Eccentric and overhyped, Tesla’s Cybertruck became a stand-in for Elon Musk during his ascent in the Republican party. It will join the ranks of other vehicles symbolic of their eras – for better or for worse
Three days after a historic blue tsunami changed America’s political landscape, Elon Musk announced Tesla would end production of its hulking Cybertruck next year.
Was it a coincidence? Maybe. Musk said the move was “to make room for increased Cybercab production”, referring to Tesla’s Robotaxi. But the combined circumstances felt highly appropriate: it was the end of an era.
Eccentric and overhyped, the Cybertruck became a kind of automotive stand-in for Musk himself amid his political ascent. Like so many of his projects, it was massively promoted, heavily delayed, and ultimately fell short: Musk once predicted he could sell 250,000 a year but ultimately sold 70,000 in three years, losing $1.9bn in the process, according to Quartz.
The design seemed to prioritize science fiction over robust engineering: the unveiling was in November 2019, when the film Blade Runner was set, as Musk proudly pointed out – but it didn’t arrive on the roads until four years later. At that unveiling event, Musk infamously showed off the Cybertruck’s durability by having a designer throw a ball at its window, which cracked. While Musk called it apocalypse-proof, it often seemed like the opposite: Cybertrucks suffered at least five vehicle fires, four of them deadly – making them deadlier than the notorious Ford Pinto, according to an analysis. They were subject to 11 recalls amid technical issues, including a loose pedal that could get stuck and cause unintentional acceleration. They routinely got stuck in the snow.
Like its creator, the Cybertruck was highly divisive. Many observers were repulsed by its bizarre, boxy appearance and its road-hogging size (a parallel parking nightmare). “It is the ugliest vehicle I think I have ever laid eyes on,” the automotive expert Mike Caudill told Fox Business. Others, however, were deeply devoted to their Cybertrucks. “I’ve got 6,000 miles on my Cybertruck; I’ve had zero issues,” Matt Holm, president of the Tesla Owners Club of Austin, told the Houston Chronicle.
Indeed, the Cybertruck had its strong points, according to experts. “People at Tesla were rightly proud of the engineering they put into it,” said Ezra Dyer, a senior editor and columnist at Car and Driver. But “a lot of the engineering problems they solved were self-imposed” – driven by the need to incorporate Musk’s super-epic design choices.
“Why is that important to you that it be bulletproof?” Jay Leno asked Musk during a test drive. “Because it’s badass and super cool,” the CEO replied.
All this, of course, coincided with Musk’s political rise in the Trump administration. The truck, as the Guardian’s Andrew Lawrence put it, became essentially “a Maga hat on wheels”, indicating its driver’s political beliefs – or at least the politics onlookers would ascribe to them. The archetypal Cybertruck driver was a guy, “probably with some kind of goatee, likely compensating for something, so desperate for attention that he will take negative attention”, as an automotive analyst told the New York Times. Many drivers of various Tesla models rushed to distance themselves from the CEO with bumper stickers that say, “I bought this before Elon went crazy.”
The Cybertruck, meanwhile, “became this totem and symbol of Elon Musk himself”, says Dan Neil, an auto columnist for the Wall Street Journal.
While Cybertrucks took to the streets, Musk was taking a literal chainsaw to the US government as head of the department of government efficiency (Doge), which bore plenty of similarities to the truck, beginning with the empty promises. Musk said Doge could cut $2tn from the federal budget; its website now claims it has cut just $215bn. In the process, hundreds of thousands of workers left the government due to workforce reductions, early retirement and other reasons – before, in a move reminiscent of the Cybertruck’s recalls, many were rehired. And like the Cybertruck, it all came to an embarrassing end: Musk left government under a cloud as he feuded with Donald Trump over spending in his “big, beautiful bill”.
Now, when it comes to the Cybertruck, “you’ve got this expensive luxury product with a very off-putting aesthetic and all this political baggage,” Dyer says (the 2026 model runs from about $72,000 to $102,000). So it’s little surprise that sales have struggled. “It’s following the trajectory of any cult vehicle,” Dyer says. The hardcore fans line up, but once they’ve all got theirs, demand fizzles.
As it reaches the end of its short road, the Cybertruck – outwardly mighty, inwardly fragile, a poorly conceived product of an increasingly oligarchical system – feels alarmingly apt as a symbol of Trump 2.0 Phase I. Ten years from now, spotting an ageing Cybertruck on the street will serve as a reminder of the bad old days.
It will join the ranks of other vehicles symbolic of their eras – for better or for worse.
The Cybertruck is to the 2020s what the Volkswagen Transporter – AKA the VW Bus – is to the 1960s. In many ways, the two are opposites: the VW Bus calls forth images of peace and music, flower decals, and a crowd of well-meaning hippies packed inside. Sixty years after the summer of love, the Cybertruck suggests an isolated middle-aged man hiding from the apocalypse.
The vehicles do have a few things in common, however. One is drugs, but while the VW conjures cannabis, the Cybertruck is more ketamine. The other is a reputation for putting looks over safety.
A few decades later came another icon of its era – in many ways the progenitor to the Cybertruck: the Hummer H2, introduced in the early 2000s. Like the Cybertruck, the Hummer was inconveniently enormous and associated with a certain kind of aggressive masculinity.
And with its military ties and gas-guzzling reputation, it was bound up with imagery of the Iraq war. “It became a lightning rod for pro and con militarism, and so people drove them or bought them as a political statement as much as a style statement,” says Neil.
A similar perception may have plagued the Cybertruck, as Tesla showed off its ability to withstand bullets. “All of that was childish,” Neil says. “It didn’t speak with any seriousness to the mindset of people preparing to put down $80, $90,000.” The Cybertruck “represented a kind of a militarized vision of the future” to an American public tired of war.
As for Tesla’s clientele, “the wager was they were emotionally immature and it looked like a toy-slash-weapon,” Neil adds. Indeed, as the Guardian’s Arwa Mahdawi put it, the Cybertruck “looks as if it were designed by a five-year-old”. In that sense, it might best be compared to another icon of American vehicle design: the Little Tikes Cozy Coupe, the plastic red and yellow car that was for a time the bestselling vehicle in the world.
But perhaps that’s unfair. To Neil, the Cybertruck represents both a “failure of management” and “a phenomenal piece of engineering.
“Its ambition and its vision and its willingness to break the mold of convention – that I think is its legacy,” he says.
Dyer agrees. “I’m glad in a way that it exists because it’s interesting, and I’m in favor of more interesting cars. Period,” he says. In this case, however, that difference “is a towering monument to overconfidence.
“There’s never been anything like it,” Dyer adds, “and I guess there never will be again.”
