We’ll always have our comically oversized windshield wiper.
We’ll always have our comically oversized windshield wiper.
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I’m calling it: time of death, November 6th, 1:30 AM, by tweet.
Elon Musk’s declaration Friday that Tesla would be “winding down” production of the Cybertruck next year to make room for the Cybercab was fascinating for a number of reasons. First, it was a humiliating way to kill a vehicle that was once hailed as the pinnacle of Tesla’s engineering — faster than a Porsche 911, more powerful than an F-150, able to leap over the Model Y as a singular representation of Musk’s Blade Runner -inspired designs for the future. “I think the Tesla Cybertruck is our best product ever,” he declared during a 2019 earnings call . (He prefaced the statement by saying, “This could be totally wrong. I could be totally out to lunch here.” It would appear so!)
The fact that Musk would just quietly put an end to the Cybertruck without any fanfare was a sign of how far it had fallen, not just in the eyes of the public, but in the eyes of its creator, the man most responsible for brute-forcing this low-emission, low-poly technological nightmare into the world.
Tesla actually thought the Cybertruck would be a huge hit, targeting production and demand of 250,000 units per year. To date, the company has only sold 70,000 units — total. Musk’s other company, SpaceX, ended up being one of the largest single purchasers of Cybertrucks to absorb unsold inventory. Musk had to become his own customer to make the Cybertruck look better on paper.
But the death of the Cybertruck is even more noteworthy given the timing of Musk’s tweet, coming just three days after his epic flop at the ballot box. Musk poured over $445 million into Republican races, with most of his money targeting his home turf of Texas — headquarters to both Tesla and SpaceX. Between funnels of $168 million to super PACs backing Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton and nearly $35 million redirected from his own America PAC, Musk dropped more than $200 million on the Lone Star State alone.
All that money, and zero return. Democrat James Talarico crushed Paxton by 12 points to break a 38-year Democratic Senate drought, while Gina Hinojosa ousted Greg Abbott from the governor’s mansion. Texas turned blue, despite the best efforts of the world’s richest man — or perhaps because of them?
Americans are fed up: they don’t want Musk meddling in their government, and they especially don’t want his stainless-steel monument to his own vanity and utter refusal to accept human feedback.
The Cybertruck was one of the most epic failures in modern automotive history. While it succeeded as a viral PR spectacle and initially became a top-selling premium electric pickup in early 2024, it ultimately collapsed under the weight of Musk’s own hubris.
The reasons for the Cybertruck’s failures are almost too many to enumerate : too expensive, not as much range or towing power as promised, too many recalls, and, well, it looked the way it did. But when Musk outed himself as a Trump supporter, forever tying himself to Trump’s MAGA brand, the Cybertruck went with him. Electric vehicles are typically associated with a style of coastal progressivism, but the Cybertruck crossed the aisle to become a physical avatar of Trump’s ugly brand of politics.
And more so than any other car in modern history, the Cybertruck was inseparable from its creator. By the time Musk threw hundreds of millions of dollars into Trump’s campaign, launched the America PAC, and took a prominent position in Trump’s administration as the head of the disastrous DOGE project, owning a Cybertruck had become a rolling liability. People who owned a Model 3 or Model Y could credibly claim they bought it before “Elon went crazy,” as the bumper stickers would later declare — a Cybertruck owner could make no such claim.
To be sure, most people who bought Cybertrucks were not interested in distancing themselves from Musk’s brand of trollish politics. A big part of MAGA culture is owning the libs. And because liberals, car purists, and environmentalists couldn’t stand the Cybertruck — mocking everything from its sharp edges to its build quality — buying one became a way to get under their skin. Before long, people were slapping Trump wraps on them , flying flags from the truck beds, and turning them into props for conservative rallies.
But vibes shift, as they always do. Edgelords lose their edge, and voters become weary and wary of efforts to divide them. The blue tsunami was a historic rejection of Trump and Musk’s brand of right-wing grievance politics. When the spectacle wore off, the bluster stopped feeling like rebellion and started looking like a shit way to run a government. In a single election, the country said it was done.
The results on Tuesday also rendered the Cybertruck an instant relic. The election stripped away the sheen of inevitability that once insulated both the billionaire and his pet project. It’s a relief, but a peculiar one at that. Has there ever been a vehicle so desperate to look like the future, only to become an immediate symbol of the past?
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