A new future for the futuristic Cybertruck
Remember the Tesla Cybertruck, Elon’s fever-dream vehicle that cosplays as a truck but is barely useful for the things that people expect from trucks? As we start to see fewer of them on the road and can laugh at how poorly they are selling—Elon told us Tesla’s annual sales for the Cybertruck would be around 250,000, but it’s actually more like 20,000—we have been wondering where all these unsold and traded-in Cybertrucks are. As it turns out, Tesla’s sister companies have them.
New reporting says SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket-ship company, has taken delivery of hundreds of Cybertrucks. It’s believed the Austin-based SpaceX will accept delivery of thousands more as well. XAI, Elon’s artificial intelligence company focusing on building large language models and chatbots, also reportedly took delivery of “several truckloads” over the past week.
Tesla didn’t want to be Cyber-stuck
For Tesla, the Cybertruck has been almost pure chaos. It’s never been the dystopia-proof citizen tank we were promised. Most think the Cybertruck is godawfully ugly, and many dubbed it the “incel camino” because it’s just not useful as a proper truck. On top of that, the Cybertruck is hard to insure, and is even illegal in some countries. It rusts, its sharp edges harm people, and its electric bed cover doesn’t even recognize when something is in its way. We could go on, but you’re picking up what we’re putting down, here.
Tesla did all it could to sell Cybertruck, too. It offered deep discounts, refurbished what it could of its fleet, and offered it up via attractive lease offers. The only way to get it off dealership lots was to sell it “internally,” it seems. It’s worth noting that SpaceX and xAI are not Tesla companies—they’re all owned by Elon Musk.
What’s SpaceX going to do with Cybertruck?
Truck things! Well, kinda. SpaceX and Tesla are said to be replacing support fleet vehicles with Cybertrucks. Wes Morrill, lead engineer on Cybertruck, attempted to spin the narrative a bit by saying this was “always part of the dream”.
“Love to see the ICE support fleets from Tesla and SpaceX get replaced with Cybertruck. When we were engineering it, this was always part of the dream. Never imagined how hard the fleet photos at starbase would go. Looking forward to more of this,” Morrill said on X, formerly Twitter. As for xAI, it’s hard to know what the Cybertruck’s “purpose” is there. It could be similar to how Tesla and SpaceX will use the Cybertruck, but we’re just not sure exactly what that is.
Final thoughts
Jokes aside, this is really all Tesla and Elon Musk could do with the Cybertruck. It’s a rare flop for Tesla, and there’s just not a lot that can be done with the existing ones other than find them a different home. The move also counts as “sales” and gets Cybertruck inventory off Tesla’s books. Though Musk views Tesla as a robotaxi-and-robots company, it’s still in the business of selling cars, and its most recent quarterly earnings suggest it needs to be far more serious about doing more of that, and soon.
