But development of the Cybertruck was more troubled than usual for Tesla, which struggled heavily to bring both the Model 3 and Y into mass production. Musk demanded “Lego-like precision” from the workers assembling the trucks, but achieving the 10-micron tolerances required by the Danish toy company was not evidently successful, based on what we saw when we experienced our first Cybertruck in reality.
That was in 2023, when Cybertruck headlines were mostly about recalls and stop sales. By then, the truck used a conventional unibody chassis—conventional for Tesla, not for full-size pickup trucks. Toward the end of that year, Musk told his audience that “we dug our grave” with the truck, perhaps the first public acknowledgment that annual sales of a quarter of a million Cybertrucks probably wasn’t going to happen after all.
Sales never took off, and the divisive shape of the Cybertruck became an all-too visible reminder of the CEO’s role in reshaping the federal government to his liking. Even selling thousands of Cybertrucks to SpaceX couldn’t save the pickup. Now, with America having vociferously rejected Musk’s vision of governance, those wishing to drive something that reminds everyone around them of that vision will only have a few months more to purchase one.
