Tesla is sitting on $200M worth of Cybertruck inventory | Hacker News Reader

Tesla is sitting on $200M worth of Cybertruck inventory

electrek.co

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How much to bet that they're coming soon to a governmental agency near you:

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/24/nx-s1-5305269/tesla-state-dep...

It's saving costs, you see!

It certainly eliminates the lengthy and costly bidding process.

It would be peanuts compared to the waste they've found.

So far, they’re significantly negative on savings (the $140B they claim versus the $500B they’ve cost just at the IRS alone) and that’s taking the figures at face value when every sober review has found them wildly overstating the savings by doing things like taking credit for contracts closed during previous administrations, using the maximum possible amount on contracts which hadn’t spent anywhere near that much, or counting the same contract multiple times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/us/politics/doge-musk-con...

Then you also have to factor in how much money they’re going to spend in lawsuits for all of the broken laws, not to mention the cost of paying people not to work for months while trying to bypass Congress and shut down legally mandated programs.

That $140B is a very concrete number with documentation to back up all 7279 line items in great detail. Nearly 1000x more than this $200M Cybertruck inventory. So yes, peanuts compared to the waste and fraud they've found. Your somewhat unrelated claim about the IRS is from a pay-walled source, and one that is historically rather biased against conservatism I might add. Are they claiming that the reduction in force reduced audits or something which somehow equates to $500B? I'd like to see equally detailed evidence for their claim.

> That $140B is a very concrete number with documentation to back up all 7279 line items in great detail.

What do you mean by "very concrete number"? And why do you consider DOGE's documentation to be substantiating evidence? I quickly searched through your comments and see that you're a Mormon. Do you likewise believe that the Book of Mormon is empirical evidence that substantiates Mormonism? If so, how do you decide which reading material is substantiating evidence and which isn't?

Elon is a proven liar, but there's no reason to bring this person's spiritual beliefs into the conversation.

Many errors and exaggerations have been found in DOGE’s numbers. Enough to where I don’t trust a word they now say. The $140B could be real or complete BS, or somewhere in between. That’s what happens when you lose trust because you don’t act in a way that engenders trust.

Sources for this very concrete number ? Besides your ass

Even if that 140B is real, how does that make the corruption and waste that this kind of purchase would be acceptable? Do you think they'll stop the corruption and waste at that? Do you think they won't just replace waste that didn't benefit them with waste that does?

Prepare to be disappointed. Career journalists can certainly be too liberal or too conservative for you, but their job is to check receipts. Why is Kari Lake lying?

https://www.propublica.org/article/doge-government-waste-fra...

Are you comfortable tallying their $8 Billion -> $8 Million typo to count as savings?

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/a-look-at-the-misleading-a...

They’re using DOGE to do something that avoids accountability.

They found nothing, because they were not doing actual review. They just slashed things without comprehension, claimed they were fraud and then had to hire people back because they broke law or fired people they need. All the while throwing around accusations and knee jerk accusations based on nothing.

Every time their claims were checked, there were found massive mistakes and lies.

Repeating loendoes not make it true, despite people like you trying to use that tactic.

Even setting aside the political stuff, this thing was 3 years late to the market. There are very few reasons you would want one of these over a Rivian outside of aesthetics, and it was a divisive aesthetic from the beginning.

Agreed. From the looks of it as someone who doesn't follow the automotive space too closely: Tesla unveiled it before any/most companies mentioned the idea, and shipped after most/all others had already. So, they got people riled up to buy an electric pickup, then sent them all to the competitors.

(And then shipped a pile of recalled garbage)

Also the price went up by over 50%, and the initial reports of issues with car washes or rain along with the resale penalty were not exactly what buyers want to hear when they’re looking at a six figure vehicle purchase.

I like the look on people's faces when I tell them the fleet is rusting. "But it's stainless steel" they say. Still rusts if you try hard enough. It's hard to believe I thought I might want one all those years ago...

It solved a bunch of problems absolutely nobody asked for, nor cared about. Bulletproof paneling? I mean you can’t make this stuff up. The sharp edges were idiotic. It was absolute hubris over good engineering.

They should’ve done what ford did. Make it just a regular damn pick up truck, no need for bulletproof nonsense. And it would’ve sold like hot cakes.

> And it would’ve sold like hot cakes.

I still don’t think it would have. It’s useless for anyone who’s pretending they might haul stuff. It’s worse than useless off road. And it’s too small to appeal to the dudes who buy dualies to take their kids to elementary school.

Your first sentence is 100% dead on, except that it also completely failed to solve any of the problems people actually have (or, at least, problems they think they have).

Well there are a lot of people that buy pickup trucks in America that aren’t in trades, etc.

Ford’s F150 Lightning had a 2 year wait list. So there definitely was a market.

I’m not one of these people but just in my circles I had a neighbor who’s a lawyer who considered one, and another that’s a marketing exec.

And another friend who’s in IT pre-ordered a cyber truck.

Sure, but that’s what I’m saying: even for the people who buy trucks basically as status symbols, it’s a crappy truck.

There’s just no use case, IMO, where it sells to anyone who isn’t fully into what Elon was or currently is, or who didn’t buy the bullshit (self-driving, etc).

The F150 was the perfect electric truck - it can do real pickup things, but it also hits all the sweet spots for people who want a truck but don’t really need one (and who are willing to spend the premium).

It looks like a cheap mock-up for a sci-fi movie --- with quality, reliability and usability to match. It's a truck that just can't do what a truck is supposed to do.

For comparison...

>GM said its inventory of vehicles, which is the number of vehicles currently on dealer lots or en route, fell 8% to 549,312 in the first quarter.

So at ~50K ASP, GM has over $25B sitting in inventory.

Very interesting. How easy/difficult is it for a dealer to return unsold inventory to a car maker?

If I understand it correctly Tesla's innovation in last 5 years have mostly been updates to their software, for better or worse.

Is there a "normal" amount of inventory to sit on?

>Used Cybertruck prices are down 55% year over year

It's wild to me folks lined up to buy this thing ... like I can understand enthusiasm for new things and all that but that's a big hit there. And even I think the prices are still high for the used ones in my area.

There is a massive overlap between Tesla 'cult' members who hold Tesla shares and Cybertruck buyers - hence the 'best-selling EV truck' for the first few months. It sounds wild, but it's a thing. Many claim to have bought several cars already 'for the mission' (one has to explain me, how buying several cars in a span of 5 years helps to fight climate change).

Once this pool was exhausted however, there is literally 0 demand. Tesla don't publish the number of Cybertruck sold, they mix them with model S / X, for a reason (the most transparent company on earth !).

Given the cratering demand, one has to ask how much money Tesla will bleed this year - despite all the hype around Optimus and other pipe dreams, at the end of the day, it's a car manufacturer employing 100k people, with installed production capacity that's now 2x the number of cars they were selling recently and the ratio is very quickly increasing. If history is any guide here, they are on a fast track to bankruptcy.

EDIT: Do not attempt to trade this ! It's become a meme stock at this point, and as we learned with GME, AMC, Hertz - even in case of real or virtual bankruptcy a stock can stay quite high.

Tesla, the DeLorean of the 21st century. Or maybe Edsel. Or Tucker.

DeLorean was / is cool tho… failed for good reason but there’s one in my area and even non car people gather round it when it is around.

The Cybertruck is nothing like the Delorean. One was the vision of a man with admitted drug use to create a stainless steel vehicle that turned out to be very unreliable. Oh wait. Nevermind.

The DeLorean was a beautiful car, though!

And they've actually gone up in value, by quite a bit. $90k-$190k used, $25k new. Which is curious, since a decade ago, they were quite cheap.

> Which is curious, since a decade ago, they were quite cheap.

The 80s kids who grew up watching Back to the Future are entering the age where some of them have money and mid-life crises.

The electric conversion kit came out last year.

Here's hoping the business world learns from this experience: trolls make terrible CEOs. It's one thing to be a narcissist or a sociopath. It's another to set out to sell a product while bending all your effort to taunting and dominating the customers who trusted you. People remember being betrayed.

It turns out no one is an NPC.

I don't think it's that simple.

Tesla sales were already slowing way before Musk turned full MAGA and he knew that. Competition showed up, states started cutting EV subisdes, especially in Europe etc. Tesla was never going to achieve the 50% / year growth that hey announced, and hit 20M car sales by 2030.

I actually think that may be one reason he did turn to Trump. It's a last ditch attempt at trying to save his empire.

People will point out that he is the richest person on earth etc etc. This is all based on valuation levels making pets.com like something Buffett could buy. The only liquid asset he has is Tesla. It's the only one on which he cashed in tens of billions of $, and it's the one he used as collateral to fund his other ventures. If it goes back down to earth, he's done.

Perhaps. I don't see how he thought this was going to save his empire, though. Trump's crowd hates electric cars. Environmental concerns are to them what pork is to pious Jews and Muslims, beef to Hindus. Rolling coal is their sacrament. The refrain at Trump's rallies was "drill, baby, drill". And this has been the case -- not the refrain, but the attitude -- since the 60s. So how was Trump ever going to save "Tesler"? It makes as much sense as sacrificing your children to Moloch to save your family line: the only thing that is sure in that bargain is the death of your children.

Technically Tesla's mission newer was about "the environment" but rather "Accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy". Slight difference.

Plus they mostly achieved that (accelerated the world) and pivoting to AI now.

Does Musk's thinking make as much sense as people intentionally voting for massive new taxes?

Peter Navarro said that he expects Trump’s tariffs to bring in $6 trillion in revenue over the next decade.

The MAGA economic miracle is actually the largest tax hike in US history --- to be paid entirely by US voters/consumers.

Nothing about MAGA (or Musk) economics makes any sense. In the words of Warren Buffet, the tooth fairy isn't going to pay these tariffs.

A -2% effect on GDP would make that a wash. So, for Trump to satisfy Navarro, he needs to beat 2% GDP growth, which he routinely could in his first term. Biden was often double Trump’s GDP growth rate.

he needs to beat 2% GDP growth

Hard to grow GDP while also working to isolate the US economy from world markets.

This won't end well for most people --- but especially not for MAGA voters.

I actually think that the design is something people could get behind. People are painting and coating it with various cool color schemes, some of them look great. The problem is that the car itself just doesn't seem good enough and has far too many quality issues and problems. The windshield wiper itself is like a flagpole for all that is wrong with that car. Of course - who knows, I'm only repeating things I saw on social media in this case. In a german reddit post I saw about Tesla cars I read that Teslas are supposedly actually fairly good quality by now ... compared to the even worse german EVs which simply declare your car's software obsolete after 3 years and never update it again.

Hey, my model year 21 German EV is still getting updates... mainly because they keep having recalls which get fixed in software.

A counterpoint as someone who owns a Volkswagen EV, I'm absolutely fine with my car not updating and changing every few months.

I bought it knowing the features it had at the time, I don't need the icons rearranged in a yearly UI redesign, or the adaptive cruise control algorithm changing from one week to the next, or needing to fork out for some subscription every month. If there's a bug or two? I will have the car for years, it's something I'll figure out.

It's a tool to get from A to B, not another IoT gadget I want to have to worry about updating and babying all the time.

Throw up a Nazi salute on television and find out. What he’s find out is that nobody wants to do business with a Nazi or drive the iconic symbol of the brand.

Aka 1 week worth of inventory.

Some EV trucks haven't sold this many in entire year.

If you consider it marketing, It did its job during a difficult period. If you need it to perform in the market, I think it's demonstrably failed, but you can look at other successful utility vehicle plays and say "thats so unhelpful to PR and sales messaging for this brand" -nobody respects the makers of UPS trucks except guys in UPS truck buying contexts and the tesla truck wasn't aimed at truck owners as such: it was aimed at what in Australia we'd call "Cashed up bogans" -people who want an image outcome, not a utility function.

I am much more interested in how the Tesla Semi Trailer is doing. And, the alternatives.

We could be saying how poorly the the Tesla solar roofing tiles are doing, but we'd have to acknowledge Tesla power storage is now critical worldwide. So, like any company it has hits and misses.

I think in the end all we're saying is that this was a hugely avoidable miss, but in PR terms at the time, it probably worked out. Long tail cost however.

Bit of "tail wagging the dog" in almost any brand-led discussion.

I don't personally know Musk, I certainly dislike his personal image. Doesn't seem my kind of guy. Interesting.

I don’t understand what “respect” means in this context….

Who cares if you won some imaginary respect if you’re not selling?

UPS van sold lots… so that seems good.

Maybe respect was the wrong word? It's not like the brand power of "UPS truck" is boosting sales in any other segment.

The brand power of Cyber Truck was (in my mind) designed to boost sales across the board. While it wasn't available people bought other Tesla product, expecting a future upsell.

Thats all. UPS truck is a fine, economically justified, fit-for-purpose design. It gets all the (brand) respect it needs.

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