In 2023, Tesla CEO Elon Musk promised that his EV maker’s upcoming Cybertruck would sell like hotcakes, delivering between 250,000 and 500,000 units per year once the company hit its stride.
But over two years later, Tesla hasn’t even gotten close, in yet another instance of Musk vastly overpromising while severely underdelivering. In reality, the carmaker’s pickup truck has flopped hard, not even selling 20,000 units this year.
And the real picture could look even worse without some creative insider efforts to hide the company’s abysmal Cybertruck sales: Musk has started selling unsold Cybertruck inventory to his own companies, as Electrek reports; SpaceX has taken delivery of hundreds of the trucks and is expected to receive thousands more. Carriers were also seen delivering trucks to Musk’s AI startup xAI’s offices.
It’s an embarrassing admission that what was once Musk’s most beloved pet project has turned into a disaster.
The numbers paint a damning picture of Tesla’s core business. The company only sold 5,385 Cybertrucks in the third quarter of 2025, down a whopping 63 percent compared to the same period last year, and a mere 16,000 overall so far this year.
Besides becoming closely associated with Musk’s highly divisive behavior and commentary, the truck has been recalled eight times for sometimes-glaring design issues. It’s been criticized for having a less-than-stellar range, especially given its premium price. Resale values have cratered, making it a poor long-term investment.
While Q3 results were not quite as grim as analysts expected — expiring $7,500 EV tax credits caused consumers to rush to showrooms in the last minute — Tesla might be in for more pain after Q4 wraps up. The federal tax credit expired on September 30, as part of president Donald Trump’s so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill,” which may put a damper on already precipitously dropping sales figures.
And imagine how bad those figures would look if Musk weren’t selling a huge number of them to himself.
It certainly doesn’t bode well, even for a company that has seemingly given up on EVs in favor of humanoid robots and artificial intelligence.
More on the Cybertruck: If You Try to Sell Your Cybertruck, You Are Going to Get a Terrible Surprise