Elon Musk Calls Cybertruck The 'Best Ever' Vehicle From Tesla — But Its Flashiest EV Still Hardly Moves The Needle

• The Cybertruck saw the light of day only four years after Musk announced it.
• Before its launch, it had 2 million preorders, underscoring early interest in the vehicle.
• While Musk once touted the Cybertruck as a 250,000-unit-per-year opportunity, third-party sales estimates show it hasn't come anywhere close to that.

Elon Musk can't stop raving about Tesla's electric pickup truck, the Cybertruck, just like a creator enamored with the work of his hands. For the umpteenth time on Thursday, he touted its virtues on X, the social-media platform he owns. This time around, he called the Cybertruck an "incredible vehicle" and the "best-ever from Tesla."

Has the vehicle done well to earn the rave reviews? Its contribution to Tesla's sales volume has been so insignificant that Tesla has chosen not to break it down, even two years after its commercial rollout. The company continues to club it under "Other Models," which together accounted for 3.3% of the third-quarter deliveries reported in October. 

Before assessing the Cybertruck's impact, or lack thereof, on Tesla and its stock, it's worth revisiting how the vehicle came to be.

Hype That Fizzled

The earliest memory many Cybertruck fans share is of chief designer Franz von Holzhausen hurling a metal ball at its "armor glass" in 2019 to prove its toughness — only for the window to crack in a now-infamous viral moment.

The Cybertruck saw the light of day only four years after Musk announced it. The first production versions rolled out from Giga Texas and were handed out to customers on Nov. 30, 2023. Ford's F-150 Lightning pickup truck, GMC Hummer, Chevrolet Silverado, Lordstown's Endurance, and Rivian's R1T were already on sale by then. 

Endurance's production has since stopped amid the startup's manufacturing woes, which led to a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in 2023. Rumor has it that Ford is planning to pull the plug on its F-150 Lightning due to mounting losses at its EV business.

When the Cybertruck launched, it came in four variants: a single-motor rear-wheel-drive (RWD) model, a dual-motor all-wheel-drive (AWD) version, a tri-motor 'Cyberbeast' performance model, and a foundation-series launch edition.

While Musk once touted the Cybertruck as a 250,000-unit-per-year opportunity, third-party sales estimates show it hasn't come anywhere close to that.

                                            Data sourced from Shop4Tesla and Tesla Fox

TSLA Stock Tepid

Tesla's stock languished for about a year after the Cybertruck launch, lagging the broader market. Although the stock staged a comeback in late 2024 and rallied strongly through year-end, it pulled back again amid the market-wide tariff sell-off. It has since then recovered. Neither the post-Cybertruck launch stock weakness nor the recovery seen in spurts since can be traced back to the vehicle. However, the cybertuck hasn't given the stock meaningful thrust.

Source: Koyfin

The oddly designed vehicle was once seen as a key catalyst for Tesla. Fund manager and Tesla investor Gary Black said in a 2023 CNBC interview, "People going to see it, they'll be like, wow!" he said, adding that people will go to the website and order a Model 3, Model Y, Model S, or even a Cybertruck.

He was probably misled by the staggering 2 million preorders it has managed to collect before its launch. Celebrity endorsements and their purchases did very little to boost demand for the vehicle, as the electric vehicle market has been in a downward spiral since its launch. As consumers balked at the high EV ownership, this pricier vehicle did not find favor with them, as they began tightening their purse strings amid an inclement macroeconomic climate.

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