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Comment by reissbaker | Hacker News Reader

What do you mean by "stupid enough to build it?" It's the best-selling electric truck in terms of shipped units, by a large margin (approximately equal to every other EV truck manufacturer combined, including Ford's electric F-150).

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Could you please cite sources on this? Just looking at Rivian [1] they delivered 37,396 units this year alone. Tesla doesn't officially publish numbers, but the Cybertruck recall from few weeks ago tells us around 27,185 total [2]. I know that the July sales were high, over 5172 units [3], but that's a single month. And just to put everything in perspective here: over 13 million trucks were sold in the States in July alone [4].

[1] https://electrek.co/2024/10/08/why-rivian-rivn-cutting-ev-pr... [2] https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2024/RCLRPT-24V718-2751.PDF [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2024/09/22/cyber... [4] https://press.spglobal.com/2024-07-24-S-P-Global-Mobility-Ju...

Here is one source from the Verge:

Tesla sold more Cybertrucks than almost all other EV trucks combined

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/18/24247985/tesla-cybertruck...

The Cybertruck was the best-selling $100,000+ vehicle in July

https://qz.com/tesla-cybertruck-is-selling-better-than-any-o...

"Tesla sold more Cybertrucks than almost all other EV trucks combined" - in July, you forgot to add

"The Cybertruck was the best-selling $100,000+ vehicle in July" - there you go

Rivian's delivery numbers include the R1T pickup, the R1S SUV, and their EDV delivery van for Amazon and other fleet customers. The R1T pickup is likely half or less of their total production number.

We don't know how profitable it is. They're already running out of folks willing to pay $100k and have begun offering the $80k version. Will that version be profitable to build? It takes more than unit sales to make a good business decision.

Even if it is profitable, it still needs to be weighed against the opportunity costs of using those resources to pursue a different strategy. Would the same resources in terms of designer, engineers, hours, and capital outlay on factory production lines have been more profitable if they were applied to a different vehicle?

It's very possible. The Cybertruck is always going to be a limited demand vehicle. It may do well versus other EV pickups in the US market, but Tesla is a global company and the Cybertruck is not a global vehicle.

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