The Cybertruck’s days are numbered. Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced last week that the company was winding down production of the vehicle and clarified Monday that the last ones would roll off the line in about eight months.
It’s been a rough road for the Cybertruck, first announced in 2019 and finally released in late 2023. Musk has tried to use a number of different excuses for why the Cybertruck is being discontinued, including everything from “opportunity cost” to a shortage of talent to actually produce more than one type of vehicle at a time. But it seems few people actually wanted to own what became a symbol of far-right extremism and midlife crises.
Musk insists the Cybertruck didn’t suffer from weak sales, though that’s clearly a lie. Electrek and Cox Automotive estimate that Cybertruck sales in the U.S. fell from just 14,416 in the third quarter of 2024 to 3,519 in the first quarter of 2026 and 3,744 in the second quarter of 2026.
A failure from day one
The Cybertruck suffered from a number of recalls, but those often weren’t even the most embarrassing issues. The unveiling in 2019 was arguably the most cringe-inducing product launch of the century when Tesla’s lead designer, Franz von Holzhausen, tried to show off the Cybertruck’s “armored glass” by hurling a heavy steel ball at it.
The window broke instantly.
Things only got more embarrassing from there.
Musk’s prototype leaves an impression
Before the Cybertruck was unleashed upon the world, Musk himself was the only one who could drive one.
In Dec. 2019, Musk went to dinner in Malibu, California, at a place called Nobu, and paparazzi captured the CEO showing off the Cybertruck prototype. Actor Ed Norton even came out of the restaurant to see the shiny new thing. Musk was dating Grimes at the time, with whom he’d have three children before their contentious split.
As Musk was leaving the restaurant, videographers captured Musk making an illegal left turn in front of a “right turn only” sign. In fact, Musk hit the sign, according to the video, as you can see below.
Good work, Elon.
Briefly serve as a boat
In the lead-up to the Cybertruck’s launch, Elon Musk said that his new vehicle “will be waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat, so it can cross rivers, lakes & even seas that aren’t too choppy.” But anyone who tried to test that out seems to have been wildly disappointed.
A Texas man drove his Cybertruck into a lake to test out the claims back in May. It didn’t work out well, of course. In fact, the man was arrested by the Grapevine Police Department for doing something so stupid. The police helpfully released the photo above to show just how stupid he was.
Another video that went viral showed someone trying to cross a river in California. The vehicle didn’t do well there either.
Even drivers who stayed on the sandy beach and didn’t dare drive into the water found difficulty in the Cybertruck. One driver on the Oregon coast had to be towed out by a real truck in 2024, much to their embarrassment.
Other Cybertruck owners were equally embarrassed trying to launch jet skis or trying to race on the beach and getting properly smoked.
Watch your fingers
The Cybertruck wasn’t just a hideous monstrosity that invited waving middle fingers everywhere they went. They also posed a risk to the fingers of Cybertruck owners.
YouTuber Joe Fay posted a video in 2024 showing how the vehicle’s frunk wouldn’t crush your fingers. Viewers noted that he seemed to be cheating, so he made a new video trying again. Things turned bad, however, when it broke his finger.
Cybertruck owners aren’t the smartest folks around. But at least some people were smart enough to use things like carrots and hot dogs for these kinds of demonstrations. This guy learned the hard way not to use his own fingers.
Not exactly rugged
The Cybertruck experienced a number of different issues during its brief life that most other vehicles didn’t struggle with. For example, when drivers took the thing through the car wash, it had the potential to brick the truck.
$TSLA Cybertruck owners ..
1) do NOT wash your car in sunlight and
2) do NOT tell Tesla SCs that you drove it through a car wash (like this guy) even if you turned on Car Wash Mode. They will void your warranty. 💀 pic.twitter.com/eXpaxlm2X6
— Stonk King ((((🌕)))) (@StonkKing4) April 16, 2024
There was also the problem of driving through shallow puddles, which seemed to mess with the electronics of the vehicle. You’re going to want to turn the sound on for the video below.
Rafael putting his @cybertruck to work on Kane Creek Road. pic.twitter.com/BCLaLg4rS1
— Kyle Field (@mrkylefield) March 14, 2024
The funny thing is that the Cybertruck manual told drivers they should gauge the depth of any water they might drive into and that doing so could void the warranty.
Shooting the Cybertruck with a gun
Other people wanted to test Musk’s claims that the Cybertruck was bulletproof. You had Joe Rogan shooting it with a bow and arrow and streamer Adin Ross shooting it with a gun.
Adin Ross testing out the bulletproof feature of Telsa's CyberTruck and it went wrong 😭😭 pic.twitter.com/uLW8XjnKxC
— ryan 🤿 (@scubaryan_) February 21, 2024
Ross’s demonstration seemed to confirm that it was at the very least bullet-resistant. But when one of the bullets found its way in between the gap in the doors (the Cybertruck had notoriously inconsistent gaps), it fared less well.
The Cybertruck terror attack
In fairness to Tesla, not every piece of bad news was related to the Cybertruck’s terrible design. Sometimes the truck was simply used for nefarious purposes in a way that any other vehicle might be. Like on Jan. 1, 2025, when 37-year-old Matthew Alan Livelsberger loaded up a Cybertruck with explosives and parked it in front of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The attack killed the driver and wounded seven people. Again, it’s not like Musk can be blamed for this attack, but the imagery really helped sum up the era.
This photo really did predict the fucking future. pic.twitter.com/NFmiPbIDgh
— Jamie Bonkiewicz (@JamieBonkiewicz) November 6, 2026
Musk is swapping out production of the Cybertruck for a self-certified autonomous taxi that’s different from what he promised. The two-seater Cybercab was initially announced as something that people would be able to buy. But, for the foreseeable future, it’s increasingly looking like Tesla will just operate the Waymo-like vehicles in geofenced areas around Texas and Florida.
The question is whether Musk can have more luck with the Cybercab than he did with the Cybertruck. And that remains to be seen, especially since Musk is facing new headwinds like a Congress controlled by Democrats intent on investigating him.
By all accounts, there was real curiosity around the Cybertruck when it was first announced in 2019, but that fell apart by 2025 when Musk made himself the face of far-right politics. The trillionaire helped get President Donald Trump re-elected and went to work taking a chainsaw to the federal government. Musk’s two Nazi-style salutes also helped destroy the Tesla brand for those of a liberal persuasion.
The Cybertruck acquired quite a few nicknames such as the Swasticar, the Incel Camino, the Deplorean, and the Starship Pooper. And several were set on fire in vandalism incidents throughout 2025 when Musk became a symbol of Trump’s fascist policies.
RIP Cybertruck. You won’t be missed by anyone with two brain cells to rub together.
