Download Subtitles for Why Tesla Cybertrucks Aren't Selling Video

The Tesla Cybert truck. In a country where pickup trucks are half of the top 10 selling vehicles, making an electric one seemed like a no-brainer. At the time the pickup debuted, Tesla was already making the world's bestselling EV. >> To solve sustainable energy, we have to have a pickup truck. >> The truck's design certainly provoked a range of opinions. Some loving it, others, >> I thought it was a joke. But in terms of performance and capability, Tesla was making big promises. >> How does this uh compare to a Porsche 911? >> At first, it looked like customer interest would be as impressive as the truck's specs. >> Demand is is off the charts. We have over a million people who have reserved the car. >> But just a fraction of the more than 1 million reservation holders have actually made a purchase. There's been plenty of reports of trucks piling up on lots. Tesla has a tendency to drastically overpromise and it's starting to catch up with the company. >> There have been recalls and canceled plans that have angered customers. Despite all this, some owners say the truck is great. >> I really like the way it looks. I like the way it drives. >> For the most part, like I would buy it again. >> So, what went wrong? CNBC dove in to find out. Elon Musk had been talking about making some kind of a Tesla truck since at least 2012. >> For most of the last decade, the three bestselling vehicles in America have been full-size pickup trucks. It's the Ford F150, the Chevrolet Silverado, and the Ram 1500. So, if the industry is going electric, it's not ridiculous to think that large that fullsize trucks need to go electric. >> I present to you the Cyber Truck. >> Thought it was a joke. I thought they were going to pull out the the real truck after they showed this thing. And I'm just like, okay, no, really. And uh and the and the show kept going on and I'm like, "Oh, that's it. Oh my god." >> Initially, when I saw it, I I love the stainless steel look. I'm a Delorean fan. I'm a Back to the Future fan. [Applause] >> So, that was striking enough and I was like, "Oh, yeah. I I never had a chance to get a Delorean." Tesla's advertised specifications bested those of longtime market leaders. up to 14,000 lbs of towing power, 500 more than the top selling Ford F-150. A 3,500 lb payload capacity, about a,000 more than the Ford truck. A top 0 to 60 time under 3 seconds, faster than many sports cars. It's important to mention that this is comparing the Cybertruck specs advertised at the 2019 reveal with the specs of a 2025 Ford F-150. Initially, Tesla said the truck would start at $39,900. As of July 2025, it started at 62,490. The max towing capacity on the Cyberbeast, the top trim, is 11,000 lb, 3,000 short of the promised 14. The most payload any version gets is 2,270 lb on the tri motor version with all-terrain tires. That's less than the promised 3,500. One month before Tesla began deliveries, Musk said over 1 million people had placed reservations. But since deliveries began in November 2023, only 52,000 units have sold in the US. In Q3 2024, they peaked at nearly 17,000 units. For a time, it was the bestselling electric pickup. From there, sales fell. >> With a lot of EVs, we see people place a reservation that never turns into an order. And it's often because the price of a reservation is very low. But Tesla told everyone this niche was absolutely enormous, and it's relatively small. Reports documenting the challenges started to roll in. There were shortened production shifts. Tesla telling Cybertruck line workers to stay home, sometimes for a few days at a time. The company started offering potential customers lifetime free supercharging on Foundation Series Cybert trucks, a special first edition of the truck that originally cost about $100,000. By January 2025, Tesla was offering discounts. >> They're not going to sell anywhere close to a million trucks. >> So, what went wrong? It fell short of the projected range. It fell short of the projected payload capacity. It fell short of the projected towing capacity. Uh it fell short of the projected speed. And it fell way short of the projected price. It's far more expensive than they had set in the first place. >> Specs aside, the design was certainly eye-catching, but it was off-putting and even cumbersome for many of the customers who use pickup trucks for work. And that is a large portion of the truck market. >> The side of the bed, I think, is still difficult to get into. I mean, one of the things that you do with pickup is put things inside of it. You can't reach the side the side of a drive. It's very difficult to do so from the like near the cab. >> Full-size truck buyers are a fairly conservative set of people. And I don't necessarily mean politically so much as I mean in their expectations. They're often buying a truck that they're going to work with. So those specifications for how hard it actually works are very important. >> And then there is the range. The company had targeted up to 500 miles, but delivered something closer to 300. The Cybert truck is Peter Scott's third Tesla. He also has a Model S and Model X. He got into EVs after news broke of the Volkswagen dieselgate cheating scandal. At the time, Scott was driving a diesel-powered VW. He loved his first two Teslas. Felt like I owed them more money. It was the first car I didn't have buyer remorse. I was so happy because everywhere I turned, I had no gas payment. I had no repair payment. I mean, it was just a it was a beautiful thing. >> Scott is a contractor and he needed a work truck. He paid the full $120,000 for the Cyber Beast. When he bought it, he was disappointed with the range, but Tesla had said it would offer a range extender. That would bump the range up to $470 mi, close to the original 500 mile target. But the range extender was cancelled. >> Okay, 470 versus 500. That's fine. I'll go ahead and buy the truck knowing I'm going to get 470 miles. I put the deposit down on the ext range extender. I bought the truck knowing that I was going to get 470 mi. Then when they canled it, that just crushed me. They got my money and then they canled what they were going to do. If I knew that, then I would have looked at a Silverado cuz the Silverado has the mileage that I'm looking for. As with many other Tesla products and plans, the Cybertruck suffered many development and production delays and challenges. Some of these, the company said, resulted from production shutdowns and supply chain shortages common to automakers during the Corona virus pandemic. Setbacks have only continued. There have also been ongoing production and quality problems. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows Tesla conducted eight voluntary recalls for the 2024 model year alone. Many pertained to physical defects, not just software. One was over body panels falling off the truck due to the use of improper adhesives. Another was for a trapped accelerator pedal defect that caused some drivers to experience frightening unintended acceleration. Tesla did not respond to CNBC's request for an interview or comment. >> What feels weird is I feel guilty for the people that had all those problems. I I didn't have all those problems like they did. Kenan Cobra Curtis did have a fair bit of trouble with his Foundation series Cybertruck, much of which he documented on his YouTube channel. >> I had so many issues and I have repeated visits to the service center. And being a newer vehicle, they struggled a little bit in the beginning, but they, you know, they worked on it. They repeatedly worked on it and it got to the point where, you know, it was just unreasonable and they actually repurchased the Cybertruck from me. Essentially, it was a lemon law buyback. They gave me all my money back and uh I turned around and got another one. This second one, there is a night and day difference, >> but Cybert truck sales still fell. Overall, EV pickup truck demand is a fraction of the total truck market. >> I think that in the long run, there will be an argument for electric trucks. It's a combination of the infrastructure has not caught up in the place where trucks are most necessary. However, Cybertruck has lost ground to the rivals against which it was benchmarking. >> Let's uh actually have a to board here with an F-150. >> Yeah, but it was uphill. >> And while we saw Cybertruck sales spike a little bit above F-150 Lightning sales for a while, they've now fallen below. And the bestselling electric truck in America is a copy of the bestselling gas truck in America, which is completely unsurprising. But Curtis and Scott find much to like about their trucks. The fact that Teslas can be updated remotely all the way down to the powertrain give them an edge. >> The next closest would be the Sierra. I really love that interior. It's very luxurious, but I feel like the software wouldn't be there. And I had a another buddy of mine talk me out of it. He said, "You know what? It's going to be outdated. They won't update it at all." And I was like, "You're right." >> Scott says some other features on the Cybertruck make it stand out from the pack. For example, the air suspension can lower the truck to fit into parking structures. The included tunno cover keeps things secure in the bed. The truck's software can recognize different types of trailers and adjust the brakes accordingly. >> I mean, it's just amazing. Like, it just keeps getting better and better. >> Of course, I love the look and the feel of it. I love the steer by wire. I love the the comfort. >> One downside is some of the attention the truck attracts. Tesla has faced protests and declining sales in response to CEO Elon Musk's incendiary political rhetoric, as well as his extensive spending and work to reelect Donald Trump and to slash federal agencies. >> As you can see, I'm I'm I'm not just MAGA, I'm Dark Ma. >> Bought it four and a half years ago before Elon went political. And so when I'm driving, I get flipped off sometimes or people swerve in front of me. two separate occasions I've had people show me they didn't like my purchase right out in the streets random people and some people don't want to deal with that and that's fair you know I stay out of the politics I stay out of all of that I just try to enjoy the vehicle >> in some ways the Cybertruck story mirrors Tesla's larger troubles >> Tesla sales as a company peaked all the way back in February of 2023 and have been falling for the most part ever since. So, a lot of the Tesla story is a story of both overpromising and of some of its early success came coming when it really didn't have competitors and now it has a significant number of competitors. >> Rivian, Ford, GM all have pickups in the North American market and there are more on the way. In late July, Tesla VP of engineering Lars Moravi said Tesla might make a smaller pickup truck. >> Always talked about making a smaller pickup and so we've definitely been, you know, turnurning in the design studio about what we might do. I'm okay with it selling at a low volume like the Model S and the Model X because you know honestly the Cybertruck isn't for everyone. >> But for a successful smaller truck, Tesla might need to make different choices. >> They need to change the styling if they want to make more sales. Of course, the lower price will help, but I think it's just associated with being weird with things people don't believe in. It was always at risk of being one of those vehicles where everyone who wanted one was going to get it in the next in the first year, year and a half and and after that it was it could struggle. But that seems to be what's happened with the Cybert truck so far. >> So the question is if Scott and Curtis each had to buy a new EV pickup truck today, what would it be? >> I would definitely do my research. It's It's not Tesla that I I really think people should be looking at. I think it should be any kind of EV. So far, it'd be a Cybert truck. >> There's a lot of great things that I feel like you get really good value for your money. Like I said, I'm watching this one closely. If I started having any issues, that that might be it.