AI Summary
5 min readIn the nearly three years since Tesla started shipping the Cybertruck, the company has registered just over 7,000 of them in the US through May of this year. Elon Musk once said Tesla could sell 500,000 annually. The gap between that promise and reality is so wide that a new Bloomberg analysis argues the Cybertruck may be on track to surpass the Ford Edsel — widely considered the greatest automotive flop of all time — as the new record holder.
The Edsel benchmark and why the Cybertruck is worse
Ford introduced the Edsel in 1957, predicting 200,000 sales in its first year. It sold less than a third of that, and the car was discontinued in 1959. The Cybertruck is off to an even worse start. Tesla delivered the first units in late 2023, and Musk told investors the company might build more than 250,000 annually — a number the company put in its own earnings slide deck. Instead, first-year sales came in at less than one-sixth of that target. The Bloomberg comparison is direct: both companies expected their radically styled vehicles to be massive hits, and both missed by historic margins. But the Cybertruck is missing by a wider margin than the Edsel did.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Episode Introduction & Thesis Statement** - Host JJ introduces the episode's central claim: the Tesla Cybertruck may be the biggest flop in automotive history.
- 2 (00:46) **The Cybertruck's Reputation Problem** - The truck's design and reliability issues are contrasted with Musk's grandiose promises.
- 3 (02:12) **Sales Misses vs. Musk's Projections** - The Cybertruck's actual sales numbers are dramatically lower than Musk's original 500,000 annual target.
- 4 (02:51) **The Bloomberg Comparison: Cybertruck vs. Ford Edsel** - Bloomberg argues the Cybertruck may eclipse the 1957 Ford Edsel as the greatest automotive flop in American history.
- 5 (04:56) **Production Targets and the SpaceX Self-Dealing** - Tesla set up production for 250,000 annual units but sold less than one-sixth of that in the first year.
- 6 (06:49) **Sales Data Confirms the Flop** - Only 7,133 Cybertrucks were registered in the U.S. through May of the current year, with SpaceX purchases inflating the count.
- 7 (08:21) **Supplier Lawsuit: Tesla Sues Angstrom Automotive** - Tesla is in a legal standoff with a supplier over tooling needed to keep Cybertruck production running.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
John Johnston (JJ) breaks down how Tesla’s Cybertruck is looking like it could be the biggest automotive industry flop in history, dethroning Ford’s Edsel.
Tesla, Cybertruck, Elon Musk, EVs, Electric Vehicles, Automotive, Car Review, Tesla News, Automotive History, John Johnston
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