I don't think Tesla's judgment should be the litmus test. They have capacity to produce 250K Cybertrucks / year, currently on pace to sell < 20K and it's only going down from here.
At the best maybe it was some sort of misguided attempt to encourage the American right to buy EVs?
If so it royally backfired and just decimated his own customer base right at the time real competition was entering the market. The Equinox EV roundly beats the Model Y head to head on range, price, AWD, etc. The Ioniq 5 is more expensive but is lovely.
The cybertruck fell flat long before Musk's true identity was revealed (maga/nazi affiliations).
Even if tesla was headed up by the most beloved CEO ever, I reckon the CT would still have sold poorly. It's just objectively a very bad, poorly designed and even worse built vehicle. And surprisingly, I feel like it's design aged very very quickly. It does not look next-gen or futuristic to me at all anymore.
Do you have a source for this?
At the time the CT was announced there were no other EV pickups remotely close to buyable. If he had stepped back, and let the people who designed the X, Y, and 3 do their thing, it would have been released in 2020, and even with its unique shape would have sold great, and probably would not have developed the reputation for poor quality that the current one has.
The Y is the best vehicle I’ve ever owned. To me, it took over what the Prius used to be - the best overall vehicle for most people.
You don’t even mention FSD here, I assume strategically. That, to me, is the most important feature. Does Equinox or Ioniq even have FSD?
I don't think the Ioniq has anything comparable.
I don't think the Ioniq has anything comparable.
No doubt Elon is destroying the profitability of his company by being a public asshole, but the Cybertruck is a fundamentally flawed vehicle (almost) nobody asked for, which is why it's a flop. By comparison, (refreshed) 3 and Y sales are not off by nearly as much, and some of that is just because they're just refreshes of existing vehicles people have been buying for many years, and there's a lot more competition in the EV market, and overall EV sales are slowing.
Q1 was handwaved away back in April as "oh people are waiting for the new models" but then Q2 was down as well.
Someone pointed out CT production is <10% of their planned capacity. So the CT is underperforming by 90%, but I'm sure 3/Y sales are _not_ down by 90%. Meaning the CT is an outsize failure, even if you take into account Elon tanking Tesla sales in general, and overall slowing or at least plateauing EV sales.