Comment by dfajgljsldkjag
6 hours ago
It says a lot that spacex had to buy so many trucks just to help the sales numbers. I always thought the ford lightning was a better option for most people anyway. It is too bad they are stopping production when it seems to be the winner.
5,600 units of Cybertrunk and Semi combined is basically 5,600 units of Cybertruck. The Semi is still a boondoggle. I can believe that number. Your maximum sales figures are capped by your price point, and the Cybertruck, as well as the S and X, are in that "Fully successful this vehicle will have sales in the mid-thousands" price bracket.
I sometimes wonder about a world where those trucks managed to hit their $40,000 price points. For the Cybertruck it was clear that Elon demanded way too much (four wheel seering? Come on) to ever get close to it, but for the F150 it seems more like the price was due to Ford halfassing the production.
If you sell five thousand units but built production capacity for a quarter million units, that's not a success.
There is also the optic that the premiere US EV company failed to deliver an EV pickup truck behind Rivian, Ford, Stellantis, and arguably did a far worse job at it.
The F150 lightning was always going to be a tough sell for die hard truck customers but it at least has all the fit and finish that those customers expect, with access to the F-series aftermarket.
I take it that SpaceX looked at all the trucks on the market and chose the cyber truck to maximize investor value and do what's right for SpaceX.
I suspect the reasoning was similar to the reason Tesla bought Solar City or X.ai acquired the site previously known as twitter. Pure unvarnished investor value.