Farewell To The Cybertruck, A Total Failure

The Tesla car company “will be winding down production of the Cybertruck” in 2027, according to a tweet from Elon Musk. Like everything else Musk says, ever, this must be treated as having essentially no truth value whatsoever and at best a coincidental relationship to anything that later happens with or to Cybertruck production. It’s noteworthy as an index of what Musk wants people to believe—it’s noteworthy, then, that Musk wants people to believe that the era of Cybertruck production is coming to an end.

And by “noteworthy,” I mean: fucking hilarious!

Few vehicles live on in history as metonyms for failure and embarrassment. Edsel, DeLorean, whatever poor beleaguered machine ferries the Sacramento Kings to a given road game instead of doing them the favor of exploding along the way. Add to these the Cybertruck, one of the most hyped vehicles of all time; Tesla’s production capacity for the Cybertruck reportedly was something like 250,000 units per year, and, should the end of its production in fact come in 2027, it will wrap up its four-year run certainly having sold, in total, worldwide, under half of that number. Given the ballooning demand for electric vehicles, the relative lack of competition among all-electric trucks, Tesla’s huge head-start in EV production, the unparalleled hype around the Cybertruck’s release, and its flowering into a rolling emblem of Musk’s personal toxicity, the Cybertruck deserves to endure in history as among the most embarrassing mass-produced products ever available for purchase by human beings. I’d rather carry a battery-powered Big Mouth Billy Bass around under my arm for a year than be seen, by any single person, climbing into or out of a Cybertruck once.