Tesla is sitting on $200M worth of Cybertruck inventory

https://electrek.co/2025/04/01/tesla-is-sitting-on-200-million-worth-of-cybertruck-inventory/

by zfg • 1 year ago

41 47 1 year ago

duxup3• 1 year ago

Is there a "normal" amount of inventory to sit on?

Used Cybertruck prices are down 55% year over year

It's wild to me folks lined up to buy this thing ... like I can understand enthusiasm for new things and all that but that's a big hit there. And even I think the prices are still high for the used ones in my area.

TheAlchemist2• 1 year ago

There is a massive overlap between Tesla 'cult' members who hold Tesla shares and Cybertruck buyers - hence the 'best-selling EV truck' for the first few months. It sounds wild, but it's a thing. Many claim to have bought several cars already 'for the mission' (one has to explain me, how buying several cars in a span of 5 years helps to fight climate change).

Once this pool was exhausted however, there is literally 0 demand. Tesla don't publish the number of Cybertruck sold, they mix them with model S / X, for a reason (the most transparent company on earth !).

Given the cratering demand, one has to ask how much money Tesla will bleed this year - despite all the hype around Optimus and other pipe dreams, at the end of the day, it's a car manufacturer employing 100k people, with installed production capacity that's now 2x the number of cars they were selling recently and the ratio is very quickly increasing. If history is any guide here, they are on a fast track to bankruptcy.

EDIT: Do not attempt to trade this ! It's become a meme stock at this point, and as we learned with GME, AMC, Hertz - even in case of real or virtual bankruptcy a stock can stay quite high.

cratermoon• 1 year ago

Tesla, the DeLorean of the 21st century. Or maybe Edsel. Or Tucker.

DFHippie2• 1 year ago

Here's hoping the business world learns from this experience: trolls make terrible CEOs. It's one thing to be a narcissist or a sociopath. It's another to set out to sell a product while bending all your effort to taunting and dominating the customers who trusted you. People remember being betrayed.

It turns out no one is an NPC.

Nathanba• 1 year ago

I actually think that the design is something people could get behind. People are painting and coating it with various cool color schemes, some of them look great. The problem is that the car itself just doesn't seem good enough and has far too many quality issues and problems. The windshield wiper itself is like a flagpole for all that is wrong with that car. Of course - who knows, I'm only repeating things I saw on social media in this case. In a german reddit post I saw about Tesla cars I read that Teslas are supposedly actually fairly good quality by now ... compared to the even worse german EVs which simply declare your car's software obsolete after 3 years and never update it again.

legitster• 1 year ago

Even setting aside the political stuff, this thing was 3 years late to the market. There are very few reasons you would want one of these over a Rivian outside of aesthetics, and it was a divisive aesthetic from the beginning.

Neywiny2• 1 year ago

Agreed. From the looks of it as someone who doesn't follow the automotive space too closely: Tesla unveiled it before any/most companies mentioned the idea, and shipped after most/all others had already. So, they got people riled up to buy an electric pickup, then sent them all to the competitors.

(And then shipped a pile of recalled garbage)

acdha3• 1 year ago

Also the price went up by over 50%, and the initial reports of issues with car washes or rain along with the resale penalty were not exactly what buyers want to hear when they’re looking at a six figure vehicle purchase.

atonse2• 1 year ago

It solved a bunch of problems absolutely nobody asked for, nor cared about. Bulletproof paneling? I mean you can’t make this stuff up. The sharp edges were idiotic. It was absolute hubris over good engineering.

They should’ve done what ford did. Make it just a regular damn pick up truck, no need for bulletproof nonsense. And it would’ve sold like hot cakes.

jmye2• 1 year ago

And it would’ve sold like hot cakes.

I still don’t think it would have. It’s useless for anyone who’s pretending they might haul stuff. It’s worse than useless off road. And it’s too small to appeal to the dudes who buy dualies to take their kids to elementary school.

Your first sentence is 100% dead on, except that it also completely failed to solve any of the problems people actually have (or, at least, problems they think they have).

jqpabc1233• 1 year ago

It looks like a cheap mock-up for a sci-fi movie --- with quality, reliability and usability to match. It's a truck that just can't do what a truck is supposed to do.

galaxyLogic• 1 year ago

If I understand it correctly Tesla's innovation in last 5 years have mostly been updates to their software, for better or worse.

ggm2• 1 year ago

If you consider it marketing, It did its job during a difficult period. If you need it to perform in the market, I think it's demonstrably failed, but you can look at other successful utility vehicle plays and say "thats so unhelpful to PR and sales messaging for this brand" -nobody respects the makers of UPS trucks except guys in UPS truck buying contexts and the tesla truck wasn't aimed at truck owners as such: it was aimed at what in Australia we'd call "Cashed up bogans" -people who want an image outcome, not a utility function.

I am much more interested in how the Tesla Semi Trailer is doing. And, the alternatives.

We could be saying how poorly the the Tesla solar roofing tiles are doing, but we'd have to acknowledge Tesla power storage is now critical worldwide. So, like any company it has hits and misses.

I think in the end all we're saying is that this was a hugely avoidable miss, but in PR terms at the time, it probably worked out. Long tail cost however.

Bit of "tail wagging the dog" in almost any brand-led discussion.

I don't personally know Musk, I certainly dislike his personal image. Doesn't seem my kind of guy. Interesting.

duxup3• 1 year ago

I don’t understand what “respect” means in this context….

Who cares if you won some imaginary respect if you’re not selling?

UPS van sold lots… so that seems good.

ggm2• 1 year ago

Maybe respect was the wrong word? It's not like the brand power of "UPS truck" is boosting sales in any other segment.

The brand power of Cyber Truck was (in my mind) designed to boost sales across the board. While it wasn't available people bought other Tesla product, expecting a future upsell.

Thats all. UPS truck is a fine, economically justified, fit-for-purpose design. It gets all the (brand) respect it needs.

netsharc• 1 year ago

How much to bet that they're coming soon to a governmental agency near you:

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/24/nx-s1-5305269/tesla-state-dep...

It's saving costs, you see!

sightbroke• 1 year ago

It certainly eliminates the lengthy and costly bidding process.

xedrac2• 1 year ago

It would be peanuts compared to the waste they've found.

acdha3• 1 year ago

So far, they’re significantly negative on savings (the $140B they claim versus the $500B they’ve cost just at the IRS alone) and that’s taking the figures at face value when every sober review has found them wildly overstating the savings by doing things like taking credit for contracts closed during previous administrations, using the maximum possible amount on contracts which hadn’t spent anywhere near that much, or counting the same contract multiple times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/us/politics/doge-musk-con...

Then you also have to factor in how much money they’re going to spend in lawsuits for all of the broken laws, not to mention the cost of paying people not to work for months while trying to bypass Congress and shut down legally mandated programs.

watwut• 1 year ago

They found nothing, because they were not doing actual review. They just slashed things without comprehension, claimed they were fraud and then had to hire people back because they broke law or fired people they need. All the while throwing around accusations and knee jerk accusations based on nothing.

Every time their claims were checked, there were found massive mistakes and lies.

Repeating loendoes not make it true, despite people like you trying to use that tactic.

more_corn• 1 year ago

Throw up a Nazi salute on television and find out. What he’s find out is that nobody wants to do business with a Nazi or drive the iconic symbol of the brand.

dzhiurgis2• 1 year ago

Aka 1 week worth of inventory.

Some EV trucks haven't sold this many in entire year.

hnburnsy• 1 year ago

For comparison...

GM said its inventory of vehicles, which is the number of vehicles currently on dealer lots or en route, fell 8% to 549,312 in the first quarter.

So at ~50K ASP, GM has over $25B sitting in inventory.

illiac786• 1 year ago

Very interesting. How easy/difficult is it for a dealer to return unsold inventory to a car maker?

Tesla is sitting on $200M worth of Cybertruck inventory

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