It’s been painfully obvious since not long after the first Tesla Cybertruck deliveries started in 2023 that demand for the truck simply wasn’t as high as CEO Elon Musk had said. So after price drops then hikes, changes to trim levels, and other attempts to help boost sales, who is still buying the electric trucks?
From a billionaire automotive CEO perspective, there’s one sure-fire way to boost your company sales – buy your own cars. And well, that’s kind of what Elon is doing. But he’s not buying Cybertrucks and stuffing them into his backyard, though. He has other companies to manage, after all.
SpaceX Has More Cybertrucks Than Rockets
2026 Tesla Cybertruck driving front 3/4Tesla
SpaceX, the rocket launch company founded by Elon Musk that notably sent a Tesla Roadster into space a few years back, is bringing home massive numbers of Cybertrucks. According to S&P Global Mobility data provided to Bloomberg News, SpaceX bought 1,279 units of the truck, more than 18% of the total in the fourth quarter of last year. That would mean SpaceX bought nearly one of every five Cybertrucks sold for the period.
Add in the 60 vehicles that other Elon Musk ventures purchased in the quarter, and 19% of all Cybertrucks registered in that period were bought from one of Musk’s companies by another of his companies. That would mean Musk, through his companies, bought nearly one of every five Cybertrucks sold for the period.
Depending on what versions of the trucks were involved, that’s around $110 million in value. The purchases have continued this year, though the report did not have complete 2026 data. It’s not clear what SpaceX would use the trucks for, but it would be approximately one truck for every employee working in operations at SpaceX, and surely not all of them need a company pickup. The company has around 10,000 employees in total.
When Musk first announced the Cybertruck, he had predicted 250,000 sales per year. After reservations opened, he said that there were more than two million customers who had put down deposits.
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In 2024, the automaker sold just under 39,000 Cybertrucks. In 2025, sales dropped even further, falling to 20,237 units. Ford’s F-150 Lightning, which was canceled over poor sales, sold 33,510 in 2024 and beat the Cybertuck handily with 27,307 last year. Chevrolet sold 11,275 electric Silverado trucks last year.
What Happened To The Cybertruck Promise?
2025 Tesla Cybertruck InteriorBrett. T. Evans/CarBuz/Valnet
With sales down and falling, selling trucks to your other companies is one way to move inventory. It can help keep the plant operating, but investors in the other companies involved may not be thrilled with the idea. Imagine if Ford sold 39,000 F-150 pickups to Lincoln in a quarter, and you have an idea of the issue.
What happened to customer demand? There are plenty of directions in which to point fingers. Elon Musk’s association with the current US administration and the DOGE agency certainly marked a turning point for Tesla’s image, but it may simply come down to the product.
The all-angles design appeals to buyers wanting attention. The originally announced specs appealed to buyers who might normally have avoided that attention. Musk promised features like bulletproof windows and skin, that it would be “waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat,” and the slightly more believable claims that it would start from $39,900, have up to 500 miles of range, offer a larger battery that slotted in and out of the bed, and more.
Instead, the truck currently starts from $69,900, with the Premium from $79,990 and Cyberbeast from $99,990. The cheapest arrived earlier this year for $59,995, and that price jumped $10,000 in a few weeks.
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Tesla’s Big Idea To Counter Plummeting Cybertruck Sales Doesn’t Make Sense
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The longest-range Cybertruck goes just 325 miles on a charge. It can’t float, it isn’t bulletproof, the trunk-mounted battery never arrived, and never will. The saying goes that you should under promise and over deliver. The Cybertruck did the opposite.
Source: Bloomberg
