Commentary: How many Cybertrucks has Tesla sold to the public? Fewer than you might think
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The Cybertruck, Tesla’s would-be competitor in the EV pickup truck market, has long since secured its place as the Edsel of the electric vehicle age.It’s been derided as unwieldy and ugly and unable to match other pickups in basic functionality.
In the colorful take of Tesla critic Will Lockett, it’s “the vehicular form of halitosis” and an “ick’ on four wheels.” But one doesn’t need words to describe how the Cybertruck has fared among the pickup-buying public; the numbers tell the story.Commentary on economics and more from a Pulitzer Prize winner.
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According to Cox Automotive’s Kelley Blue Book, Tesla sold only 20,237 of the vehicles in 2025, down 48.1% from the 38,965 sold the year before.The slide continued in the first quarter of this year, Cox reported — 3,519 sold, down 45.1% from the 6,406 sold in the year-earlier period.
But there’s more to the story — or to be more precise, less.In the fourth quarter of 2025, of the 7,071 Cybertruck U.S.
registrations, 1,279 went to SpaceX, the rocketship company headed by Tesla boss Elon Musk, which is planning an initial public stock offering sometime this year.An additional 60 were registered by other companies in the Musk empire, namely xAI, Neuralink and the Boring Co.
In other words, nearly 20% of all the Cybertrucks registered in the U.S.in the fourth quarter went to Musk’s companies.
Based on the Cybertruck’s starting price of $70,000, that’s the equivalent of $93.7 million in merchandise circulating within Musk’s orbit rather than going to outside buyers...