Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / The Cybertruck Is Running at 10% Capacity

Transcript

The Cybertruck Is Running at 10% Capacity · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:01
  Ford's F-150 Lightning outsold the Tesla Cyber truck in 2025,
• 0:05
  and Ford still killed the program because it wasn't
• 0:08
  selling enough. A Tesla stainless steel truck
• 0:11
  moved roughly 21,500 units globally last year, while the
• 0:15
  Lightning, a truck Ford publicly retired in December, delivered
• 0:19
  approximately 27,300 units in the US alone.
• 0:23
  Now you have a discounted vehicle outpacing an actively
• 0:26
  marketed 1. And that raises a question most
• 0:29
  Tesla bulls don't want to answer.
• 0:32
  If Ford abandoned its EV truck at 27,000 units, what does that
• 0:38
  mean for a cyber truck stuck at 21,500?
• 0:41
  Now we're going to break down the actual sales numbers Tesla
• 0:44
  doesn't want you to see. Explain why SpaceX buying over
• 0:47
  1000 cyber trucks still couldn't stop the bleeding, and look at
• 0:50
  what options Elon Musk has left. The data here paints a picture
• 0:55
  of a vehicle program running at roughly 10% of its intended
• 0:59
  production capacity, and we'll get right into that after this
• 1:03
  very short break. Now, the cyber truck is now
• 1:06
  producing at a fraction of what Tesla planned, and the company
• 1:10
  is doing everything it can to hide the numbers Tesla bundles.
• 1:13
  It sails into two broad categories, Model 3 and Y, and
• 1:17
  other models. The second bucket includes the
• 1:19
  Model S, Model X, Cyber Truck and Tesla Semi, which makes
• 1:23
  isolating cyber truck performance an exercise in
• 1:26
  reverse engineering. Model S and Model X have held
• 1:29
  relatively stable at low volume, hovering around 5000 to 6000
• 1:34
  units combined per quarter globally.
• 1:37
  And if we allocate A generous 6000 units for S&X and quarter
• 1:41
  for 2025, that leaves roughly 5600 units for the Cyber Truck
• 1:46
  and Semi combined. The semi remains in pilot
• 1:49
  production with negligible volume, so we're looking at
• 1:52
  about 5500 cyber trucks for the entire quarter.
• 1:56
  Now that number should alarm anyone who followed Musk's
• 1:59
  original production promises for the vehicle in Tesla Confirm in
• 2:03
  July 2025, the Cyber Truck sales had dropped to around 5000 units
• 2:09
  in quarter 2, and the recovery never materialized.
• 2:12
  The company cut prices, introduced a cheaper trim, and
• 2:15
  sales still cratered nearly 50% year over years.
• 2:19
  And for context, the original Cyber Truck reveal in 2019
• 2:22
  promised 250,000 units per year at full production.
• 2:27
  The current run rate suggests annual output closer to a measly
• 2:33
  22,000 units. That's roughly 10%, less than
• 2:37
  10% of stated capacity figure that would trigger program
• 2:41
  cancellation at any other automaker.
• 2:44
  Now, Ford provides a useful comparison point here.
• 2:47
  The F-150 Lightning launched A genuine enthusiasm and solid
• 2:51
  early sales, but Ford faced its own production challenges,
• 2:55
  battery cost overruns, and shifting consumer demand.
• 2:58
  By late 2025, Ford announced it was ending Lightning production
• 3:02
  to pivot toward extended range EVs.
• 3:06
  The Lightning delivered about 27,300 units in the US for 2025,
• 3:11
  down 18% year over year as the company wound down the program
• 3:15
  and Ford looked at those numbers and decided the truck wasn't
• 3:18
  viable long term. Tesla is looking at worst
• 3:21
  numbers and calling it a success now.
• 3:24
  I've been digging through the analytics of the show and
• 3:27
  noticed that 37% of you are following the channel for you.
• 3:32
  I'm forever grateful and you are part of our success here at the
• 3:36
  show. The other 63% of you haven't hit
• 3:38
  the follower subscribe button. There's a few reasons for that.
• 3:41
  You may have listened to a few episodes and just forgot to hit
• 3:43
  the button. And that's cool.
• 3:45
  I do that all the time. So please, if you can hit the
• 3:48
  follower or like button. And I've been an independent
• 3:51
  journalist covering SpaceX, Elon Musk, Space Flight and tech for
• 3:55
  the six years. And I spent a year at Starbase
• 4:00
  Texas, on the ground at SpaceX, and I'm going to continue for
• 4:05
  the next 10 years. All I ask from you is one second
• 4:08
  of your time to hit the follow or subscribe button on whatever
• 4:12
  platform you're watching on right now.
• 4:14
  I'm extremely grateful and blessed to have you in this
• 4:17
  community. You're part of this now.
• 4:18
  So thank you so much for joining us.
• 4:22
  Now let's get back into this Tesla stuff.
• 4:25
  It's crazy. Tesla released a cheaper strip
• 4:29
  down cyber truck variant to boost sales.
• 4:31
  The company cancelled it months later because it wasn't selling.
• 4:35
  Musk then had SpaceX purchase over 1000 cyber trucks in
• 4:39
  quarter 4 of 2025. Now that single purchase
• 4:43
  accounted for roughly 20% of Tesla's quarterly cyber truck
• 4:46
  sales. His own company he bought.
• 4:49
  He basically bought his own cyber trucks.
• 4:50
  Even with his own company propping up the numbers, cyber
• 4:54
  trucks sales still declined more than 50% year over year.
• 4:58
  SpaceX cannot keep buying trucks to pad Tesla's quarterly
• 5:01
  reports, and eventually the financial engineering runs out
• 5:06
  of runway. Now the 4680 battery cells
• 5:09
  deserve scrutiny here as well. Tesla built the cyber truck
• 5:12
  around these proprietary cells, betting that in house battery
• 5:15
  production would reduce costs and improve performance.
• 5:18
  The opposite happened. The 4680 cells contributed to
• 5:22
  higher vehicle prices than originally announced and
• 5:25
  delivered shorter range than the 2019 revealed promise.
• 5:29
  A cyber truck that was supposed to start at around 40,000 now
• 5:32
  starts well above that in the range.
• 5:34
  Figures fell short of early marketing, 50,060 thousand for
• 5:39
  some of those. And those broken promises eroded
• 5:42
  trust with people who would love to buy a Tesla truck.
• 5:48
  They needed to convert those people and they just didn't do
• 5:50
  it. The price was too high.
• 5:52
  And also Elon Musk, his public persona is another viable factor
• 5:58
  in this equation. Brand perception matters, and
• 6:01
  when it comes to automotive consumers, Musk's political
• 6:05
  activities over the past two years have alienated a
• 6:07
  significant portion of potential buyers Out.
• 6:11
  There have been surveys out there, and I'm not saying that
• 6:12
  they're perfect, but they consistently show that CEO
• 6:16
  behavior ranks among the top reasons consumers avoid Tesla.
• 6:21
  The company has no marketing department to counteract
• 6:23
  negative press, no dealer network to smooth over concerns,
• 6:26
  and no PR team to manage Elon Musk's controversies.
• 6:31
  Every Musk tweet becomes the de facto voice of the company, no
• 6:34
  matter what he says. It reflects on Tesla and all of
• 6:38
  his other companies. And for a vehicle that already
• 6:40
  struggled with polarizing design and it's hot, it's metal and
• 6:44
  it's sharp, adding a polarizing spokesperson, Elon Musk, created
• 6:50
  compounding headwinds for the vehicle.
• 6:54
  Now the path narrows with each quarter at Tesla.
• 6:57
  Musk previously said Tesla would pivot to more traditional truck
• 7:01
  design of this cyber truck failed.
• 7:03
  But that pivot hasn't happened. There's no talk about it.
• 7:07
  Acknowledging failure would require Musk to admit the design
• 7:09
  was completely wrong. And it's management style
• 7:13
  doesn't accommodate that kind of public reversal.
• 7:16
  The Cyber Cab and other projects continue to absorb engineering
• 7:20
  resources while the Cyber Truck line sits underutilized.
• 7:25
  Most automakers would have written off this program by now,
• 7:27
  absorbed the loss, and redirected capital toward viable
• 7:30
  products. Tesla appeared committed to
• 7:32
  running out the clock. Instead, Ford has officially
• 7:37
  killed the Lightning at 27,300 annual units.
• 7:42
  Tesla is celebrating the Cyber Truck at 21,500 units.
• 7:47
  One company recognized when a product wasn't working, it just
• 7:51
  killed it, moved on, pivoted. The other company keeps buying
• 7:53
  its own inventory through the shell game with SpaceX
• 7:57
  transactions from other companies and they call it
• 8:00
  growth. But that's not how it is.
• 8:02
  They they needed to appease the people that were buying the
• 8:06
  stock. They needed those extra sales so
• 8:08
  it didn't look like it was a horror show of only 4000 units
• 8:12
  sale sold in the last quarter. So Cyber Truck program now
• 8:16
  operates at about 10% or less capacity prices remain higher
• 8:21
  than promised, range fell short of announcements and the cheaper
• 8:24
  variant got cancelled. So unless something changes at
• 8:30
  Tesla, they may never do another cyber truck again.