Tesla is reportedly slashing Cybertruck prices to encourage customers to buy after sales declined last quarter. While the discounts are modest for a vehicle in its price range, they may be sufficient to sway some would-be customers.
According to Automotive News, the company is putting $1,600 on the hood of new models with another $1,000 available for customers who received referral codes from existing Tesla owners.
While some are suggesting that this is the direct result of sales volumes cooling with the winter months, it seems equally likely that the company is trying to plan around upcoming products. Tesla eventually plans on offering a rear-drive variant of the Cybertruck with a significantly lower price tag. Once that hits the market, the current $80,000 model could be a harder sell. But that doesn’t mean sales volumes haven’t likewise played a role.
Tesla sold nearly 39,000 Cybertrucks through 2024. That was enough to edge out the Ford F-150 Lightning by a few thousand units and even made the Cybertruck the fifth best-selling EV of last year. However, the Tesla Model Y still saw 372,613 deliveries and the Model 3 moved 189,903 units within the same time period.
Relatively speaking, that’s not a lot of volume and the fourth quarter resulted in Tesla selling 4,000 fewer Cybertrucks than it did in Q3. But Ford’s all-electric pickup hasn’t been selling quite as well as it used to either — hinting that the issue may not actually center exclusively around the product. It may have more to do with the EV pickup segment as a whole.
This will not preclude plenty of articles discussing how the Cybertruck is an abject failure from being written, however. Automotive News’ own piece suggested that the model was a flop after noting that it wasn’t achieving hundreds of thousands of units in its first full year on sale, seemingly ignorant to the fact it was still the best-selling electric pickup of 2024.
Meanwhile, Ford has already paused production on the Lightning due to insufficient demand.
Assuming any $80,000 battery driven truck was going to instantaneously supplant the gasoline-powered F-Series as America’s favorite never really made much sense. Cybertruck was probably always going to see a major decline in sales once everyone interested in showing off purchased one. That’s not dig at the brand. This is the normal trajectory for trendy halo vehicles. Automakers see a year or two of peak demand before the inevitable cooling-off phase.
Tesla built something unique that drew in the kind of people who might have never purchased an all-electric vehicle otherwise. It’s insanely fast, loaded up with features, and looks like nothing else on the road. But it also isn’t brand-new anymore and arguably doesn’t accomplish certain truck tasks as well as the more traditional alternatives — which also cost significantly less if you can keep away from the highest trims.
That’s not to suggest the Cybertruck cannot do truck things, or even a few things most other pickups cannot do. But I’ve seen plenty of them in the wild by now and none of them were parked at job sites or loaded up with lumber. It’s largely a niche vehicle, catering to a specific sort of person and many of those people have already made their purchase. If Tesla wants to continue seeing healthy sales, it’s going to need to bring down pricing and maximize quality control because the truck can’t really get much more unique than it already is.
[Images: Tesla]
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