Well, well, well. It seems the Tesla Cybertruck — that stainless steel wedge of suburban overcompensation — isn’t exactly flying off the shelves like Elon Musk probably imagined back when he was smashing its windows on stage.
So what’s a floundering EV giant to do when the original “futuristic” truck, priced like a luxury condo, isn’t catching on? Easy: Slap together a stripped-down version, knock a few grand off the sticker, and hope nobody notices you took out half the features.
Enter the Cybertruck Long Range — the budget-friendly (if you consider $72,000 “budget”) solution to Tesla’s sales woes. This new model shaves about $10,000 off the all-wheel-drive version by, well, taking away most of the things that made the truck remotely interesting to begin with. Gone are the days of four-wheel drive — the Long Range gets just one lonely motor pushing power to the rear wheels. Zero to 60? Now a relaxed 6.2 seconds versus the speedy 4 of the original.
And the luxury cuts don’t stop there: out go the leatherette seats, in come “textile” ones. Yes, the cool edgelordy Cybertruck now comes with the most old-fashioned of downgrades: cloth seats. Lol.
And the best part? All this frugality was apparently necessary because the Cybertruck isn’t selling. At all.
Once upon a time, deep in the heart of Austin, Musk’s cyberpunk fever dream rolled off the line, all sharp edges and hype. Musk promised an indestructible, all-electric pickup so advanced it would make traditional trucks look like horse-drawn wagons. Instead, the Cybertruck has cruised straight into the junkyard of automotive flops, parking itself comfortably alongside the Ford Edsel, the Pontiac Aztek, and — fittingly — the DeLorean.
Musk once predicted Cybertruck would be the next big thing — 250,000 units a year big. Reality, as usual, disagreed. In its first full year, Tesla managed to unload fewer than 40,000 of these brushed-metal doorstops, a performance so bad it makes the Edsel look like a Toyota Corolla.
How bad has the Cybertruck bombed? Well, Ford’s aforementioned and much-maligned Edsel sold 63,000 units in its first year. Yes, let that sink in: the car so bad its name became a punchline outsold Cybertruck by a lot.
To sum it up, the Cybertruck is getting trolled by potential buyers harder than Elon when he’s trying to show off for gamers.
And while the truck’s design has always been “love it or hate it” (spoiler: mostly hate), its reputation for quality hasn’t helped either. Eight recalls in 15 months — including one for body panels that just fell off — and it’s no wonder the Cybertruck has become a moving billboard for global Tesla protests. Not even its Austin birthplace — Tesla’s beloved, specially modified Gigafactory, retooled to crank out 250,000 Cybertrucks per year — can save it from this flop status. Right now, the only thing rolling off those production lines is regret.
Looks like Musk wasn’t kidding when he said: “I do zero market research whatsoever.” Maybe he was too busy becoming a world record gamer? Oh right, jk.
And so, the new Cybertruck Long Range is here, arriving sometime this summer, ready to offer a few extra miles of range (25 more than the old model!) and a whole lot less of everything else.
The Cybertruck: still the future, just not the one anyone asked for.