Marcus

READ IT TO BELIEVE IT 🚨 The Cybertruck might've lost the sales race. Its technology didn't 🔥 InsideEVs has called the Cybertruck one of the greatest flops in automotive history. They even put it next to the Ford Edsel, the late-1950s car whose name became shorthand for failure. It's a brutal verdict, and it lands days after Tesla confirmed that the truck that broke the internet in 2019 will wind down production in mid-2027 to make room for more Cybercabs. On sales, they're right. Elon Musk once talked about 250,000 to 500,000 trucks a year. The real number will land around 70,000. No amount of spin can change that, and there's no point pretending otherwise. But a sales chart can't tell you what was inside this truck. And what was inside it is already outliving it. 📐 UNDER THE STAINLESS STEEL, THE ENGINEERING DELIVERED Let's start with the part most owners will never see: the wiring. For about 70 years, cars have run their lights, windows and screens on 12 volts. Cybertruck threw that out and ran its entire low-voltage system on 48. Four times the voltage means a quarter of the current for the same power. That means thinner wires, less copper and less weight, all hidden behind the panels. Then Tesla did something very Tesla. Instead of guarding the playbook, it sent rivals a document on how to build a 48-volt vehicle. Ford CEO Jim Farley replied that it was "Great for the industry!" and said Ford had been heading down a similar path. Fast forward to today. Ford's next electric pickup, due in 2027, moves key systems to 48 volts. Whoever got there first in their own labs, Cybertruck was the first mass-production vehicle to go all in. The wiring got smarter, too. Cybertruck's electronics talk over Etherloop, a gigabit Ethernet cable that loops around the cabin. Together with 48 volts, it lets Tesla rethink the wiring harness, one of the heaviest and most labor-intensive parts of any car. That beefier electrical backbone helps power the truck's boldest move: steer-by-wire. There's no steering column connecting the wheel to the road. Sensors read your hands, redundant actuators turn the wheels, and rear-wheel steering lets this big truck turn like a much smaller one. Infiniti tried an earlier version with a mechanical backup. Cybertruck is widely credited as the first vehicle to put full steer-by-wire into mass production. Since then, Lexus and Nio have put it on the road, and Mercedes is bringing it to the EQS. And here's the best part: the steering became software. Within weeks of production starting, an over-the-air update shaved nearly two feet off the turning circle. Owners got tighter turns from the hardware they already had, without a single service visit. Under the floor, Tesla went big again. Cybertruck was its first 800-volt vehicle, which moves the same power with less current through smaller cables. Add improved 4680 cells and smarter charging software, and peak charging climbed to 500 kW. That battery doesn't just move the truck, either. When the grid goes down, Cybertruck can send up to 11.5 kW of backup power into your house. Pair it with Powerwall 3, and the truck and the home battery work together as one coordinated microgrid. Tesla says a full charge can back up a typical home for more than three days. Your pickup becomes your power plant. And none of it stood still. Back in September, Cybertruck lead engineer Wes Morrill shared 14 changes Tesla had made since the first trucks shipped. They ranged from a lighter, tougher underbody shield and quieter gears to a door rattle fixed with software and a window switch moved after fleet data showed passengers bumping it with their elbows. [ The full breakdown of all 14 changes is here 👉 nitter.gq/tslaming/status/210200… 😇 ] Most vehicles freeze their engineering the day production starts. Cybertruck kept evolving. That's why the story doesn't end in 2027. When the wind-down was announced, Wes called the truck "an incredible technology development platform" that "lives on through Cybercab." Elon put it his own way: "There will never be another vehicle like it." Both are true. There won't be another truck like it, but its technology is already moving on. The carryover is real. Cybercab uses the 48-volt architecture, steer-by-wire and 4680 cells that Cybertruck brought into production. Not everything made the jump. Cybercab stuck with a 400-volt system instead of Cybertruck's 800 volts. Tesla kept what the robotaxi needed and left the rest behind. 📉 WHERE THE SALES STORY WENT WRONG This is the part that stings, and it starts with the gap between what Tesla promised and what arrived. At the 2019 reveal, the promise was a price around $40,000, more than 500 miles of range, over 14,000 lb of towing and production in 2021. Deliveries started in late 2023, about two years late. The cheapest version ended up costing roughly double the promised price, and the remaining trims now start above $92,000. Range topped out at 325 EPA miles, the bed-mounted range extender was canceled, and towing landed at 11,000 lb. The one headline spec Tesla beat was acceleration, with the Cyberbeast hitting 60 mph in 2.6 seconds. For a lot of reservation holders, the truck that showed up wasn't the truck they'd signed up for, and at nearly twice the price, many seem to have walked away. Those reservations were never as solid as they looked, either. More than a million people signed up, but the deposit was just $100 and refundable. That measured excitement, not commitment, yet it helped justify factory capacity for a mass-market truck. Then the whole electric pickup market hit a wall. Pickup buyers care about range while towing, price and charging access, and EV trucks struggled across the board. Ford ended the F-150 Lightning after sales never got close to its planned capacity, and GM has idled its electric truck plant for long stretches. Here's the twist: in 2024, Cybertruck sold 38,965 units, more than the Lightning sold in any single year, at a much higher price. It won its segment. The segment was just too small for a factory built for hundreds of thousands of trucks. The truck didn't help itself, either. A string of recalls, early quality complaints and a design that thrilled some buyers and turned off traditional ones all took a toll. It also became a political symbol, which seems to have pushed away some of the buyers most open to going electric. Sales fell 48% in 2025. In the first nine months of this year, just 11,586 trucks found buyers. 🚀 THE LEGACY OUTLIVES THE SALES So yes, as a product, the Cybertruck failed. Tesla built a factory for a mass-market truck and sold a niche one, mostly because the truck it delivered wasn't the truck it promised. But the Edsel comparison only works if you judge a vehicle by sales alone. The Edsel left behind a cautionary tale. The Cybertruck leaves one too, about promising price and range before you can deliver them. It also leaves a 48-volt system Ford is putting in its next truck, a steer-by-wire setup other automakers have followed into production, and the electrical and steering foundation Tesla's robotaxi is built on. The Cybertruck's past will be judged by its sales, and on that scoreboard, it lost. Its future will be judged by what it left behind, and that future is already taking shape on the same Giga Texas floor where the truck is being phased out, one Cybercab at a time.