000 of them after more than a year? How does anyone drop a bag full of money like that? Not even a tenth of the reservation-holders actually put their money where their mouth was. That's just mystifying. Again, I'm happy Tesla hasn't sold more of these things, especially since they're ugly, poorly built and dangerous on the road, but really is impressive just how few Cybertrucks Musk has actually sold, especially with tax credits and discounts added to sweeten the deal.