It Doesn't Look Great For The Tesla Cybertruck

Tesla's Cybertrucks aren't selling as well as expected, so Elon Musk's other companies are reportedly gobbling them up.

2024 Breakthrough Award Nominee: The Tesla Cybertruck

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Rob Stumpf

By: Rob Stumpf

Oct 14, 2025 at 9:37am ET

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Tesla Cybertruck sales figures are in. According to Cox Automotive, only 5,385 were sold in the third quarter.
The vast majority of Tesla's sales are for the Model 3 and Model Y.
Now, other Elon Musk companies are reportedly snatching Cybertrucks up for fleet duty.

Tesla's once-hyped Cybertruck was billed as an apocalypse-proof cyberpunk machine capable of withstanding bullets and steel balls, while generating virtually limitless demand. It turns out that at least two of those things didn't come to fruition exactly as expected.

However, Tesla may have uncovered somewhat of an infinite money glitch that allows it to rack up sales of the Cybertruck while also clearing out some old stock, and it all involves other companies that CEO Elon Musk oversees.

Tesla Cybertruck Hero Reddit Service

Photo by: Reddit

The Tesla Cybertruck is flopping. New sales estimates from Cox Automotive estimate that Tesla only managed to sell 5,385 Cybertrucks in the third quarter of 2025, which is a significant downturn from this time last year and an even further cry from the original half-million annual units CEO Elon Musk originally estimated Tesla could sell.

The Verge goes over the numbers:

Tesla only sold 5,385 Cybertrucks in the third quarter, down 63 percent compared to the same period in 2024, when the automaker delivered over 14,000. The company has sold a little more than 16,000 Cybertrucks so far in 2025—a far cry from the 250,000 that Elon Musk once predicted would be sold annually. Tesla is now expected to deliver around 20,000 Cybertrucks this year, a steep drop from the estimated 50,000 sold in 2024.

[...] The third quarter was an otherwise banger for EV sales, with a total of 438,487 units sold. That’s up 40.7 percent from the previous quarter and higher by 29.6 percent year over year. Shoppers rushed to snatch up available EVs before the expiration of the $7,500 tax credit on September 30th. Sales are expected to drop dramatically in the fourth quarter—which could make the Cybertruck’s situation even worse.

Granted, the electric truck space in general is flagging at the moment. In Q3, the Ford F-150 Lightning led the pack with 10,005 sales, and to be fair, the Cybertruck came in second—ahead of General Motors' electric trucks and the Rivian R1T. But these volumes are nowhere near what was projected, or what automakers are used to from the lucrative truck segment.

So with a very limited value proposition for buyers, who the heck is buying these trucks? Well, it turns out the answer is Elon Musk (or, rather, companies that Musk is closely entangled with).

According to a report by Electrek, "hundreds of Tesla Cybertrucks have been spotted being delivered" to both SpaceX and xAI over the last week. This includes "truckloads" to both locations in recent days which are expected to continue into the near future. "SpaceX has taken delivery of hundreds of Cybertrucks at Starbase [over] the last week and it is expected to take delivery of hundreds, if not thousands more in the coming weeks," the outlet reported.

Tesla has also been seen absorbing some of its unsold Cybertrucks into its internal fleet. The automaker has been planning this for some time, as a Tesla technician confirmed to me back in August that the automaker was getting ready to refresh its mobile service fleet with Cybertrucks. Several weeks ago, a few of these trucks were spotted wearing Tesla branding and posted to Reddit, meaning that Tesla seems to be reallocating this inventory to its internal fleet.

This was also confirmed recently by Wes Morrill, the lead engineer on the Cybertruck project. In a post on X, Morrill celebrated that both Tesla and SpaceX were refreshing its support fleet with Cybertrucks. It's not clear how many vehicles this refresh will account for.

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It is kind of ironic that the Cybertruck looks at home as part of SpaceX's fleet. And the stainless steel silver lining is that the trucks are getting some use rather than just sitting in a lot somewhere. Whether it was a last-ditch effort to make use of the expiring EV tax credit or a way to blow through unsold inventory while also propping up sales numbers, the Cybertrucks now have a new home.

At least Musk's empire is consistent. As with Grok AI, if nobody else wants the product, you can always buy it yourself.

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