Elon Musk hoped to sell 500,000 of these things a year. Now they can’t even give them away.
Source: Forbes
The list of famous auto industry flops is long and storied, topped by stinkers like Ford’s Edsel and exploding Pinto and General Motors’s unsightly Pontiac Aztek crossover SUV. Even John Delorean’s sleek, stainless steel DMC-12, iconic from its role in the “Back To The Future” films, was a sales dud that drove the company to bankruptcy.
Elon Musk’s pet project, the dumpster-driving Tesla Cybertruck, now tops that list.
After a little over a year on the market, sales of the 6,600-pound vehicle, priced from $82,000, are laughably below what Musk predicted. Its lousy reputation for quality–with eight recalls in the past 13 months, the latest for body panels that fall off–and polarizing look made it a punchline for comedians. Unlike past auto flops that just looked ridiculous or sold badly, Musk’s truck is also a focal point for global Tesla protests spurred by the billionaire’s job-slashing DOGE role and MAGA politics.
And what are they comparing it to? The Edsel, Ford’s disastrous launch that stayed in production less than three years, from 1958-1960.
