It isn't just about sales, it is about margin. F150 Lightning was losing money on each unit produced - they cost about 40% more to product than they sold for. Cybertruck has a positive gross margin, so even though sales are terrible, they don't have have a pressing financial need to cancel it.
Tesla doesn't disclose the gross margin on Cybertruck. They may say it is positive but if nobody knows what constituted those gross margins or what they amounted to, it's pretty much meaningless.
I agree. I am quite confident that if someone challenges them on this claim, they will say it was non-GAAP gross margin, which excluded all the crucial expenses
it's one of their models i would like for them to succeed the most. americans love trucks (especially where i live), and the impact of electric truck replacing ice ones on the gestalt of the neighborhood is significant, no noise, no fumes. people tend to drive their electric cars/trucks more gently too. my neighbor bought one, and it's night and day.
and oddly enough, while i kneejerk hated it at first, the design has grown on me, something genuinely different, playful. much rather see a parked cybertruck than yet another oversized bloated "regular" truck.
While I also don't mind manufacturers trying a new look, and I like the vague "halo warthog" look of the thing, the Cybertruck seems to have ended up a very bad spot.
It's just not a good truck.
It's also suffered from being insanely overhyped, and then underdelivering on basically every front.
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Part of my problem with modern Tesla is that they seem to have really jumped the shark on delivering products that are functional. Across the board - from autonomous driving, solar roofs, power walls, Cybertruck, Semi, etc... Even the mass manufactured lines like the Y get staggeringly bad reliability ratings and reviews.
Good form is great! Good form at the expense of good function is not.
I have bemoaned the sameness of car design these days. To the Cybertruck I say, thank you for trying something different!
But not like that.
(Also, the problem is "Americans love trucks"—the Cybertruck doesn't solve that. It's still just a lethal grocery-getter in suburbia where the Cybertruck was only going to sell anyway. I'd sooner get behind the new golf-cart craze in suburbia—let them drive their golf carts to Costco.)
> people tend to drive their electric cars/trucks more gently too
Really? I tend to see much more aggressive acceleration from people in electric cars (including myself when I'm driving, though I try not to). I've been putting it down to people being used to how gas cars seem to be working harder when you ask them to accelerate heavily, while electric just goes with no complaints.
I don’t agree with that external analysis (cnbc is saying it’s lower than their expectations). This is a gen 1 product for super fans that they want to evolve into a mainstream one.
