The Cybertruck Is Turning Into a Complete Disaster

Tesla is reportedly pulling back production of its much-maligned Cybertruck.

According to Business Insider, the EV maker has dropped production targets for several Cybertruck lines over the last few months – and is going as far as to move workers from the line entirely at its manufacturing facility in Texas.

"It feels a lot like they're filtering people out," a worker with knowledge of the situation told the publication. "The parking lot keeps getting emptier."

It's yet another sign Tesla's highly divisive pickup truck is turning out to be a major sore point for the carmaker. According to an eighth recall issued last month, Tesla has sold a mere 50,000 Cybertrucks since it went on sale in late 2023.

That's well short of the "quarter million Cybertrucks a year," which the company would "reach sometime in 2025," as Tesla CEO Elon Musk promised during the company's Q3 earnings call in 2023.

As Electrek pointed out last week, 2,400 unsold Cybertrucks, worth roughly $200 million, are piling up. Even Tesla is no longer accepting its own trucks as trade-ins, due to the massive disparity in demand.

The carmaker is facing plummeting sales worldwide across the board, with fuming investors accusing Musk of having abandoned the company in favor of gutting the United States' government.

A number of high-profile execs have left the company over the last couple of weeks, including longtime Tesla software VP David Lau, continuing a major leadership exodus that kicked up late last year.

Tesla shares are down almost 50 percent since hitting all-time highs in December, shortly after president Donald Trump was elected.

Meanwhile, the Cybertruck has turned into a major target of a growing anti-Musk movement, dubbed Tesla Takedown.

Whether a recently-released entry-level Cybertruck, which still goes for an eyewatering $69,990 before incentives, will reinvigorate interest in the issue-ridden vehicle remains to be seen.

Tesla has since slashed prices in a last-ditch effort to inflate demand and offload "Foundation Series" trucks, which the company stopped building in October 2024, per Electrek.

By many accounts, the rollout of what was once Musk's "pet project," has been a disaster, from delivering lemons to giant trim pieces that become delaminated.

The timing couldn't be worse, as Tesla's brand crisis continues to deepen. The longer resentment for the company's mercurial CEO continues to simmer, the harder it will get for Tesla to breathe new life into lagging demand.

And the competition keeps on growing, with Chinese EV maker BYD outpacing Tesla's revenue numbers for the first time last year.

Next week, Tesla is expected to hold a key Q1 earnings call — and given its current predicament, investors will likely have some burning questions for Musk.

More on the Cybertruck: Tesla Shows Off Cheaper and Slower Cybertruck That's an Even Worse Deal